Chapter 10：Where Is The Joy In Living

"Woe is me…"

In the dilapidated backyard, Huai Shi sat on a step in the garden. He raised his head to the sky with a sigh, then he looked to the ground in a daze.

Right now, he really felt like he was born under an unlucky star.

His agent tricked him into going for an interview at a gigolo club, he bumped into a corpse on his way back, he was randomly arrested at a station for having a box, and after he was released, he was held at gunpoint and dragged into another station.

Now, he had to accept help from a crow because he had no other choice, but the crow's main ability was killing him over and over again.

It all came to nothing in the end, okay?

If he had to die, could he not just die once?

Why did he have to die several dozen times…?

He had died so many times he was numb to it now! Even that skill he had never heard of, 'Premonition of Death' was on its way to leveling up!

If he was lucky enough to survive this time, Huai Shi figured that he might even level up that skill to LV10 in this lifetime, just by dying again and again!

"If you have the time to whine, you might as well spend it dying again. At least by meditating like that, you'd be able to train your elementium. For all you know, you might be able to complete that 99% loading bar soon and become an Ascender," suggested the crow next to him.

For some reason, she seemed to have run out of ink, so now she was striped.

"As if I'd believe you!"

Huai Shi ignored her completely, staring at the bare yard. He started to think, 'Who am I? Where am I? School's gonna start in half a month, and I'm almost dead broke. But aside from seeking death over and over again, what else am I doing?'

All of a sudden, he raised a brow and came up with a plan.

"Hey, I need money. Do you have any ways to get some?"

"Sure."

The zebra crow combed her feathers nonchalantly and pointed at the road outside the door. "Walk for ten minutes then take the bus, get off one stop later and turn left. There's a bank there. You just have to rob it, and you'll have everything you want."

"...Tell me something I don't know!" Huai Shi rolled his eyes. "Don't you guys have some magic that can turn stone to gold?"

"Oh, magic? That's a long story, but yes, I do know how to make gold. However…"

"However what?"

Huai Shi approached her, his eyes shining.

"However, the cost to create a gram of gold would probably cost about three thousand yuan in East Xia currency."

She said calmly, "The pure gold created this way is usually used as a spiritual base in all sorts of ceremonies and sacrifices. If you want, I can make a kilogram of it."

"If I had that money, why would I still want gold?!"

Huai Shi was speechless.

All he could do was continue sitting on the step blankly until he was awoken by a faint crackling.

It sounded like a glass bottle being shattered by a kick.

It sounded so very sharp and clear in the summer afternoon heat.

Huai Shi turned around in shock to look in the direction of the front yard.

"Is someone here?"

The crow raised her head with a thoughtful look and concern in her voice. "Could it be that they found out about me using your wires to steal electricity?"

Huai Shi blinked for a bit, but then he immediately jumped, eyes wide with fury. "When the heck did you do something like that behind my back?!"

"Actually, I pulled some fiber optics too. There's a pretty good WiFi signal here." The crow pulled a random smartphone out from under her wing. "Do you want the password?"

Huai Shi glared at her and stood up, tiptoeing to the corner of the wall behind the house. He poked his head out, and the crow stood on his skull like it was natural, sticking her head out as well.

In the corner of the dilapidated yard, there was someone looking around the corner suspiciously. After a while, that person helped down a companion who had jumped over the wall.

Just like that, the two of them landed on the ground, their pockets bulging and their faces masked.

"Oh my…"

The crow asked softly, "Does the electricity company make their employees vault walls nowadays?"

"They're probably thieves." Huai Shi clenched his teeth and bent down to pick half a metal bar from the corner of the wall. "Well, it's not like this is the first time I've done something like this."

"Oh?"

The crow gave Huai Shi a thoughtful look, and then she sniggered. "I hope so."

Huai Shi did not have the time to waste on her. Keeping his movements quiet, he stealthily peeked at the events unfolding before him. The two burly men were wearing gloves, and after they looked around for a bit, they whispered some words to each other before sneaking into the house through a broken window on the side. Huai Shi carefully opened the back door, listening to the old floorboards creak insistently.

The heavy footsteps paced the living room for a while before they moved upstairs. He could hear the sound of doors opening everywhere.

Soon enough, he heard a voice from upstairs.

"He's not here!"

"Look around! Try to see where he's hidden the thing!"

Those words were immediately followed by the sound of upturned drawers and things shattering everywhere. It made Huai Shi's teeth heart; his house was already stripped nearly bare to begin with, and almost everything worth anything had been pawned off by his parents long ago. All that remained was a set of worthless furniture.

Those things had really hung on to survive this long, but today marked the end of the road for them.

Thankfully, although the house was practically empty, it was still quite large with plenty of space. They would probably have to spend quite some time scouring through it.

Huai Shi took a deep breath and held the bar, sneaking upstairs behind them. That was when he heard rough crashing from his room.

There was a loud bang.

His drawer must have hit the floor.

'F*ck, that's my desk.'

There was another loud clatter, and everything on the shelf ended on the floor.

Smash.

The table lamp and the stuff on the desk cascaded down as well.

"Look at this!"

They seemed to find something, and then Huai Shi heard something unzipping. They had opened up his cello case, and soon he heard the dull thud of their knocking on the cello.

"It isn't in here?"

"Could there be a concealed layer?" One guy hazarded a guess. "Maybe we should smash it open to check."

F*ck you guys!

Huai Shi flew into a rage.

'I don't care if you turned over every shelf and cupboard along the way, but now you're trying to smash my very livelihood? This is war!'

There was no more time for hesitation. He stuck his head out and saw the two men crouched down with their backs facing him. One of them was already holding up a hammer, and Huai Shi's temper immediately flared. That gave him the guts to do anything, including holding up his bar and leaping into the air, swinging down at the men.

