Character Count: 3,094
Date: March 11, 2023, 09:24:57
Dongping Village, early morning, the Yu residence.
In the main hall,
Yu Zhou stared at the group of supposedly familiar yet completely unfamiliar relatives before him. He still hadn't recovered from his shock.
His maternal uncles and aunts were talking nonstop, trying to persuade their nephew, soon to marry into another household, to accept his fate.
"Yu Zhou, don't blame your uncles for being heartless. Poverty has forced our hands. You've earned a scholar's rank now. If we had any other choice, we wouldn't bear to send a scholar like you off to another family, would we?"
"A scholar can even exempt the household from land taxes and military service. But your older cousins need wives, and your female and third-gender cousins need dowries. Everything costs money. If you don't marry into the Qiao family, how are we supposed to survive?"
"Don't worry. As long as you obediently become the Qiao family's live-in son-in-law, we'll be sure to tell you about your birth father."
"Besides, you're hardly losing out. The Qiaos are wealthy county merchants with more silver than they can count, and their young man is said to be unbelievably beautiful. Isn't that what they call getting both wealth and a beauty…?"
"…"
They had already exchanged the marriage documents with the Qiao family's matchmaker the previous day, formally settling the engagement.
But no one could guarantee that something wouldn't go wrong before the wedding, especially since Yu Zhou's agreement concealed a complication. His uncles worried that if they pushed him too hard, he might become desperate and refuse everything.
So when they noticed his strange expression after he awoke that morning, the Yu family immediately began another anxious round of persuasion.
They could have talked all day without him hearing a single word.
Because the body before them no longer housed the meek, easily bullied Scholar Yu. Its occupant was now a soul from another time and world, a man who happened to share exactly the same name!
…
Yu Zhou had transmigrated in the middle of the previous night.
When he first awoke, he assumed he was dreaming. In the era he came from, houses of mud and straw as dilapidated as this were almost impossible to find, even in the remotest mountains, unless one was on a historical film set.
And the quilt covering him was so dark and stiff that even a homeless person on the street would probably refuse it. If this wasn't a dream, what else could it be?
But soon, one unfamiliar memory after another surged into his mind, and Yu Zhou gradually understood the truth.
He apparently wasn't dreaming. He had transmigrated.
Not only that, he seemed to have entered a novel—a boys' love story with male pregnancy titled My Husband Is the Chief Minister!
There was a reason he realized so quickly that he was in a book.
On the surface, Yu Zhou had been a respectable university professor. Others regarded him as deeply knowledgeable, exceptionally capable, stern, and aloof.
In reality, he wasn't very different from other young people. He liked fashion, entertainment, gossip on the internet, novels, and all sorts of similar things.
My Husband Is the Chief Minister was one of the novels he had read.
Although its three-gender world had surprised him, the plot was interesting, and its descriptions of examinations and government service were fascinating enough that he'd read the whole thing.
Apart from complaining about how indecisive the male protagonist was, he'd thought it was fairly good.
He'd particularly admired the protagonist's spouse, who was clever, decisive, and formidable. He had kept everything at home running so smoothly that the protagonist could pursue his official career without worries. That intelligence and capability were truly impressive…
Yet the very day after finishing the book, Yu Zhou had transmigrated straight into it.
From the original body's memories, he discovered that his new identity belonged to a disposable minor character who died young after handing the male protagonist a valuable opportunity!
The situation, in brief, was this:
The original Yu Zhou had been on good terms with the male protagonist because they came from the same village and were classmates. But years of bullying and torment by his dreadful maternal uncles had left him depressed and sickly. In the end, he'd died of illness inside the provincial examination hall.
Furious, the male protagonist had avenged his good friend. In doing so, he'd obtained an heirloom connected to Yu Zhou's origins. Later, during the examinations in the capital, he'd met Yu Zhou's biological father. In gratitude, that influential man had given the newly appointed protagonist a great deal of help in court.
Yu Zhou: …
He'd transmigrated into the body of such an unfortunate, short-lived character!
The world might be a book, but it felt utterly real. Yu Zhou had no desire to die just to gamble on whether he'd return to his own world. If he died and didn't go back, what a terrible loss that would be!
After carefully comparing all the original body's memories with the novel's plot,
Yu Zhou soon worked out how to change his fate. It was simple: he only needed to get away from those monstrous maternal uncles.
Without their oppression, he wouldn't suffer from depression and ruined health.
With a healthy body, he wouldn't die in the examination hall.
And if he didn't die, he could carry on living. Wasn't that obvious?
Simple, perfect logic. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it.
As for whether the protagonist would still enjoy a smooth official career if Yu Zhou survived, leaving him unable to obtain the heirloom or secure the help of Yu Zhou's influential biological father…
That was none of Yu Zhou's concern.
Surely he couldn't be expected to kill himself just to help the protagonist get ahead?
