End of recollection.
Although Ye Zheng had slept through what happened next and knew nothing about it, he had woken briefly several times and vaguely heard some of the commotion.
Basically, whether because Yun Qing was desperate to save a life or too embarrassed to refuse, the shrew Madam Wang had latched onto him and relentlessly forced “Ye Zheng” into the Yun family as a live-in son-in-law.
At one point when Ye Zheng woke, he even heard Madam Wang shouting in the Yun family's courtyard, demanding thirty strings of copper cash as a “bride price.”
Thirty strings of cash were worth thirty taels of silver in this era. Such an extravagant “bride price” was unheard of in Xishan Village. The villagers weren't wealthy; ordinary weddings generally cost only a few taels. Even when taking in a man as a son-in-law, demanding thirty strings of cash was an outrageous sum.
But Madam Wang felt perfectly justified. “Zheng is a scholar, no matter how you look at it! All these years he's eaten rice and grain in my house, worn clothes we paid for, and had tuition fees to pay. Which of those things doesn't cost money? Thirty is less than I should be asking! And that's only because Qing wiped down Zheng's body. Strictly speaking, a ger who's seen a man's naked body has already lost his purity. My Ye Zheng is a man, so it doesn't matter to him, but as for your Qing—well, that might be another story.”
Every word implied that Yun Qing had lost his purity and would be left on the shelf unless the Yun family paid up. They had to give her the money, whether they wanted to or not.
Father Yun and Mother Yun were nearly beside themselves with rage!
The two of them had found out that they suddenly had a “son-in-law” only when villagers kept congratulating them as they walked along the road that day.
After wiping down Ye Zheng at the field's edge, Yun Qing had finally brought his temperature down and steadied his breathing. Madam Wang, terrified that Yun Qing would deny their arrangement, had raised her voice to shout to passersby: “Our Zheng is marrying into the Yun family down by the mountain! Just look, poor Zheng has heatstroke, and Qing has come to look after him. Those young sweethearts are so affectionate,” and on and on.
Xishan Village was small. In less than half a day, news had spread everywhere: the Ye family in the west of the village and the Yun family by the mountain were becoming in-laws. Young Ye was to be the Yun family's live-in son-in-law.
Which young Ye?
Who else? Ye Zheng, of course—the one who passed the child-scholar examination at nine!
What? If he was already a child scholar, why would he marry into someone else's family?
Ah, there's something you don't know. Come closer and I'll tell you the whole story. Ever since the old Ye couple died, one after the other, six years ago…
The Yun parents had no time to discuss it with anyone. They grabbed their farming tools and hurried home, only to find young Zheng of the Ye family lying on one of their beds, just as everyone had said.
Yun Qing quickly explained what had happened. A human life was at stake, and Madam Wang had stood by doing nothing. If he hadn't saved Ye Zheng, the young man might have died.
Even so, his parents couldn't swallow their anger.
They had seen enough of the world not to be as innocent and trusting as their child. It was clearly Madam Wang's fault. She had schemed against their Qing and then spread the story far and wide, deliberately making the arrangement a settled fact so the Yun family would have to suffer in silence!
“You can't bully people like this! I'm going to find the village chief and make him give you justice…”
Father Yun threw down his hoe and was about to go confront someone, but Yun Qing stopped him.
“Dad, don't be impulsive. Hear me out first.”
“What is there to hear?” Father Yun was still furious.
Yun Qing picked up his father's tobacco pipe, struck a flint to light it, packed and lit a bowl for him, then handed it over to calm him down. “Dad, hadn't you always planned to find me a live-in husband anyway? Isn't this just right?”
“I wanted a sturdy, healthy man who could shoulder the responsibilities of this household. I never wanted someone like him!”
He swallowed the words “sickly invalid” before they could come out.
His disdain for Ye Zheng was obvious.
Ye Zheng, the Ye family's third son—the child born late in life to Ye Shugen at the west end of the village!
His elderly parents had treasured him beyond measure. Before the age of three, his feet had practically never touched the ground. While the other village children rolled around in the dirt and got tanned as dark as coal, Ye Zheng grew up on Ye Shugen's knee, beautiful and fair-skinned, like a young master from a wealthy family in the county town. He was educated, too, and passed the child-scholar examination at nine.
Unfortunately, Ye Zheng had always been frail and sickly. He was forever suffering some minor ailment or major illness, swallowing bitter medicinal decoctions as though they were water.
If Yun Qing had remained unmarried because his fertility mark was faint and his appearance failed to match the villagers' standards for gers, Ye Zheng had attracted no interest because he looked far too delicate to work.
When village girls and gers looked for husbands, they didn't care about looks. What mattered was whether a man had a sturdy build and could work the fields to support the entire family. What use was a handsome face? It was all the same in the dark at night. Were they supposed to hug a husband as delicate as a flower while their whole family starved to death?
That said, Ye Zheng was only sixteen this year, so he could hardly be called a hopeless bachelor yet.
If he managed to live a few more years, perhaps some well-to-do family's daughter who never had to worry about food or clothing would take a fancy to him and bring him home as an attractive ornament.
What a pity, then, that the original Ye Zheng had already died on the day of his heatstroke.
The Ye Zheng of today was not the Ye Zheng of Xishan Village, but a modern man who had transmigrated into his body.
His original name was Qin Zheng. He was a newly graduated corporate wage slave. The plane he had taken crashed, and Qin Zheng thought his death was certain. Instead, he opened his eyes to find himself in Xishan Village, dizzy and unconscious in the Ye family's dry field.
Qin Zheng remembered everything Yun Qing had done that noon—giving him water and wiping him down. It was just that he had been absorbing the original owner's memories at the time and was suffering so badly that he couldn't react.
