The late autumn of November is cold, and Tang Mo wears a sweater and a coat. A cold, sharp object presses tightly against his waist, piercing a small hole in his thick clothes.

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Tang Mo’s bent-over posture does not change. He can tell that the object is a knife.

But the other person becomes impatient. “Fuck, give me your wallet! Hurry it up! Or else I’ll[1] cut you up!”

Tang Mo’s voice is calm. “Move the knife away a bit and let me stand up. I’ll give you my wallet then.”

“So much useless shit.” The person retracts the knife a little bit.

Tang Mo stands up, obediently keeping his gaze forward, and gives him the wallet. In an instant, the wallet is snatched away, and a rough man’s voice curses. “Fuck, only this much? The car’s yours, right? Keys are inside?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t fucking move, or I’ll cut you up.”

Tang Mo doesn’t turn around. The knife against his waist moves away, and he hears the other person open the car door and try to turn on the car. After confirming that the car works, he shuts the door with a bang.

Tang Mo says loudly, “My suitcase is in the back. Can you let me get it?”

The car starts, then stops. The man says impatiently, “How come you got so much shit going on? Your suitcase is mine now, fuck off.”

Tang Mo: “It’s getting colder and colder now. I just want some clothes, da-ge[2], otherwise I’ll freeze in this weather. Just one coat.”

The person curses but opens the car door, putting the knife against Tang Mo’s waist again. “Then hurry the fuck up and get your clothes,” he says coldly. “I’ll kill you if you fuck around any more.”

Finally, Tang Mo turns and sees this person clearly.

It’s a shifty-eyed man with oily and messy hair. The clothes he’s wearing are also patchy and dirty, with dust and oil all over it. When he realizes that Tang Mo is looking at him, the man suddenly becomes frightened[3], as if he hates other people looking at him. He swallows uneasily and curses. “The fuck you looking at, get your clothes already,” he says, shoving the knife forward.

Tang Mo nods.

This person seems to be a thief.

Tang Mo walks to the back of the car and pops the trunk.

“What’s this? A match?” the man asks.

Tang Mo bends over to get his suitcase. At the same time he presses his hand down hard on the lock of the trunk. The sharp metal slices over the tenderest part of his palm, leaving only a faint mark. Tang Mo’s gaze hardens, and he grabs the match with his left hand, swinging it backwards like a baseball bat.

“What’s the match… you—ahhh!!”

The huge match hits the man’s head with a thud. Immediately, blood bursts forth.

Tang Mo didn’t know that the match would be this powerful. It’s not very heavy when he balances it on his hand. It feels like a normal wooden match, but judging from the sound just now, it seemed painful, like a metal rod smashing into the man’s head.

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A normal person would be dead by now, but the man only staggers backwards a few steps. He raises his bloody face and glares at Tang Mo. “I’ll fucking kill you!” he roars, raising the knife and rushing forward.

Tang Mo’s chest tightens. He dodges to the right and raises his left leg, kicking the man in the stomach. The man lets out a howl of pain, slicing at Tang Mo’s calf. His pant leg rips immediately, but the sharp blade only leaves behind a very shallow cut on his skin, as if it was scratched by a fingernail. It also sounds like nails on a chalkboard, as if the knife was trying to cut through a tile floor.

The man holds his stomach and yells, rushing at him again.

Tang Mo reacts extremely quickly, meeting him halfway with his match.

The sharp blade and the wooden match collide, and with a crack...

The knife breaks into two pieces.

Tang Mo: “...”

The man: “...”

Tang Mo himself never would have thought that the match would be so powerful, but he quickly regains his senses, whirling the match around to hit the man. Because he’d charged right at him, the man is very close to Tang Mo and cannot avoid the blow, but right when the match is about to smash into his head, countless red[4] bills fall out of the air.

Tang Mo has never seen so many hundred-yuan bills before. They’re like little mountains, countless pieces of paper dropping out of the air to form a wall between the match and the man, helping the man absorb the shock so that he only falls from the impact.

“Don’t kill me, don’t kill me…” the man begs with a trembling voice.

Tang Mo stops his attack. He holds the match and crouches down to touch the money.

