Jiang felt distinctly uncomfortable listening to this, and her brows drew together.
That was nothing compared to how the person at the center of those words must have felt.
How did Huo Shu react after hearing all that? He didn’t react at all. He didn’t even lift an eyelid, as if he were asleep.
As the footsteps drew closer, Jiang saw Second Young Master Huo, Huo Ye, at the head of the group.
What kind of person was Huo Ye? Compared with Eldest Young Master Huo Jing, who was often sent away on business trips, Huo Ye seemed more like the eldest son. He had the arrogance and conceit of someone born to rule, and the only person he respected was Huo Yuan. He was Huo Yuan’s most obedient dog.
Yes—a dog.
The little affection Huo Yuan had left was reserved for his youngest daughter, Huo Jing.
In his eyes, his other children were pawns for forging marriage alliances and expanding his influence—dogs who only needed to obey.
During the early part of Huo Shu’s life, most of the abuse he suffered in the Huo family came from Huo Ye.
In front of his father, Huo Yuan, Huo Ye barely dared to breathe. He was constantly on edge, afraid of making a mistake, and had lived under suffocating pressure for as long as he could remember.
Then Huo Shu, an illegitimate son who had suddenly appeared, became the outlet for all his pent-up feelings.
That was why Huo Ye’s fate was so tragic. Huo Shu didn’t kill him; he sent him to a prison in the mines, where he had to dig and haul bricks every day and endure the torment of his fellow prisoners.
For someone like Huo Ye, a pampered favorite of fortune, it was a punishment as good as death.
…
Back in the present.
Several of Huo Ye’s followers pinned Huo Shu firmly into the flower bed. The mud stained his neatly pressed suit and wrenched it into creases. In the dim light, the boy’s face was barely visible.
“What makes you think you can compete with me for her?” Huo Ye raised his foot and kicked him hard with his expensive leather shoe.
The hard sole sent a dull ache through Huo Shu’s body, but he didn’t make a sound.
Jiang watched without moving.
The butler’s handbook explicitly forbade getting involved in disputes between the heirs.
Even if her own heir was hurt.
If she tried to stop them, she would be breaking character[1]In system-based transmigration fiction, a host may be required to follow the personality and duties of an assigned role. Acting outside that role can trigger penalties. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3733396_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3733396_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });.
This was her first world. If she failed because she’d broken character, all she’d have done was lose out.
Huo Ye knew the rules for butlers well. He glanced at the female butler standing not far away, the corner of his mouth curling in mockery.
Even if she tried to help, Huo Shu wouldn’t escape today.
“You think you got that slut from the Chu family to fall for you because of that face?” Huo Ye shifted his shoe and planted it on Huo Shu’s face instead. He took the small knife one of his followers handed him. Its sharp blade caught the moonlight with a cold gleam.
His face barely changed. “Tell me—if you lost that face, would that slut from the Chu family still like you?”
At his words, the followers exchanged glances, then quickly broke into matching, vicious grins.
At last, Huo Shu opened his eyes. His dark gaze held none of the fear or panic they expected; it was still as a dead pool.
He looked at them as if they were a bunch of clowns. His eyes finally settled on Huo Ye, and a faint emotion flickered in them, as though he could see through the bright, elegant, aristocratic exterior to the scheming, low, filthy maggot underneath.
“What’s that look for?” Enraged by Huo Shu’s gaze, Huo Ye pressed down harder with his shoe. Huo Shu sank deeper into the flower bed, the soil burying his eyes, then his nostrils.
Just then, someone suddenly appeared, yanked Huo Ye off the boy, and immediately hauled Huo Shu up from the ground.
The moment the injured boy stood, he began to gasp violently. The oxygen flooding into his lungs was like sweet rain falling on barren land, bringing a little color back to his nearly ashen face.
As his senses returned, he turned to the side. In his line of sight was an extremely ordinary profile, with pale-colored phoenix eyes set in the face, shining with determination and warmth.
Jiang’s expression remained calm, but inside she was panicking like a dog.
Hey, hey, hey! How did I end up rushing over here?!
I’m done for. I’m going to be punished when I get back.
Sure enough.
Huo Ye, whom she had yanked away, fell to the ground. He looked up, recognized who it was, and his expression darkened. He was about to speak when a stern, commanding voice came from behind him.
“Huo Ye!”
Huo Ye’s body gave an involuntary shudder. He stared back over his shoulder and saw a dense crowd of people.
Among them stood the person who had called his name: his father, Huo Yuan.
They had no idea how long the crowd had been standing there. They were murmuring among themselves, watching Huo Ye with strange looks.
They had seen everything that had just happened.
They had seen Second Young Master Huo, usually so arrogant and haughty, kicking and beating his own younger brother like some street thug.
…
The birthday banquet ended early because of what Second Young Master Huo had done.
Back at the Huo family manor,
Jiang’s punishment was to kneel on an iron board wrapped in thorns. She had to stay there for ten hours before she could leave.
The board lay along a route the butlers used constantly. They looked at her with glee, mockery, or indifference as they passed.
The sharp wires had already pierced deep into her flesh. The thorns had been coated with a blood-stopping medicine, so no matter how long she knelt, she wouldn’t pass out from blood loss.
Instead, every slight movement drove the thorns deeper and made the pain worse.
“Ugh.”
Pain brought cold sweat to Jiang’s forehead. Her vision blurred, and wavering patches of red swam before her eyes, but her brows never furrowed.
Why had she rushed over?
That resting spot hadn’t been somewhere Huo Shu had picked at random. He’d known all along that Huo Yuan and the senior members of the other families would be drinking tea there, which was why he’d gone to rest there.
He’d also deliberately led Chu Muci there.
As soon as Huo Shu appeared at the birthday banquet, he had crossed Huo Ye’s line.
Huo Ye wouldn’t accept an illegitimate son standing as his equal, much less allow him to lay a finger on anything that belonged to him—even if Chu Muci was only one of the candidates on Huo Ye’s marriage-alliance list.
So when Huo Ye learned that Chu Muci had met Huo Shu alone, he went after him at once.
Huo Shu had thought the place was secluded, but he hadn’t expected there to be so many people watching.
Huo Ye was in no better position now. He had humiliated Huo Yuan in front of all the great families. His punishment would probably be even worse than hers.
Huo Shu’s move had been crude, not particularly clever, but it had worked well enough.
If Huo Ye had had even a little sense and hadn’t gone after him at that moment, he wouldn’t have fallen into the trap.
…
If Jiang had just held back for one second, she wouldn’t be kneeling here now.
She wasn’t afraid of pain; she was used to it.
She sighed because she’d broken character.
The System’s punishment wasn’t severe, but for Jiang, a miser, it was still a heavy blow.
Ten points deducted.
Points were useless in the planes, but in the retirement world they were worth money.
System 2933 had told her that once she had completed all her missions, she could retire in her original body. The savings she had when she retired would come from the points she earned through her ratings in each world.
One point could be exchanged for a hundred yuan[2]The yuan is the main unit of Chinese currency. Here it is also the unit used to value the fictional system’s reward points. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3733396_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3733396_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. Ten points meant a thousand.
“2933, can’t you take off a little less?” Kneeling there didn’t hurt, but the System’s deduction made her heart ache so badly she could hardly breathe.
【Beep. You’re in the queue. Your position is 19—】
References[+]