Chapter 167: Benefactor! This is Improper!
Shang Yue felt a deep stir in his heart.
The sentence “don’t let your brothers experience the exact same pain all over again” pierced him to the core. Having lost his entire family, Shang Yue understood the meaning of living family members better than anyone.
Up at the mine, there were still so many people like him waiting for their families, and their families were waiting for them to return. The truly vicious ones had either died, fled, or rebelled. Those who were actually banished to do hard labor down in the mines were, in fact, not many.
Shang Yue wiped away a handful of tears and fell to his knees before Jian Xingxia. “Thank you, Miss, for saving my life! I will definitely find a way to survive!”
If it were an ordinary person suddenly transported from their home to a completely strange and distinct place, they would surely be filled with anxiety, astonishment, and caution. But Shang Yue was different.
These past few years of his life could be described as living death, dying over and over again. He didn’t even harbor the will to live, so why would he fear a change in his surroundings?
It was only now that his hand gripped the machete. A commoner at the very bottom of society, stripped of everything from family property to life and dignity, left at the mercy of others with absolutely zero power to resist the imperial court, war, and corvée labor—even a convict slave who had almost died a wrongful death—for the first time, possessed a weapon to fight with.
Shang Yue tightly gripped the machete. “I want to take this back… Huh? I can’t carry it back?”
Shang Yue froze. The dried blood on his head, washed down by his sweat, trickled to the corner of his eye. Through the hazy blood and sweat, he seemed to see the same bizarre sight he had witnessed down in the mine. Only this time, the vision of blood and sweat was not a field strewn with corpses pushing him to crawl toward the gap above his head.
Instead… the blurred machete could not be held securely no matter how he grasped it.
Shang Yue didn’t catch on. “This object is not allowed to be taken away.”
Without a second word, Jian Xingxia took the machete and handed it to Da Hei. “Smash it for me! Smash the handle to pieces. As long as you don’t damage the blade, make it look as ruined as possible.”
Da Hei took it with high spirits. He raised his hoe and swung it straight down toward the handle of the machete.
Sparks flew along with bolts of lightning as metal clashed against metal, clanging loudly. When the hoe bent out of shape, he switched to stones. When stones failed, Jian Xingxia went back to the old house and brought out a heavy meat cleaver.
This caused the plump auntie to shout from behind, “Aya, Owner! I’m about to chop the big bones right now, why are you taking my kitchen knife away!”
The heavy-duty cleaver specially meant for chopping bones had been purchased at the market.
Jian Xingxia didn’t even turn her head, tossing back a single sentence: “I’ll buy you ten of them during the next market day.”
For the remaining time, Jian Xingxia, Da Hei, and Shang Yue—the three of them together—subjected that sturdy machete to a series of utterly tragic acts.
With every bit of damage inflicted, Jian Xingxia would hand it to Shang Yue to try out. “See if you can carry it back.”
If Shang Yue said it wouldn’t work, they would continue to inflict more damage. Jian Xingxia’s meager knowledge of physics was utilized to its absolute limit. They had to make the machete look completely tattered and worthless, yet they couldn’t damage the machete’s functional structure and stress points. In other words, the handle could be flattened or slightly bent, but it couldn’t be broken open. The spine of the blade could be battered, but it couldn’t be snapped. As for the edge, it did suffer a bit of damage, but as long as it didn’t chip completely, a tiny bit of rolling at the edge wasn’t a grand issue.
Jian Xingxia had Shang Yue carry a coarse stone so he could sharpen it later.
After an hour of meticulous yet brutal hacking and battering at a single machete, the blood and sweat Shang Yue didn’t dare wipe away finally crystallized into reality before his eyes.
“It seems to be working now. I can carry it back.”
The blurred machete before his eyes no longer floated. Shang Yue reached out to swing it, and the shadow didn’t waver either.
“Finally!”
Jian Xingxia set down the bone cleaver and plopped straight onto the ground. Heavens! Running the guesthouse was so busy, yet she hadn’t felt this tired. Taking turns with Da Hei and Shang Yue for this past hour had left her nearly devoid of strength. The quality of this machete casually bought at the market was simply far too sturdy!
As expected, without modern tools and technology, forging iron with bare hands was still far too difficult for a human being.
