Chapter 5

The thought of eating someone only flashed through her mind briefly. An Xiang quickly snapped awake and focused more of her attention on An Zimo.

He was tiny, wearing an ill-fitting, worn-out shirt and jeans. His hair had clearly gone untended for a long time, sticking up in a messy tangle.

The child was very quiet, huddled motionlessly in the corner. Dusk sank into his eyes, but there was no warmth there—only the cold detachment of winter ice.

An Xiang's heart pounded. She stood there for a long while without saying a word.

After a long silence, her face flushed red. She gathered her courage and greeted An Zimo. "Hello, I... I'm your mommy." The word "mommy" curled gently on her tongue, but her voice fell quieter after she said it. Uneasily, she waited for An Zimo to respond.

[My son is so shy.]

[He must be embarrassed to see his mommy.]

[Ahhh, look at him, he's so excited he can't even speak!]

An Xiang wore an obedient expression, but every word of her inner struggle and screaming fell clearly into An Zimo's ears.

He did not react. Silently, he stepped back twice to widen the distance and automatically held his breath to block out those annoying thoughts.

At the same time, hatred began to ferment.

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

When she had treated him as a tool to make money? When she had beaten him with every kind of furniture? Or during those countless verbal assaults too vile to repeat?

An Zimo could not say. All his hatred and unwillingness 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. Yet he had never expected an accident three days ago to awaken the memories of his previous life.

If he had not accidentally rolled down the mountain and injured his head that day, perhaps he would have remained a mindless fool for the rest of this life. Maybe... that would have been happier.

An Zimo was a genius.

He possessed extraordinary talent for language and logic. His photographic memory allowed him to rapidly absorb whatever knowledge he learned.

His mother had seen that potential and begun making him appear on television programs and participate in all kinds of competitions. He became that woman's tool for making money, and the title of "child prodigy" gradually became a burden.

When he was six, An Zimo was diagnosed with congenital analgesia. His mother could not accept it and saw him as a monster. She began using every tool within reach to beat and abuse him, claiming it was treatment.

Blood was red, but his heart was cold. He could not feel pain.

All the emotions a human should have gradually faded under the daily domestic violence. He lived numbly in this world like a walking corpse.

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

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

He could sense that this life was different. For some inexplicable reason, he had been a foolish idiot for three years since birth. Then, after damaging his head, he suddenly regained the memories of his previous life and even acquired the ability to read minds. As long as someone came within half a meter of him, he could see every thought in their heart.

At first, An Zimo thought he had transmigrated, but the congenital analgesia from his previous life was still with him, as was the face before him that looked exactly like 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 would never be willing to waste extra money and energy on a useless burden.

That was not necessarily a bad thing for him.

As long as he kept pretending to be dumb and did not reveal his intelligence, she definitely would not take him away as dead weight. Once she left, everything afterward would be much easier.

No matter what, An Zimo did not want anything to do with this so-called mother in this life!

He swept his gaze around from 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, quickly stepping back to dodge it.

Plop.

The "stone" landed five centimeters from her toes, splitting into several pieces and giving off a faint stink of green grass.

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

Holding her breath, An Xiang retreated several more steps and solemnly said to An Zimo, "Baby, why are you throwing cow poop at me?"

An Zimo looked at the hand that had grabbed the cow dung. "..." His face twisted.

"Y-You should come out quickly. It's very dirty to keep squatting with poop."

An Xiang's words successfully reminded An Zimo.

So he had spent all this time with cow dung?

A wave of disgust ran through An Zimo. He pursed his lips and walked out of the corner.

The little boy was filthy all over, with several blades of grass faintly visible beneath his clothes.

An Xiang could not bear to look at him like that. Her expression conflicted as she asked, "Do you want to wash up over there?" The faucet was right nearby, and it would be easy to rinse off.

An Zimo looked at the faucet in the distance, then at An Xiang's frown. He stood still and quietly listened to her thoughts.

[My son is so dirty.]

[His head really still isn't right.]

[Sigh, what should I do...]

After hearing her thoughts, An Zimo, who had been about to wash his hands, instead expressionlessly rubbed his dirty little hands against An Xiang's clean jeans right in front of her. Then he tossed his head, took a step with his short legs, and strode away.

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

Seeing that he was about to leave, An Xiang no longer cared about the dirt on her pants. All she wanted was to drag her son off to wash his hands.

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

Using her height advantage as an adult, An Xiang effortlessly grabbed An Zimo by the back of his collar, successfully stopping him from moving forward.

"Son, you..."

Before she could finish speaking, An Zimo raised his arms and tightly shielded his head. It was a completely instinctive act of self-protection.

His eyes were squeezed shut, his shoulders trembling faintly. His two small arms covered his face tightly, and his every movement was filled with fear.

An Xiang froze. The moisture in her throat seemed to vanish in an instant, leaving it so dry that she could no longer make a sound.

Slowly, she loosened her hand and watched helplessly as the small figure ran away without making another move.

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

When people suffered harm, they unconsciously made protective responses. Once the harm happened too many times, those responses became conditioned reflexes. Even a raised hand or a glance could trigger intense resistance from the body.

An Xiang had gone through those things every day before.

Her son had been bullied...

Her son might have been bullied every day...

