“The sun is already high in the sky, and some people are still not getting out of bed! Such a lazy little parasite!”
Liu Yu was woken up by a sharp, scolding voice from outside the window. With a splitting headache, he muttered irritably: Who is so lacking in manners, shouting curses on the street early in the morning? Don’t they let people sleep?
Massaging his temples, Liu Yu forced his eyes open. The moment he opened them, he was so startled by the scene before him that his heart almost stopped.
“What the hell!” Liu Yu kicked his legs out and sat up abruptly.
The roof was constructed from a messy heap of withered grass and broken tiles, unable to block out either the rain or the light. Sunlight streamed straight through a gap directly onto Liu Yu’s face, forcing him to squint against the glare as he surveyed his surroundings with growing terror.
The rickety wooden door was held together by nothing more than a single thick log, and a small square table missing half a leg was barely propped up by a few broken kiln bricks picked up from goodness knows where.
Liu Yu was completely stunned.
After a long moment, he pinched a piece of flesh on his thigh hard.
Both the visual scene and the physical sensation were far too real; this couldn’t possibly be a dream. So, had he actually time-traveled?
Looking at the dilapidated furnishings inside the room, Liu Yu was speechless for a long time, unable to do anything except forcefully hammer at his still-throbbing head.
Outside, the sharp and mean-spirited scolding continued unceasingly, as if tireless.
Liu Yu had no choice but to rapidly process a stream of memories that clearly did not belong to him. He was forced to accept the fact that he had completely and utterly died in his original world, and then, by some twist of fate, his soul had transmigrated into another world.
The environmental background of this world was roughly equivalent to the 1960s and 1970s of his lifetime, though the history was somewhat different.
The original owner was named Liu Heqing, a native-born resident of Liu Family Village. His father, Liu Xiaoquan, was the youngest son of the old farmer Liu Weibao, and his mother, Zhou Fengxia, was the second daughter of Zhou the carpenter in Qinghe Town.
Zhou the carpenter’s wife had given birth to three sons and one daughter in total, and passed away from dystocia while giving birth to the youngest son. Fortunately, relying on a widely praised trade, Zhou the carpenter had managed to raise his children to adulthood.
Liu Xiaoquan had been the only child in the family who managed to escape the fate of scratching a living out of the dirt. At the age of nine, when he went into town with his family to buy cloth, a veteran tailor took a liking to him because he looked sharp and clever, and took him on as an apprentice. Later, introduced by the shop manager, he met and married the original owner’s mother, and a year and a half later, Liu Heqing was born.
Both of the original owner’s parents were capable people. After marriage, they were filial to their elders, supported their brothers and sisters, and even used their savings to buy a small courtyard in town. Originally, their life was supposed to be peaceful and happy.
However, Heaven is unpredictable; in the year the original owner was over seven years old, a massive flood struck Qinghe Town, taking countless lives in the town, including those of his father and his second uncle.
Ever since then, the original owner’s mother was left alone to raise the child, surviving solely on her own salary and the meager relief from her natal family.
Misfortune always targets the vulnerable, and disaster relentlessly seeks out the suffering. When the original owner was twelve years old, his mother contracted pulmonary tuberculosis. No matter how much medicine she took, she failed to get better, and she was simply worn away like that for over half a year until she died.
After both parents were gone, the helpless and orphaned original owner had his eldest uncle sell the small courtyard in town, and bringing along his last remaining family property, he went to seek help from his paternal grandparents.
There was no need to guess what happened next; since Liu Yu had the opportunity to transmigrate into this body, the attitude of the Liu family toward him was clearly far from favorable.
Perhaps because he inherited the original owner’s memories and experiences, and felt a deep sense of shared empathy, grief welled up in Liu Yu’s heart, and his eyes began to sting.
Perhaps it was for the best that the original owner was gone. Watching loved ones leave one by one while being powerless to stop it, finding that the anticipated affection of grandparents was ultimately just a mirage, and living day after day without support or shelter while being bullied by everyone, this was simply not something a youngster of around ten years old could bear, Liu Yu thought.
