Chapter 313: Beggar (Part I)

"Extra! Extra! Read all about it!"

"Kind miss, have mercy, please give me a bite to eat!"

"Kind shopkeeper, have mercy, please give me a bite to eat!"

"Kind sir, have mercy, please give me a bite to eat!"

"Kind lady, have mercy, please give me a bite to eat!"

"Kind young master, have mercy, please give me a bite to eat!"

Qin Huai watched An Youyou, who was kneeling and kowtowing all the way with a smooth, practiced routine, his mouth hanging open in sheer astonishment.

An Youyou currently appeared to be a child of about eleven or twelve, dressed in rags. Her face, body, hands, and even her hair were covered in dirt and grime, so filthy that her gender was indistinguishable—a textbook beggar's getup.

How to put it? He knew that the first lives of spirits never followed the beaten path.

Chen Huihong buried herself in the dirt, Qu Jing wanted to hide in the deep mountains, Luo Jun used his high-level skills to pose as a wealthy young master returning from abroad, and Chen Gong took the steady approach of carrying loads to earn his first pot of gold. Qin Huai could actually understand these four types; they belonged to different schools of thought among spirits.

But what kind of strategy was this "beggar school" of An Youyou's?

What species was she? What exactly was written in the textbooks? It was one thing to be like Qu Jing and not follow the beaten path by posing as a child, but why become a beggar?

Watching An Youyou's skillful begging routine—earning a profit when she succeeded, slipping away instantly when she didn't, and using full-on evasion tactics when peers tried to snatch her food, or throwing punches to beat them up if she could win—Qin Huai knew An Youyou was definitely a veteran beggar.

She hadn't begged little since coming to the human world.

If nothing else, her integration into society was quite successful.

It was just that she was born in the wrong era; otherwise, if she held a phone and shouted, "Brothers, I've begged for food again," An Youyou would already be financially independent.

Qin Huai just watched as An Youyou diligently begged for food all day.

And let it be said, the competition was quite fierce.

Qin Huai was very familiar with the scene of An Youyou begging; it was in Shanghai. Due to her status, An Youyou couldn't get into the foreign concessions and could only circle between the ordinary city districts and the remote suburbs. However, Qin Huai had already seen many of the buildings in Luo Jun's memories, so he could clearly confirm that An Youyou was definitely begging in Shanghai.

Big cities were just different. An Youyou, Luo Jun, and Chen Gong's first lives were all here, just at different times and with different identities; otherwise, the three of them might have even crossed paths in their first lives.

As a professional beggar, An Youyou was very good at reading people when begging for money.

When she encountered a wealthy young lady who looked inexperienced, dressed appropriately, and was followed by servants, An Youyou would pounce, rolling on the ground and wailing. She used exaggerated body language and tragic words to awaken the young lady's sympathy, causing the lady to toss out a few coins from her pocket.

Even while rolling, An Youyou would deliberately keep a distance, allowing the young lady to see her performance without getting too close, lest she be beaten by the servants.

When she encountered a wealthy young master traveling with a beauty, An Youyou would kneel on the ground and launch a verbal offensive, her mouth as sweet as honey, speaking in a smooth, practiced manner. If she coaxed the young master into a good mood, he might also toss out a few coins.

If she encountered a naive, sweet person, she would pester them relentlessly.

If she encountered students, she would frantically play the victim, but she couldn't do it to a group of students; she had to target those who were alone.

If she encountered a tough character who looked like trouble, she would stay far away, only begging quietly on the side, just in case she got lucky and they tossed something.

Begging at restaurants happened after meal times, and she had to pick those with good business. She couldn't beg at the main entrance but had to go to the side door, showing gratitude, shedding tears, and presenting a tragic image of someone who would starve to death tomorrow if they didn't eat today.

If she encountered soft-hearted waiters and shopkeepers, she could not only get a bowl of some unknown mush but, if lucky, even some leftover food that had started to go sour.

Even with ordinary people, there were target customer groups.

Laborers and porters wearing short jackets were definitely off-limits; they not only had no money but also had strength and could fight. If she ran into a "black-on-black" situation, it wasn't certain who would be begging whom.

