Chapter 2
I was reborn while we were fleeing the famine, just after He Peizhi had rescued Bai Yuanqing and her mother.
He had fallen for Bai Yuanqing at first sight.
As the eldest grandson and a sixteen-year-old licentiate, he carried the hopes of every elder in the family. Everything good was saved for him. Even when they were disappointed in him, they could never bear to be too harsh.
But in this new life, I would not let him bleed the He family dry again.
I would make him understand that without us, there would be no glorious examination success for him.
When He Peizhi calmly accepted the egg Grandma handed him, I snatched it away, peeled it, and divided it among my hungry younger siblings.
“Big Sister.” Six-year-old Ah Jing swallowed hard but obediently shook his head. He knew such treats were supposedly He Peizhi’s alone.
Ignoring everyone’s strange looks, I pushed pieces into his and Xiaochun’s mouths. “Eat. Ah Jing and Xiaochun must grow up quickly, then give Big Sister a good life.”
Ah Jing’s gift for learning was no worse than He Peizhi’s. If He Peizhi had not consumed more than half our household expenses, Ah Jing would not have been forced to be so sensible that he dared not even ask to study.
Once they had eaten, I turned to He Peizhi with a sneer. “Since Brother is so capable that he threatens his own life to keep two strangers with us, why are you shameless enough to eat my food? I raised that hen. Don’t think I don’t know you gave yesterday’s egg to her.” I pointed at Bai Yuanqing nearby.
Everyone stared at him in disbelief. Grandma clutched her chest and cursed, “You fool! Don’t you see how starved your younger siblings are? Do you think they don’t want to eat? All those books have taught you less sense than a dog!”
He Peizhi flushed to his ears.
He was not yet an imperial favorite, only a penniless scholar who could barely afford his studies. He could not even truss a chicken and depended entirely on his family.
Yet he had casually used an egg his siblings tasted perhaps once in six months to please a woman he had known less than a day.
“Have you forgotten that we live this miserably only because we pay for your schooling?”
“On the road you do nothing but read all day. Now you want to play the saint and save two freeloaders. We are fleeing a famine. Everyone is tightening their belts, and you mean to get our whole family killed?” With every word my resentment rose. I wanted nothing more than to cut down both him and Bai Yuanqing.
The daughter of a wealthy merchant’s concubine, Bai Yuanqing was extraordinarily beautiful. Without the famine, she would already have been offered to some powerful household.
Among a procession of gaunt refugees, her conspicuous beauty and figure were precisely what drew the bandits’ eyes.
“Sister Nian, are you still angry with Brother Peizhi because of me?”
Tears shimmered in Bai Yuanqing’s eyes as she turned the nauseating tricks of the inner household against me.
When I said nothing, she dipped into an affected curtsy. “If that is so, then Mother and I will not—”
He Peizhi cut her off coldly.
“Miss Bai, do not trouble yourself. I gave you my word. I will not abandon you and your mother.”
His temper flared, and he announced that he no longer needed special treatment from the family.
“I will provide their food as well. I will not burden the family. Are you satisfied now, Sister?”
With that, he swept away, furious that I had embarrassed him.
Watching his back, I finally saw how utterly selfish he was.
He had always gambled on his family’s soft hearts. Just as in my former life, one convenient fainting spell was enough to make everyone forgive him.
He behaved without restraint because he knew they would never abandon him.
Though my family looked at me with disapproval, I would hold back no longer. They had the right to know their future—and what a cold, ungrateful wolf they had raised.
That night, after sending Ah Jing to watch He Peizhi and the two women, I faced my exhausted grandparents and parents and quietly told them everything that had happened in my previous life.