Shang Yue obtained the machete. The machete, now thoroughly battered yet with its crucial functions intact, was judged by the system to be worth only two yuan and seventy cents. It was roughly equivalent to the price of scrap iron, well within the limit of Shang Yue’s wage quota.
At this point, the three-hour recruitment shift was also drawing to a close.
Shang Yue bowed deeply to Jian Xingxia, his face resolute. “Thank you, Benefactor, for waking me up and granting me this machete to seek survival. Although I do not know what mystical affinity brought me to this place to meet you, I will firmly bear Benefactor’s guidance in mind to fight for a life of my own!”
Jian Xingxia waved her hand. She was far too exhausted to speak empty pleasantries. “There are still a few minutes left, no need to rush. Try a few more items to see if there is anything else you can carry back.”
Jian Xingxia handed over half a box of matches—the kind where the matchbox was flattened and damaged. The remaining dozen or so matches inside were somewhat bent, and some had lost their phosphorus.
“Can you carry this away?” Jian Xingxia had Shang Yue hold them.
Shang Yue: “…Yes.”
“Good, then try this next.” It was a handful of rusted utility knife blades, some broken and notched, numbering seven or eight pieces.
Shang Yue’s eyes widened. “This works too.”
Following that, Jian Xingxia placed an abundance of items into his hands, such as moldy straw ropes, broken pottery bowls, and discarded bamboo joints and roots… As long as Shang Yue held them and the vision of blood and sweat in his eyes didn’t float, he took them all.
Finally, and most crucially—Jian Xingxia told Shang Yue to take off his clothes.
Shang Yue was shocked. “Benefactor! This is improper!”
“Shut up! This is highly proper!”
Jian Xingxia no longer had the time to fret over what Shang Yue was thinking. Encountering this kind of situation, she could just call Da Hei directly. “Da Hei, strip him for me!”
Da Hei: ? He didn’t understand, but he executed the command.
In an instant, Shang Yue’s already tattered garments were completely torn to shreds, exposing his gaunt body and the new and old scars covering his entire torso. Da Hei didn’t feel much of anything about this—as a slave, being beaten was an exceptionally common occurrence.
Jian Xingxia found it a bit hard to look directly for a brief moment, but in the next second, she steeled her complex emotions and pulled out a sports drink bottle with a squirt cap to squirt water onto Shang Yue’s wounds.
Shang Yue’s blank yet shocked expression transformed into an agonizing gasp in that exact second.
“Sss—ah!”
Jian Xingxia’s hands didn’t stop, squeezing the bottle frantically to squirt water. “Time is running out. This is the only bottle available at the manor. Don’t worry, the bottle is filled with saline solution to help clean your wounds.”
A good deal of the sand, dirt, and gravel clinging to Shang Yue’s body was washed away, exposing wounds that were even more shocking to look at. The old injuries had already become ancient scars, turning into thick tissue. The new injuries still showed traces of dark red blood and pinkish-white flesh.
Jian Xingxia pulled out another squeeze bottle with a pointed nozzle—
“This is iodophor, to prevent the wounds from becoming inflamed.”
When ancients were injured, their skin, flesh, and even bones could heal gradually given enough rest. What they feared most was inflammation; without anti-inflammatory medicine, they couldn’t break a fever, and no one could save them. Fortunately, Jian Xingxia had bought the largest bottle of cheap iodophor, so she didn’t feel a trace of heartache right now, squirting it on with a heavy hand.
Shang Yue clamped his teeth tightly together. It was excruciatingly painful, but he absolutely had to endure it.
After applying the iodophor, it was just about done. There were no wounds bleeding uncontrollably, so Jian Xingxia didn’t apply Yunnan Baiyao to him. Instead, she popped the single extra safety pill she had saved previously straight into Shang Yue’s mouth.
“This is life-saving medicine. When you go back in a bit, we don’t know what the situation inside the mine is like. In case you get injured, it can buy you some time.”
Jian Xingxia’s brows were tightly knit, not daring to imagine the situation Shang Yue had to face.
“Set your mind at ease. Tomorrow morning at five o’clock, the moment the recruitment quota refreshes, I will recruit you to come over.”