Rickshaw pullers couldn't be begged from either; most of them were as thin as sticks and looked like they needed to beg more than An Youyou did, not to mention they ran fast, and An Youyou didn't have the advantage in skill points.

However, women who looked a bit plumper than ordinary people, with some meat on their cheeks and chins, and who weren't as dark or overworked, were excellent targets for begging.

She only needed to pretend to be deathly ill and lie on the ground, rolling as she lay. With a face covered in black mud and dirty, messy hair, it was impossible to tell if she was really dying. The women would often back away in disgust while muttering about how pitiful she was, then take some simple food from home, like mush or boiled beans.

Of course, there were dangers in the process of begging.

In Luo Jun's storyline, gang members who appeared many times as background props for screaming, and fellow beggars, were all potential sources of danger.

The former would vent their inner evil simply because they were in a bad mood, and the latter would start a vicious "black-on-black" fight out of jealousy over An Youyou's daily earnings.

For An Youyou, she would avoid the former if she could and beat the latter if she could, pushing the art of "knowing when to bend and when to stretch" to the extreme.

As the sun set and the light gradually dimmed, just as the sun was about to sink below the horizon, An Youyou hummed a jaunty, off-key tune and skipped toward the suburbs.

An Youyou's begging route was clearly her route home, begging all the way from the city to the suburbs. She started her day's work in the morning and finished after begging for the last bit of black beans from a kind woman by the water, ending her day's work and heading home.

There were many households along the river, and at this hour, many children were still playing by the water. One could tell the difference between a farmer's child and a wandering beggar at a glance. Although the farmer's children weren't wealthy and their bodies weren't clean—their faces and hands were dirty from playing—their short jackets, though heavily worn, were at least complete garments.

Beggars were different. Among beggars, those who could master begging techniques as precisely as An Youyou were extremely rare, top-tier talents. During the better part of the day that An Youyou spent begging, Qin Huai saw more than one beggar who suffered beatings, insults, or even brutal thrashings because they were clumsy with their words, didn't play the victim well enough, or played it too well and displeased the nobles.

For ordinary beggars, being able to cover their bodies with a few rags was already quite good. Someone like An Youyou, who could wear a complete set of short jackets, was absolutely the elite of the elite.

During the better part of the day, Qin Huai had only seen a similar outfit on the leader of a small group that tried to rob An Youyou in the afternoon.

As an aside, that group had a total of 9 people; 8 were pinned to the ground and hammered by An Youyou, the leader ran away, and An Youyou even swiped 4 out of the 6 copper coins they had earned all morning, leaving 2 so the group wouldn't actually starve to death.

An Youyou looked at the ordinary children playing by the river from afar, without envy in her eyes, and just silently found a shallow spot by the river to squat and wash her face, scrubbing off all the black mud, and washing her hair casually as well.

Most importantly, she washed her hands very carefully, repeating the process five or six times to ensure there wasn't a speck of mud under her fingernails before she stopped.

"Boss, Boss, you're back!"

In the distance, a beggar whose top was so torn only a strip of cloth remained, barely tied around his waist as a belt, and whose trousers were so worn they looked like shorts, ran excitedly toward An Youyou. He looked like he had crawled out of the mud, making it hard to tell if his skin was dark from the sun or simply from filth.

"Thirteen... Brother Thirteen found a job today!" the beggar's excited voice could almost pierce the sky.

An Youyou had just finished washing her hands and, like a treasure, pulled out a cloth bundle wrapped in several layers from her bosom. She didn't pay much attention to the beggar and proceeded to count the day's spoils.

Inside the cloth bundle were a dozen copper coins, a few bills of legal tender, a chipped rice bowl, and a white pound note.

The one who contributed this white pound note was a kind-hearted, naive young master. Seeing An Youyou crying so genuinely and playing the victim so pitifully, he took out his wallet and gave her a pound note.

Unfortunately, An Youyou was uneducated and inexperienced; she didn't recognize the pound note, knowing only that it seemed to be money but not how much it was worth. She didn't place much importance on the pound note, valuing the bowl given to her by the kind restaurant waiter at noon the most.

