Chapter 2
Chapter 2
My brother felt incredibly guilty seeing me look so dazed and lost.
He hadn’t expected that waking me from my nap would have such a severe consequence.
I held him and cried for a long time.
I had finally managed to stop my tears, but the moment I saw my mother, I began sobbing even harder.
Both my brother and my mother were left dizzy by my crying fit.
“Ah Qing, I beg of you, please stop crying. In just two days, I’ll be heading to the examinations. When the time comes, your brother will bring back a Xiucai degree for you!”
My crying stopped abruptly, as if someone had suddenly squeezed my throat.
“The… the examinations?”
My brother patted my head affectionately.
“Ah Qing, don’t you worry. Your brother will definitely study hard. In the future, I’ll earn a Gaoming title for both you and Mother!”
As he spoke of earning the Gaoming, my brother clenched his fists.
His eyes shone with a brilliant light, and his face was filled with confidence and longing for the future.
I suddenly stood up.
In my previous life, before the exams, my brother had accompanied his close friend to Wenquxing Temple to burn incense.
On the way home after offering incense, they encountered a gang of local thugs.
Those thugs broke my brother’s fingers, robbing him of the ability to hold a brush forever.
I frantically shook my brother’s shoulders.
“Brother, are you going to Wenquxing Temple tomorrow?”
My brother nodded with a smile.
“Your Brother Wenyan usually hates studying, but he’s quite diligent when it comes to running to temples.
“I’ll just treat it as accompanying him on a spring outing. The scenery over by Wenquxing Temple is actually quite nice.”
In my previous life, after my brother’s accident, his friend Zhang Wenyan cut off all contact with our family.
Later, I heard the Zhang family had struck it rich through overseas trade. Their entire family moved to the prefectural capital to live.
Thinking of my sister-in-law…
No, thinking of Jiang Wanru’s madness when she strangled me to death, a preposterous suspicion flashed through my mind.
Was the destruction of my brother’s hands somehow connected to Jiang Wanru?
After all, she was crazy enough to kill both me and my mother just to have my brother all to herself…
Jiang Wanru was the daughter of the wealthiest man in South City.
Her maternal family was in the maritime trade business. Rumor had it their home was paved with gold bricks and lit by night-luminescent pearls.
However, Jiang Wanru was hideously ugly. Even with a family wealth that could rival a nation, no decent family ever came to propose marriage.
The local thugs and rascals in the city often made jokes at Jiang Wanru’s expense. They all said if they truly hit rock bottom, they would just go to the Jiang family to become a live-in son-in-law.
Any family in South City with even a shred of dignity was unwilling to wrong their son by having him marry a Wuyan Woman.
In my previous life, my brother was depressed for a long time after his hands were ruined.
Later, he slowly came to terms with it, saying that if he couldn’t study, he would go into business; he could still support my mother and me that way.
But my brother simply wasn’t suited for commerce. No matter how much effort he put in, he lost money on every venture he attempted.
Later, someone died from eating at the restaurant our family opened, and we lost everything paying out compensation.
Then my mother suddenly fell gravely ill. The physician said she needed to consume ginseng every day to recover.
In the midst of that despair, the Jiang family came to propose marriage.