At the end of the 22nd century, a global influenza pandemic broke out. People retreated into their homes, avoiding contact with the outside world, relying entirely on a virtual marketplace for daily necessities: food, medicine, self-defense weapons—everything.
Unfortunately, no one anticipated that the disaster would last for a decade. Even the vast stockpiles of supplies could not keep up with the needs of billions. Before long, the marketplace was monopolized by the elite at the top of the social pyramid. White rice, yellow flour, chicken, duck, and fish became exclusive luxuries for the wealthy. Ordinary people like her were forced to rely on life-sustaining nutrient pills to survive. If one were unlucky enough to fall ill or get injured, even those with money could rarely find a channel to buy medicine unless they were deemed valuable by the upper class, in which case they might receive a meager handout.
Cheng Nuo tapped excitedly on the high-grade fever reducer, and a small box popped up.
【High-grade fever reducer, price 500 yuan. Current balance insufficient. Please choose another payment method.】
Money? They wanted Renminbi?
She had transfigured into this body; where was she supposed to find money?
Cheng Nuo checked the main page, and sure enough, the balance column showed 0.00—three big, fat goose eggs.
She couldn't buy it!
The excitement in Cheng Nuo’s heart slowly cooled. There had to be another way. Don’t panic, don’t panic...
Before the apocalypse, she had been obsessed with web novels for a while. How did those "golden finger" systems work again?
Bartering... That was it, bartering!
She picked up the half-empty bottle of ointment from the table and spoke to the air: "I want to sell this bottle of medicine."
After a "ding," a cold, mechanical electronic voice sounded once more.
【Detected half a bottle of inferior ointment. No resale value. The marketplace will not accept it.】
Cheng Nuo’s eyes lit up. She wasn't discouraged; just because they wouldn't take this bottle didn't mean they wouldn't take anything else. At the very least, her line of reasoning was correct.
Seeing a glimmer of hope, Cheng Nuo immediately began searching the room: the table and chairs, pots and pans, bedding and clothing...
After one round, she was covered in sweat. Aside from the secondhand cotton quilt on the kang that might fetch fifty wen, everything else put together wasn't worth more than twenty or thirty wen.
The quilt was covering the little one and couldn't be moved; she couldn't sell the pots and pans she needed to eat; the table and chairs were also off-limits.
Cheng Nuo was speechless for a moment, then walked straight into Meng Nanzhou’s study.
To provide Meng Nanzhou with a quiet, independent space for his studies, the best room in the house—the one facing south—had been given to him as a study.
The room was small but well-organized. In the center sat a wide desk with an exquisite Duan inkstone carved with a landscape pattern. Cheng Nuo remembered that Meng Nanzhou had brought it home three months ago.
The original owner, despite her lack of education, knew it was a good item. When she pressed him on where he got it and how much it cost, Meng Nanzhou dismissed her as vulgar, claiming only that it was a gift from a close friend.
One day, while cleaning the desk, the original owner nearly knocked it to the ground. Meng Nanzhou had scolded Cheng Siniang severely, pointing his finger at her face while cradling the inkstone as if it were his most precious love rather than a mere writing tool.
Beside the inkstone, five or six calligraphy brushes hung on a rack, of varying quality. One of them had a sharp, firm tip, and the ink on it hadn't yet dried, suggesting he had just been writing something.
Beyond that, the most striking feature of the room was a tall bookshelf filled with books—some bamboo-style, others paper scrolls—covering everything from Confucian classics to the Hundred Schools of Thought, to poetry and prose. Unfortunately, they were all handwritten copies and held no market value.
Cheng Nuo put her hands on her hips, a smile appearing on her face. "System, scan everything. As long as it sells for a decent price, pack it all up!"
The mechanical voice responded quickly this time, even the "ding" sound carrying a note of excitement.
【Detected one high-quality Duan inkstone. Recycling value: 300 wen. Does the customer wish to sell?】
【Detected two wolf-hair brushes. Recycling value: 200 wen. Does the customer wish to sell?】
【Detected one jade seal. Recycling value: 500 wen. Does the customer wish to sell?】
The jade was only worth five hundred wen? Did the system think she was clueless about the market and trying to cheat her?
