During dinner, Lai Yi met the Uncle Hagrid and Aunt Linda that Neil had mentioned – they were a married couple.
Hagrid had a robust physique and dark skin, while Linda was a plump woman who always wore a smile on her face.
They brought the brothers a pot of stew and several loaves of rye bread.
To Lai Yi’s surprise, Hagrid seemed to have teary eyes when he saw him.
He gently squeezed Lai Yi’s arm and carefully examined the scar on his head.
“You’ve lost weight.”
Linda looked at Hagrid with a beaming smile.
“Look at you talking like that. The child has just recovered from a serious illness. He’ll gain it back once he eats more.”
Lai Yi smiled stiffly; he wasn’t very good at handling others’ concern.
His parents had passed away early, and his grandparents in the countryside raised him until high school before they, too, passed away. He relied on student loans to finish college. But as fate would have it, not long after he started working, the apocalypse broke out.
The people around him were all strangers.
And in the post-apocalyptic world, relationships between people were filled with wariness and indifference.
“Only you two brothers are left. If it weren’t for the Magical Beasts’ attack, your parents wouldn’t have passed away so soon…”
Linda nudged Hagrid with her elbow and glared at him fiercely, stopping him from continuing.
Hagrid immediately took the hint and stopped talking.
“Ahem, if you need anything in the future, just have Neil come find us.”
“Alright. Thank you, Uncle Hagrid and Aunt Linda, for taking care of us during this time.”
Judging by Neil’s affectionate attitude toward them, the Haggard couple had indeed provided them with significant help.
Kicking someone when they’re down is common, and turning a blind eye is everywhere.
The Haggard couple, who had helped Neil even when it was uncertain whether the original host would survive, deserved to have their kindness remembered.
“Silly child, what’s there to thank us for?”
Linda patted his head, her eyes full of affection.
Lai Yi chatted with the couple for a while longer before they left, leaving behind half a bag of rye flour.
Days passed between taking medicine and recovery training. During this time, the Haggard couple occasionally brought them some food, which made Lai Yi feel a bit embarrassed.
Thanks to his youthful body, after a month, Lai Yi had fully recovered.
During his recovery, with Neil’s help, Lai Yi sorted through their current belongings.
They had a two-story house, a vegetable garden behind it, a small plot of farmland, and a large yellow dog—which, according to Neil, had one-eighth magic beast bloodline.
The original host’s parents, the Victors, had left them an inheritance of seven gold coins.
Purchasing winter food and spring farming had cost half a gold coin, and the original host’s accidental injury had consumed another portion.
They now had only three gold coins, thirty-two silver coins, and a number of copper coins left.
It was important to note that, given this world’s purchasing power and productivity level, one gold coin was enough to support a poor family of three for a year.
The Victors had indeed left them a considerable fortune.
But if they did nothing, they would eventually exhaust their resources. Lai Yi had to find a way to earn money to support himself and his newfound younger brother.
Over the past month, Neil had completely become Lai Yi’s shadow, following him everywhere at all times. This left Lai Yi with no opportunity to test his ability.
Once he was capable of physical labor, Lai Yi immediately took Neil to tend the vegetable patch, pulling out all the weeds.
The original owner had planted the field early with his younger brother before his injury. But since he got hurt, Neil had been taking care of him wholeheartedly, and all the vegetable seedlings in the plot had suffered.
Though they struggled to grow, they appeared thin, small, and unhealthy.
Some areas were completely overrun with weeds, without a single vegetable sprout, so Lai Yi simply cleared those sections entirely. He dug up some unfamiliar seeds, watered them, and planted them directly.
Something was better than nothing.
Lai Yi also went with Neil to check their family’s cultivated land.
To his surprise, the wheat in the field was growing well, with few weeds. He later learned that Haggard had his three sons helping to look after it.
This world was only a few hundred years into the agricultural era, with wheat and rye as the main staple crops.
Most of the village’s cultivated land was also planted with wheat and rye.
With only one harvest per year and no modern machinery, the yield wasn’t very high. Every year, they had to pay one-third of their grain to the city lord.
In years of drought or flood, the harvest would be even worse.
So, the people here didn’t live well, sometimes struggling to have enough food and clothing.
Lai Yi’s small village was located on the outskirts near the edge of the Great Eldon Forest, a half-day’s walk from the nearest town.
Because it was remote, the area was sparsely populated, with fewer than fifty households in the entire village.
Therefore, land reclamation and management in the village weren’t strictly regulated; one just needed to register with the clan elders.
Victor and his wife had moved here only in the last twenty years. Farming wasn’t their strong suit, so they hadn’t cleared much land. After taxes, they barely had enough grain to feed their family of four.
After all, their labor force was limited.
Haggard was a distant cousin of Mr. Victor, Lai Yi’s nominal father. Haggard had provided considerable help for the couple to settle here.
According to Neil, Victor had once been a knight. Among the inheritance they received was indeed a gleaming steel blade and two old daggers.
However, Lai Yi’s current body had lain too long and was somewhat frail, so he couldn’t wield the steel blade well yet and had hidden it in a chest.
In this era, a knight’s steel blade was worth quite a few gold coins, and someone in the village with ill intentions might steal it.
Thousands of years of history and culture teach us that “treasure invites disaster” is no joke.
All the houses in the village were built of wood and stone, and the families didn’t live close together.
