Starting as pearl divers, they have endless jobs.

Chapter 14 Advancement, Night Walker!
Three professions, representing three completely different paths, were laid out before Chen Ye.

The Mechanical Master, specializing in decryption, is the nemesis of all treasure vaults and secret chambers, but is slightly weaker in direct combat. The Thousand-Faced Man, skilled in disguise and infiltration, plays with people's hearts and tricks, making him best suited to infiltrate enemy ranks.

As for the Nightcrawler...

Chen Ye's gaze was fixed on the description of the Nightwalker.

This is almost the purest and most direct enhancement and advancement of the Thief class! It does not go down the side branches of technique or disguise, but takes the two points of "stealth" and "assassination" to the extreme.

What is your best skill?
It's about movement, speed, and swift blades!

While mechanisms and disguises are useful, they are not his core strength. The path he chooses to take is one of ruthless slaughter, navigating the darkness and crushing everything with absolute power.

"I choose, Nightcrawler."

Chen Ye made a decision in his heart.

The text on the system panel suddenly changed and then froze.

[Job transfer successful! 】

Name: Chen Ye

【Occupation: Night Stalker (lv1)】

[Talent: Child of Shadows (You are a darling of the shadows, born to blend into the darkness. Your aura, voice, and form are greatly concealed in the shadows, making you almost undetectable.)]

[Original Skills: Skillful Hands lv10, Swift Blade lv10, Leaping Over Roofs lv6]

A warm current instantly spread throughout Chen Ye's body, and he felt some kind of wonderful change taking place. His breathing became longer, his heartbeat became more steady, and his eyes seemed to see farther and more clearly in the darkness.

He simply stood there quietly, as if he were about to merge into the surrounding darkness.

It's a feeling I've never had before.

Chen Ye's heart stirred slightly, and he tentatively took a step forward.

No sound.

His footsteps landed on the ground without raising a speck of dust; he seemed like a weightless ghost, merely shifting a short distance in the shadows.

He then tried to move around in the cramped room, his movements as elusive as a ghost, so quiet that even the slightest rustling of his clothes was suppressed.

If the previous "light as a swallow" allowed him to run faster and jump higher on the rooftops, then the current "child of shadows" truly makes him a part of the night.

The former is skill, the latter is instinct.

Chen Ye pushed open the window and leaped into the courtyard.

He didn't deliberately seek out shadows; he simply strolled casually through the courtyard.

Even so, his presence was still minimized.

Even the old cat in the corner of the yard, which was usually the most alert, didn't notice anything at this moment. When Chen Ye walked past it, it didn't even lift its eyelids.

A surge of indescribable excitement welled up in Chen Ye's heart.

With this talent, what place in the world is there that I can't go?

Even those heavily guarded wealthy families would find it difficult to stop him.

The days that followed were uneventful, and Chen Ye continued his habit of mingling in the city during the day and practicing alone at night. However, he now had added another element to his practice—how to perfectly master the talent of the "Child of Shadows."

Before we knew it, it was already Mid-Autumn Festival in August.

This was a day for family reunion, but at that moment, a fast horse from the north rushed into the city at an extremely high speed.

The guards at the city gate dared not stop him; instead, they immediately cleared a path for him, for the rider on the swift horse was none other than a messenger wearing a goose-feather hat. This signified an urgent dispatch, an extremely urgent military matter, thus granting him direct access to the palace. Anyone who dared to obstruct him would be executed without mercy!

Soon, the messenger galloped down the long street and rushed straight into the imperial city, leaving behind a crowd of astonished people discussing the matter.

"What's going on? Could there be some trouble at the border?"

"Who knows? Let's hope nothing happens!"

But things didn't go as planned; just half a day later, news of the battle report began to circulate.

The nomadic tribes of the grasslands, who had long been eyeing the border, could no longer contain their greed and launched a fierce attack. With the border defenses in disarray, the three cities of Yuguan, Shikou, and Ningwu fell overnight.

This news was like a bucket of ice water, extinguishing the festive atmosphere of the entire capital city.

An emotion called panic began to spread silently among the crowd.

In the days that followed, the situation became more and more chaotic.

Today's news is that the steppe cavalry have breached Xiong Prefecture, slaughtering for three days, leaving rivers of blood. Tomorrow, another city will be besieged, its defenders in grave danger. Bad news keeps arriving from the north like snowflakes.

Meanwhile, in several southern prefectures, peasant uprisings broke out due to natural disasters and man-made calamities. Although small in scale and quickly suppressed by government troops, the sparks of a prairie fire had already quietly ignited on the parched grasslands of Dazhao.

To defend against the steppe cavalry, the imperial court began a frenzied expansion of the army, conscripting soldiers from all over the country and manufacturing weapons. The enormous military expenditures, like a bottomless black hole, quickly drained the already depleted national treasury.

As for where the remaining money will come from?

Then we can only make the people suffer even more.

As a result, all sorts of exorbitant taxes and levies emerged one after another, and grain prices rose three times a day. The little grain stored in ordinary people's homes was quickly depleted.

The people of the capital were relatively better off, after all, they were under the emperor's nose, and the court had to maintain some semblance of dignity. But the countryside outside the city was already a living hell.

Countless farmers toil for a year, only to find that the harvest they produce is not even enough to pay rent and taxes. Left with no other choice, they have to sell their children, pawn their wives, and sell their land.

For a time, the people suffered greatly, and corpses of the starving were everywhere.

Large numbers of villagers, unable to make a living, flocked to cities like Beijing, hoping to find a way to survive.

On the streets of the southern part of the city, one could see emaciated and ragged refugees everywhere. They huddled in corners, staring blankly at passersby with numb and empty eyes, and the air was filled with the scent of despair and death.

Chen Ye watched all of this with a cold eye.

He saw a mother sell her seven- or eight-year-old daughter to a slave trader for half a steamed bun. He also saw an old man kneeling on the ground, kowtowing until his head bled, begging for a bite to eat.

He knew then that the Great Zhao Dynasty was like a sinking ship; everyone knew it was about to collapse, but no one knew exactly when it would sink completely.

Ironically, even under these circumstances, those aristocratic families and imperial relatives who sit high above the world are still indulging in a life of debauchery.

The banquets in their mansions never stopped, and they even took advantage of soaring grain prices to hoard and speculate, squeezing the last blood-stained copper coin from those emaciated people.

They seemed completely unconcerned that the overwhelming public resentment would backfire on them, and they had no idea that this wealth, stained with blood and tears, could very well become the money that would bury them in the future.

Or perhaps they did think of it, but simply didn't care.

And it was amidst this impending chaos that Chen Ye began to take action.

He intends to try and change this messed-up world with his own abilities.

Even if one person's strength is very weak, doing something is better than doing nothing!

His first target was the rice shop run by the Lin family.

(End of this chapter)