He wasn't that selfless!
And without this little advantage, the protagonist would still have other patrons to help him, wouldn't he? He still had his own intelligence and talent, and an exceptionally intelligent and capable husband, too.
If losing such a small piece of outside assistance meant he could no longer accomplish anything, then he simply lacked the ability to justify his position.
Therefore,
Yu Zhou saw nothing wrong with trying to change his fate. He wasn't hurting anyone. He was just saving his own life.
…
Once he had analyzed and organized everything,
Yu Zhou looked again at the Yu family, who were still chattering away to persuade him to become a live-in son-in-law, and sneered inwardly.
These maternal uncles of the original body's were a truly extraordinary collection of scoundrels.
In fact, the Yu family hadn't always been this poor. They had once been among Dongping Village's most prosperous households, with dozens of acres of good land, a blue-brick house with tiled roofing, and enough money to eat meat every few days. They'd lived in considerable comfort.
Yet it was this prosperous family that had sold one of its own daughters—the original Yu Zhou's mother—to a human broker.
The reason was simple.
His useless uncles had gambled, visited brothels, indulged themselves, and refused to work, squandering the family's wealth until they had no choice but to sell their daughters and third-gender children to pay their debts.
That was how the original Yu Zhou's mother had been sold from place to place and eventually become a maid in an influential household in the capital.
The master of the house took a liking to her and slept with her, but his principal wife was jealous and soon had her thrown out. With nowhere else to go, she returned to her hometown with the money she'd received, only to discover that she was pregnant.
To prevent her brothers and sisters-in-law from selling her again, and because she couldn't bear to part with her unborn child, she paid the clan elders to intervene. With their help, she found a man with a lame leg to marry into her household, finally securing a stable life.
Unfortunately,
Fate was unkind. When the original Yu Zhou was twelve, his mother and stepfather went into the mountains for firewood and were attacked by wild beasts.
His stepfather died on the spot. His mother was rescued with serious injuries, but she passed away a few days later.
Luckily, she knew exactly what her brothers were like. Before dying, she told her son to hide their savings carefully, allowing him to continue his education.
But the boy was young and alone. Over the years, his uncles had seized the family's fields and house, leaving him only the money he needed to study.
They also used supposed information about his biological father to blackmail him, continually squeezing him for benefits.
Now they even wanted to force a qualified scholar like him into another family as a live-in son-in-law. They clearly wouldn't be satisfied until they'd swallowed him whole!
Yu Zhou was almost speechless.
The original owner had been too close to the situation to see clearly. Given how terrible his mother's relationship with those uncles had been, why would she ever have told them anything about his biological father? The Yu family was plainly taking advantage of his youth and gullibility.
But now the original boy had been replaced by Yu Zhou from another world, and the family's calculations would no longer work.
He still needed to plan carefully how to deal with those uncles. The ancient world valued reputation. As a scholar, he couldn't afford to ruin his future because of that trash…
Yu Zhou considered the problem silently.
He remained quiet throughout the family's persuasion. Eventually, when they'd talked themselves hoarse and thirsty and finally left, he slipped out of the Yu house.
He found a secluded place where no one was around and prepared to smash the "heirloom" that proved the original owner's parentage!
Yes. He was going to destroy it.
The uncles were dreadful people, but that supposedly influential father was no better.
Although the book showed him helping the protagonist, that hardly proved he was a good person. If he'd truly cared about the original Yu Zhou and his mother, he wouldn't have ignored her completely when she was thrown out of his residence.
They'd never even met. What father-son affection could there be between a powerful man and an unacknowledged son born outside his principal marriage? What a joke.
Look beyond appearances to the truth: the man's willingness to help the protagonist in the novel came down to the value he saw in him.
Yu Zhou had no intention of getting involved in some ridiculous struggle between legitimate and illegitimate heirs.
With that time and energy, he could forge his own career. He had no need for a powerful father to help him.
Therefore,
He would never acknowledge this birth father, and the proof of his parentage had to be destroyed.
Otherwise, some old man might suddenly turn up one day, claiming the right to tell him what to do.
"Crack! Crack! Crack!"
Hidden in a secluded corner of Dongping Village, Yu Zhou happily smashed a jade pendant to pieces, then kicked the fragments into a stream, where they disappeared. Evidence eliminated perfectly.
Once that was done,
He stood, dusted off his hands, and prepared to wander around and get used to his new surroundings.
But as soon as he stepped out of the secluded corner, he ran into a farmer sprinting toward the fields and shouting as he ran,
"Trouble! Terrible trouble! Eldest Zhao, your boy Lixuan just coughed up blood and passed out!"
Eldest Zhao? The boy Lixuan? The male protagonist, Zhao Lixuan?
Yu Zhou: …
He'd only destroyed one small advantage meant for the protagonist. Surely that wasn't enough to make the man cough up blood?
* * *
