“Beat this filthy thief to death!”
With a furious roar, a rough palm struck Lu Yuan hard across the face.
Immediately afterward, a stick came crashing down onto his thin back.
Lu Yuan felt as though his internal organs had been knocked out of place.
Just one second ago, he had been in the National Materials Science Laboratory. A newly hired assistant had violated safety procedures, causing a short circuit in the reaction vessel.
The blinding light from the explosion instantly swallowed him whole.
Now, after recovering from the excruciating pain of his body being torn apart, the cold snow and brutal beating dragged him back to reality.
“Hiss—”
He sucked in a sharp breath, his throat filled with the thick taste of blood.
Unfamiliar memories forcibly flooded into his mind like a surging tide.
Great Jing Dynasty, Yuanhe Town, Lu Family Village.
The original owner was also named Lu Yuan. Before the age of fifteen, he had been a brilliant and promising young scholar. After fifteen, however, he had become a sickly scholar who was treated worse than a dog.
He had lost his mother at the age of three. His biological mother had left behind a generous dowry, and her only dying wish had been for her son to receive an education.
For the sake of his son’s dream of achieving success, his scumbag father, Lu Dagui, had indeed continued supporting his studies.
But everything changed after his stepmother, Madam Zhao, entered the family and gave birth to his younger brother, Lu Qiang.
Lu Yuan was exceptionally intelligent and consistently ranked first at the village school.
Lu Qiang, on the other hand, had been spoiled rotten since childhood. He never studied seriously and spent his days doing petty theft and other mischief with the village children.
Seeing that her stepson was about to surpass her own son, Madam Zhao became consumed with jealousy.
She bribed the scholar who taught at the village school and deliberately slandered Lu Yuan, claiming that he had poor morals and was unfit to study. She successfully cut off his path to education after he turned fifteen.
From then on, Lu Yuan became the family’s unpaid laborer.
Meanwhile, his useless younger brother continued studying at the village school.
Not only did Lu Yuan have to do the hardest farm work, but he also had to endure his stepmother’s constant abuse.
A few days ago, heavy snow had fallen continuously. His stepmother insisted that he go into the mountains to chop firewood. His already frail body finally collapsed, and he came down with a severe cold.
His fever would not go down, and he lay in the drafty woodshed, waiting to die.
But half an hour ago, Madam Zhao suddenly screamed that two taels of silver were missing from the household.
Without investigating anything, she immediately accused the bedridden Lu Yuan of stealing it!
“Husband! You must beat this ungrateful wretch to death today!”
At the entrance of the woodshed, a sharp-featured woman with high cheekbones and a spiteful expression was pointing at Lu Yuan’s nose and cursing furiously.
It was his stepmother, Madam Zhao.
Spittle flew from her mouth as she shouted, “I’ve kindly raised him all these years, and this is how he repays me? He actually stole money from his own family!”
“That money was supposed to pay for Qiang’s expenses when he goes to the county next year to take the examination for child scholar!”
The moment Lu Dagui heard that his younger son’s future was involved, his eyes turned bloodshot.
“You disgraceful bastard! Today, I’ll pretend I never had a son like you!”
The thick wooden stick was raised high once again and came crashing toward the back of Lu Yuan’s head with a sharp whoosh.
Lu Yuan instinctively tried to dodge.
But this body was simply too weak. He could not even lift a finger.
Just as he thought he had transmigrated only to die here all over again—
“Don’t hit my husband!”
A desperate, heart-wrenching scream tore through the freezing snowy night.
A frail figure, so thin that she looked as though a gust of wind could blow her away, suddenly rushed through the snow.
She threw herself over Lu Yuan, desperately shielding him with her body and leaving her thin back exposed to the thick wooden stick.
“Bang!”
The stick landed solidly on the woman’s back.
The woman let out a muffled groan, her frail body trembling violently, yet she clenched her teeth and did not move away even an inch.
Lu Yuan struggled to open his eyes.
What came into view was a pale, gaunt little face covered in tear stains.
It was the original owner’s wife, Lin Qingyue.
Because her family was poor and she had not required a bride price, Madam Zhao had considered the marriage a bargain and casually arranged for the original owner to marry her.
In this household, Lin Qingyue’s life was worse than a dog’s.
She not only handled all the household chores, but was also treated like a servant by her sister-in-law every day.
Even so, at this moment, she was willing to protect him at all costs.
Lu Yuan’s gaze moved downward.
Beneath Lin Qingyue’s patched and tattered cotton jacket was an astonishingly large belly.
She was pregnant, and it appeared that she was about to give birth.
Lu Yuan felt as though an invisible hand had tightly seized his heart.
In the modern world, he had been an orphan and had grown up in an orphanage. He was accustomed to the coldness of human relationships, scheming, and betrayal.
He had never experienced what it felt like to have someone risk their life to protect him.
Yet now, a heavily pregnant woman who was about to give birth was willing to throw away her own life for him, a “useless man.”
