Because they had run into the young master, and the young master had summoned a physician for Xie Licheng, Xie Licheng was not locked in the woodshed.
It was while his wounds were being treated that Xie Licheng slowly absorbed all the memories of the original body's owner.
It was only at that moment that he realized he hadn't merely transmigrated—he had transmigrated into a novel.
It wasn't that Xie Licheng was slow on the uptake; it was mainly because the original owner was nothing more than an unnamed extra in the novel. Had he not later received the original owner's memories and recalled the young master's name, he probably still wouldn't have known he was inside a book.
The original owner was a horse groom, a criminal slave from the slave camp.
Because the original owner was tall and sturdy, with a rather handsome face, he had caught the eye of someone from the Gu family.
The Gu family member who had taken a liking to him was a concubine-born young master from the second branch of the Gu family, who had a preference for men.
He had originally intended to bring the original owner into his courtyard for his own amusement, but unexpectedly, his father discovered it the moment he brought the man home.
The master of the second branch was a reasonable man. He did not vent his anger on the original owner because of his son's foolishness. Instead, he placed the original owner in the outer courtyard of the Gu estate as an ordinary servant.
This should have been a stroke of good fortune for the original owner, but unexpectedly, he later ran into the youngest young master of the first branch of the Gu family.
The old master of the Gu family had three sons in total. The youngest had died young from illness, leaving only the eldest and second sons' families. Since he had few children, he did not have his two sons split the family estate, and everyone lived together.
For a great household like theirs, though they appeared to live together, they were actually divided into several courtyards.
The old master had one large courtyard, the first branch had one large courtyard, and the second branch had one large courtyard.
Then, when the children of the first and second branches married, they would each receive a smaller courtyard.
In this way, large courtyards enclosed smaller ones, and the entire Gu mansion was so vast and impenetrable that it truly deserved the name "deep mansion with hidden courtyards."
The young master the original owner encountered was the youngest son of the first branch—a delicately raised young master.
A young master was a gender, the third gender in the book Xie Licheng had transmigrated into.
In the world of the book Xie Licheng had entered, besides men and women, there was another gender known as "young master."
Young masters resembled men in appearance but, like women, could bear children.
Because young masters lacked the physical strength of men and could not impregnate women, their existence was similar to women's—they were generally meant to marry men.
Gu Tinghe was a young master, raised to be arrogant and domineering by his family.
The original owner had a somewhat dull disposition. Once, he accidentally offended Gu Tinghe, and from then on, Gu Tinghe held a grudge against him.
Gu Tinghe began to find fault with the original owner from time to time. He would even publicly abuse and beat the original owner to display the authority of a young master of the Gu family.
In the original text, the original owner was beaten to death by Gu Tinghe, and until his death, he never had a proper name.
I forgot to mention that this novel was an old-school danmei conquest story—one could also call it a harem novel with a single dominant male lead.
The entire story revolved around the male protagonist, Song Qiyue.
Song Qiyue was a transmigrator who had crossed into an ancient era of chaos.
Relying on the advantages of being a transmigrator, when the chaos erupted, he stockpiled grain and fortified his walls, eventually becoming a warlord who carved out his own territory.
Because he was the protagonist of a harem novel, he collected many beautiful people.
Among these beauties were not only men but also young masters—he accepted all comers without discrimination.
Like the male leads of many male-oriented harem novels, he appeared passionate but was in truth cold-hearted; he seemed benevolent but was actually ungrateful.
Of the beauties he collected, he would treat them well when he liked them, and casually give them away to his subordinates when he didn't.
The lucky beauties could find someone to marry.
The unlucky ones might end up as military prostitutes in the army camps.
Among the many beauties he collected, there was one great beauty named Gu Changyuan—the very young master who had saved Xie Licheng today.
Gu Changyuan was different from the other beauties. He did not want to squabble over affection with a crowd of people, nor did he want to be trapped in the inner quarters by Song Qiyue.
He did not like Song Qiyue. The reason he had followed Song Qiyue was that when Song Qiyue attacked Lingzhou, he had happened to intercept the Gu family's carriage convoy on the road.
The Gu family was very wealthy and had several beautiful young masters, so Song Qiyue took both the people and the money.
Gu Changyuan was unwilling to stay with Song Qiyue, nor was he willing to fight over a man with a crowd of others. He tried every means to leave.
Unfortunately, Song Qiyue was a ruthless man. He would not allow those around him to escape, and he would regard their attempts to flee as betrayal.
When he learned that Gu Changyuan did not want him, he decided to give Gu Changyuan to one of his subordinates as a reward.
Yes, he would rather give the people around him to his subordinates as playthings than see them happily regain their freedom.
Cruel he was, truly cruel. Vicious he was, truly vicious.
He did not treat others as people at all, but rather as his personal collection.
