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Warm blood gushed out, and a drop or two splashed into Weng Shao's eyes. It wound down the contours of his face like a streak of bloody tears. Weng Shao suddenly looked up, his scarlet eyes fixed on Weng Yingxiong, who was sprawled by the windowsill hurling curses—

The crude, filthy abuse came to an abrupt stop. Weng Yingxiong moved his lips, then lay back down on the kang, avoiding Weng Shao's gaze.

Amid that strange silence, Weng Shao methodically dealt with the chicken.

Once, these chickens and ducks, along with the pigs raised at home and the vegetables and melons grown in the fields, had all been used to earn money. Yu Huixin and he rose before dawn and worked until dark, feeding livestock while begrudging themselves even a bite of meat or an egg. Aside from supporting the household and paying school fees, the money they earned also had to go toward Weng Yingxiong's medicine.

Before turning eighteen, Weng Shao had barely eaten any meat. After turning eighteen, every bite of meat he ate earned him condemnation.

But Weng Shao was, after all, a carnivore. Long-term suppression could not wear down his beastly nature. It could only make him, after erupting into madness, put everyone who had bullied him on the menu.

No one could stop a starving beast from feeding.

He lit the fire, boiled water, plucked the feathers, and chopped the chicken into pieces. He put the fresh chicken chunks into the pot, added scallions, ginger, star anise, Sichuan pepper, cooking wine, and other seasonings, then pasted several coarse rice cakes around the edge of the iron pot.

Weng Shao casually pulled out a few sticks of firewood and shoved them into the stove, stoking the flames. The warm firelight illuminated the dried blood on his face.

An hour later, Weng Shao squatted beside the stove, clutching his bowl and wolfing down his food.

Yu Huixin stood silently to one side. Weng Shao looked up at her, rose to his feet, took an empty bowl, filled it to the brim with chicken, covered it with a coarse rice cake, and shoved it into Yu Huixin's hands. "Eat."

No one was good to them, so they had to be even better to themselves. The more people wanted to see him dead, the more freely he would live.

Weng Shao said, "It doesn't matter whether Weng Yingjie acknowledges me as his son, but I acknowledge you as my mother. You raised me when I was young, and I'll support you when you're old. If you're willing, you can come to Jinghai with me someday. Even without Weng Yingjie, I can buy you a big house and give you a good life."

Yu Huixin held the bowl without making a sound. It seemed all her courage and fury had been poured out at yesterday's banquet. Once daylight came, she had turned back into that silent, long-suffering rural woman.

Weng Shao did not press her. He lifted his own bowl and continued eating.

After an unknown amount of time, Yu Huixin suddenly grabbed a chicken leg and viciously stuffed it into her mouth, chewing in huge bites. The moment the fragrance of meat filled her mouth, tears streamed down her face.

After that meal, Weng Shao slung his battered schoolbag over his shoulder. Carrying the remaining chicken diced with pickled mustard greens, along with several changes of clothes that had been washed pale, pilled, frayed, and even patched, he returned to school looking travel-worn.

It was evening, and the students returning to school were all boarders, so there were not many of them. But once they saw Weng Shao, they stopped in twos and threes from a distance, pointing and whispering at him.

After so many years, Weng Shao had long forgotten which dorm room he lived in. Fortunately, his glorious feat of causing a scene at the Qingming Festival banquet had made him famous at school once more. He casually stopped a fellow villager who had been pointing at him. "Help me carry my luggage back to the dorm."

The student he stopped froze. He gave Weng Shao several aggrieved looks, then, after a long pause, picked up the luggage despite clearly being angry but afraid to say so. As they walked, he cautiously asked, "Weng Shao, how's your grandfather? Has he been discharged?"

"I don't know." Weng Shao's attitude was cold. He did not care in the slightest whether the old man lived or died.

"Aren't you worried at all? What if your grandfather really was angered to death by you—"

Weng Shao corrected him, "Grandpa wasn't angered into fainting by me. He fainted because he couldn't accept the reality that his biological son had slapped him."

"..." The bag-carrying lackey's liver hurt from Weng Shao's barefaced sophistry. He indignantly accused him, "How can you be so shameless? Don't you think what you did was excessive?"

The bag-carrying lackey looked at Weng Shao with utter disgust, as though Weng Shao were something filthy.

"I never thought you were this kind of person. My parents used to tell me to learn from you all the time. Good thing I never did. If I were like you, turning against my entire family for wealth and glory, even angering my grandfather into the hospital, my parents would beat me to death!" the bag-carrying lackey said with malicious delight.

Growing up, Weng Shao had always been the model child in their village. He was sensible and obedient, and he excelled at school. At such a young age, he already knew how to care for the adults around him. He even worked during winter and summer breaks to earn money for the household. He was practically every parent's ideal son.

By comparison, the other children in the village seemed far less sensible. Whenever they got into trouble or did poorly on exams, their parents would tug their ears and scold them, always telling them to learn from Weng Shao. The teachers at school practically wanted to set Weng Shao up as an example for every student.