“Where did you get so much money? Where did they come from?”

These are real, legitimate hundred-yuan bills!

The man looks fearfully at the huge match and explains, “I’m a thief. Everyone disappeared from the streets today, so I went and stole a lot of things. In the afternoon, I went to the bank, and… and I took all the money I could.”

That’s not what Tang Mo wants to know. “Where did you hide all this money?”

The man raises his right hand, showing him a light green tattoo on his wrist. “In here. I… I noticed when I was taking the money that I could put it in this tattoo. I’ve had this tattoo for a long time, and it can only store money. When you were about to kill me, I unconsciously took out the money…”

Tang Mo nods and lowers his head to look at the tattoo on the man’s wrist.

In an instant, a six-inch-long knife appears out of thin air and jabs at his eyes.

“Go fucking die!”

The match whirls quickly in the air. Tang Mo breaks the knife without blinking an eye, and the red match head draws an arc in the air as it smashes into the man’s head. With a crack, as if something shattered, the man opens his eyes wide, looking at Tang Mo and his match in disbelief. His heavy body tilts to the side and crashes onto the ground with a thump.

Tang Mo’s expression changes, and he puts his hand under the man’s nose.

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“...dead.”

Tang Mo looks conflictingly at this dead man. After a while, he averts his gaze and picks up the man’s right hand, examining the tattoo on his wrist.

The night is too dark and he was too far away before, so Tang Mo didn’t notice that his tattoo is a “￥”[5] symbol. He picks up the man’s left hand and finds that there’s a tattoo on this wrist too, except in the form of a knife.

Tang Mo looks at it for a while. Suddenly, the tattoo vanishes, and two more knives appear on the ground. His heart leaps, and when he looks at the man’s right hand, he sees that the “￥” tattoo has disappeared too, and there’s another mountain of hundred-yuan bills on the ground.

Tang Mo gets into the car and takes out his book.

When he flips to the second page, he finds, as expected, that lines of text have appeared.

[Ability: I’m Worse Than The Protagonist By Just A Single Acre of Spiritual Farmland][6]
[Owner: Qian Sankun (Stowaway)]
[Type: Special]
[Function: Can seal objects within body with physical touch; objects will appear as tattoos]
[Level: 2; can store two non-living objects]
[Restrictions: Can only store objects of the same type, and cannot store living objects]
[Notes: Qian Sankun never would have thought that he was worse than the protagonist by not an acre of farmland, but a single match!]

These are all written in black, but at the bottom, there’s a line written in red.

[Tang Mo’s Version: Single-use, can only store one type of object and cannot be changed. Friend, have you thought about what you want to store?]

“Stowaway?”

Tang Mo stares at the word on the page for a long time. He cannot come to any conclusion, so he can only give up for the time being.

The book only knows how to insult him, but it’s his ability, after all, so Tang Mo quickly understands this man’s ability and how to use it for himself.

Qian Sankun was a thief, but he also had an ability. His ability can store non-living objects on his own body for easy access. As long as it’s the same object, he can store infinite items. Tang Mo doesn’t know what Ability Level means, but if abilities can be upgraded, then Qian Sankun can only store two objects right now.

He chose money and knives.

He really was a narrow-minded man. In this kind of situation, money is just useless paper, but Qian Sankun still couldn’t let go of it.

Qian Sankun was pretty clever. He knew to deceive Tang Mo and tell him that he could store money because he already had a tattoo. He didn’t expose his ability and got a second chance to attack Tang Mo with his knife tattoo, but thankfully, Tang Mo never let down his guard, otherwise he might have really been defeated.

What a pity. If Qian Sankun’s second object wasn’t money but some other weapon, then maybe he would have had a chance to live.

Tang Mo glances at San Qiankun’s cold body, then at the knives and cash all over the ground. Unhesitatingly, he picks up his giant match and presses it to his wrist. After a beam of red light, the match disappears, and a small red match tattoo appears on Tang Mo’s left wrist.

The giant match is more powerful than Tang Mo had thought. In storing it, he can use it as a secret weapon and catch enemies off-guard. Then, if he ever runs into anyone else like Qian Sankun, he’ll be a little less threatened.