As soon as that thought emerged, the pain in her heart became impossible to control. Sadness and self-blame rapidly spread through her. Her nose stung, and tears slid down her face.

An Xiang wiped away her tears haphazardly, sniffed, and walked into the house.

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

"Y-You're Xiangxiang?" A middle-aged man uncertainly called An Xiang's name, then looked her up and down.

An Xiang had naturally petite features, delicate and refined. Without any makeup, her brows and eyes were youthful and tender. She did not look like a mother who had given birth, but more like an innocent high school student untouched by society.

She nodded absentmindedly, her gaze drifting toward the tightly shut door to the side. She immediately fell into another daze.

"D-Did Zimo go back to his room?" It was An Xiang's first time facing so many humans. Though she was nervous and afraid, she still gathered the courage to ask.

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

Someone pointed toward the most remote corner. After thanking them, An Xiang made her way through the crowd with difficulty and headed for the room.

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

An Xiang stood on tiptoe and peered through the greasy glass.

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

An Zimo lay amid the mess, pitiful as a rat.

An Xiang could not believe her son was forced to live in a place like this. Her mind exploded with a boom, and every trace of reason was burned away by the fire called rage.

She stormed into the living room, eyes red, and demanded of everyone present, "Why is Zimo sleeping in there?"

The last time An Xiang had secretly come to see An Zimo, he had still been living in the main house where sunlight could shine in. She might have been slow to react, but she was not stupid. Her son had obviously been deliberately placed there.

The relatives at the table were eating. One of them spat out a bone, waved her chopsticks around as she pointed everywhere, and righteously said, "So many of us came all this way to handle the funeral. Don't we need somewhere to sleep? There are only a few rooms here. How could they possibly fit everyone? We originally wanted An Zimo to squeeze in with those boys, but he refused."

"Girl, don't make it sound like I bullied your son. He asked to stay there himself!" She rolled her eyes at An Xiang. "If you feel sorry for him, why don't you take him to live in your big house? You just think he's dead weight."

The fat woman's tone was contemptuous and aggressive.

An Xiang clenched her fists, ready to retort, but before she could speak, the accusations from the whole room swallowed her up.

"Exactly. If you gave birth to him but weren't going to raise him, then why have him at all? What right do you have to blame us now?"

"If you think we stole your son's room, then who's paying for all the trouble we went through to come here and arrange the funeral?"

"Having two shabby houses has really made you full of yourself."

"..."

The arguments grew louder and louder, leaving An Xiang utterly unable to fight back.

Actually, they were all right.

She had given birth to him but never raised him. She had been irresponsible. From the very beginning, she had never regarded that child as a life, only as a tool for achieving her own goals.

She had made An Zimo live the childhood she herself had once lived.

She had made him unhappy. She had made him miserable.

An Xiang silently swallowed her tears and took the cash she had brought from her backpack, placing it on the table.

As expected, the room fell quiet.

"This is Grandpa's funeral expense. As his granddaughter, I'll naturally pay my share."

An Xiang had lived in the tower all year round, far removed from society, and did not understand the rules of human life. The system had told her to prepare this money before it left, nagging her about many other things as well. At the time, An Xiang had been thinking only about her son and had not understood much of it.

Thinking of the system inevitably made her feel depressed again.

"Since there are so many people here, Zimo and I won't stay any longer." An Xiang lowered her eyes, picked up an axe from the ground, and walked to the firewood room door under everyone's watchful eyes. She raised her arm high and swung the axe down—

Thud!

The first strike did not split it open, so An Xiang immediately swung a second time.

Thud!

The fragile wooden door let out a pained groan under the axe's relentless assault. An Zimo instantly jolted upright from the ground, 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 is going to kill someone over a lump of cow dung.

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

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

The money the female lead gave was Grandpa's funeral expense. Split among the relatives, it was not much. The system mainly did not want people to have something to say about her, and it also did not want her to keep dealing with this group of relatives, so please don't call her a saint. (Survival instinct)

**

Although I point out the important parts every chapter, it seems some of you don't read them at all, so I'll extract them again for you.

1: An Xiang currently has a human body. Because the mission failed and the system left again, she will not be able to return to her own body until a year later. Don't worry, her own body and her son are in the same world. It was written in the first chapter: the world she is in is actually a novel.

2: The son is the original human owner's son in a parallel world. You can understand it as rebirth in the wrong time and space. The original owner in the parallel world was a bad mother; I wrote that in the previous chapter.

3: Baidu Encyclopedia on parallel universes: A parallel universe refers to other universes that split off from a certain universe and exist alongside the original universe, both similar to and different from it. Within these universes may also be universes born under the same conditions as ours. There may be planets identical to the one humans inhabit, or planets with the same history, and there may even be people exactly the same as humans. At the same time, in these different universes, the development of things may have different outcomes.

4: If you still do not understand, just think of "Spider-Man." Every parallel universe has its own little Spider-Man, and some parallel-universe Spider-Men even died, QAQ.

5: It is fine if you still do not understand, because this really is not the main point!! It is just background setup! So please stop asking strange questions unrelated to the plot, sob sob sob! I really think I explained it very clearly, sob sob sob sob.

Still doing red envelopes. See you tomorrow.