With all his vicious energy drained away, A Pai collapsed limply to the floor, his eyes wide, unable to understand what had happened. All he knew was that he could not move, no matter how hard he tried.
There seemed to be a piercing pain inside him, too, gnawing at his flesh and bones.
Liu Zimu curled his lips. Dropping to one knee, he gripped the man's face and forced him to look at him. "See? You keep calling me a bastard, but how could you know that before my mother married you, I was the most cherished child in my family!"
"With the inheritance my birth father left her, she could have lived out her days in peace. So why did she enter your household and marry someone like you?"
Indeed, Zi Mu had puzzled over that endlessly without finding an answer.
His mother was hardworking. She could farm and make steamed buns, and she had his birth father's inheritance. Whatever happened, the two of them would never have starved.
A Pai had not a single redeeming quality from head to toe. He was rotten enough to stink.
How could Mother have married him!
It was not until the day before his mother was beaten to death that Zi Mu discovered a silver note and a handkerchief beneath a loose floor tile in his room.
That silver note was his birth father's entire inheritance-a full fifty taels of silver.
He remembered how A Pai's mother, that sharp-tongued, spiteful old woman, would often come to their home weeping. She claimed she was gravely ill and had little time left, and that only fifty taels of silver for treatment could save her.
Yet when Zi Mu looked at her back then, her steps were perfectly nimble and her eyes gleamed shrewdly.