An Youyou had already finished the rice in the bowl, and the pastries she had begged from the wealthy young lady in the afternoon were also gone. An Youyou also had a bag made of rags around her waist, which contained the beans, mush, and sour bran she had begged and didn't want to eat.

Qin Huai had been curious before why An Youyou kept this food if she didn't want to eat it, but now that he saw An Youyou actually had underlings, Qin Huai understood.

It was food brought for her underlings.

As a spirit, even if An Youyou was a beggar, she wouldn't be an ordinary one; she was a beggar boss who raised many underlings who needed to eat.

In the physical sense of needing to eat.

"Found a job?" An Youyou frowned, almost writing the words "I don't understand" on her face. "What kind of job do we need to find? Don't we already have a job?"

Qin Huai:...

Amazing. Redefining "having a job"—this was true flexible employment.

The little beggar didn't dare to refute the boss's words and could only say weakly, "Thir... Brother Thirteen says there's no future in being a beggar. The world is chaotic now, refugees are everywhere, and even the infant orphanages aren't giving out porridge anymore. The number of beggars in the city increases every year, and most don't survive the winter. Being a beggar means either freezing to death in the winter, being abducted to a factory to work day and night until you die of exhaustion in a few months, or being beaten to death for stealing."

"Begging has no future, and when you grow up, you'll be malnourished because you're not getting enough to eat..." An Youyou added.

"Right, anyway, it's something like that. You'll be thin and small with no strength, and no one will want you even for carrying loads as a laborer."

"Being a beggar isn't a long-term plan; finding a stable job and learning a trade is the way to go," the little beggar said honestly.

After listening, An Youyou asked, "You remember it so clearly and say it so smoothly, Little Nine, how many times has Thirteen said this to you all?"

"For over half a month," Little Nine said honestly.

An Youyou exploded, fiercely knocking Little Nine on the head, sending him crashing to the ground. "Is this the reason you all haven't been begging properly for the past half month?"

"I've been working so hard, getting up early and returning late every day, skipping meals and losing sleep, working day and night... anyway, I've been out begging and fighting so hard, and you all just listen to Thirteen's nonsense and want to go out and find jobs?"

"Have you forgotten how you all survived? You all only survived because I picked you up in the ruined temple. Is there any job in this world better than begging?"

"Aren't you all fed by my begging?"

"And this Thirteen, having a trade is amazing, huh? Wasn't he also picked up by me? Why was he picked up by me? Because his previous job didn't work out, it wasn't as good as begging, so he couldn't survive."

"Little Nine, let me tell you, begging is the best job! No job is more stable than begging. If you go to the docks to carry loads, there are days when they don't need you, but you can beg anytime!"

"What did you beg for today?"

Seeing the leader suddenly start checking on work, Little Nine shivered. "A... a... a sweet potato."

An Youyou sighed deeply. "I can't blame Thirteen for persuading you to find jobs; your begging level really isn't as good as mine."

An Youyou threw the bag from her waist to Little Nine and strode forward with the demeanor of a king. "Let's go, I want to see what kind of job Thirteen can find."

Little Nine carefully caught the bag, held it in his hands, and followed closely behind An Youyou, not forgetting to reach into the bag to secretly eat black beans as he walked.

Qin Huai:...

What a fantasy storyline.

Chen Huihong was me learning to be human in a disaster year, Luo Jun was me being a young master in Shanghai, Chen Gong was me finding a boss in the human world, and Qu Jing was me saving my grandfather in the countryside.

When it came to An Youyou, it actually turned into me being the boss in a beggar's den.

Truly, you can't judge a book by its cover. Don't look at An Youyou now, working hard every day for a promotion and raise, rolling until she became the Radish Cake Sister; in her first life, she was also a boss with 13 underlings.

It's not easy; one person begging to feed 13 underlings. No wonder she was so successful at begging yet looked so poor.

An Youyou and her 13 underlings lived in a ruined temple on the outskirts of the city.

In the physical sense of a ruined temple, the temple had already collapsed halfway, with only a few earthen walls to shelter from the wind. In rainy and snowy weather, it was estimated that everyone had to curl up in the corner to ensure they wouldn't get wet or frozen.

An Youyou's 13 underlings, including Little Nine who was following behind her, were all in the ruined temple.

