Would Pigs at a Pig Farm Be Grateful to the Farm Owner?

It wasn't to protect that battered, bruised child, but to persuade him to donate bone marrow and save another young master whom everyone cherished.

"You changed your name!" Huo Jiu let out a faint sigh. The woman before him was Lu Manzhen, Su Shiyuan's wife and Su Zhuo's stepmother. As for Lu Manjuan, the unfortunate woman who had been beaten alongside her own son, the Lu Manjuan who would hold Huo Jiu in her arms and take the blows for him, the Lu Manjuan who had needed him to cry, shout, and kneel outside the neighbors' door until someone's parents came out to save them—she had disappeared more than a decade ago.

She would never come back.

Lu Manzhen stared blankly at Huo Jiu.

These past few days, this child had given her a headache. When Huo Jiu threw tantrums and accused her of treating someone else's child better, of bringing him back to the Su family only to coax him into donating bone marrow, Lu Manzhen had also been filled with grievance and resentment.

She resented Huo Jiu for being so immature, for failing to understand her good intentions.

What kind of family was the Su family? What kind of man was Su Shiyuan? Without a suitable reason, how could she dare suggest bringing her ex-husband's son over? How could she dare beg Su Shiyuan to treat her son well?

But if Huo Jiu could donate bone marrow to Su Zhuo and help cure his illness, things would be different. Huo Jiu would become Su Zhuo's benefactor. Even if only for that reason, Su Shiyuan and the Su family would have to treat Huo Jiu well.

Then Huo Jiu could rightfully stay with the Su family and become Su Shiyuan's stepson. Only then would mother and son truly have a secure foothold.

As the saying went, parents who loved their children planned for them far into the future.

Huo Jiu was the flesh and blood she had carried for ten months. How could Lu Manzhen not love him or think of his future?

But Lu Manzhen couldn't say such things to her son. She couldn't let Su Shiyuan know that she had such calculations. So she could only blame Huo Jiu for being immature and failing to understand her good intentions.

But when Huo Jiu said those words, Lu Manzhen finally understood what her son had been thinking.

When I was being beaten, I never blamed you. When my classmates mocked and bullied me, I never resented you. When the neighbors shunned and drove me away as though I carried some contagious disease, I never hated you. Because I knew that one person being beaten was better than two people being beaten to death.

"But I can't accept that you came back for me not to save me, but to make me donate bone marrow to someone else."

"After you left that man, before you became Mrs. Su, did your life get any better?"

"Did you have somewhere to live? Could you eat your fill? Did you have a stable job? Did you miss me? Why didn't you come back for me?"

"Was it because I was a burden back then?"

Huo Jiu blinked his dry eyes. He was asking that question on behalf of the original owner of this body.

Why had she only remembered that she had a son with Rh-negative blood when Su Zhuo needed a bone marrow transplant?

Lu Manzhen looked into Huo Jiu's eyes, opened her mouth, and suddenly lost the ability to speak.

She left Huo Jiu's room in disarray.

Huo Jiu closed his eyes again.

He still remembered that endlessly repeating stretch of time in the coffee shop.

Huo Jiu had thought he would be trapped in that period forever. Yet when he woke from a nap, he had somehow arrived at the Su family home.

What exactly had happened?

Or had that repeating period merely been a dream, not reality?

Huo Jiu carefully recalled and repeatedly examined those memories. In the end, he concluded that even with a high fever, even if he had kept reliving the original owner's experiences in his dreams, he couldn't have been so muddled as to confuse a dream with reality.

That memory in the coffee shop had truly been time repeating itself. So what had triggered it?

Remembering that he had transmigrated into a book, Huo Jiu suddenly understood. Was it because he had refused the bone marrow transplant proposal, preventing the story from continuing, that the plot had kept repeating?

Then, when his high fever became too much and he passed out, Chairman Su had brought him back to the Su family. That happened to follow the story's intended progression. The subsequent plot could continue, so that endlessly repeating sequence came to an end?

Huo Jiu raised an eyebrow. If his deduction was correct, then the trigger for those repeated Reloads in the coffee shop had been a story node. If events did not follow the story's direction, that period would Reload over and over until Huo Jiu compromised—or until his actions could connect back to the plot.

He was like an outsider trapped within a story. Once he did something that deviated from the plot, he would be trapped at a story node and repeatedly experience that section. But if he obediently cooperated with the plot's development, then when the story reached its end, his character would die a miserable death.

So here was the question: either die, or possess endless time within a limited stretch of time. Under those circumstances, why the hell should he cooperate with the plot?

What did it have to do with him whether this story could reach its ending smoothly?

Would Pigs at a Pig Farm Be Grateful to the Farm Owner?

Perhaps the high fever had affected Huo Jiu's ability to think normally. After pondering it for a while, he drifted off to sleep again.

When he woke again, the room was pitch-black. Outside the window, the night was deep and silent, and everything was still. It was clearly the middle of the night.

Huo Jiu's stomach growled, and his gut burned as if it were on fire. Hunger had woken him.

Bracing himself against the bed with his arms, Huo Jiu climbed up with some difficulty. Staggering out of the bedroom, he followed the original owner's memories and found the kitchen on the first floor.

The refrigerator was packed with ingredients, along with chilled milk, juice, soda, and beer.

Huo Jiu took two eggs and a tomato from the refrigerator, chopped a small amount of scallion, scooped out a small bowl of flour, added water to make dough, and cooked himself a bowl of dough-drop soup.

The rustling sounds woke Aunt Zhao, who lived in the maid's room on the first floor. Thinking there was a thief in the house, Aunt Zhao quietly called the security guards patrolling outside. When the group rushed into the kitchen to catch the intruder, they happened to see Huo Jiu holding the bowl of dough-drop soup he had just made—

For a moment, the scene was rather awkward.