Grave Robber's Chronicles！！

Chapter 2: The Wind Cuts Like A Knife

books on coin charts and porcelain records. The first book I read until it disintegrated was about ancient currency. Around Hanhe, the old folks called them "purple coins." I didn't care about the inscription. I didn't care about the history. If it was old, I bought it.

What really cornered me, what pushed me to the edge, was the winter I turned eighteen.

That year, the snow fell hard. It buried the roads and froze the rivers. One morning, my grandmother slipped on the ice and broke her leg. The sound of the bone snapping was louder than the wind.

The hospital said it would cost more than three thousand yuan.

Three thousand.

To people now, that’s a dinner bill. To us back then, it was a mountain. We couldn't even scrape together six hundred. The house was empty. The pot was empty.

I went to borrow money from relatives.

My eldest aunt’s family ran a farmhouse inn. They were living decently. They had meat on their table and heat in their walls. When I went there, I didn't even dare step inside with mud on my shoes. I scraped my boots on the mat until they were clean, terrified of tracking my poverty onto their floor.

I did manage to borrow the money. My aunt handed it over with a sneer, counting the bills twice.

But that was also the day I stood behind the doorway, invisible in the shadows, and heard my uncle speaking in a lowered voice.

"He’s a jinx," he said, the words muffled by the wall. "Our family are washed-up nobodies. Lending them that money is the same as throwing it into a well."

That night, in Hanhe’s minus-thirty-degree cold, I sat alone on a boulder at the entrance to the village for three hours.

The wind made my face go numb. The tears ran down my cheeks and froze before they could drip.

I was young then, and pride was the only thing I had left. One sentence from a relative hurt more than ten slaps to the face. It burned. It festered.

My hand shook around the borrowed money in my pocket. It felt hot, like a coal. In my heart, only one thought remained, hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

I have to make something of myself.

I have to.

I will not die in this frozen hell.