He had everything perfectly planned out. First, he was going to take one person down, and before the other could react, he would unleash his bar on him as well. That would be that!

Everything went unnaturally smoothly.

There was a bam.

The man holding the hammer collapsed on cue, but immediately after that, Huai Shi saw the metal pipe he had left lying around for forever crack down the center. It even went flying.

He paused.

The other man froze as well, but soon there was a vicious gleam in his eyes, and he pounced at Huai Shi.

Huai Shi instinctively lifted his leg and kicked the man, sending his victim stumbling back. After that, he lifted the chair next to him and smashed it down on the intruder.

With that, the old chair he had kept for so long died spectacularly as well.

It did not seem to hurt the man at all, though, when he eventually crawled up from the ground. He clenched his fist, his joints cracking, and the face underneath his mask turned gruesome as well.

Huai Shi took a step back at first, but then he remembered that things had changed. He was no longer the helpless weakling he had been before.

'Alright, I'm going to test my amazing martial arts on you!'

He laughed coldly and immediately used his military boxing skills!

After that, he used it again, and again… It really did come quite easily to him, and he moved from the first set of moves to the third without stopping, as unstoppable as the wind or the waves.

It was perfect… aside from the fact that it did not take so much as a hair off the enemy's head.

Huai Shi was tiring himself out already, but he had not even touched the other guy… If he were performing under a pedestrian crossing now, he might have earned eighty to a hundred bucks in appreciation fees, but right now, it was absolutely useless.

The burly man's movements were terrifyingly agile as well. Although he never learned military boxing or whatever, his every punch and kick was truly terrifying. A random punch from his fist was enough to turn Huai Shi's vision to black and make half of his face swell up.

'Crap, this is a little tricky. Maybe I should sound a retreat…'

As soon as the thought appeared in Huai Shi's mind, he flipped. 'This is my f*cking house! I'm not the one who has to run away!'

Immediately after that, however, he felt a chill on the back of his head, and he lowered his head instinctively.

He soon felt a metal hammer swing past the top of his head, whistling through the wind as it went. The man Huai Shi had taken down with one blow had actually gotten back on his feet.

See, that ancient steel pipe was not that useful, after all…

Huai Shi did not even have time to reflect on his mistakes. The man pounced at him and took him down with a bear hug, pinning him to the ground and putting one large hand around his neck.

"I'll kill this little b*stard!"

The eyes beneath the mask were cruel and ruthless. "F*ck, we nearly lost!'

The man with the hammer panted as well before approaching them and aiming his hammer at Huai Shi's head. Karma sure took its toll quickly; just a while ago, Huai Shi was attacking them from behind, but now they were the ones about to crack his skull open.

When he saw the hammer being lifted into the air, he was so scared that he put up a desperate struggle, but he could not pull away from that hand around his neck. In the chaos, all he could do was pull down his assailant's mask, revealing that scarred face. It looked like he had been hacked with a knife.

"F*ck, save me…"

Huai Shi screamed.

"Quick, think of something sad!" the crow yelled at the top of her lungs. "Remember how you died in those dreams… Remember how many times you died, and how cruel your deaths were!"

Huai Shi suddenly felt mentally exhausted. He was already about to die here, so what was the point of remembering that? Oh, was it so he could be mentally prepared?

He might be able to have a relatively peaceful death, then! What a good idea!

The thought of those tragic deaths in his dreams filled Huai Shi with tragic fury. After he personally experienced countless deaths in those illusions, the cumulative weight of those memories threatened to suffocate him.

The more he died, the more he feared death, because dying was such a terrifying thing.

In that instant, he felt a surge of warmth in his right hand, and soon it felt like something new had appeared in his tightly-clenched fist.

It felt small and grainy, like a handful of sand.

Before he could think it through, Huai Shi instinctively tossed out some of the substance in his hand. The pitch-black dust flew from his fingertips and instantly landed on that person's face.

The hand that had been choking him suddenly loosened its grip, and Huai Shi abruptly opened his eyes, rolling away before he heard a loud boom by his ear.

It turned out to be the sound of the hammer making dust out of the floor where his head had been.

That deadly crush made Huai Shi burst out in a cold sweat.

Before he could even get to his feet, though, the face of the man who had been strangling him suddenly contorted and flushed red. The man panted heavily before somehow bursting into tears.

The man holding the metal hammer was stunned as well, and his eyes reddened too…

The heck? What was this?

Was it some chili powder?

In his shock, Huai Shi accidentally inhaled some of the black powder floating in the air, and all of a sudden, an intense stinging sensation spread from the tip of his nose.

"Watch out, I think that's Disastrous Dust! It'd be bad if you get any on you!"

The crow was always one step late with her warnings.

Huai Shi finally realized that the sensation on the tip of his nose was not due to external stimuli. It was… a deep pain and sorrow that came from the very depths of his heart.

It felt like the moment when the useless manager fired him from the job he relied on to make a living, when the Shiba Inu he had all his life was stolen away, when he busted his butt off slaving away from morning to night and ended his OT early only to find another man in his girlfriend's best, when he suddenly received an obituary and a cancer diagnosis, when he was a useless author who promised to update twice a day but ended up going days without writing a word.

His lungs were spasming, his eyes were heating up, his nose was stinging, and an unbearable sadness spread through his chest. His mind recalled the time when he fell on the steps at three years old, when the one and a half bucks he collected at six years old had been taken away by the fat kid at the arcade, when his unreliable parents ran away with all the money, when he had that interview at the club, when all these random things happened to him when all he wanted to do was go home…

"Oh heavens, woe is me!"

Huai Shi tossed his head back and screamed at the sky, his voice painful and tragic in his throat. He wailed like a child, tears flowing freely...