Zhao Heng opened his eyes.
There was a sharp, stabbing pain at the back of his head, throbbing and threatening to split his skull open.
Isn't he in the elevator?
The tearing pain in my heart still lingers.
A vague cry of surprise seemed to still echo in my ears.
"Why did the delivery guy faint in the elevator?"
"Hurry up and call the property management, call 120."
But this is not a hospital.
There is no smell of disinfectant, no pale forehead.
Instead, a pungent smell of mold and dust hit me in the face.
Above his head was a roof made of thatch and wooden beams. A few rays of sunlight leaked through the holes, casting a visible beam of light in the dimness, and countless tiny dust particles fluttered up and down in the beam of light.
The hard wooden bed beneath him was so uncomfortable that all his bones were protesting.
Where is this?
He struggled to sit up, but his whole body felt sore and weak. The severe pain in the back of his head made his vision go black, and he almost fainted again.
A timid voice sounded beside the bed.
"Dad, you're awake."
Zhao Heng turned his stiff neck and looked in the direction of the sound.
A little boy of five or six years old was standing by the bed, staring at him nervously with a pair of abnormally large eyes.
The boy was wearing a short linen jacket of an indistinguishable color, covered with layers of patches. The hem was worn and torn, revealing two thin legs that were so thin that only a layer of skin remained.
His feet were bare and caked with dried mud.
Zhao Heng's heart suddenly twitched.
How could this child be so thin?
He looked past the little boy and towards the door not far away.
A smaller figure was squatting at the doorstep, about three or four years old, with hair as dry and yellow as a bunch of hay that had lost all its moisture.
She was concentrating on pulling something out of the cracks in the mud on the ground, then carefully stuffing it into her mouth, chewing with her little face puffing up.
It's grassroots.
She was eating grass roots.
A suffocating pain suddenly rushed up his throat, making his chest feel stuffy and almost unable to breathe.
He is also a father himself.
His daughter is ten years old this year. She is plump and fair-skinned, like a little witch, raised by his ex-wife.
He was still planning that after delivering the last takeaway order, he would use the money he earned today to buy his daughter a cream cake that she had been talking about for a long time, to give her a birthday surprise.
But this little girl in front of me...
Zhao Heng's breathing stopped.
"What... did you call me?"
His voice was dry and hoarse, squeezed out of his throat, and even he sounded unfamiliar.
The little boy was startled by his tone and shrank back a little, but he still mustered up the courage and shouted again.
"father."
Zhao Heng's brain exploded with a loud bang, and everything went blank.
father?
How could he, a middle-aged man over 40 who had just died suddenly in an elevator, have a son out of nowhere?
"Who are you calling daddy? Who is your daddy?"
He demanded harshly, his voice filled with fear and resistance that he himself was not aware of.
The little boy was completely frightened this time. His mouth pursed and his big black and white eyes were instantly filled with tears.
Tears as big as beans rolled down his dirty cheeks, breaking through two muddy marks.
"Dad, you...you don't want us anymore?"
"Wuwuwu…"
The boy's cry was like a needle, piercing Zhao Heng's brain.
A dizziness came over me.
Countless fragments of memories that did not belong to him rushed into his mind madly and unreasonably like a mountain torrent.
Pain, anger, and unwillingness.
The frenzy after drinking, the fists waving at the child, and the blurred back of a woman walking away in the rain...
The chaotic images and emotions impacted his mind. Zhao Heng groaned, tilted his head, and lost consciousness again.
…
I don't know how long it took.
Zhao Heng woke up again, and his mind was no longer in chaos.
He, Zhao Heng, was really dead.
Died of a heart attack in the elevator of a delivery man's house.
Then, he came back to life.
Living in this Yu Dynasty, an unprecedented fictional era.
What is even more bizarre is that in this time and space, there actually was a Qin Dynasty, which lasted for more than three hundred years before being overthrown by the ancestors of Dayu.
For example, Dayu had been established for nearly three hundred years.
The body he occupied was originally owned by Zhao Heng, who was thirteen years old.
It was completely different from his experience in his previous life. The original owner of this body was a scholar. He passed the examination for the title of Tongsheng a few years ago, but failed again and again at the threshold of Xiucai.
The successive disasters wore down his spirit, making him cynical and bad-tempered. He spent his days numbing himself with the lowest quality liquor.
And those two children...
Zhao Heng's heart felt a sharp pain again.
The boy is Zhao Gan, nicknamed Tiedan, and is six years old.
The girl eating grass roots is Zhao Guo, nicknamed Guoguo, and is only three years old.
They are all the original owner's biological children.
As for their relative, he fled from other places seven years ago to escape famine. A year ago, he went to the county town to get some tailoring work, but he disappeared on the way back and never returned. No one found him, alive, or dead.
The disappearance of his wife became the last straw that broke the camel's back for the original owner.
He completely turned into a drunkard and a bastard, turning all his dissatisfaction and resentment into fists and venting them on his two young children.
This time, the original owner got drunk and had an argument with his neighbor Wang Zhuo.
Relying on his tall stature, he pushed and shoved the man. Wang Zhuo was so angry that when the man turned around, he picked up a clothesline stick and hit him from behind.
With just one blow of the stick, the original owner was beaten to death.
Then, the 40-year-old delivery man Zhao Heng woke up in this young body.
After integrating the original owner's memories, Zhao Heng felt mixed emotions.
He couldn't resent Wang Zhuo's neighbor.
He dug out many scattered fragments from the corners of his memory.
Wang Zhuo and his wife are among the few people in the village who are still willing to help their family.
Several times, Wang Zhuo's wife would secretly give the two children a few steamed buns or a bowl of vegetable porridge while the original owner was away.
The original owner was such a jerk.
A deep sense of guilt surged from the bottom of my heart.
This guilt is not only towards my neighbor Wang Zhuo, but also towards those two poor children.
He slowly raised himself up, this time much more gently.
The wound on the back of my head still hurts a little, but it's bearable now.
He looked at the young body. His hands were slender, with distinct joints and some thin calluses on the palms, left by years of holding a pen. They were unlike the weathered and calloused hands of his previous life.
The musty smell was still strong in the air, mixed with a faint smell of blood, which should be coming from the wound on his head.