Totem

Jiang Nan didn’t know what happened, but all he remembered was that after the car accident, he opened his eyes to an unfamiliar world.

He had reincarnated, and taken over a white youth’s body named Rodi.

And this world was called Yuanzhi Continent. Here, there was no so-called magic, battle qi, nor any mythological beasts; here, people believed that power stemmed from natural living things, and developed a type of mysterious power called ‘totem’. Here, totem masters were the top of the top, and they possessed unparalleled status. Here…

Enough!

Did this whole mess even have any relation with Jiang Nan?

Jiang Nan was only a slave!

More accurately, the body of Rodi which Jiang Nan occupied belonged to Count West (维斯特), his master, and he was only a pig herder on West farms.

Every morning before it was even light, he would be lashed awake, then cut the gra.s.s, feed the pigs, clean the pig pen… He was always bustling, and only late at night would he rest and take his meal, but this was his only meal. There would only be two pieces of charred steamed bread, and a big pot of barely seasoned wild herb soup.  

If any pigs gave birth, the master and his household definitely wouldn’t sleep, so Jiang Nan had to accompany them until dawn. If any of the fat pigs caught illness or lost some weight, Jiang Nan would receive twenty lashes of the whip as punishment…

This was the only thing Jiang Nan could imagine for his entire life! Totems… totem masters… was a slave even qualified to think of such things?

It’s not that Jiang Nan had never rebelled, but once, when he had only uttered two phrases of complaint, he was taken by the farm overseers and hung up and whipped thirty times. He just narrowly avoided being whipped to death.

He had also thought about running away, but this was the world of totems, and on his shoulder was a mysterious mark that would allow those mysterious totem masters to catch him and bring him back even if he ran until the ends of the earth. Then… it would be a whipping until he could only spasm lifelessly, to serve as an example to those who wished to run away as well!

Eventually, Jiang Nan began to accept his fate as a slave…

From an anatomy professor of great standing and prestige, he had degraded into slave caretaker of pigs. Jiang Nan believed that the G.o.ddess of fate had played an insane joke on him!

Oh, I apologize, Yuanzhi Continent had no G.o.ddess of fate.

Rather, as long as nature and all living things persisted, there was a reason for everything. It could be that Jiang Nan was so frustrated because he had done something he shouldn’t have done in the past world.

  ……

“Mr. Tom (汤姆), do you still remember what we came into town to do? Look at the time!”

Jiang Nan took the cane hanging at his belt and lightly knocked it against Tom’s head.

That youth who had mocked Jiang Nan was named Tom, and was also a slave who took care of the pigs. Both of them had went into the city to purchase some pigs, but took advantage of the opportunity to be a bit lazy and listen to the story of Yulianne.

“Don’t you know? We came to buy pigs… Aiya, not good, not good. We only thought about listening to the story. Don’t you know? If we don’t get those pigs before nightfall, the overseer’s going to beat us to death!”

Tom always like to say the phrase ‘don’t you know’ because his family had been slaves for seven generations. As such, he had considerably more experience than other slaves, giving him an air of superiority.

“Calm down, I counted the time. We can still make it if we leave right now.”

After Tom put away his cane, the two people disappeared from the streets of Sun City.

What was weird was that the cane which was made from other worldly material and hid seventy-two types of dissecting instruments actually came along with him into this world, and Jiang Nan couldn’t figure out why. However, carrying this cane made him feel in his spirit as though something had been entrusted to him, and this gave him a sort of security in his heart.

As such, Jiang Nan used mud, grease, and rotten leaves to muddy the cane, allowing it to look as if it had just been thrown on the street like something n.o.body wanted or cared for… a rod for sifting through manure!

Not long after the two men began walking, the crowd on the street still hadn’t dissipated, and they were still discussing the matter of Yulianne.

At this moment, that obese minstrel who was sitting in the tavern stuck his head out of the window. Seeing that there was still a crowd, he gleefully said: “This old man’s story has already been told, yet you’re still not scattering? Could it be that you guys wish for me to tell another?”

n.o.body acknowledge the old geezer.

“These ungrateful wretches, have you forgotten who told you the story?”

Indignant, he leaped onto the dais and cleared his throat, shouting: “Ladies and gentlemen, if any of you want to hear about Yulianne, then turn your heads this way and look at me! This old man knows something big, something good!”

