From Night Watchman to Saint

In the final years of the Great Yong, martial strength reigns supreme, and human lives have a price.

Kill a night watchman, and the compensation is five taels of silver.

Seventeen-year-old night watchman Jiang Han owns little more than an old copper gong, half a leaky room, and a mother who coughs blood at night. All he wants is to save thirty taels and take her away from this county town, which grows more dangerous by the day.

Then, at the second watch one night, he crouches behind a ruined drum in an alley, clutching his gong and not daring to strike it once. He watches a masked man slash someone seven times, then search the corpse for half a page of a boxing manual.

After finishing his watch that night, Jiang Han goes to sleep and awakens the ability to replay his dreams. Anything he has witnessed with his own eyes while awake can be replayed in his dreams. Strike the gong once in a dream, and it starts all over. Even death doesn't count.

Die three times in a dream, and when he wakes, he has learned the young man's three boxing moves.

Take a few punches in a dream, and when he wakes, he can see the shoulder dip that comes just before a thug throws a punch.

But he can learn the skills in his dreams, not gain the strength. That still takes meat and medicine, one mouthful and one dose at a time.

So he keeps working as a night watchman, keeps pretending to be deaf and dumb, and keeps his head down as he says the same thing: I'm just a night watchman.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.