Starting right off the bat in hell mode, it looked like the road ahead would not be easy.
Fortunately, Liu Yu was not the original owner; he was not a genuine child, and his capacity to accept such things was very strong.
After all, his own luck in his previous life hadn’t been any better. He had been plagued by bad luck since childhood; the moment he received his university admission letter, his absentee parents promptly announced their divorce and quickly started new families.
After graduating from university, he overcame numerous obstacles to land a so-called iron rice bowl. Just when he thought his life was about to undergo a complete transformation and sail smoothly from then on, fate threw a basin of cold water right in his face.
Liu Yu’s e-bike malfunctioned and plunged into a river, where he drowned.
He died quite unglamorously.
Liu Yu could even imagine that his method of death would be used as dinner conversation fodder by others for quite a long time to come.
“Sigh, one step at a time!” Liu Yu let out a long sigh, then picked up the clothes on the bed and put them on.
Since the original owner had already passed away, and he had accidentally taken over the other person’s body and gained a second chance at life, he ought to live it well; there was no reason to complain further.
Outside, the cursing was growing increasingly nasty, beginning to fabricate rumors that the original owner stayed up all night and couldn’t get up in the morning because he was out doing thieving, dog-stealing work. No matter how deeply uncomfortable Liu Yu felt, he had no choice but to get up first.
Following his memory to find the outhouse to relieve himself, Liu Yu felt every pore on his body relax.
The person who had been cursing him while plucking vegetables in the courtyard just now was his cheap aunt, Li Cuihong.
Probably believing that the eldest branch should naturally inherit the family estate, she felt intense resentment because the original owner consumed the eldest branch’s food and used their daily necessities, and thus she held a grudge against him.
Washing dishes in the kitchen was Liu Mei, the eldest daughter of his second uncle’s family. Everyone else was out, presumably having gone to work in the fields by this hour.
After finishing a quick wash, Liu Yu bypassed his aunt’s line of sight and hurried into the kitchen.
“Why are you only just getting up now? A moment later and Auntie might have run into your room to pull your ears,” Liu Mei said, turning her back to the window as she stealthily scooped a bowl of taro porridge out of the stove and handed it to him.
The porridge was still slightly warm. Liu Yu was starving and dizzy with hunger, so he couldn’t care about the flecks of plant ash floating on top and immediately began to drink.
The taro porridge left a hint of pure sweetness in his mouth, silencing the protests of Liu Yu’s stomach.
He pursed his lips and offered a genuine, heartfelt smile of gratitude to the eldest female cousin who was willing to secretly hide food for him.
After eating, Liu Yu carried a basket full of soybeans and went to the fields with his eldest cousin to plant soybeans. His eldest cousin dug the holes in front, while Liu Yu followed behind dropping the beans.
After burying several rows of beans and watering them, it was already noon, and both of them were so sore they couldn’t straighten their backs.
Liu Yu supported his aching waist and sighed. At not even fourteen years old, combined with days of inadequate food, his body was ultimately too thin and weak. If things kept going like this, his health would collapse sooner or later.
Returning home under the blazing sun, his second aunt was already bustling about preparing dinner in the kitchen. Wiping an oily cloth across the surface of the wok, she dumped in a basin of white radishes, stir-fried them three or four times, scooped in a ladle of cold water and a spoonful of coarse salt, and clapped the lid on the wok to finish. It saved trouble alright, but the taste was entirely unmentionable.
However, food was too precious nowadays, and every household struggled just to have enough to eat. Even though Liu Yu had been skilled in cooking in his previous life and held extremely high standards for food, he didn’t dare be picky now, praying only to be more than half-full and completely satisfied.
At the dinner table, Liu Gui, the youngest son of the eldest uncle’s family, beat his bowl with his chopsticks while shouting that he was starving to death. Without waiting for his grandparents to make a move, Auntie hastily and eagerly scooped several full ladles of white radishes specifically for her little ancestor, causing the contents of the basin to shrink by nearly half instantly.