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Tang Mo looks down at the book.

Qian Sankun’s ability name has changed—--

[Ability: I’m worse than the protagonist by a single acre of farmland (used)]

He flips to the first page. The first page is about his own ability, and it doesn’t seem to be any different from before, but Tang Mo doesn’t give up. He stares expressionlessly at this book. After about five minutes, lines of text begin to appear.

[Notes: Clearly, Tang Mo already knows. When he killed that person, he took and took from that other person without giving money.]

Tang Mo’s pupils contract. He holds the book tightly, trembling.

“Is it really killing people…”

A minute later, another line of text appears.

[Notes: But why would I ever tell Tang Mo that he can get other people’s abilities without killing them as well?]

Tang Mo: “...”

Bang!

A book is thrown into a mountain of cash.

Three minutes later, Tang Mo coldly picks the book back up. He casually puts a handful of bills on Qian Sankun’s face, burying him in his most beloved cash, and then drives away, continuing his journey to Shanghai.

Notes

[1]

The man actually says something more along the lines of 'hurry it up or I, your old man, will kill you'. The phrase 老子 (laozi) is oftentimes used as a term for 'dad' or 'father'. Referring to yourself as 'laozi' (ex. Laozi will kill you! --> I will kill you) means that you think you're better than everyone else. It can be used either jokingly (usually between friends) or in a genuinely arrogant manner. Yes, the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-Tze, or Laozi, uses the same characters. It's a totally different context, though.

[2]

Da-ge = 大哥 = older brother. While it's true that ge already means 'older brother', the single character is used mostly in familiar settings. Adding da adds a layer of respect and distance (which is why if you read webnovels with gang/mafia/clique settings, the leader will often be referred to as da-ge). Outside of gang settings, just in normal life, it recognizes that you know the person you're talking to is older than you but that you're not familiar with them. For example, you might call an older man da-ge if you're asking a random stranger for directions. Sponsored Content A notable exception to this, though, is if you have multiple older brothers. Then, to differentiate between brothers, you would call your oldest brother da-ge (big older brother), your next oldest brother er-ge (second older brother), and so on. The same goes for older sisters as well; even if your oldest sister is younger than your oldest brother, you would still have to call her da-jie (oldest sister). As a side note, younger siblings do not necessarily follow this rule. Sibling order begins from the oldest and consecutively counts down, regardless of which sibling you are. You could be the fifth child (wu-di/mei, fifth younger brother/sister) and still call your next youngest sibling liu-di/mei (sixth younger brother/sister). However, when referring to your older siblings, you would still have to abide by the 'older sibling rules' as detailed above. The youngest child will often be called xiao-di/mei, regardless of which number they are. *Note: Family relationships are quite complicated in China, and it has a lot to do with the region you grew up in and the ways they do it there. That being said, most of this should be correct, but I also should say that I based this long-winded explanation off of my mother's family, who is from a very specific part of a very specific province. If other families in other regions do things slightly differently, they are most definitely correct as well since these things are so specific to geography.

[3]	Original text: 'the man suddenly becomes like an animal that's been frightened'.

[4]	Hundred-yuan bills are technically pink, but people refer to them as either pink or red. I've seen both, and it doesn't really matter. There's no ambiguity since the other bills are all very different colors (green, yellow, blue, etc).

[5]	This is the symbol for yuan, which is the official currency of China.

[6]

I debated over this for a long time but have decided to translate 灵田 (lingtian) to 'spiritual farmland'. The novel itself gives zero context, but from what I can gather, a lingtian is a plot of land that game or fantasy-novel characters can plant stuff in, and the stuff that grows will have magical properties that can boost your stats and fighting abilities and stuff. As for why this is Qian Sankun's ability name, I can only guess that he's a bit weak and lacks in other ways, which is why he has to steal and store items on his own body. Or, of course, it could be the author making a joke, being like 'oh haha if QSK had had a lingtian and been a bit stronger, maybe he would have been the protagonist'. Tl;dr: This was a confusing term to translate and I'm not sure I fully understand it either :( if anyone has any information or context, I'd be interested to hear it!

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