“Father! My husband is so sick that he can’t even get out of bed. How could he possibly have stolen the money?”
Lin Qingyue was crying her heart out, her reddened hands tightly clutching Lu Dagui’s trouser leg.
“Please, Father, stop hitting him! If you keep beating him, my husband really will die!”
“Bah! You unlucky woman, you still have the nerve to cry?”
Beside them, a young girl wearing a brand-new red cotton jacket spat contemptuously.
She was Lu Yuan’s younger half-sister, Lu Xiaocui, who was six years younger than him.
She looked at the couple on the ground with disgust. “He didn’t steal it? Did the silver grow wings and fly away?”
“I think the two of you conspired together and planned to take my brother’s travel money and run away!”
Madam Zhao immediately chimed in sarcastically. “Exactly! Dagui, a filthy thief like this is nothing but a disaster if we keep him in the family!”
“Just break his legs and throw him out of the house together with this jinx!”
“Our Lu family can’t afford to lose face like this!”
Lu Yuan lay on the cold muddy ground and stared coldly at these so-called “blood relatives.”
The original owner’s bookish mind could not figure out what was happening, but as a highly intelligent modern researcher, Lu Yuan saw through the scheme after thinking for only a moment.
Two taels of silver.
That was exactly enough money for a couple of rounds at the gambling house in town.
The day before yesterday, while he had been drifting in and out of consciousness, he had clearly seen his second younger brother, Lu Qiang, who did nothing but fool around all day, sneak out of the courtyard looking nervous. He had even smelled cheap inferior perfume and alcohol on him.
How could this be a theft?
Clearly, Lu Qiang had stolen the family’s money to indulge in drinking, gambling, and women. When he could not cover the hole he had created, Madam Zhao had simply dumped all the blame on Lu Yuan, who was already on the verge of death, in order to protect her own son!
What a perfect scheme of using someone else’s hands to kill!
The original owner had died here because of his unbearable resentment combined with his severe illness and exposure to the cold.
Lu Yuan took a deep breath.
The cold air in his lungs stabbed at his nerves, but instead it made him even calmer.
He knew that he absolutely could not behave like a modern person right now.
He had neither physical strength nor connections. Confronting them head-on would only get him killed faster.
He had to use the logic of the original owner’s identity as a scholar and strike directly at their weak point!
Lu Yuan struggled to raise his hand and gently wiped the tears from Lin Qingyue’s face.
He looked at his father, who was holding the stick with an enraged expression.
Suddenly, Lu Yuan curled the corners of his mouth and let out a chilling, mocking laugh.
The laughter sounded especially eerie in the silent snowy night.
Lu Dagui froze, the stick in his hand suspended in midair.
“What are you laughing at?!”
Lu Yuan narrowed his eyes slightly. His voice was weak, yet it carried a ruthless authority that could not be challenged.
“I’m laughing at how foolish you are, Father.”
“I’ve been suffering from a severe cold for three days. I haven’t had even a drop of water, and I become breathless after taking just two steps.”
“I would like to ask my stepmother this: How exactly was I supposed to climb over those two high thresholds, evade all of your eyes, and steal those two taels of silver from the main house?”
Madam Zhao’s expression changed, and her eyes darted away. “Who—who knows what trick you used!”
Lu Yuan ignored her and stared directly at Lu Dagui.
“Father, it doesn’t matter if you beat me to death today.”
“But I passed the county examination and became a registered child scholar!”
“Although I did not pass the scholar examination, my name is still recorded in the county government’s register as a scholar!”
“Under the laws of Great Jing, murdering a scholar with academic honors carries an even heavier punishment!”
The moment he said this, Lu Dagui’s hesitant hand trembled violently.
Lu Yuan did not give him a chance to recover and continued, each word striking directly at his heart.
“Even taking the most favorable possibility, suppose the county government only sentences you for failing to discipline your family properly and spares you from the death penalty.”
“But if you acquire the notorious reputation of having murdered your own son, who among the surrounding villages will not know about it?”
“Your second son, Lu Qiang, is supposed to take the child scholar examination next year, isn’t he?”
“Do you think an examiner will make the son of a murderer a child scholar?”
“And if he somehow becomes an official in the future, all his political enemies would have to do is accuse him of having ‘questionable virtue and blood on his family name.’ Do you think he would ever be able to rise even to the rank of a lowly ninth-grade official?”
Silence followed.
Those few words were like poison-coated blades, precisely stabbing at the weakest points of Lu Dagui and Madam Zhao.
For these extremely prideful farmers who regarded their younger son as the family’s only hope of rising in status, the imperial examinations and their reputation were their very lives!
“H-Husband…” Madam Zhao was completely flustered. She stared at Lu Yuan on the ground in disbelief.
Was this really the same dull and timid man who normally could barely utter a word?
Why did every sentence he spoke today carry such an oppressive and sinister force?
With a clang, the stick fell from Lu Dagui’s hand.