In the story, Gu Changyuan refused to become a plaything for a group of men, and he was utterly disappointed in Song Qiyue and the people around him. When he found himself with no way out, he chose to set himself on fire.
It wasn't that he was particularly chaste—he simply wanted to preserve a shred of dignity.
Before the chaos, he had been the esteemed eldest son of the Gu family, pampered and noble. When he died, he should have had the decency befitting his station.
Xie Licheng read this kind of morally questionable novel mainly because he lived in an apocalypse.
In his world, civilization had collapsed, and things like novels had become a luxury.
Because everyone was busy surviving, no one had the time or energy to write novels.
After the apocalypse, if they wanted to read novels, they could only read the paperbacks that had been published before the end of the world.
Xie Licheng had a Portable Space, but it wasn't just a simple space—more accurately, it was a Portable World.
His Portable World was enormous, an undeveloped game world.
In this game world, there were no human NPCs, only animals, plants, and many vacant buildings.
Xie Licheng was the only player inside. He could level up by hunting animals, gathering plants, or building houses.
After leveling up, he could earn attribute points.
These attributes could be added to personal stats like strength, agility, and so on.
These attributes weren't just useful in the game world—they were equally useful in the real world.
It was precisely because of these attribute points that Xie Licheng was so powerful during the apocalypse.
During the apocalypse, Xie Licheng had only unlocked the Novice Village map of his Portable World, and he still didn't know what the other maps looked like.
But even if only the Novice Village map was unlocked, the space there was more than enough to store a lot of supplies.
Because the Portable World had so much space, when he collected supplies, he gathered novels along with everything else.
In Xie Licheng's Portable World, there were tens of thousands of web novels alone.
This old-school "all-top" romance novel was probably published by some pirated press.
The content of this novel had many explosive elements that no legitimate publisher would dare to print.
Xie Licheng was sometimes bored, and since he was a lone wolf who preferred solitude, whenever he stayed in his Portable World, he would pass the time by reading novels.
But he never expected that while he was just killing time reading a novel, he would one day transmigrate into it.
There were many things about this novel that Xie Licheng wanted to complain about.
However, there was one thing that was good for him.
That was—this was a world without natural disasters or viruses.
Although it was a chaotic era, it was still much safer than his apocalypse world.
The only pity now was that he had transmigrated with his soul, so his Portable World should be gone.
If his Portable World were still there, even if this world was completely chaotic, it wouldn't affect him in the slightest.
Thinking this, Xie Licheng subconsciously tried to summon his Player Panel.
If his Portable World still existed, he would be able to summon the Player Panel.
In his subconscious, he felt that the Golden Finger was tied to his body.
Now that his body was gone, the Golden Finger naturally disappeared with it.
But what Xie Licheng didn't expect was that the moment he summoned it, the panel actually appeared.
Seeing that the panel was still there, just with the data wiped clean, Xie Licheng smiled softly in delight.
It seemed… heaven wasn't too unkind to him after all.
He had transmigrated into a book, and even as a soul transmigration, the Golden Finger had followed him.
Previously, the player information displayed on Xie Licheng's panel had been his own.
The player's name was Xie Licheng, and the body data on it was all his.
Now that he had a new body, the player's name had become Horse Slave, and the body data belonged to the original owner.
Xie Licheng glanced over the original owner's data.
Name: Horse Slave
This could be changed—one free name change, and subsequent changes would cost money.
Xie Licheng immediately changed the name to his own.
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Age: 21
Height: 190 cm
Weight: 53 kg
This weight was far too thin.
But considering the original owner was a criminal slave who had been frequently abused, this weight really wasn't his fault.
This section of information couldn't be modified—for example, height was fixed as it was.
Weight could change with his actual weight, but the other values couldn't be touched.
Aside from these, the data below could be modified.
What "modifiable" meant was that he could deduct some attribute points from a high-value stat and add them to another stat.
For example, the original owner had low strength but high appearance.
He could deduct some attribute points from appearance and directly add them to the strength column.
At that moment, his appearance would decrease, and his strength would increase.
He could also earn attribute points through leveling up and add them to whatever stat he wanted.
The original owner's strength was: 23
Xie Licheng's initial strength was 47, which was relatively high among men.
Later, through his personal efforts, he increased his strength to 98 points.
With this strength, he could kill an ox with a single punch.
Defense: 39
The original owner's defense wasn't low. The higher the defense value, the greater the ability to withstand blows.
If defense reached a certain level, even fatal wounds wouldn't cause too much damage.
Agility: 18
Agility was tied to personal speed and reaction ability.
His agility was a bit low, which would be a weakness in future fights.
Health Points: 14
A healthy person typically had 100 health points.
Illness and injury would consume health points.
