Century’s First Village Girl, Trillions of Supplies

The ramshackle plank house held nothing but a low wooden bed, one of its rotted legs propped up with a splintered block of wood that resembled a neglected ancestral tablet. A gaunt young girl lay flat upon the bed—so emaciated that even the dried corpses in a museum display would have looked sturdier by comparison. Outside, rain poured in torrents; inside, it dripped in a thin, persistent drizzle. A drop of rain fell onto the girl’s face. She opened her eyes wearily and sighed at the mold-furred, leaking roof above her. Her name was Qin You. Raised by her grandfather, she had learned the craft of repairing old objects from childhood. That very morning, she had formally taken over the family’s small repair shop. Her first job was to mend a decayed wooden coffin newly dug from the earth. No one had expected the rotten lid to fly up without warning and smash into her head. When she awoke again, she thought she had fainted and fallen into the coffin. Instead, she had crossed into a completely unfamiliar world, inhabiting the body of a girl who appeared to have already died. The memories left behind were scant. Qin You only knew that the girl shared her name, had just turned eighteen, had been sickly since childhood and never attended school. Her parents and relatives were all dead. The entirety of her inheritance consisted of a whole mountain of trash and this dilapidated wooden shack built at its foot. Having barely ever left the garbage heap, her only impression of this world was that demons and ghosts roamed freely. Qin You found no concrete images of such creatures in the girl’s memories. Perhaps the garbage mountain was too filthy and barren—aside from a single girl barely clinging to life, there was no one else. Even ghosts, it seemed, could not be bothered to haunt such a place. After accepting the fact of her transmigration, Qin You forced herself to sit up. A wave of dizziness crashed down upon her, and she collapsed again. With her extensive experience in dieting, Qin You knew immediately what it was. Hunger. The pain and terror of starving to death still lingered in the girl’s body. Qin You had no desire to experience it firsthand again. She had to live. She had to eat. Behind the shack stood a shelter cobbled together from plastic sheeting, crammed with household odds and ends, filthy and chaotic—no cleaner than the surrounding refuse. Qin You shuffled into the shed, stopping every step to gasp for breath. Her thin clothes were soaked through, and she trembled uncontrollably from the cold. She sat on the ground, kicked the most conspicuous filthy wooden basin outside to catch rainwater, dug out a rust-eaten iron pot thick with dust, then crawled to the pile of discarded lumber in the corner—wood once saved for repairing the house and bed—and selected pieces for firewood. She could only lift small fragments. The moment one touched her hand, she sensed something amiss. The palm-sized piece of rotten wood bore distinct carved patterns. She had felt similar textures before, on antique jade talismans her grandfather once repaired. Carefully rubbing the surface and scraping away mold and grime, Qin You recognized it as a talisman meant to ward off evil and misfortune. In ancient times, wealthy families often equipped their sons and daughters with jade talismans like this, especially frail children prone to fright and loss of spirit. In a world overrun by demons and ghosts, even as a mere charm, this ought to fetch some money. Its appearance was poor—but she could fix that. Having stumbled upon a way to earn a living in this strange world, Qin You’s heart raced with excitement as she continued rummaging through the pile with hands trembling from hunger. Some of the wood looked familiar, much like the board that had struck her into this world. Some were scavenged firewood, thicker pieces sprouting ominous, clearly toxic mushrooms. Some were unmistakably ancestral tablets, their inscriptions eroded beyond recognition. At the very top lay a section of pine, crowned with a large cluster of pine mushrooms. Qin You’s eyes lit up. As a child, she often foraged mushrooms in the mountains with her grandfather. She knew these were edible. Food lay right before her, and her exhausted body felt instantly reinvigorated. She scrubbed the pot, built a fire, boiled water—half for washing herself, half for cooking mushroom soup. She drank the soup from a chipped bowl, forcing herself to stop despite the urge to keep eating. This fragile body could not withstand overeating; a little was enough. Unwilling to return to the