After gaining his freedom, James Walker wanted to find another job, but it seemed as if fate was playing a joke on him—he couldn’t find work for months. Eventually, he was running out of money, and the bank’s mortgage payments felt like a death sentence. In the end, with nowhere else to turn, James Walker was introduced by a friend he’d met in the detention center to some gray-area jobs. Relying on the martial arts skills he’d practiced since childhood and his agility, he started doing things like guarding venues, debt collection, and smuggling shipments. Although these jobs weren’t exactly respectable, the money came in fast—faster even than when he had a regular job.

It was under these circumstances that James Walker transformed from an IT worker into a member of the gray zone, doing work that skirted the line between legal and illegal. In fact, James Walker’s thinking was simple: he wanted to pay off his house first, then save up some money, and after that, he’d quit these jobs, find a proper one if possible, or start a small business if not. Then he’d find a girlfriend, get married, and have children. That was James Walker—the most ordinary of dreams for an ordinary person.

Unfortunately, during one smuggling job, a disagreement broke out between the buyer and seller, and a gunfight erupted on the spot. In the chaos, James Walker fought bravely, taking down seven or eight of the other side’s thugs in a row, but in the end, someone kicked him into the water. Not knowing how to swim, he drowned in the sea. When he woke up, he found himself in the Zhengde era of the Ming Dynasty, and his identity had changed to that of a wealthy young master known as a prodigy. Sadly, he had the body of a young master but the fate of a servant, and within just a few days, he became a bankrupt young lord.

It was precisely because of his experiences in his previous life that, although this life’s Charles Bennett didn’t have the original Charles Bennett’s talents, he was extremely methodical in handling the debts owed by The Bennett Estate. After all, in his previous life, he’d spent his whole life paying off debts to the bank—though he never managed to pay them off before he died, it did train him to have a calm mindset. Now, although the creditors coming to the door were fierce, compared to the relentless banks of his previous life, they were a piece of cake.

First, Charles Bennett took care of his cheap old man’s funeral, then tallied up the debts owed and the assets of The Bennett Estate. To his dismay, he found that the amount owed was just a bit more than the assets of The Bennett Estate. In other words, after paying off the debts, not only would The Bennett Estate have nothing left, but they’d still owe some outside debts.

Although this discovery left Charles Bennett rather depressed, life had to go on. So he pulled himself together and began selling off The Bennett Estate’s properties—mortgaging what could be mortgaged, selling what could be sold. He even started selling off items from the mansion itself, like the ornamental rocks just moved from the garden, which were worth several hundred taels of silver. The gold and silver jewelry of the women in the household were also being sold, a task handled by Charles Bennett’s younger sister’s mother, Mrs. Taylor, who had probably finished collecting everything by now.

Thinking of this, Charles Bennett turned and walked toward the inner quarters. His cheap old man had four concubines. Among them, besides Mrs. Walker, who gave birth to his elder sister Grace, and Mrs. Taylor, who gave birth to his younger sister Lily, there were also two young Mrs. Howard, a pair of sisters only twenty years old, who had not yet had children.

Speaking of which, Mrs. Walker was the first to enter the household, so she should have been in charge. But Mrs. Walker came from a humble background and was honest and dull, really not suited to managing the household. Instead, Mrs. Taylor, who had been a courtesan and was clever and capable, had managed the inner quarters of The Bennett Estate ever since she arrived.

The The Bennett Family had once been the top wealthy family in Songjiang Prefecture, with a grand mansion. The inner and outer quarters were separated, and the estate was huge—by Charles Bennett’s estimate, at least a dozen mu. Both the front and back courtyards had sizable gardens, and the interior and exterior decorations were all extremely luxurious, even extravagant in some places. Unfortunately, now this once-luxurious The Bennett Estate had fallen into ruin.

All the antiques and vases used as decorations in the living room and inner quarters had been taken to pay off debts. The tables and chairs had all been sold, and even the marble guardian beast horns on the roof had been pried off and sold by Charles Bennett. You could say that, apart from the courtyard itself and the people, everything else in The Bennett Estate had been sold off for silver to pay the debts.

But even after selling off everything, the remaining debts still couldn’t be paid off. Although the remaining debts weren’t much, given The Bennett Estate’s current situation, it was uncertain whether they could be repaid. In addition, all of The Bennett Estate’s shops were gone, and the farmland had been sold off. In other words, The Bennett Estate now had no source of income.

What was even worse was that, in his previous life, Charles Bennett had been a bachelor, only needing to feed himself. But now, he had four concubines above and two younger sisters below to support—a total of six mouths to feed, which was much harder than just supporting himself.

With all these troubles piling up, anyone would feel deeply distressed. But apart from being a bit disappointed that he hadn’t enjoyed the life of a young master for long, Charles Bennett remained optimistic. For someone who had been reincarnated, all of this belonged to the original Charles Bennett. His own life had already been forfeit, but now he’d taken over someone else’s body and lived again—it was as if heaven had given him a second chance. So if heaven now took away some of what belonged to the original Charles Bennett, it was only natural.