Chen Youzai felt a heart-rending pain assault him, yet there was nowhere to dodge and nowhere to hide. He wanted to run, but even standing up was difficult. Everything was gone. His final hope had been shattered. Living like this, he would not last ten days. Even if he did not starve to death, he would be beaten to death. Chen Youzai wanted to cry, but no tears came. A sweet, metallic taste rose in his throat, and he clearly saw two pools of bloody water appear beneath him. The moment he fell, he felt such unwillingness, unwilling that his seventeen-year-old life would end so casually on this barren land.
“You want to die? It won’t be that easy!”
At some unknown point, Chen Youzai sensed a strange voice by his ear. He wanted to open his eyes and tell that person he had never wanted to die. He was so afraid of death. But after struggling for a long time, Chen Youzai only groaned twice and could not even lift his eyelids.
“When I decide to let you die, even if you want to live, you won’t be able to…”
Had the Grim Reaper come? Or had the King of Hell come to summon him? Chen Youzai was enveloped by immense terror. The blinding white light made him feel his body growing lighter and lighter, as though he were about to float up. Was he about to leave? In that instant, Chen Youzai’s heart turned to ashes.
He felt someone pry open his teeth again. A warm liquid flowed along his tongue and into his throat. It was probably Meng Po’s soup! Chen Youzai secretly thought. Although Meng Po was a bit ruthless, the soup she made was actually quite good. Perhaps this could also count as release. Chen Youzai fell completely into despair.
Elio’s Notes: In Chinese folklore, Meng Po serves a soup to the dead before they reincarnate. Drinking it makes them forget their past life. Here, Chen Youzai mistakes the liquid being fed to him for Meng Po’s soup, meaning he thinks he has died and is about to enter the afterlife.
After waking up, Chen Youzai felt that he had inexplicably recovered his strength again, but his surroundings had not improved in the slightest. Having come back to life once more, Chen Youzai was incomparably excited. He clasped his hands and thanked Heaven for showing him such mercy. Now, being alive was already Chen Youzai’s highest demand. Because as long as he was alive, there was still hope of finding the silver coin again.
Over the next few days, Chen Youzai finally truly experienced what it meant to live a life worse than death, though this was only the beginning. He had thought this body of his did not need food, because he had not known beforehand that someone had fed him soup. Faced with a stinking ball of wild vegetables, Chen Youzai’s dark, filthy face revealed an expression of wanting to cry but having no tears.
Unable to endure the contractions in his stomach, Chen Youzai pinched his nose and took a bite. In the next second, he hunched over and began vomiting. Bile mixed with streaks of blood made Chen Youzai cry once again. He did not think he was a weak person, but these days, he seemed to have been crying constantly. Apart from crying, he could not find any outlet at all.
There was no food to eat and no water to drink. He did not even dare open his mouth, because in such a dry place, opening his mouth meant his tongue would stick to the roof of it. Besides the heavy labor, he also had to endure sudden beatings. And now, Chen Youzai especially hated this body of his. No matter how it was beaten, it would not break. If it broke, then perhaps he could become numb. But like this, after being beaten, a few days later it would become smooth and clean as before, only to be branded with new wounds again. It was simply torture like purgatory.
Every day, there were only a few hours to sleep, yet because of wounds large and small, he was always moaning and crying out in pain. During the day, he did not even dare make a sound. Only in the latter half of the night would he feel the slightest trace of drowsiness, and then Chen Youzai would be woken by a hard stick or a long whip to continue the next day’s torment.
Futile Devices Scans 
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