Chapter 5

The thought of eating someone flashed through An Xiang's mind only briefly. She quickly snapped out of it and focused more of her attention on An Zimo.

He was tiny, dressed in an ill-fitting, worn-out shirt and jeans. His hair had not been tended to in a long time and sat in a messy tangle on his head.

The child was quiet, huddled motionless in the corner. Dusk fell into his eyes, but there was no warmth in them, only a chilling distance like winter ice.

An Xiang's heart pounded with nerves. She stood frozen for a long while without speaking.

Only after a long silence did her face flush red as she mustered the courage to greet An Zimo. "Hello, I, I'm your mommy." The word "mommy" curled gently around her tongue. Her voice dropped after she finished, and she waited anxiously for An Zimo to respond.

[My son is so introverted.]

[He must be shy about seeing his mommy.]

[Aaaaah, look, he's so excited he can't even speak!]

An Xiang wore a meek expression, but every word of her inner struggles and screams reached An Zimo's ears.

He gave no reaction, silently retreating two steps to put distance between them and automatically tuning out those annoying thoughts.

At the same time, hatred began to ferment.

When had he started hating his mother, hating his family?

When she treated him as a money-making tool? When she beat him with all kinds of furniture? Or was it all that unspeakable verbal abuse?

An Zimo could not say. All his hatred and resentment had turned to ashes along with his body when he fell from the twentieth floor.

He had thought his body was dead and his soul extinguished. He had never expected an accident three days ago to awaken his memories of his previous life.

If he had not accidentally tumbled down the mountain that day and hit his head, perhaps he would have spent this whole life as an intellectually disabled child who knew nothing. Perhaps... he would have been happier that way.

An Zimo was a genius.

He had exceptional linguistic talent and logical reasoning skills. His photographic memory allowed him to rapidly absorb the knowledge he learned.

His mother had seized on precisely that, frequently sending him onto various television shows and into all kinds of competitions. He became that woman's money-making tool, and the title of "child prodigy" gradually became a burden.

At six, An Zimo had been diagnosed with congenital insensitivity to pain. His mother could not accept it and regarded him as a monster. She began beating and abusing him with anything she could get her hands on, under the fine-sounding pretext of treating him.

His blood was red, his heart was cold, and he could feel no pain.

All the emotions a human should have gradually drained away under the domestic violence. He lived numb in this world, like a walking corpse.

One winter day when he was fourteen, he left, simply because this world did not deserve him.

But why... why had he been brought back into this world again?

He could feel that this life was different. For some inexplicable reason, he had spent three years in a dazed, witless state since birth, then suddenly recovered his past-life memories after injuring his head. He had even gained the ability to read minds. As long as someone came within half a meter of him, he could perceive every thought in their heart.

At first, An Zimo had thought he had transmigrated, but his inability to feel pain from his previous life was still with him, and the face before him was identical to that woman's.

-Nothing had changed.

Everyone in the village said he had been abandoned.

An Zimo was not surprised. After all, that selfish, vain woman had no desire to waste extra money and energy on a good-for-nothing.

That was not necessarily a bad thing for him.

All he had to do now was keep playing dumb without revealing his intelligence, and she certainly would not take a burden like him away with her. Once she left, what came next would be much easier to handle.

No matter what, An Zimo wanted nothing to do with this so-called mother in this life!

He scanned his surroundings out of the corner of his eye, grabbed a stone from the ground, and hurled it at An Xiang's face.

The attack came without warning. An Xiang's eyes widened as she sucked in a breath and swiftly stepped backward to dodge.

Plop.

The "stone" happened to land five centimeters from her toes, breaking into several pieces and faintly giving off a grassy stench.

What he had thrown was a lump of dried cow dung!

An Xiang held her breath and backed away several more steps, then said to An Zimo in all seriousness, "Baby, why are you throwing cow poop at me?"

An Zimo looked at the hand he had used to grab the cow dung. "..." His face twisted.

