Chapter 1: The Fake Young Master Is Reborn

“Xie Zhao! Get lost! It’s New Year’s Eve, can you stop bringing us bad luck? We already told you that you’re not welcome in our house! If it weren’t for you, how could our little brother have suffered so much? You lived off our family for all these years, how can you still be so ungrateful?”

“Yeah, stop clinging to us so shamelessly! Get out! Don’t make me say it twice! You’ve already made our Chen Qiming suffer enough!”

A buzzing sound rang in his ears.

But Xie Zhao only felt a sharp pain in his eardrums, as if he had been slapped hard, making it difficult to hear clearly.

Who was speaking?

And where was he?

Hadn’t he been hit by a car and sent flying?

Was this heaven or hell?

Heh.

A person like him would probably go to hell, wouldn’t he?

Xie Zhao thought self-deprecatingly. After a moment, the pain subsided, and the sound of the wind mixed with the angry shouting finally became clear. The overly realistic sensations forced him to take a deep breath, grit his teeth, and open his eyes.

All he could see was a vast expanse of white, with snow reaching all the way up to his ankles.

Scattered specks of dark red firecracker debris made the two red lanterns hanging in front of the house look exceptionally festive.

Some children were setting off firecrackers, laughing and playing as they ran past the courtyard with bare bottoms. Because of the cold, their backsides were frozen purple, yet they seemed completely oblivious to it.

Xie Zhao froze. Images began to flood into his blank mind, and he gradually regained his senses.

Why did this scene feel so strangely familiar?

He seemed to realize something. Dazed, he looked down at his hands, which were covered in chilblains, feeling a faint stinging pain.

The melted snow soaked through his layered-sole cloth shoes and seeped into the soles of his feet, making him shiver violently from the cold.

Looking closer, he realized something else.

He was lying face down in the snow. His coarse cloth jacket was soaked through, and his polyester pants were covered in a mixture of melted snow and mud. He looked filthy and utterly wretched.

Right in front of him, standing on the high steps, were several people.

Xie Zhao looked up, his pupils shrinking violently as his entire body went rigid.

It was none other than…

The wealthiest family in Hudong County, his former parents, the Chen Donghai family!

Wait!

He remembered!

He remembered where this was!

After living half his life in a daze, he, Xie Zhao, had actually been reborn after being hit by a car?!

And he had returned to the very year he was sent back to Shishui Village!

…

Xie Zhao’s original name was Chen Zhao.

It was just like the plot of a cliché novel.

In the winter of 1964, on a night of heavy, swirling snow.

Two village women gave birth at the same time. In the chaos, the babies were swapped. Thus, two parallel lines crossed, and their lives were exchanged.

He became the youngest son of Chen Donghai, the wealthiest man in Hudong County, stealing eighteen years of carefree life from someone else.

But the truth always comes to light eventually.

And so, on Xie Zhao’s eighteenth birthday, the real young master of the Chen Family came knocking on the door.

Covered in black and blue bruises, with tears in his eyes and trembling hands, he fell to his knees before Chen Donghai with a thud.

“Dad, you lost me for eighteen years. Are you still not going to recognize me? I’m your real son!”

Chen Qiming cried, kowtowing heavily.

With that kowtow, he reclaimed his status as a wealthy heir and shattered Xie Zhao’s peaceful life.

From then on, his world was turned upside down.

He was kicked out of the Chen Family and sent back to the impoverished Xie Family in Shishui Village.

The eighteen years of stable life were suddenly shattered. It felt like falling into hell. He got married in a daze and worked the fields. His hands, once slender and unaccustomed to hard labor, grew calloused, and his spotless clothes became caked in mud and grime.

Xie Zhao had also felt deeply resentful.

What had he done wrong?

If he had been born into the Xie Family from the very beginning, he would never have complained. But he had plummeted from the clouds, kicked out of his home in the most brutal way.

He went from having no worries about food and drink to starving every day, from holding a pen to study to gripping a hoe to till the fields, and from a soft, elevated bed to a damp, moldy wooden board covered in straw.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t struggled.

In the second month after being kicked out, he sneaked back to the county seat, wanting to see his Chen Family parents.

In Xie Zhao’s heart, he had genuine feelings for the Chen Family who had raised him for eighteen years.

But that day, as he peered through the window, he heard only warmth and laughter inside.

His former mother, Zhao Lanzhi, held Chen Qiming with deep heartache and said resentfully, “If it weren’t for Xie Zhao, how could my son have suffered so much? He really is detestable! None of the Xie Family are good people, and he’s no good either! My poor son had to suffer so much in his place!”

In that instant, Xie Zhao’s head buzzed, and he fled in panic.

Since then, he had woken up in the middle of the night countless times, unable to sleep from resentment.

Was all the family happiness they had shared in the past a lie?

Did the Chen Family have no affection or lingering attachment to him at all?

So, carrying this bit of resentment, he came to their door once again on this New Year’s Eve.

He just wanted to ask the Chen Family parents to their faces.

Was the love they once showed him only because he had been the son of the Chen Family?

However, reality dealt him a harsh slap in the face.

He was kicked out, thrown out the door without mercy, and fell heavily into the snow.

Everything came crashing down.

Dazed, Xie Zhao scrambled and crawled away from the Chen Family home.

He drank, returned to Shishui Village smelling of alcohol, and fell into a deep sleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

Yet, on this night, while the sound of firecrackers bid farewell to the old year, he slept heavily. When he woke up, he only felt a terrifying silence around him.

He turned his head in shock, only to see a washbasin sitting by the bed, filled with bright, striking red blood.

Inside, a pair of tiny infants lay quietly, their bodies swollen and pale from being soaked.

They were twin daughters, with thick hair and fair skin, very beautiful and lovely.

In the corner, his parents were weeping softly.

His wife, Lin Muyu, was in a daze, hugging her knees and curling up in the corner like a broken doll.

Beneath her was a pool of blood. Her lips were bitten raw and bruised, her messy hair clung to her thin cheeks, and her eyes were hollow, filled with a profound silence and despair.

She seemed to sense that Xie Zhao had woken up.

She finally turned her head stiffly and looked at him. Her lips twitched as she forced a smile that looked uglier than crying.

“Let’s get a divorce.”

She said softly.

As if it had taken all her strength, she closed her eyes after speaking, unwilling to spare Xie Zhao another glance.

“If you don’t like us, just leave.”

In the corner, his father’s voice was incredibly hoarse.

“In the end, I just didn’t have the blessing to be your father.”

At that moment.

Xie Zhao’s world completely collapsed.

Lacking the courage to face it, he fled Shishui Village.

And for the next thirty years, he lived day after day as if in hell, a living death.

*

“Gasp!”

Xie Zhao finally took a heavy, slow breath.

He lowered his head, staring at his red, frozen fingertips, and took another deep breath of the smell of firecracker smoke lingering in the air.

As the icy air rushed into his lungs, his sanity returned.

He looked up at the sky and finally couldn’t help but laugh out loud with joy!

He had been reborn!

He had actually returned to this very day!

There was still time to change everything!