cold, leaking shack, she leaned against the dry debris and examined the bowl in her hands. It was ordinary ceramic, with two large missing chips. If the broken pieces were still there, she could have restored it to a complete bowl. But with only this fragment remaining, even the most skillful hands could do no more than make do. Still, the bowl was large and of decent quality. With some grinding, it could be carved into two ceramic talismans—surely worth more than that rotten wooden one. She set to work at once. With a bit of strength recovered, Qin You searched through the house. The repair tools were plentiful, accumulated over years of patching this and that. Grinding ceramic required strength—and steady hands to wield a carving knife. Her hands trembled even when lifted slightly, so she began instead with the wooden talisman. Already damp, it was washed clean in a basin, then—half dry—coated with a protective layer and hung in a cool, ventilated spot to dry. Except she had no protective varnish. Left with no choice, Qin You scraped some half-dried engine oil from a pile of sorted metal scraps and smeared it on. The dark oil conveniently concealed the mottled rot, lending the talisman an air of mystery and gravitas. The only problem was that it left her hands pitch-black. She could sell it cheaper. Drowsy, Qin You hugged the talisman, curled into a small ball on the ground, and drifted into a half-sleep, half-faint. The next day dawned bright and clear. After another serving of mushroom soup, Qin You finally regained enough strength to stand and walk—briefly. Dragging a small table refashioned from coffin planks, she set up a stall on an open patch of ground a dozen meters from the garbage mountain. The wooden talisman was her sole item for sale. Unable to sit idle, she picked out a few even more decayed pieces of wood, wondering if she could refurbish them into something sellable. She wasn’t worried about unsold goods. A glance at her ancestral garbage mountain told her all she needed to know—scraps of every kind lay everywhere. Just selling the metal in the shed would be enough to keep her fed. The problem was transport, strength, and knowing where to sell. For now, she would start right here, at her own doorstep. Once her health improved, she could consider trading farther afield. Reality, however, was far crueler than her plans. By day’s end, she hadn’t seen a single passerby—not even a fly. Just as she prepared to head home to cook more mushroom soup, a small truck rattled toward her and stopped at the foot of the garbage mountain. The driver was a man in his early forties, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Spotting Qin You, he greeted her. She recognized him. The girl used to call him Uncle Sun. When her family was still alive, they would collect trash from elsewhere to find more scraps worth selling. After only the barely self-sufficient girl remained, they stopped actively collecting. But garbage had to go somewhere. Uncle Sun worked as a security guard at a university, which produced enormous amounts of trash. Whenever there was nowhere to dump it, he brought it here. Trash delivered for free—mostly useless junk, but with careful sorting, usable items always turned up. The girl’s entire understanding of “school” came from these truckloads of garbage. Clutching the talisman, Qin You eagerly stepped forward to try her luck. An oil-stained charm like this would be perfect to hang in a vehicle for safe travels. Uncle Sun wiped his hands and handed her a large bag. “These clothes are my daughter’s—she doesn’t want them anymore. They’re all washed, don’t mind them. And those buns on top are my wife’s. I told her I’d let you try some.” Qin You hesitated. She had intended to take money from him; now, her shabby talisman probably wasn’t worth even a fraction of what he’d given. Seeing her hesitate, Uncle Sun thought she couldn’t carry it. “I’ll bring it into the house for you.” “No, no, thank you, Uncle Sun—I can manage,” Qin You said hastily, taking the bag. It felt like lifting a block of solid iron. She nearly dropped it, her spindly arms barely holding on. Qin You: “…” Strength training was now an urgent priority. To avoid revealing that she couldn’t even carry a bag of clothes, she obediently stood still, the bag placed at her feet. After unloading the trash, Uncle Sun asked, “Anything else?” Thinking fast, Qin You said, “You’ve taken such good care of me, and I have nothing to repay you with. I have this protective talisman—if you don’t mind, I could hang it in your truck.” Uncle Sun glanced at the grimy wooden charm and smiled