Seeking good fortune and avoiding misfortune: Starting with death row inmates

I started learning martial arts at the age of twelve. Before that, my father insisted that I study and take the imperial examinations, but I just couldn't concentrate on my studies. At the age of nine, I couldn't even read the Three Character Classic, but I could knock out the front teeth of the kid next door who was three years older than me.

When I was little, my dad forced me to study, day and night! He even wanted me to do things like hanging my head from the beam and pricking my thigh with an awl. I couldn't take it anymore, so I burned all the books in the cabinet my dad bought for me. I also threatened him that if he forced me to study again, I would hang myself and complain to the ancestors!

Compared to studying, I preferred martial arts. I could wield even a broom with incredible skill. My father, seeing that I wasn't cut out for studying, had no choice but to agree to let me learn martial arts.

My father passed the imperial examination and became a scholar in his early years. He served as a staff member for a county magistrate, but unfortunately, he and the magistrate resigned and returned to their hometown to become a private tutor.

Damn it, my dad was an idiot. He resigned because he couldn't stand the county magistrate's obsequious and bullying behavior.

What official doesn't flatter superiors and bully subordinates? I really don't understand why he's so aloof. So aloof that he owns no possessions at home, so aloof that my mother ran off with a goatee-bearded merchant.

I've made up my mind to learn martial arts, but my family doesn't have a penny to our name, and learning martial arts is a very expensive thing. What should I do?

My dad definitely won't pay for it; he'd love for me to give up martial arts as soon as possible and come back to read his worthless books.

But I still found a way. At that time, there were two gangs in the city recruiting thugs. One was called the Tianlong Gang and the other was called the Dihu Gang. The two gangs would always recruit a group of thugs to fight over the docks. I would go to the Tianlong Gang to be a thug on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and then go to the Dihu Gang to beat up the Tianlong Gang on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. In short, I would follow whoever paid me.

After a few fights, my father found out that I had become a thug for the gang. He scolded me severely and warned me that I must never associate with those thugs again, and that the Wei family must never do such disreputable things.

I said it's fine if I don't go, but you can pay for my martial arts lessons.

Where would my father get any money? Although he ran a private school, he mostly accepted poor kids. The tuition fees those poor kids paid my father were just a few eggs and a few pounds of rice. My father was willing to let his kids go to school for such meager gifts. He was truly foolish.

But my dad still agreed. He said he would raise money for me to learn martial arts and that I should stop making money by fighting.

The next day, my father sold the house he used as a private school to raise the tuition fees for my martial arts school enrollment. I stopped joining gangs to make money and started learning martial arts obediently.

I have some talent in martial arts, and I quickly became the head disciple of the martial arts school. My father also supported my martial arts training. Sometimes I wondered where he, a poor scholar, got the money.

I've asked him many times, and he always stammers and brushes me off, but I didn't take it to heart. I'm sure my dad's money is clean.

He always warned me to be an honest person. The Wei family has produced three generations of good people, and we must not let it become a "common family" or even a "sick family" in my generation. Heaven has eyes, and the law is supreme. Even if it means death, we must not break the law. Heaven is watching.

Unfortunately, my dad still broke the law in the end.

In order to raise money for me to practice martial arts, he went back to the county to serve as an advisor to the former county magistrate. He had an excellent memory and was methodical in his work, so the magistrate entrusted him with handling a large number of important financial matters in the county.

Of course, all those accounts were in deficit. The county magistrate clearly wanted my father to falsify the accounts, and they even agreed on a price: five hundred coins for each falsified account. The money I earned to learn martial arts came from my father's falsification of accounts.

Of course, his falsification of accounts was eventually discovered. Because the accounts were too large, he was executed within ten days and sentenced to beheading.

Before he was taken to the execution ground, he was brought to see me again. The fool cried and said that he had let down his ancestors and the heavens. He warned me that I must never do anything illegal or criminal like him and that I must keep my status as a respectable person.

My father had already made a deal with the county magistrate to ensure my innocence. To that end, the magistrate changed my household registration in advance and severed my relationship with my father. In this way, the crime my father committed could not be pinned on me, and I remained an innocent and respectable person.

That idiot, even on his deathbed he was still thinking about how to sell his life for a good price to give to his son.

After my father died, the county magistrate treated me quite well. He sponsored me to pass the martial arts examination and made me a martial arts graduate. He also bought me a house in the city and made me a master.

Those were incredibly boring days. I did nothing all day except eat and play with the maids, and my cultivation level remained stuck at the Internal Organs Realm without any progress.

Sometimes when I'm bored, I go to the docks to watch gang fights. Sometimes I get so itchy to join in, but every time I do, it's like my father's eyes are watching me, telling me that I must never do anything that violates the laws of the Great Yan Dynasty.

If nothing unexpected happens, I will always be a law-abiding and respectable person. Unfortunately, in the fourth year of Tianyuan, Huaizhou suffered a severe drought. The rice seedlings in the fields all withered and the rivers were dry.

At first, the people ate tree bark, and after that, they ate clay. After eating the clay, they died in the ground, their bellies as big as drums.

Although I was better off than others at that time, I was still starving. Rice in the city was sold by the grain, and I spent all my savings to buy a few pounds of rice, which I ate by the grain every day!

Finally, when we were almost out of rice, I was so hungry that I couldn't stand it anymore, so I joined the refugee group and started fleeing the famine.

On the way to escape famine, I fainted from hunger. When I woke up, I found myself hanging upside down. Two starving refugees were sharpening their knives, ready to kill and eat me like a piglet.

I asked one of the refugees wearing a straw hat, "Aren't you afraid of God watching the evil deeds of cannibalism that are against all reason?"

A refugee standing nearby said viciously, "If God really had eyes, so many people wouldn't have starved to death."

Another man wearing a straw hat said that even if God had eyes, he wasn't afraid. Because he was wearing a straw hat, even God couldn't see what he looked like.

I suddenly realized.

So that's how it is. My father's lifelong belief that "Heaven has eyes and the law is supreme" was wrong. Heaven has no eyes at all, and even if it did, it would be completely blind. As long as it wears a hat, whether it's a straw hat or an official hat, it can't see who did the evil deeds.

Ironically, when I was living a life of luxury, I struggled to break through to the True Qi Realm, but now, starving and skin and bones, I've somehow managed to sense that True Qi.

I ate those two villains who wanted to eat me instead, and then I took that straw hat. From then on, whenever I wanted to do something dirty, I would wear that tattered straw hat so that the wicked heavens couldn't see my face.