"Y-you should come out. It's filthy to keep squatting with the poop."

An Xiang's words successfully reminded An Zimo.

So he had been spending all this time in the company of cow dung?

A shudder of revulsion ran through An Zimo. He pressed his lips together and walked out of the corner.

The little fellow was filthy all over, with a few stray blades of grass half-hidden in his clothes.

An Xiang could not stand the sight. Looking conflicted, she asked, "Would you like to wash over there?" There was a sink right nearby, making it convenient to rinse off.

An Zimo looked at the faucet a short distance away, then at the frowning An Xiang. He stood still, quietly listening to her thoughts.

[My son is so dirty.]

[His mind really still isn't clear.]

[Oh, what am I going to do...]

After hearing her thoughts, An Zimo, who had been about to wash his hands, instead wiped his filthy little hands on her clean jeans right in front of her, his face expressionless. Then he tossed his head, stepped out on his short legs, and marched away.

An Xiang: "..." Her pupils shook!!

Seeing that he was about to leave, An Xiang forgot all about the stains on her trousers and focused entirely on catching her son to wash his hands.

There were so many germs. She did not want her son getting sick.

With the height advantage of an adult, An Xiang effortlessly caught An Zimo by the back of his collar, successfully stopping him from going any farther.

"Son, you need to..."

Before she could finish, An Zimo raised his arms and tightly shielded his head, a protective measure born entirely of instinct.

His eyes were squeezed shut, his shoulders hunched slightly, and his two little arms covered his face securely. His behavior was full of fear.

An Xiang froze. All the moisture seemed to drain from her throat in an instant, leaving it so dry she could no longer make a sound.

She slowly released her grip and watched helplessly as that little figure ran away, making no move.

An Xiang knew what An Zimo's behavior just now meant.

People instinctively protected themselves when they were hurt. Once they had been hurt enough times, that protective response became a conditioned reflex. Even a raised hand or a look could provoke fierce resistance from the body.

In the past, An Xiang had experienced this every day.

Her son had been bullied...

Her son might be getting bullied every day...

As that thought emerged, she could not control the ache in her heart. Grief and guilt quickly spread through her. Her nose stung, and tears slid down.

An Xiang hastily wiped away her tears, sniffled, and walked into the house.

The living room was packed with people. The relatives, who had been drinking, eating meat, and chatting merrily, fell silent the moment An Xiang entered. More than a dozen eyes turned toward her at once.

"Are you... Xiangxiang?" One middle-aged man spoke An Xiang's name uncertainly, then looked her up and down.

An Xiang had a naturally small face, with delicate, finely formed features. She wore no makeup, and her face looked youthful and innocent. She did not look like a mother who had given birth, but rather a sheltered, innocent high school student.

She nodded distractedly, her gaze drifting toward the closed door to the side, and fell into another daze.

"Has Z-Zimo gone back to his room?" This was An Xiang's first time facing so many humans. Although she was nervous and afraid, she still gathered the courage to ask.

"Zimo's in that room at the back."

Someone pointed toward the most out-of-the-way corner. An Xiang thanked them and struggled through the crowd toward the room.

The door was tightly shut, with a tiny window at the very top.

An Xiang rose onto her tiptoes and peered through the grease-covered glass.

It was very dark inside, and small, too. The room, less than ten square meters, was piled with firewood and miscellaneous clutter.

An Zimo lay amid that mess, as pitiful as a mouse.

An Xiang could not believe her son was forced to stay in a place like this. Her mind exploded with a boom, and the fire called anger burned every last shred of reason away.

She strode into the living room and demanded of everyone there, her eyes rimmed red, "Why is Zimo sleeping there?"

The last time An Xiang had secretly come to see An Zimo, he had still been living in a main room that received sunlight. She was slow to react, but she was not stupid. Her son had clearly been put there out of malice.