Something good? A number of pa.s.serby’s turned their heads out of curiosity.

The old man’s head bobbed as he laughed, when his face suddenly straightened and he said in a serious voice: “Within a month, Yulianne will appear in Sun City!”

“What?!”

All the gazes of the crowd again fixed onto the old man, and one said in pleasant surprise: “Old mister, aren’t you deceiving us? Would Yulianne come to a place like this?”

“Within one month, if Yulianne hasn’t come, then this old man will jump down from here!”

The old man’s voice was incredibly captivating as he spoke resolutely, “Gentlemen, would you like to have the continent’s most beautiful woman accompany you for a spring night every night? Would you like to bewitch the moon with one blade, and possess the exceptional power to fell a thousand-troop army in one stroke? Do you wish to have an endless and inexhaustible amount of authority and wealth… your blade method only needs to be faster than Yulianne!”

  ……

Sun City was simply a town of around thirteen to fourteen thousand people located in the midst of a mountain range, encircled by golden yellow soil.

This soil was so valuable because the amount of crops produced when planted in this soul would be twenty-some times more than normal, and was thus called ‘golden soil’.  

Count West’s farm was situated on top of the golden soil, and took up around 2,900 *mu. The farm possessed 4,800 slaves, and was the largest farm in the vicinity of Sun City.
(*TL: mu = unit of measurement)

Right as the sky grew dark, Jiang Nan and Tom promptly arrived back at the farm. At this time, that repulsive and despicable overseer, unknown if had drunk a lot or just took advantage of female slave, was in quite a good mood. After checking the live pigs, he waved his hand and said with a smile: “Your work isn’t bad. Go on, you guys can rest for the night.”

“Hurrah! Did you know? Caretaker, I’m grateful to death to you!”

Tom leapt up in excitement because to slaves, resting for a night was the most extravagant reward.

Jiang Nan, on the other hand, only nodded his head, then turned to leave.

“Rodi!”

The caretaker suddenly called after Jiang Nan, then mockingly said: “Tom can go rest, but not you! Miss ‘Weylin’ (维兰) is currently looking for you!”

Miss Weylin!

When he heard this name, Jiang Nan who had unflinchingly faced the provocation of tens of old-time experts and referred to them as things that should be conquered suddenly looked as if he had just swallowed seventy or eighty flies. Speechless, he just laughed bitterly.

Weylin was Count West’s younger sister, and could also be considered as Jiang Nan’s master.

Fairly speaking, Weylin was Sun City’s most beautiful woman, and had turned nineteen this year. She possessed a bust size that a.s.saulted one’s visual senses to the limit, and had a body line as curved as the path of a roller coaster (TL: that description though.) Starting at age fifteen, she began to help the Count manage the farm, and was a lovely and remarkably capable woman.

However, while Weylin possessed a beautiful outward appearance, she had a considerably irritable temper that couldn’t be worse. Whenever she spoke, it was so foul and biting unlike her age, and at the drop of hat, she would take out her whip and lash a person. It was exactly because of this temper that although she was already nineteen, she still hadn’t been married off, and had become Sun City’s infamous ‘leftover spinster’.

And for some specific reasons that Jiang Nan didn’t feel like saying aloud, Weylin always looked on him unfavorably, constantly searching for an opportunity to sort him out…

When Jiang Nan found Miss Weylin, she was in the middle of supervising the female slaves as they washed clothes by the creek that ran through the farmland. Seeing how Jiang Nan took his time walking over, she grew furious and roared: “Rodi, I had told you to arrive by the afternoon, and right now…

What time is it right now? Did you even take what I said to heart?!”

Jiang Nan silently uttered the next half of Weylin’s speech because almost every time, she started berating him with the same opening. After that, she’d deliberately find something to nitpick on and make things hard for him. “Calm down, Miss Weylin. Haven’t I come already? What instructions do you have for me?”

Weylin snorted, then pointed towards several baskets of laundry beside the creek, “Go, go wash the clothes! You, a lowly slave, dares to have the audacity not to take my words to heart, so your punishment is to wash one hundred articles of clothing before dark. If you can’t finish, then you’d d.a.m.n well not think about sleeping!”

Before dark? F***, it was already 7:30 in the evening!

Jiang Nan wanted to say, “Honorable madam, do you not recall that for a period of time, even though it wasn’t right, your mother at least dealt with my body reasonably?”