As for Liu Ping and Liu Lan, the two sisters sitting right next to Liu Gui, they acted as if they were nonexistent, transparent people, unable to catch even half a glance from their parents.
In the countryside during this era, female children were looked down upon; many baby girls were sent away to fend for themselves the moment they were born. Being unable to give birth to a boy meant losing face in the village. Even though Auntie had been renowned for her fiery temper before marriage, after consecutively giving birth to two girls, she stopped acting so fierce.
It wasn’t until eight years ago, when she gave birth to Liu Gui, that she finally straightened her waist and lifted her head high when walking in the village, no longer needing to look at her parents-in-law’s faces.
“You treat your child like gold, keeping all the good things for him to eat while leaving nothing for anyone else?” Zhou Hongxia, the second aunt, slammed her bowl and chopsticks heavily onto the table and stared unhappily at Liu Gui’s rice bowl.
Seeing this, Li Cuihong also put down her chopsticks and sneered, “Some people are truly laughable; they don’t have hands of their own yet they blame those who do.”
“Alright! Can you people have some peace during a meal? If you love quarreling so much, get inside a room and quarrel!”
Liu Yu glanced up at the grandparents sitting at the head of the table, who were currently spooning food into their bowls with dark expressions. Though they showed displeasure toward the eldest family’s actions, they ultimately said nothing, choosing instead to mildly scold both sides equally. It seemed their extreme favoritism toward this youngest grandson was real.
Sitting on the left side was the second uncle’s family of five. Liu Limin, Liu Mei, and Liu Ju, the three siblings, were silently keeping their heads down and shoveling food into their mouths.
They were already long accustomed to the selfish and protective food-hoarding behavior of the eldest branch. Since the grandparents hadn’t spoken up to stop it, it wasn’t their second branch’s place to have an opinion.
In the time it took to eat a meal, Liu Yu had unraveled the family dynamics: the first and second branches secretly did not get along, and the grandparents’ favoritism toward the first branch was now an undeniable ironclad fact. As for the third branch, only the original owner remained as its sole surviving seedling.
The original owner might be gone, but he certainly remembered that when the person had first come seeking refuge, he had handed over a very generous living allowance to the grandparents.
Yet these two elders lacked basic decency; despite accepting the money, they still turned a blind eye to this pitiful, destitute grandson, acting as though giving the original owner food and shelter was something he should be deeply grateful for.
It looked like in this household, not only did the eldest uncle’s family have issues with him, but these halfway-acquired cheap grandparents were also exceptionally difficult people to deal with.
Liu Yu quickly scooped a bowl of rice soup, downed it in big gulps, wiped his mouth, and calmly returned to his room under the venomous glare of his aunt.
This room was simply too dilapidated. When Liu Yu shook out the tattered quilt on the bed, a wave of long-term damp, rotting stench choked him so hard he could barely breathe.
It was completely impossible to sleep under; he would have to wait until tomorrow under the blazing sun to take the bedding outside and hang it on a pole to air and dry.
Sitting on the bed, the more Liu Yu thought about it, the more aggrieved he felt for the original owner. When he first moved in, the original owner hadn’t just brought over 370 yuan in cash; apart from the furniture, everything else he could bring, including quilts, clothes, shoes, and thermoses, had been brought along in full.
And now? All his clothes and shoes were locked away at the bottom of his grandparents’ chests, and his quilt had been taken away to be used by their precious little grandson Liu Gui. Being banished to live in a run-down shack was one thing, but instead, they even publicized him as a freeloader living off them.
The original owner had been timid and weak, letting this family of oddballs bully him, but Liu Yu wasn’t going to pamper them.
As someone with nothing to lose, would he be afraid of people wearing shoes? If they dared bully him, Liu Yu naturally had ways to make them lose face throughout the entire village.
And as for this rotten quilt, whoever wanted to sleep with it could; he wouldn’t spend a single extra day sleeping under it.
Since he already bore the reputation of a freeloader, tomorrow he would simply demand all his belongings back.