The 11 underlings were all gathered together, all half-grown children. The youngest looked only three or four years old, and the oldest looked about the same age as An Youyou. Surrounded by the 10 children in the middle was that oldest-looking youth, who was not only older but also taller. It could be seen that his family background must have been quite good, his foundation was excellent, and he was thin but not emaciated, even looking quite sturdy.

"Brother Thirteen, you're too amazing! You were actually able to get into the Fu Ji Restaurant as a handyman! We usually don't even dare to go to Fu Ji Restaurant when begging; the waiters there are so fierce, they'll hit us with sticks if they see us getting close. Little Seven's leg was broken by the waiter at this restaurant last time, and Boss spent a lot of money to treat him."

"Right, right, right, the waiters at Fu Ji are so bad!"

"Their leftovers and slop are never poured out, nor are they sold to the slop collectors; they are all poured directly into the river. They say that even if it's the leftovers of nobles, it can't be eaten by others, as it would dirty the nobles' leftovers."

"I've seen Fu Ji pouring leftovers into the river, and it smelled so good. After the Fu Ji people left, I jumped into the river to fish for it, but I didn't catch anything."

"Brother Thirteen, is the pay at Fu Ji especially high?"

"Brother Thirteen, how did you get into Fu Ji? Can I go to Fu Ji too? I want to be a waiter at Fu Ji."

"Didn't you just say the ones at Fu Ji are very bad?"

"That... that's different."

An Youyou strode toward the underlings. Seeing their boss return, the underlings gathered around An Youyou again, excitedly saying, "Boss, Boss, you're back!"

"Boss, Brother Thirteen got into Fu Ji as a handyman!"

"Boss, Brother Thirteen brought back steamed buns today! There were only two, we didn't dare to eat them and saved them specifically for you!"

"Boss, I begged for a bowl of meat soup today. I drank the soup, but I brought the meat back for you! It's a whole piece of meat!"

"Boss, I begged for a bag of black beans!"

"Boss, I snatched a lot of leftovers, but they're all sour, I don't know if we'll die if we eat them."

The underlings were chattering, but An Youyou ignored everyone and stared straight at Thirteen, asking, "You actually found a job at Fu Ji?"

"How much is the pay?"

"One meal provided every day, one silver dollar a month. If I can become a chopping chef, three silver dollars a month, with two meals provided."

"Damn," An Youyou blurted out. "There really is a job in this world better than begging."

Thirteen:...

"Then are you going to leave?" An Youyou asked.

Thirteen hesitated for a moment and shook his head. "You saved me half a year ago, I won't leave, but I can't give you all of my monthly wages. I can give you half."

An Youyou thought about it and felt that earning half a silver dollar net per month was also quite good, so she nodded in agreement. "Fine, then there will still be a portion for you in the food I beg for in the future."

After speaking, An Youyou took out her precious cloth bag, picked out the copper coins and legal tender, and stuffed them to the underling who was second only to Thirteen in age. "Go buy something, same old rule, I want to eat salted fish."

The underling took the money and ran; it was about to get dark, and if he didn't run fast, he might encounter danger.

"Little Eleven just said you brought back two steamed buns. Where are the buns? I haven't eaten steamed buns in a long time," An Youyou asked.

An underling hurriedly went to get the buns.

An Youyou gnawed on the bun with satisfaction and looked at Thirteen with great confusion. "Thirteen, I really don't understand, why do you just refuse to beg properly like me?"

"You have such good conditions, you're strong and can fight. If the two of us go out begging, we'll definitely be invincible in the city."

"Although the job at Fu Ji is also quite good, I still think begging is better."

Thirteen:...

"Maybe it's because I wasn't a beggar before," Thirteen said somewhat speechlessly. "And I have a name."

"My name is Jiang Weiguo."

"I know, but 'Thirteen' is easier to say. Everyone is a number; it can't be that only you have a name, otherwise it would be too tiring for me to come up with 12 more names."

Jiang Weiguo looked at An Youyou even more speechlessly. "So is that why you named yourself 'Boss'?"

"Exactly!" An Youyou proudly raised her head. "What a great name! I thought about it for a long time; this is definitely the best name in the world!"

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 314 =====