However, he did not let slip a single word, and diligently got to work washing the clothes.

If one was a slave, one must have the bearing of one!

Seeing that Jiang Nan actually began performing the labor of women, the female slaves began snickering. One of them even pointed at Jiang Nan’s handsome face and mocked him, saying, “Rodi grew up to be so handsome, and even washes clothes for women. Teehee, it’d be great if master could just marry you off.”

“Stop dreaming already. For handsome slaves as Rodi, they’re generally gifted to the n.o.bility who have lost their husband as a present…”

“You lowly slaves, what are you talking about?”

After hearing the slave girls’ commentary, Weylin was fuming to the point that she drew out the whip at her waist and ‘Pah!’, she lashed Jiang Nan’s face. “If you dare to talk drivel again, this woman’s going to whip this pretty boy to death!”

Jiang Nan’s face began developing a welt lined with blood, and shrugging his shoulders, he continued to wash the clothes.

Even though it was another party’s fault, he would get thrashed, and this kind of situation would occur nearly everyday. Anger, vexation, unreconciliation… Ah save it. He was long since numbed to these things!

Didn’t someone say he was a lowly slave?

However, it was a bit weird. Weylin would often lash Jiang Nan’s face, but never before had any wounds left a scar. Even counting the time that Weylin had once used a knife and torn his nose, several days later it still recovered to its former condition.
(TL: Remember kids, don’t marry this type of woman.)

This infuriated Weylin, so she would often scold him by calling him a ‘pretty boy who wouldn’t repent even in death’.

  ……

Yuanzhi Continent had three moons: one golden yellow, the other blood red, and the last a mild silver color.

When these three moons had reached their highest point in the night sky, the female slaves had long since gone to rest, and the enormous West farm only had a few patrols going through their rounds. Jiang Nan, however, was still washing clothes one by one by the creek.

Right at this moment, ‘crunch, crunch’, a piercing nose resounded from beside the creek.

A woman had crawled over.

This woman was a disabled person, and in the pant legs of her trousers, there was nothing but empty air below her knees. As her body lay atop a flat cart, her two hands grabbed towards the ground, and her crawling speed was just a tiny bit faster than a snail.

On the other hand, while one didn’t have to look for a word to describe this woman’s age and appearance, in truth, this woman’s face had two grisly scars that intertwined together sinisterly. Adding the fact that she had appeared in the middle of the night, she was basically a malevolent-looking and horrifying demon!

But when Jiang Nan saw this terrifying face, he only began laughing from his heart, “Auntie, what are you doing here?”

This woman was called Alisa (艾丽莎).

She was Rodi’s mother’s sister, so obviously she was his maternal aunt.

It was said that Alisa had once been a beautiful woman, but just a day after she had become a slave, a cruel and lecherous male master had wanted to possess her. As such, she had unhesitatingly and resolutely seized a fruit knife and carved 108 cuts onto her face.
(TL: okay IDK if it literally means 108 or if it’s just some expression to say a lot, so just a note.)

It was also said that when that brutal and lecherous male master had found out about Alisa’s decision, he exploded in rage, and immediately called people to cut off her two legs!

Of course, those were all just rumors, and in Jiang Nan’s eyes, Alisa had genuinely been this way already.

He still remembered that the first day he was reincarnated into this world (it was probably because Rodi’s body was originally very frail or because of some other obscure reason), it seemed as though his body suffered dehydration, and couldn’t even stand up.

No one on the farm would care about the life or death of a slave. Therefore, Lord West, several overseers, and a number of slaves, besides Weylin who had been preoccupied, all waited for Rodi’s life to run its course, not to mention that a few thugs had even brought a burlap sack over to take Jiang Nan, whether dead or not, and feed him to the wild dogs!

Right at that moment, Alisa has dragged her disabled body over and blocked the thugs, pleading and begging Lord West, “Master, I beg of *you, Rodi is not yet dead!”
(*TL: respectful term)

Lord West had only shrugged, “My dear Alisa, I won’t raise a useless person. Even if he hasn’t died, he is already of no use…”

“Yes, Rodi is useless, but I am not yet useless!”