The original Ye Zheng had died of heatstroke and dehydration. Qin Zheng arrived while the body was still warm and inherited all the aftereffects of its heatstroke. Without Yun Qing's kindness in cooling him down and giving him water, Qin Zheng would probably have followed the original owner straight into the next world.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call Yun Qing his savior.
Qin Zheng was someone who remembered a kindness. He didn't have many close relatives or friends in the modern world anyway. He'd had no choice about arriving here, but since he'd been given a new life, he decided to live as Ye Zheng and repay his benefactor's family properly.
Outside, the conversation continued.
“Qing, Ye Zheng obviously can't work. The burden of supporting this household will fall on your shoulders in the future. Your mother and I don't want you to suffer.”
Yun Qing shook his head with a smile. “Dad, Mom, I wasn't planning to get married anyway. Besides, no one else wants me. When it comes to live-in husbands, the men who have come to our door have all been hooligans and ruffians. I'd rather stay single for life than take in one of them. And if I choose to stay single, won't the burden of our household fall on me all the same?”
…W-well, that was true.
His parents couldn't refute the argument, but they still felt something wasn't right.
Father Yun glanced at the bedroom door and said worriedly, “But look at that boy's body. He's so weak, and he doesn't even reach your shoulder. I'm afraid he won't be able to father children later. No matter what, we ought to have at least one child, shouldn't we?”
Inside the room, Ye Zheng: …
Yun Qing: “…”
Whatever else could be said, Yun Qing was a ger. Naturally, this subject made him uncomfortable.
Still, after thinking for a moment, he said, “Dad, Mom, you know Ye Zheng's circumstances. He's probably suffered from neglect these past few years, and he's still young. With some care… with some care, he'll get better.”
Father Yun and Mother Yun exchanged glances. They supposed that wasn't entirely unreasonable.
Everyone in Xishan Village knew what kind of life Ye Zheng had led after the old couple died. His eldest brother and sister-in-law had tormented him mercilessly. They let their own third son, Ye Wangzu, take possession of Ye Zheng's room and drove Ye Zheng into the woodshed. They stopped him from studying, wouldn't buy him medicine, and made him do every filthy, exhausting chore in the house. Whenever there was something good to eat, they shut themselves away and ate it without sharing any with Ye Zheng.
Before their deaths, the old Ye couple had made Ye Zheng kneel beside their bed and swear to obey his elder brother for the rest of his life, never defying him. They'd even summoned the village chief to witness the division of the family property in front of the villagers. All the valuable possessions went to the eldest son: seventy taels of silver, three large brick-and-tile rooms, all the pots and dishes, six fat pigs, a flock of chickens, approximately one and two-thirds acres of superior farmland, and about one and one-third acres of middling farmland. Their youngest son, Ye Zheng, received only about one-third of an acre of middling farmland, the room in which he lived, and twenty taels of silver.
Father Yun and Mother Yun knew those details very well.
The division had been so unfair only because the parents hoped that, knowing his younger brother had gotten the worse share, the eldest son would take better care of him after they were gone.
Unfortunately, the eldest Ye son and his wife had no shame. At the time, in front of their dying parents and the entire village, they had sworn solemnly to treat Ye Zheng well, or else they would be worse than pigs or dogs.
But the moment the old couple passed away, they changed their tune, ordering Ye Zheng about and berating him constantly.
It wasn't that the villagers didn't know what was happening. They did. But it was another family's business. If Ye Zheng himself never complained, who would go looking for trouble by meddling in someone else's household affairs?
Sometimes the village chief couldn't bear to watch and would reprimand the eldest Ye son. He always agreed readily to the chief's face, but as soon as he told Madam Wang about it at home, she would treat Ye Zheng even more cruelly. She could stand in the courtyard behind the chopping block and curse at the top of her lungs all day!
Naturally, she wouldn't dare curse the village chief. Every insult, direct or indirect, was aimed at Ye Zheng.
She called him an ungrateful wretch with no conscience, accused him of bringing death to his parents, and said he'd studied books for nothing only to turn against his own family. She used every nasty insult she could think of.
The original Ye Zheng had been a flower raised in a greenhouse. After studying for a few years, his head was full of refined, scholarly principles. He was utterly helpless against a shrew like Madam Wang.
He had always been sickly. Thinking about how happy life had been while his parents were alive, then comparing it with his present misery, he'd nearly sunk into despair.
Ye Zheng had only been ten when the old couple died. Even in an ancient society where children grew up early, that was still just a child. He missed his father and mother every day, missed them so fiercely that his heart ached, and sometimes wished he could follow them into death.
Now, touching his chest, Ye Zheng could still recall the emotions he'd felt when he first entered this body. They were unlike what one would expect from a dying person: an unexpected sense of anticipation and joy.
At the very end, the original Ye Zheng's strongest feeling had not been the desire to survive. It was relief that his suffering was finally over. He was going to Heaven to find his father and mother and be with them forever, never to be separated again.
In modern terms, perhaps the original Ye Zheng was the sort of person who would never really grow up. Because he'd been protected so thoroughly as a child, he had lost the ability to spread his own wings. When the old Ye couple died, they took half his life with them.
If such a mama's boy had been born in the modern world and someone had posted about him online, he'd probably have been buried under a mountain of criticism. But Ye Zheng knew that everyone's upbringing was different. No one had the right to dictate how someone else should live, least of all a stranger on the internet who knew nothing about that person's life.
Besides, Ye Zheng had inherited the body that the original owner had relinquished. As the one who benefited, he had even less standing to judge. He could only be grateful.