His lips trembled as he pointed at Lu Yuan, unable to say a word for a long time.
He was afraid.
Compared with this eldest son who was already close to dying from illness, he was far more afraid of ruining his precious younger son’s future.
“You… you unfilial bastard! How dare you threaten your father?!” Lu Dagui shouted, putting on a brave front despite his inner fear.
A trace of mockery flashed through Lu Yuan’s eyes.
He understood perfectly well how selfish these people were.
“I wouldn’t dare.”
With Lin Qingyue supporting him, Lu Yuan struggled to lean against the pile of firewood.
He gasped for breath, but his eyes were as cold as ice.
“Since my stepmother and Father are convinced that I am a thief and believe that I have disgraced the Lu family’s reputation…”
“I know that I don’t have much longer to live, and I don’t want to drag my second brother’s future down with me.”
“So why don’t we settle this today? In front of the clan head, Father can write me a severance document cutting all family ties.”
The moment those four words were spoken, the three people present all sucked in a sharp breath.
In ancient times, clan ties were considered as important as heaven itself.
Being expelled from one’s family and removed from the genealogy meant becoming a rootless wanderer. Even after death, one could not be buried in the ancestral graveyard and would be condemned by everyone.
“Husband, you can’t!” Lin Qingyue covered her mouth in horror.
Lu Yuan, however, reached back and took her cold little hand, gently squeezing it and giving her an extremely reassuring look.
Lin Qingyue froze.
Although her husband’s hand was ice-cold, the calmness and determination in his eyes miraculously soothed her panicked heart.
The moment Madam Zhao heard this, she was secretly overjoyed.
She had been desperately looking for an excuse to throw this sickly burden out of the family for good!
And now he had suggested it himself!
“Dagui! Listen to him! He’s the one who wants to sever the relationship!”
“Keeping such an unfilial son around will only embarrass us. We should cut ties with him as soon as possible!”
Lu Dagui’s face turned livid.
On one hand, he felt that losing his eldest son this way would make him lose face. On the other hand, he was genuinely afraid that Lu Yuan might die in the house and bring bad luck.
More importantly, once they severed their family ties, whether Lu Yuan lived or died would truly have nothing to do with them anymore.
“Fine! Fine! Fine! There’s no need to do it in front of the clan head. I’ll have the clan head cross your name out of the family genealogy later.”
Lu Dagui gritted his teeth and said “fine” three times.
“Xiaocui! Bring the ink and brush!”
Before long, a severance document stating that Lu Yuan was leaving the family with nothing and that life and death would no longer concern them was completed, stamped with their fingerprints, and thrown directly into Lu Yuan’s face.
They did not give him a single grain of rice or even one coin.
They even forcibly removed the better wooden hairpin from Lin Qingyue’s hair, with Madam Zhao claiming, “The Lu family bought that.”
It was the bitterest part of winter, when even water froze solid.
The front door slammed shut behind them.
It cut off the sound of Lu Xiaocui’s gleeful laughter and Madam Zhao’s triumphant curses from inside.
Lu Yuan clenched the thin sheet of paper in his hand.
The last trace of the original owner’s longing for familial affection completely disappeared.
From this moment onward, Lu Yuan would live only for himself and this foolish woman by his side!
“Husband…”
Lin Qingyue was trembling from the cold as she stared helplessly at the heavy snow falling all around them.
They had no home anymore.
They had truly become homeless wanderers.
Lu Yuan forced himself to summon his last bit of strength and pulled Lin Qingyue into his arms, shielding her from the biting wind.
“Don’t be afraid. I’m here.”
The man’s voice was not loud, but it carried an unprecedented firmness.
For some reason, those words brought a faint warmth to Lin Qingyue’s heart, which had been as dead as ashes.
The wind and snow raged around them.
In the depths of winter, remaining outdoors for any length of time could be fatal.
Supporting each other, the two trudged through the snow, taking one difficult step after another.
With every step, Lu Yuan could feel his life slipping away. His legs felt as heavy as lead.
He did not know how long they had walked.
Finally, at the foot of the mountain, they found an abandoned thatched hut that looked as though no one had lived there for countless years.
They pushed open the precarious wooden door. The hut was full of gaps through which the wind blew freely, and there was not even any dry straw to keep them warm.
Lin Qingyue could no longer hold herself up. Her body went limp, and she collapsed onto the icy floor.
Her lips had turned purple from the cold. She tightly clutched her swollen belly with both hands, curling herself into a ball in agony.
“It hurts…”
Cold sweat mixed with melting snow slid down her forehead.
There was no fire, no food, and not even a mouthful of warm water.
Lu Yuan collapsed onto the floor. His vision kept going black. His injuries combined with extreme hunger had left him barely strong enough to raise his hand.
Listening to the howling wind outside like a wild beast and looking at his pregnant wife, who was writhing in pain in his arms, Lu Yuan could not help but wonder—
How were they supposed to survive this night?