Gritting her teeth, she spoke, “*Lord, I still have two hands. I will put forth all my effort to perform manual labor worth two people, I beg you, as long as you give Rodi back to me…”
(*TL: They alternate between Lord and Master)

Lord West’s character wasn’t bad, and curling lips, he agreed.

Alisa thanked him profusely, then dragged Jiang Nan who was like a dead dog to a shanty. She sobbed broken heartedly and said, “Rodi, you still live, thank goodness you still live! Lie down, from now on Auntie will provide for you!”

From then on, this woman would drag her disabled legs and perform two people’s worth of manual labor in the day, then pick up wilted vegetable leaves to boil as porridge at night. Miraculously, Jiang Nan was able to live.

And at the beginning of his rebirth, Jiang Nan was unable to speak the common language of Yuanzhi Continent, nor did he recognize all the people next to him. He could only put on the facade of an ‘idiot’ to observe this world with a detached point of view.

During that challenging period of time, as always, it was Alisa who bore the hardship of educating Jiang Nan in language, reading, and the general knowledge of a slave. One could say… if there was no Alisa, there would be no Jiang Nan today!

For a woman who had sacrificed herself for him to this extent, would Jiang Nan still consider her face as horrifying? Would he not be most willing to call out the word, ‘Aunty’?

People’s hearts were of flesh, not stone, and thus susceptible to feelings and emotion!

  ……

As Alisa arrived before Jiang Nan, she smiled, although on her it seemed a bit unsettling, “Because you didn’t return, Auntie couldn’t sleep, so I came to look for you.”

Slightly raising her head, her terrifying face expressed uneasiness, and she shouted: “What would I have done if you didn’t return? What if you had been killed by someone?”

Jiang Nan only laughed bitterly.

  好吧，艾丽莎姨母其实是一个病人，准确说，她患有‘间歇姓幻想精神病’，也就是医学上所说的‘臆病’。
Alright, Alisa was actually a sick person. More accurately, she had contracted ‘intermittent delusional psychosis’, or in medical terms, ‘hysteria’.
(TL: noooo idea of this paragraph. I searched up these terms and I’m not sure they’re correct, so I’m leaving the raws.)

She always deluded herself into thinking that there were people out to murder Jiang Nan, and after just several minutes, she would start inquiring of every person anxiously, “Is my child still alive? Is my child still alive?”

If a whole day pa.s.sed without seeing Jiang Nan, she would drag her disabled body around and look all over the place for him, on one hand searching, on the other hand bawling and wailing, “*Wuwu, my child has definitely been murdered, Rodi is already dead, wuwu…”
(*TL: onomatopoeia for crying/whimpering)

But really, who would come and murder him? His present rotten life wasn’t even worth the value of a dog!

Jiang Nan ground out a few smiles with difficulty, then consoled his aunt, “Auntie, don’t worry. n.o.body came to murder me today. Miss Weylin only told me to wash clothes.”

“It’s fine as long as you’re alive, it’s fine as long as you’re still alive…”

Alisa breathed a sigh of relief, then took out a shabby bowl from the flat cart, “Rodi, you’re exhausted from the whole day, so eat.”

Slaves were only allowed to eat one meal a day, but Alisa always worried that Jiang Nan didn’t eat enough, so she would always secretly boil a bowl of porridge for him.

But, seeing the contents of the bowl, there were a few withered leaves, some muddy yellow soil that, while edible, would most likely lead to digestive problems, and a dirty pile of mud. This was the porridge that Alisa had boiled.

Because the soil within the porridge was called golden soil, Alisa even called what she cooked ‘golden porridge’.
(*TL: ahhhh so pitiful this is making me emotional)

Honestly speaking, Jiang Nan couldn’t drink this kind of porridge, but thinking about how his aunt had dragged her two disabled legs here and picked those withered leaves, he simply tilted his neck and ‘gulp’, he drained the bowl in one breath.

“The porridge that Auntie makes is the continent’s best porridge!”

Alisa laughed and her scar-filled, horrifying face scrunched up, then she began muttering to herself, “It’s fine as long as you drink it, it’s fine as long as you drink it. Tomorrow, Auntie will boil a bowl of porridge for you again…”

Counting the days, Jiang Nan had already lived in Rodi’s body for half a year, and for this half year, he would drink this bowl of porridge nearly everyday.

Considering the past Rodi, in truth, Jiang Nan’s body had already been nourished by this ‘golden porridge’…

For ten whole years!