The Victor family’s home was even more remote, on the edge of the village, over fifty meters from the nearest neighbor.
Lai Yi thought this was just fine, as it avoided a lot of unnecessary trouble.
He worked hard to adapt to life here, learning about this unfamiliar world through Neil. Fortunately, Neil was young, only twelve, and Lai Yi used his “aftereffects” as an excuse to cover up, so Neil didn’t become suspicious.
Besides magic, what astonished Lai Yi even more was that this world wasn’t inhabited solely by humans!
This was a continent filled with swords and magic.
In more prosperous cities, magicians were said to be everywhere.
However, Lai Yi’s small village was far too remote and poor; even the Rosen Town it belonged to had fewer than a hundred magicians.
Every town had its own mayor, and a dozen towns formed a small city.
Each small city had a minor city lord who managed all the land within their jurisdiction.
Above them were castle lords who owned castles and thousands of acres of territory. Finally, the castle lords would nominate and select the king.
Among these powers, the church controlled people’s faith, but the castle lords were the actual center of power in the country.
Castle lords were far too distant for Lai Yi at the moment. His most urgent task was to earn money to support his younger brother.
There was also some good news.
Here, the maximum human lifespan could reach two hundred years.
Lai Yi’s body had just reached adulthood at twenty years old, meaning he had not only become over ten years younger but also gained an extra century of lifespan!
He had actually inherited some of the original host’s memories, though they were incomplete. He hadn’t taken over the body through force – the original host had truly died during that fever.
In the afternoon, Lai Yi took Neil to gather two bundles of dry branches from the woods near the village, then returned home to prepare dinner.
After eating mixed grain porridge for three consecutive days, he finally realized Neil only knew how to make this one dish, so he naturally took over the cooking duties.
While cooking, even when there wasn’t much to help with, Neil liked staying by Lai Yi’s side, passing him seasonings and such.
Lai Yi mixed wheat flour with rye flour to make dough, then used a rolling pin to flatten it into a large sheet. After folding it crosswise, he cut it into noodles.
As the water in the pot reached a rolling boil, he tossed all the noodles into the bubbling water.
Neil placed the cleaned mushrooms and vegetables on the cutting board and took over the task of boiling the noodles.
Lai Yi went to fry bird eggs in a smaller pot – he planned to make hot noodle soup for dinner tonight.
He scooped a spoonful of oil from the oil jar into the pan. Once the oil was hot, he cracked two speckled bird eggs into it.
Plant oil was more expensive than animal fat here. Most households used animal fat rendered from animal tissues, which had a gamey smell that Lai Yi hadn’t quite gotten used to.
The bird eggs came from one of the few domesticated animals here – the red prairie birds.
After frying the eggs, Lai Yi directly added a ladle of hot water, which soon turned milky white. He then added mushrooms, vegetables, and noodles in sequence, completing the simple hot noodle soup.
Neil happily devoured his bowl, but Lai Yi found it rather bland.
He hadn’t eaten meat for nearly a month! Meat! He desperately needed meat to supplement his nutrition.
But Neil always followed him and wouldn’t let him go hunting in the woods. When pressed, Neil would look at him with teary eyes while sharpening knives near their only four egg-laying red prairie birds.
Lai Yi really wanted to facepalm.
For the sake of those poor red prairie birds, Lai Yi had postponed his hunting plans until today.
He needed to find an opportunity to go out alone.
He really wanted to test whether he still possessed his ability, or what might be called magic here. The roof also urgently needed suitable timber from the woods for repairs.
The rainy season was approaching soon. If left unattended, the house would eventually grow moldy.
Moreover, once repaired, little Neil could return to his own room on the second floor instead of squeezing into one room with him.
After dinner, Lai Yi took Neil for their daily exercise routine – push-ups, sit-ups, or running around their home.
The village gossips sometimes whispered that Lai Yi had lost his mind, but Lai Yi simply ignored them, and Neil didn’t care about such trivial matters either.
After his serious illness, Lai Yi’s health had suffered some lasting weakness. Aside from consistent exercise, he insisted that both he and Neil must eat one bird egg every morning.
There was a small episode regarding the bird eggs.
Neil wasn’t too keen on eating the eggs themselves; he wanted to save them up and sell them in town during the market by hitching a ride on an oxcart. One bird egg could fetch four copper coins—a hundred eggs would mean four silver coins!
Health is the foundation of revolution. Only with a strong physique can one be prepared to face future challenges, right?
Lai Yi successfully used the excuse of nourishing their bodies to shut Neil up and forced him to eat the eggs along with him.
The results were actually quite noticeable.
Over this period, Neil’s little face finally gained some color, and Lai Yi could now wield a steel blade for over ten minutes. That was certainly something to celebrate.
However, the matter of testing magic troubled him a bit. He couldn’t stop thinking about it, itching with the thought—what if?
Lai Yi kept searching for an opportunity.
Author’s Note:
At the dawn of the century, all things were born anew.
The Prime God took pity, tore through the chaos, and perished from exhaustion;
His eyes became the nature-loving elves;
His brain became the thoughtful humans;
His heart became the powerful and aloof Dragon Clan;
His blood became the passionate beastfolk;
His hands became the creative dwarves;
His feet became the seductive demons;
His soul became the damp and shadowy undead;
And the lice upon His body became the detestable goblins.