It could be said that their entire group had grown up in Weng Shao's shadow. They were sick to death of him. At long last, Weng Shao had made a huge mistake—even his biological father and mother were condemning him as an ungrateful wretch. Everyone thought that this lofty golden child would surely be left disgraced this time, hanging his head and admitting his mistakes. Yet they had not expected him to be so thick-skinned. He had angered his own grandfather into a coma and hospitalization, yet still dared to argue—he did not seem to think he had done anything wrong at all!

Weng Shao's calm, fearless attitude immediately stirred the onlookers' anger.

"You're so inhuman. No wonder your biological parents don't want you."

"I wasn't this inhuman from the start. It's just that after suffering for eighteen years, after enduring eighteen years of misery, I only now realized that I was never supposed to suffer like this in the first place." Weng Shao smiled serenely. "Tell me, in my situation, were there proper adoption procedures? If I apply for legal aid, should I ask about human trafficking, child abuse, or abandonment?"

"Since you're all so curious about my business, why don't you go ask for me?"

"..."

No one said another word for the rest of the way. By the time the group unconsciously followed Weng Shao all the way to his dormitory, the bag-carrying lackey threw Weng Shao's luggage heavily onto the bed and left cursing.

As the top student at City No. 1 High School year after year, Weng Shao had been assigned a free four-person dorm. His other three roommates had returned earlier and were sitting at their desks reviewing their lessons.

Seeing Weng Shao enter surrounded by a crowd, the three were baffled. "What's going on?"

"They're here to watch the show." Weng Shao explained in a few words. He had just taken out the jar of pickled vegetables when Zhang Chang, whose sense of smell was sharp, sniffed and looked over. "What smells so good?"

Zhou Mingjing, sitting across from him, muttered, "What smell? Why can't I smell anything—"

Weng Shao unscrewed the lid of the jar. "Diced chicken stir-fried with pickled mustard greens. Want some?"

Zhou Mingjing looked at Zhang Chang in disbelief. "You can smell that? Do you have a dog's nose?"

After saying that, he turned to Weng Shao. "What day is it today? You're actually willing to eat meat? I thought you were planning to become a monk!"

Zhang Chang had already pulled out the steamed buns he had gotten from the cafeteria that night. He eagerly leaned toward Weng Shao. "Let me have a taste."

Weng Shao casually passed the jar to Zhang Chang and answered Zhou Mingjing, "I figured things out."

"You should've figured things out a long time ago." Jiang Rui, who had barely spoken, snorted. "We're seniors now. Studying is hard enough; we need to eat better. You used to barely eat or drink. I was afraid you'd starve to death."

"Listen to less of the gossip outside, and don't take it to heart even if you hear it. Those people are either talking big because they've never suffered, or they're jealous of you and deliberately saying things to embarrass you." Zhang Chang used his chopsticks to scoop out a tiny amount of the pickled vegetables and spread them over a steamed bun he had broken open. He ate one half himself and forcibly stuffed the other into Weng Shao's hand. As he ate, he complained, "I really don't understand what your family is thinking."

Even without the issue of Weng Shao recognizing his family, the Weng family was bizarre enough—

His biological uncle, who ran a company and was a big boss in Jinghai City, had watched the family of his elder brother, the man who had saved his life, live in poverty for so many years without lifting a finger. Forget blood relatives and a life-saving debt—even close neighbors would not behave like that.

They said Weng Shao's second uncle spent hundreds of thousands, even millions, on charity every year. Why had he never considered spending a few thousand more to help the nephew in name who was his biological son by blood?

If Zhang Chang had any say in it, his second uncle should have covered Weng Shao's family's expenses. If not for saving someone, Weng Shao's former father and current eldest uncle would not have become disabled, right?

"Could there be something else going on here?"

Watching his roommates seriously discuss the Weng family's melodramatic mess, Weng Shao knowingly asked, "Don't you think that abandoning my disabled eldest uncle and wanting to acknowledge my wealthy biological father makes me vain and heartless?"

"Bullshit!" Zhou Mingjing frowned deeply. "Anyone who says that should do more than ten years of farm work first, clean pigsties for more than ten years, feed chickens and ducks for more than ten years, wipe shit and piss for a bedridden paralyzed man as a caregiver for more than ten years, and go a whole year without getting a single meal of meat... Then see if they still have the nerve to talk like that."

"It doesn't matter if other people think so. If you think so too, then you're an idiot!"

"The more they slander you, the harder you should study. Get into Jinghai University and slap them hard in the face. Then let that biological father of yours, that second uncle, regret it!"

After three years as classmates, the four of them spent even more time together than they did with their own parents. Of course Zhang Chang and the others knew exactly what kind of person Weng Shao was. They had known Weng Shao before the rumors, and they knew how hard his life had been.

Throughout the three years of high school, Weng Shao's meals had always been one steamed bun and the cafeteria's free seaweed soup. If his brothers had not been unable to bear watching it and often gotten him an extra serving of vegetables and two steamed buns when buying food, Weng Shao would have fallen ill from hunger even if he had not starved to death.

Still, Weng Shao never accepted their food for nothing. He had no money, but he was first in the grade. Even teachers from every subject took his notes as references. Weng Shao also gave them one-on-one tutoring from time to time, and all three roommates had benefited greatly.