Immortality by Merit and Sin Coins

From the surrounding crowd, the old cripple who was clearly of the lowest status and had only dared to watch from a distance immediately scurried over. He was full of worry but didn’t dare show it.

He bowed and scraped obsequiously at Master Liu San.

Then, afraid the man would go back on his word, he hastily and clumsily dragged Lin Shu from the ground into the woodshed.

The woodshed was messy, but at least it was dry.

The old cripple helped Lin Shu lie down against a wall. He first cautiously closed the door, then turned and complained in a hushed voice:

"What were you thinking, sticking your nose into other people’s business?"

"Have they ever shared a single sliver of the silver they earned with you? You don’t even have the right to get paid. Even if that old hag’s entire family gets wiped out, what the hell does that have to do with you!"

The cripple walked back to the corner and saw Lin Shu, gritting his teeth in pain, had already forced himself into a sitting position.

His fair, smooth, bare skin was now covered in wounds; there was hardly a patch of unblemished flesh left.

But the kid’s face showed little fear. He was clearly gasping for breath, yet the way he leaned against the wall seemed almost casual. He even closed his eyes, a small smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

The old cripple was dumbfounded. The kid had almost been beaten to death, and he could still manage a smile?

’What’s going on?’

Lin Shu looked down at his own chest. Compared to the wounds covering his body, the empty cavity there made him even more curious.

’How can a man with no heart still be alive?’

"Who knows what’s wrong with you. You were like this when I dragged you back here in the first place, looking like you could drop dead at any moment."

The cripple was called Old Yang. He was once one of the troupe’s main performers.

Unfortunately, he later broke their rules and had his Martial Arts and one of his legs crippled, falling to his current state.

The two of them were brothers in misery.

"So you’re saying that because I don’t get a share of the money and don’t know how long I’ll live, I should just let people bully me like this?"

Lin Shu opened his eyes and looked over, quite surprised.

"Who told you to be such a good Samaritan!" Old Yang shot him an exasperated glare.

In this opera troupe, you didn’t necessarily need Martial Arts to survive.

The kid was blessed with a handsome face, and that itself was an asset.

If he had just been obedient, his status would be far better than it was now.

"A good person." Lin Shu felt the wall was too hard and shifted into a more comfortable position.

"What else?" Old Yang felt that the person before him was a bit strange today. He wondered if the whipping had addled his brain.

Hearing this, Lin Shu mulled it over for a moment, then nodded lightly. "True. After all, I’ve never heard anyone call me a bad person."

"..."

Old Yang let out a long sigh, not bothering to continue the pointless chat.

If the kid hadn’t meddled, at worst, a child would have died from illness. But now, that old woman’s entire family would probably suffer for it.

At this thought, he couldn’t help but offer another piece of advice. "Just do your job! If you can’t truly become part of the troupe, you’ll never get a share of the money. How will you find a doctor then? Do you really want to die?"

’Money?’

Lin Shu turned his head to the side, looking at the black light in his palm.

It was a jet-black copper coin that had appeared the moment the old woman breathed her last.

[Good deeds bring good fortune; evil deeds bring Sin Coins]

[Arsonists and murderers wear belts of gold, while those who build bridges and pave roads die without a grave. For killing one worthless life, you are rewarded with one Sin Coin.]

The brief lines of text confirmed that the old woman had indeed died at his predecessor’s hands.

Taken literally, it meant that if he committed acts like arson and murder, resulting in death, he could obtain similar coins.

’But what’s the use of this thing?’

’Since it’s a coin, it should be meant for spending, but who would accept money from the dead?’

Lin Shu rubbed the coin twice with the pad of his thumb.

The moment he closed his fist around it, everything in his vision changed.

Wisps of hazy Fog appeared around his body. They floated erratically, originating from the chest of this body.

Where his chest had been an empty cavity, a blurry, indistinct phantom image had appeared.

It looked like a small, curled-up white wolf.

The next moment, the copper coin in Lin Shu’s hand suddenly burrowed into the phantom image.

The little white wolf let out a muffled groan of pain, and a hint of gray flashed across its once snow-white body.

It dazedly lifted its eyelids. Deep within its clear eyes, a touch of crimson quietly began to glow.

This seemed to be the reason his predecessor could live without a heart.

’Was he... parasitized?’

Lin Shu’s expression faltered slightly, but he stared at his chest with great interest.

He saw that the Fog drifting from the phantom was connected to his entire body like meridians, taking the place of his heart.

New lines of text appeared before his eyes.

[A Sin Coin enters the Immortal Body, unleashing disaster upon the mortal world.]

[Half-Life Immortal: Silver-eyed White Wolf]

[Qi Cultivation Seventh Grade. Moonlight Claw Technique: Entry-level]

’What’s a Half-Life Immortal? It sounds like a bunch of mystical mumbo jumbo.’

’But it seems the coin really was spent.’

Lin Shu clenched his fist.

Before the coin went in, the Fog from the White Wolf phantom had been passively sustaining his body. But now, he discovered he could actively control that Fog.

He tried to wrestle for control with the little white wolf and felt a warm current begin to surge through his body.

Although his injuries hadn’t healed, his strength started to return, and the pain gradually faded.

Lin Shu leaned against the wall, closing his eyes and waiting for his energy to slowly replenish.

Suddenly finding himself in such a body after a hangover, and then encountering so many bizarre things, he needed some time to process it all.

However, the moment he closed his eyes, a massive amount of information flooded his mind.

Countless obscure characters began to unfurl.

Lin Shu clearly couldn’t understand a single character, yet his fingertips trembled instinctively, as if he had suddenly learned some kind of technique.

’Moonlight Claw Technique... an Immortal Technique?’

His eyes snapped open, and he looked back at the phantom image in his chest.