kindly. “Well, thank you then. A professor from the fortune-telling department said I’ve got a big calamity coming and should be extra careful lately. I was thinking of getting a charm myself. Now this is perfect—having it in the truck will make night driving feel safer.” Out loud, Qin You said, “You should still get a proper talisman when you can. This is just a trinket.” Privately, she thought: A fortune-telling department? Figures—this really is a world crawling with spirits. If only she’d learned some fortune-telling patter herself. That would make far more money than guarding a garbage mountain. After seeing Uncle Sun off, Qin You sank eagerly to the ground and cradled the bag of still-warm buns—enough to last her three or four days. The fluffy dough, the juicy meat filling—it was so fragrant she nearly cried. But tears solved nothing. First, she needed to eat, then haul the clothes home. The whole bag was impossible to carry at once. One or two pieces at a time would do. By the time she finished, it was close to midnight. Gazing at the pile of nearly new clothes covering her bed, Qin You resolved to quickly polish a ceramic talisman to give Uncle Sun in return. The clothes varied in thickness, clearly styled for a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl. She estimated her height at over 160 centimeters, but she was painfully thin. The sleeves and pant legs were a bit short, though the fit was otherwise just right. With no wardrobe in the house, she set aside two outfits to wear and folded the rest back into the bag, storing it in a corner where the roof didn’t leak. After several days of recuperation, Qin You regained most of her strength and could handle manageable physical labor. She first sifted through the trash Uncle Sun had delivered, looking for scraps of paper with writing—anything to gather information about the outside world. Luck favored her. She found a talisman-drawing manual with half its cover torn off. The blank margins were filled with doodles of turtles, likely discarded by a student. Inside was also a stack of ruined yellow talisman paper. Seeing that the text matched her own knowledge system, and that the incantations mirrored those on objects she had once repaired, Qin You let out a long breath. She wouldn’t have to start from scratch. Before transmigrating, she had just left school—having to relearn literacy now would have been hell-level survival difficulty. As it stood, she had knowledge, education, skills—and an entire garbage mountain at her disposal. Prosperity was only a matter of time. First, the leaking house needed repairs. To fix the house, she needed to fix the ladder. Full of determination, Qin You repaired the ladder, then the roof, and finally weighed it down with a scrap of metal to keep it from being torn away by strong winds. After the labor, she sat to rest, picked up a bald-bristled brush she’d scavenged, dipped it in ink made from pot ash, and experimented on the discarded talisman papers. According to the manual, the student had intended to draw a basic peace talisman. Whether due to shaky hands or careless drawing, a few strokes turned it into a rather lethal ghost-repelling talisman. Qin You hesitated. In her old world, talismans were little more than comfort objects—effective or not, they simply soothed the heart. But here, where ghosts truly existed, a peace talisman could still be sold as a decorative charm; efficacy mattered little. A ghost-repelling talisman, however, was meant to save lives. With her crude, pot-ash technique, it would be a miracle if it worked at all. Selling a useless ghost-repelling talisman would be harming people. She couldn’t bring herself to throw it away either. Perhaps she could fold it into triangles and sell it as ordinary peace charms—or grind wood and glass bottle bottoms into beads and sell them as ornaments. Decision made, she tucked the talisman papers into her pocket. With the stars bright and sleep eluding her, she went out again to rummage through the garbage Uncle Sun had delivered. Just as she reached the pile at the very edge, a figure came hurtling toward her at full speed, screaming hoarsely for help. In her previous life, Qin You would have rushed to assist without hesitation. Now she glanced at her thin arms and decisively collapsed onto the garbage heap. The runner sped past her. Only then did Qin You notice a pale white figure some ten meters behind him. It floated without touching the ground. Its eyes were rolled back, tongue lolling grotesquely long. Cold sweat broke out over Qin You’s body—followed by a strange, creeping curiosity. That was… a ghost?