Chapter 2: The Favor Began with This Bowl of Soup

And so the two were married. The Su family, with their wealth, hired the best teachers for him, and a few years later, he actually made it to the palace examination and even earned a second-rank jinshi title.

Everyone thought this would be a happily-ever-after ending.

But no one expected that Shen Xiuyan would catch the eye of the Prime Minister’s legitimate daughter.

On one side was the promising daughter of the Prime Minister; on the other, just a minor merchant’s daughter. Shen Xiuyan, blinded by greed, made the obvious choice.

But Su Mingyue, as his wife, had done nothing wrong and couldn’t be divorced and replaced so easily.

So he fabricated a charge and had the entire Su family thrown into prison. In the end, they were all killed, every last one of them.

At that time, Su Mingyue was already pregnant, but Shen Xiuyan didn’t stop—nor did he care.

After all, how could the child of a merchant’s daughter compare in worth to one born of the Prime Minister’s legitimate daughter?

Poor Su Mingyue died never knowing she had caused the destruction of her entire family.

Of course, the original Shen Xiuyan didn’t end up any better, which left the current Shen Xiuyan quite satisfied.

Still, he failed to consider that no matter how good-looking he was, why would the Prime Minister’s daughter fancy someone who had only managed a second-rank jinshi title? That marriage was indeed beneath her.

Within six months of marrying Shen Xiuyan, the Prime Minister’s daughter gave birth, and by then, he fully understood—he was just a cuckold raising another man’s child.

But constrained by the Prime Minister’s powerful status, he had no choice but to swallow his rage.

Fortunately, he adjusted quickly. As long as he could climb the ranks by leveraging the Prime Minister’s influence, he would one day exact his revenge.

Fueled by resentment, he became a powerful and corrupt official.

When he finally reached the peak of power and fame, he once again plotted to kill the Prime Minister’s daughter—but a girl raised in the Prime Minister’s household was no fool. She saw through him immediately.

In the end, they brought each other down. All of Shen Xiuyan’s crimes were exposed.

The emperor was enraged, and Shen Xiuyan’s entire clan was executed.

After reading through the whole plot, Shen Xiuyan shivered. How did a fine, upstanding young man of the modern era end up in the body of such a man?

So many lives lost—everyone connected to him met a terrible end.

【Ding! Memory transfer complete. Mission: Change the doomed ending. Please choose whether to stay.】

Shen Xiuyan: 【Stay.】

The system logged off immediately after issuing the mission.

Looking at the now-inaccessible system, Shen Xiuyan shed two bitter tears.

Faced with this kind of plot, he had no desire to stay—but he had no choice. He was penniless now, not even a single point to his name, a broke bachelor with nothing.

He consoled himself: as long as he didn’t do anything evil and stayed away from the key characters, he probably wouldn’t die…

He hugged his weak self tightly.

He just didn’t know how far the plot had progressed…

Oh well, since he was already here, he might as well go with the flow and take it one step at a time…

“Brother, hurry up and drink your chicken soup.” Shen Yuanming walked in with a bowl of soup.

Though the child seemed a bit distant, the concern in his eyes couldn’t be hidden.

Shen Xiuyan took the soup and took two perfunctory sips before handing it back. “Yuanming, you finish the rest.”

Shen Yuanming looked at him in surprise, then silently shook his head.

Though his dark eyes were dull and lifeless, his longing gaze at the soup was impossible to hide.

Looking at the dark, skinny boy before him, Shen Xiuyan sighed. A child in his teens looked no sturdier than a seven- or eight-year-old—it was clear none of the good things in the house had ever reached him.

And that wasn’t even the worst of it—after suffering a lifetime of hardship, he still ended up being implicated along with the original host, dragged into extermination of the nine familial generations, all because of a calamity not of his own making.

Thinking of this made Shen Xiuyan feel even more protective of the boy.

He swore that as long as he was around, he would make sure this poor child lived a good life!

The favor began with this bowl of soup!

“You’re not listening to me now?” Shen Xiuyan immediately put on the airs of an elder brother. “Or are you looking down on me?”

Shen Yuanming suddenly looked up at him, eyes full of disbelief, as if to say Shen Xiuyan had lost his mind.

After all, something as precious as chicken soup—when had it ever been his turn to have any?

His brother had always licked the bowl clean, and all that was left for him was a bit of broth scraped from the pot to satisfy his craving.

After all, his brother was a scholar, and studying harmed the body. The good things had to go to him first, and Shen Yuanming had never dared complain.

Under Shen Xiuyan’s questioning gaze, Shen Yuanming mumbled, “Not looking down on you… how could I ever look down on chicken soup…”

“Then hurry up and drink it before it gets cold.” Once it cooled, a layer of grease would float on top—it’d be oily and not tasty at all.

Looking into his brother’s smiling eyes, Shen Yuanming mumbled a few more times but still didn’t say anything in the end.

But he still didn’t drink the soup in his hands.

Shen Xiuyan sighed. Just how awful had he been before, that even after saying all this, the boy still didn’t dare to drink…

At that moment, Zhou Shi (Madam Zhou) came in. “Xiuyan, are you feeling better?”

Shen Xiuyan nodded. “Much better.”

“Why is Yuanming standing there like a fool? Hurry up and give the soup to your brother,” Zhou Shi called out, seeing her son standing frozen at the side.

Shen Xiuyan quickly raised a hand. “Mom, I already drank some. I can’t finish the rest—let Yuanming have it.”

Zhou Shi looked at him in surprise. That didn’t match Xiuyan’s usual behavior.

But Yuanming was her son too, and since Xiuyan said so now, she couldn’t stop it. She turned and smiled, saying, “Yuanming, your brother said so—go ahead and drink it.”

Looking at her dark and skinny son, Zhou Shi wiped at her eyes in her heart. She felt sorry for the boy, but there was nothing else she could do.

Given their family’s circumstances, the money she earned from farming and selling vegetables barely kept them fed.

Whenever there was something good, it had to go to Xiuyan for his studies. So in the end, it was always the younger son who had to be wronged.

It wasn’t that she didn’t have other thoughts. She just hoped her younger son’s sacrifice would be noticed by Xiuyan, and once he passed the Xiucai exam, he might repay his little brother a little.

But that was just wishful thinking. With the original host’s selfish and self-serving nature, not dragging his brother down was already the best outcome.

Seeing even his mother say so, Shen Yuanming no longer refused. He picked up the bowl, took a deep breath, and began to slurp.

It had been so long since he’d had meat…

This soup was truly delicious…