The relatives at the table were eating. One spat out a bone, waved her chopsticks around, and declared self-righteously, "With so many of us coming to arrange the funeral, don't we need somewhere to sleep? How are we all supposed to fit in these few rooms? We wanted An Zimo to squeeze in with those boys, but he refused."

"Girl, don't act like I'm bullying your son. He asked for it himself!" As she spoke, she rolled her eyes at An Xiang. "If you feel so sorry for him, why don't you take him to live in a big house? You think he's a burden, too."

The fat woman's tone was contemptuous and aggressive.

An Xiang clenched her fists, ready to argue back, but before she could speak, she was swallowed up by the condemnation filling the room.

"Exactly. If you weren't going to raise him, you shouldn't have given birth! What's the point of blaming us now?"

"If you're accusing us of taking your son's room, who's going to pay us for the trouble of coming all this way to arrange the funeral?"

"Owning two lousy houses really has gone to your head."

"..."

Wave after wave of noisy argument rose higher, leaving An Xiang utterly unable to defend herself.

They were actually all right.

She had given birth without raising him and had been irresponsible. From the very beginning, she had never treated that child as a life, only as an object for completing a task to achieve her own goal.

She had made An Zimo live out her own childhood.

She had made him unhappy and deprived him of happiness.

An Xiang silently held back her tears, took the cash she had brought from her backpack, and placed it on the table.

Sure enough, the room fell silent.

"This is for Grandfather's funeral expenses. As his granddaughter, I'll naturally pay my share."

An Xiang had lived in a high tower for years. Cut off from society, she did not understand the rules of human life. The system had told her to prepare this money before she came, and had rambled on about many other things. At the time, An Xiang's head had been filled with thoughts of her son, and she had not understood much of the specifics.

Thinking of the system brought another bout of despondency.

"Since there are so many people here, Zimo and I won't stay." An Xiang lowered her eyes, picked up an axe from the floor, and walked to the woodshed door under everyone's gaze. Raising her arms high, she swung the axe down-

Thud!

The first blow did not break it open. An Xiang immediately swung a second time.

Thud!

The fragile wooden door let out agonized groans under the axe's relentless assault. An Zimo jolted up from the floor, terrified and dumbfounded as he stared at the cracks in the door and the blade about to break through.

His mom... was going to kill him.

Son: My mom isn't human. My mom's going to kill someone over a lump of cow dung.

An Xiang: Gasp! I've finally been exposed.

Son: ?? You really aren't fucking human?!!!

The money the female lead gave was for her grandfather's funeral expenses. Split among the relatives, it wasn't much. The system mainly didn't want to give people anything to hold against her, and didn't want her to have any more contact with these relatives, so please don't call her a bleeding heart (trying to survive here).

**

Although I point out the important bits in every chapter, some sweeties seem not to read them at all, so let me automatically extract them for you again.

1: An Xiang is currently in a human body. Because the mission failed and the system left, she can only return to her own body a year later. Don't worry, her own body and her son are in the same world. I wrote this in the first chapter: the world she's in is actually a novel.

2: Her son is the son of the human body's original owner in a parallel world. You can think of it as rebirth into the wrong spacetime. The original owner in the parallel world was a bad mother. I already wrote this in the previous chapter.

3: Parallel universes, from Baidu Encyclopedia: Parallel universes are other universes that split off from a certain universe and exist alongside the original, both similar to and different from it. Among these universes, some were born under the same conditions as our universe. There may be planets identical to the one humans inhabit, or planets with the same history, and there may even be people identical to humans. At the same time, events may develop with different outcomes in these different universes.

4: If you still can't understand it, think of "Spider-Man." Every parallel universe has a little Spidey, and the little Spideys in some parallel universes have even died QAQ

5: It's fine if you can't understand it, because this really isn't the point!! It's only a backdrop! So please stop asking weird questions unrelated to the plot, sob sob sob! I really do think I made it very clear, sob sob sob sob.

Red envelopes as usual. See you tomorrow.