When health points dropped below 20, it became very dangerous—the kind where one might kick the bucket at any moment.
With this body's current health points, it really couldn't withstand any more setbacks.
Stamina: 9
When stamina dropped to 0, he would directly faint.
Combined with the very low health points, fainting would be very troublesome, and it would be easy to never wake up again.
This really was… somewhat tricky.
Appearance: 89
The original owner's appearance was about the same as Xie Licheng's.
This number was extremely high among men.
But considering he was a man—previously in the apocalypse, now in a chaotic era—he didn't plan to rely on his looks to survive. Honestly, having such high appearance didn't seem very useful.
It would be better to reduce some of it and add the points to other attributes later.
The last two attributes were Charm and Luck.
The original owner's Charm was 79, but his Luck was only a mere 3.
No wonder the original owner was so unlucky—first being noticed by the young master of the second branch who had a preference for men, then being targeted by the ill-tempered young master of the main branch.
And neither of these two were good people—one wanted to toy with the original owner, and the other wanted to kill him.
With such high appearance and charm, the original owner was destined to be a very conspicuous person.
And his luck was especially low—one could say he was quite unfortunate.
Under such circumstances, being a criminal slave with no ability to protect himself, it was indeed very hard to survive.
Xie Licheng stopped in his tracks on the way back to the original owner's residence. He planned to adjust his body's attribute points before returning.
His current condition was terrible. If he encountered any more trouble, he might really kick the bucket.
Regardless of why he had transmigrated here, he wanted to try his best to live well.
With this thought, Xie Licheng found a place to sit down. He reduced his Appearance from 89 to 80.
If he reduced his appearance too much, his facial features would change drastically, which would cause unnecessary trouble.
After reducing 10 points from Appearance, he then reduced 30 points from Charm.
Charm was something invisible and intangible, so reducing a bit more wouldn't matter much.
But it couldn't go too low either—if it was too low, it would inexplicably make others annoyed.
Having gained 40 attribute points, he first added 10 points to Health Points.
Getting his health points above twenty would ensure he wasn't in mortal danger.
Health points would slowly recover with rest, and recover faster with medical treatment—there was no need to waste too many attribute points on this.
For the remaining thirty points, he added 20 points to Defense and 10 points to Agility.
Defense and health points were linked—the higher the defense, the slower health points would drop even if injured.
As for why he didn't add to Strength?
There was still about half a year before the chaotic era described in the book.
That was plenty of time—he could obtain attribute points through other means.
Entering his Portable World put him in the state of a game player, allowing him to level up through various methods.
For example, leveling up by fighting monsters, gathering, fishing…
Currently, Xie Licheng's Portable World only had one map: Novice Village.
Novice Village was an ancient village with a large mountain beside it.
On the mountain, there were wild beasts, wild vegetables, wild fruits, herbs, and streams…
Among these, fighting monsters was the fastest way to level up. The monsters killed were all wild beasts, and he could obtain beast hides, beast bones, and beast meat.
These beast hides and meats could be sold at the shops in Novice Village, or brought to the real world to sell.
The shops in Novice Village bought items at very low prices, so selling hunted goods to them was very unprofitable.
Also, the shops had very few items for sale—only things like farmland and seeds.
If he wanted other things, like clothing, food, or tools, those weren't available.
As for farmland, Xie Licheng's farm currently had eight plots.
He couldn't farm that much land alone, so there was no need to keep saving money to buy more land.
Farming also gave very little experience, and he didn't plan to level up through farming, so he wasn't interested in farmland.
Seeing that his health points were now at 24, Xie Licheng finally felt a bit relieved.
This attribute adjustment operation couldn't be done every day—it could only be done once a year.
Now that he had used up his chance, he would need to be more careful from now on and absolutely couldn't let his health points get too low again.
Once he was certain he wouldn't die anytime soon, he got up and continued walking toward the original owner's residence.
The original owner's residence was in a side courtyard of the Gu family's outer compound, a courtyard that housed the lowest-ranking servants of the Gu household.
The original owner was a stable hand who had only recently arrived at the Gu family.
He shared a room with five or six male servants, a room with a large, dirty, and messy communal sleeping platform.
When Xie Licheng returned, the male servants sharing the room with him were chatting about him.
They didn't bother to lower their voices when he walked in, continuing their lively conversation one after another.
One male servant with a square face, thick eyebrows, and closely set eyes glanced at Xie Licheng and said with a laugh, "Some people are just stupid—offending one person after another. Now they've even dared to offend the young master. Who knows how many lives they have left to live?"
…
Initial Stats
Name: Xie Licheng
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Age: 21
Height: 190 cm
Weight: 53 kg
Strength: 23
Defense: 39
Agility: 18
Health Points: 14
Stamina: 9
Appearance: 89
Charm: 79
Luck: 3