【Mission Objective: Destroy and cut off the Eight Treasures Golden Body inheritance by any means】
【Mission Reward: One heaven-and-earth marvel, one heaven-and-earth treasure】
【Time: 7 days】
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Wei Yuefu rubbed his temples. Just moments ago, he had lived through the entire life of a man named Ding Shoucheng.
Ding Shoucheng was a direct personal disciple of Meng Wei, the head of the Sifang Martial Arts Hall, ranked third among the disciples.
The eldest senior brother was Meng Wei's own son, the designated heir.
The second senior brother was the young master of the largest noble family in the region, a disciple in name only, kept for the sake of social connections.
Ding Shoucheng, on the other hand, was an orphan who had been taken in and raised from childhood.
It wasn't that Meng Wei was kindhearted. Rather, Ding Shoucheng had an exceptional innate foundation and was superb material for the martial arts.
The reason he had taken him in, of course, was so that Ding Shoucheng could one day help his son keep the martial arts hall running.
It had to be said that Meng Wei's repressive upbringing had been very successful. Ding Shoucheng had indeed grown up the way he wanted, and he was kept firmly under control.
Ding Shoucheng was an honest, dull sort. In the martial arts hall, he did the most work and took the fewest rewards.
Controlled as he was, Ding Shoucheng never complained. As long as he had food to eat, that was enough.
And then it all came to an abrupt end. The memory stopped at the moment he was thrown into the woodshed like a dead dog to wait for death.
The outcome went without saying—Ding Shoucheng had certainly died.
If he hadn't died, how could Wei Yuefu have taken his place?
After Wei Yuefu completed the replacement, a lingering wish surfaced.
【Ding Shoucheng: I want to live a different life.】
【What you bear is a lingering wish. When a man dies, his debts dissolve; you need not be bound by the karma of the one you replaced—their past, their graces and grudges, their loves and hates.】
To Wei Yuefu, the lingering wish was rather vague.
But the hint below it, Wei Yuefu found interesting.
The meaning was that he was only a proxy, and he shouldn't truly project himself onto the dead man he had replaced.
In fact, Wei Yuefu didn't feel any sense of projection at all.
Ding Shoucheng's cause of death had been either ruptured organs or severe internal bleeding, and the source of those injuries had naturally been a beating taken in a martial contest.
But after Wei Yuefu replaced him, he had none of those symptoms.
It was precisely because he had been cut off from the past that he was fine.
Otherwise, if he were truly gravely wounded, how would he complete the task and resolve the lingering wish?
Wei Yuefu got up and stretched his body a little.
The first sensation was... hunger.
Yes, the kind of hunger that makes a man's eyes go green.
For one thing, Ding Shoucheng had been thrown into the woodshed without a single bite to eat; for another, Ding Shoucheng himself had a large appetite.
Fortunately, Wei Yuefu held his hunger in check. As he adapted to Ding Shoucheng's body and thought about what to do next, he opened the panel.
【Lingering Wish: Ding Shoucheng】
【Talents】
【Whale Swallowing and Silkworm Devouring: Expands stomach capacity, strengthens digestion and absorption.】
【Dragon Vitality and Tiger Vigor: Raises the caps of energy and stamina, boosts the recovery rate of energy and stamina.】
【???? x2】
【Skills】
【1. Layered Tower Art (minor mastery), 2. Pagoda Stance (minor mastery), 3. Bright Hall Force (minor mastery)】
After Wei Yuefu completed the replacement, a lingering wish panel had come into being.
It was just that this panel was considerably simpler than Wei Yuefu's own.
And at this point, Wei Yuefu finally understood why Ding Shoucheng had such a large appetite and got hungry so easily.
So it was all because of the talents.
He really wanted to complain—so Whale Swallowing and Silkworm Devouring just meant "a bottomless stomach"...
Still, it fit a martial artist perfectly. If you couldn't eat, what was the point of practicing martial arts?
The three minor-mastery skills were the martial arts of the Sifang Martial Arts Hall. The only pity was that Wei Yuefu had come in as a replacement, so his Yellow Turban Strongman spell couldn't be used.
After all, he was logged into Ding Shoucheng's account now, not his own.
Then he noticed that his little brother seemed to be leveling up.
As his companion spirit, Wei Geci had naturally come along too.
It was just that after arriving, Wei Geci had been curled up in his consciousness, undergoing a transformation, and it would probably be finished in another three to five minutes.
Wei Yuefu, meanwhile, shifted into a more comfortable position, sat down, and began to think about what to do next.
"Practicing martial arts has no future," Wei Yuefu said with a sigh. "I can't win a fight, and I can't even eat my fill."
From Ding Shoucheng's past, Wei Yuefu had also learned what the martial arts of this world were really like.
A Grandmaster could take a general's head from within a formation of several dozen elite soldiers, or kill several well-trained armored elites—cavalry excepted.
That was the clearly recorded upper limit of a martial artist. The two Grandmasters who had done those very things were afterward caught by the court and executed by slow slicing.
The reason they were caught was that after finishing, they were left with only half their lives.
The former had nearly been stabbed into a pincushion; the latter was left with only half his life after the fight.
And those two Grandmasters hadn't even fought head-on...
Still, Wei Yuefu couldn't really say much, because when it came to combat power, the Qi Refiners of their Great Xuan Dynasty truly couldn't match the martial artists.
It was just that martial artists developed in a rather one-sided way, unlike Qi Refiners, who had abilities of every type.
So they could be considered roughly evenly matched.
When Wei Yuefu first came to this world, he'd thought he might run into those martial artists who could move mountains and fill seas, or shatter the void with a fist.
Instead, they turned out to be a pair of smiling tigers, a couple of black-horned sharks.
It was just that, compared to Qi Refiners, the martial artists had somewhat stronger physiques.
Just as Wei Yuefu was planning what to do next, the woodshed door was pushed open.
A woman pushed the door open and stepped in. Seeing Wei Yuefu sitting up, she couldn't help but look surprised, and said instinctively, "Third Senior Brother, you're all right?"
"Of course I'm all right, but..." Wei Yuefu said, his words gentle yet barbed, "Junior Sister, why are you still here in our Songyang County?"
"Didn't you go with Junior Brother to the prefectural seat?"
Wei Yuefu had no intention of indulging her. What his junior sister had come to the woodshed for—how could he not know?
It was nothing more than to check whether he had stopped breathing.
If he had stopped breathing, she'd bury him as soon as possible, lest he start to stink.
As for this junior brother, he was quite a character, and Ding Shoucheng's death had a great deal to do with him.
"No, Junior Brother said he'd come back for me next time," Junior Sister Meng Mingzhu said, not catching Wei Yuefu's meaning.
Knowing Ding Shoucheng's temperament, he wouldn't say anything sarcastic, so she took it as a genuine question about why she hadn't gone to the prefectural seat.
"Since Third Senior Brother is all right, then go report to Father and let him know you're safe." Having said that, Meng Mingzhu turned and left.
Seeing this, Wei Yuefu gave a cold laugh.
A tool was just a tool—let alone a home-raised one. Not only did they think nothing of him when he wasn't needed; they thought nothing of him even when they were putting him to use.
If they had truly cherished even a shred of affection, they wouldn't have merely called a doctor to take his pulse and then thrown him into the woodshed.
"What's done is done. Food first." Wei Yuefu stood up and headed straight for the kitchen.
Once he'd eaten his fill, it wouldn't be too late to go see Meng Wei. It was about time to lay everything out in the open.
As for the Eight Treasures Golden Body inheritance, he'd just have to take it slowly.
He had no idea where the thing even was, so he'd better sort out the matter at hand first.
Chapter 2