Cheng Nuo didn't even bother to wonder where the destitute Meng Nanzhou had acquired such precious jade; she was focused entirely on haggling with the system.
"Hey, I may not be a scholar, but I know how expensive items for intellectuals are in this dynasty. I won’t argue with you about the 300 wen for the inkstone—after all, it’s a secondhand rock—but this seal is carved from jade. Even if I took it to a bookstore to resell, it should be worth two or three taels of silver, right?"
【"Exchange what you have for what you lack." The deal is voluntary; we never force a sale.】
No sooner had the words faded than two lines of large characters appeared before her. It was certain that she was penniless and had no choice but to do business with it.
A seal usually had characters carved into it, making it easy to trace if sold elsewhere, unlike the marketplace, which left no tracks.
Forget it. It was Meng Nanzhou’s stuff anyway; she wouldn't feel bad about it.
Cheng Nuo immediately clicked the "sell" button. With the sound of coins clinking into her account, her balance became exactly one thousand yuan.
So, the exchange rate for the marketplace was one wen to one yuan.
She glanced casually at other items on the main page: white flour was five yuan a jin, salt was two yuan for five hundred grams...
That was a relief; it was the price level from before the apocalypse.
Cheng Nuo didn't leave immediately, continuing to search the study, determined not to miss any stragglers.
【Handwritten copies of "The Analects" and "The Great Learning." No resale value. The marketplace will not accept them.】
【Several paintings and calligraphy by non-famous artists. No resale value. The marketplace will not accept them.】
【Three sets of worn young man’s robes, one pair of boots. No resale value. The marketplace will not accept them.】
Fine, that was a complete sweep.
She stood up from the scroll tube and tossed the painting she was holding onto the desk. It wasn't balanced properly, and one end rolled off the corner of the table, revealing a painting of a beauty in the wind and snow.
The world was vast and desolate, with heavy snow falling like willow catkins dancing in the sky. In the midst of the wind and snow stood a young girl, about twelve or thirteen, wearing a pale green, elegant dress. The silver silk threads shimmered against the snow as if forged from ice. She wore a red mink cape, and the artist’s strokes were so delicate that one could almost feel the soft fur trembling in the wind. It set off the figure’s peerless beauty—her brows like distant mountains touched by green, her eyes like ripples in an autumn pond.
This was... painted by Meng Nanzhou?
And who was the girl in the painting?
For some reason, Cheng Nuo felt a vague sense of unease. She opened several other paintings that Meng Nanzhou had treasured and carefully wrapped in cloth.
Every one was a portrait of a person—the girl, either still or in motion, from deep autumn to cold winter, from the morning dew to the evening dusk.
Some of the paper had yellowed; clearly, these were not recent works.
Only one, where the ink was somewhat smudged as if the artist had been in a hurry and had tucked it away before it was dry, showed the subject having grown from the green youth of her early teens to the graceful poise of twenty. Her features had lost their youthful shyness, replaced by a woman’s allure, with only the red mole between her brows remaining as vivid and matchless as ever.
Who would have thought? Meng Nanzhou had a sweetheart, and it looked like a childhood friend at that.
Cheng Nuo had no interest in Meng Nanzhou’s business. If her intuition hadn't warned her that something was wrong, she wouldn't have had the habit of rummaging through other people's things.
Her sixth sense had always been sharp; it had saved her from disaster many times before. She didn't know why, since coming here, she had become a gossip detector.
Just as Cheng Nuo was about to close the scroll, a small poem inscribed in the upper right corner caught her attention.
"The south wind knows my intentions, blowing my dreams to Xizhou.
In the third year of Jiade, at Swallow Slope in the southern suburbs, Feng Zhiyi gifts this to Master Meng."
Feng Zhiyi, Master Meng...
Cheng Nuo’s pupils trembled slightly. A haunting description surfaced in her mind:
"Blood stains the landscape, beautiful as a painting, yet how can it compare to the cinnabar mole between her brows?"
The cinnabar mole between the beauty’s brows on the scroll grew infinitely large in her eyes.
So, she hadn't just "borrowed a corpse to return the soul."
She had transmigrated into a book!