He wore a grave expression as he carefully examined the room, inch by inch.
Yet the room was empty—whether at the door or by the window, there wasn’t a single footprint left behind. Indeed, there were no signs of intrusion.
Besides, he had always been vigilant.
Even with a fever, even in half-conscious slumber, he could never have fallen so deeply asleep that someone entered without his notice.
The wooden door, too—the cracks were filled with straw, tightly packed and sturdy. It looked perfectly normal, with nothing suggesting deliberate mischief.
On the contrary, it could even block out a bit of the cold wind.
This was truly beyond comprehension!
For a moment, Lu Huan wondered if he was still feverish and seeing hallucinations. But when he lifted his hand to touch his forehead, it was cool to the touch.
Or perhaps—perhaps last night, in his fevered haze, he had gotten out of bed in a half-dreaming state to mend the door himself?
He had been planning to patch up the drafty gaps sooner or later, only he’d been too exhausted these past few days and had delayed it.
But no matter how he thought about it, it still didn’t make sense.
Lu Huan stared first at the bedding, then at the clearly mended door.
In his pitch-black eyes, alertness and suspicion flickered. Yet finding nothing else out of place, he could only let it rest for now.
He walked to the wardrobe, rummaged beneath a pile of old, tattered clothes, and drew out a sharp dagger—its blade carved from stone. Quietly, he hid it in a crevice beneath the wall by the bed.
Outside, the voices of two servants sounded again, urging him.
Today was the day when the sons and family members of Prince Ning’s household went to the ancestral hall to pay respects to their forebears.
The shabby courtyard where Lu Huan lived was located among the servants’ quarters, and from early morning, the air was filled with the clamor of slaughtered chickens and sheep.
Though he was a concubine-born son, he was still required to attend the ancestral rites—otherwise, people would have more to say behind his back.
Lu Huan washed his face with cold water, letting the chill drive away a bit of the lingering fever from his forehead, then turned and stepped out the door.
He was long accustomed to the looks thrown his way by the servants along the path, so he neither avoided nor responded to them.
The snow around Prince Ning’s ancestral hall had frozen into ice—bitterly cold and bone-piercing.
Illegitimate sons were not permitted to enter the main ancestral hall, so he could only kneel outside the gates.
He owned but a few sets of clothing—thin, patched, and ill-fitting.
His long-limbed frame had grown, leaving his wrists and ankles exposed; the pale skin showed beneath the frayed fabric. Mud and melted snow soaked through, turning his skin even whiter under the biting wind.
After a full half-hour, two sedan chairs appeared at last—blue silk canopies, lacquered red with silver fittings—coming slowly to a stop before the main hall.
Two young men, a few years older than Lu Huan, stepped down, treading on the backs of servants.
The shorter of the two was Lu Wenxiu. He glanced at Lu Huan and let out a cold snort through his nose.
Yesterday, he’d found an excuse to “teach” Lu Huan a lesson, expecting him to still be bedridden today—unable to even crawl up.
Yet to his surprise, this stubborn brat had gotten up anyway.
The sight of Lu Huan’s straight-backed posture as he knelt only deepened Lu Wenxiu’s irritation.
And when he met the boy’s eyes—though the youth’s face was pale from the cold, though his clothes were thin and shabby—Lu Huan still lifted his head, neither flinching nor looking away.
That look only stoked Lu Wenxiu’s fury further.
He was about to roll up his sleeves and continue yesterday’s “lesson” when his elder brother, Lu Yuan, pressed a hand to his shoulder.
“Wenxiu, this is the ancestral hall,” Lu Yuan said, shaking his head and scolding in a low voice. “Do not make trouble here. Whatever you have to do, wait until we return.”
Lu Wenxiu flung his sleeve in frustration, glaring fiercely at Lu Huan.
“Letting him go yesterday was already too kind,” he muttered.
Not long after, another sedan chair approached—a grand peony-patterned phoenix sedan and a noblewoman alighted.
She tightened her golden hairpin-studded fox-fur cloak around herself and said to the two brothers, “Why are you still standing there? Go in already.”
Once the brothers had entered the hall, the Princess Consort of Prince Ning turned to walk toward the side chamber.
Before entering, she cast a sidelong glance at Lu Huan, who still knelt outside.
Lu Huan’s face was expressionless.
He merely lifted his head and returned her look, calm and indifferent.
The Princess Consort had always regarded Lu Huan as a thorn in her eye.
If she could have plucked it out, she would have done so long ago.
Yet this boy of barely ten-some years—so stubborn, so hard to kill—had somehow managed to keep living until now.
───♡───
Two servants came over carrying food boxes, distributing meals to the guards stationed outside the ancestral hall.
When it was Lu Huan’s turn, the Princess Consort of Prince Ning raised her hand to stop them.
She spoke to him in a gentle voice: “The weather outside is freezing. Huan’er, if you don’t eat something, I fear you’ll go hungry. But on the day of the ancestral rites, one must not partake in food or drink. The servants are not of the Lu bloodline, so they are not bound by this rule. Yet you and your two elder brothers must lead by example. So, Huan’er, bear with it for now—you may eat once you return home.”
“You two,” she instructed the servants, “take the Third Young Master’s meal to his quarters.”
The two servants quickly nodded and bowed, then turned to leave.
“I’ll have the kitchen prepare something you like,” the Princess Consort continued, still keeping up the façade of a benevolent matron before others.
But the thin youth before her clearly had no patience for such pretense.
Though his stomach growled from hunger, Lu Huan stood tall, his cold face expressionless, not even bothering to respond.
Something he liked?
At best, that meant coarse grains and hard steamed buns.
The Princess Consort’s smile faltered for a moment. She forced it back, then, with the help of her maid, entered the side hall. Once inside, her face immediately darkened with irritation.
Snowflakes spun and fell, soon burying the long narrow path outside the ancestral hall.
Kneeling beyond the red walls and green tiles, Lu Huan’s shoulders and body were covered in snow, until he looked like a small snowman.
From within the hall came bursts of laughter.
Outside, the lane was silent and deathly cold.
The boy knelt motionless, eyes lowered, listening to the cutting wind whistle past his ears, feeling the endless, bone-deep chill seep into his flesh.
Day after day—for fourteen years—it had been like this.
Darkness and hatred slowly climbed up from the depths of his heart.
───♡───
Su Xi finished her homework with her classmates, and after seeing them off, her parents, too, arrived.
The moment they entered the hospital room, the aroma of black-bone chicken soup wafted through the air from the thermos her mother carried.
Su Xi instantly felt her mouth water. With delight, she cried out, “Mom! How did you know I was craving your soup?”
Mother Su set the thermos by the bedside, picked up two snack wrappers that had fallen near the trash can, and tossed them in.
“I told you not to eat junk food! How are you going to drink my soup after that?!” she scolded.
Su Xi, her leg still in a cast, cheerfully scooted to the edge of the bed, eyes glued to the thermos.
“My stomach’s big enough—I can still drink it!” she said eagerly.
Father Su tidied up the room while Mother Su pulled over a chair and sat down. She ladled the chicken soup into a bowl and handed it to Su Xi.
She even set up a small table on the bed so the bowl wouldn’t burn her hands.
“Then drink it all,” she said gently.
After finishing the soup and eating a bit of rice, Su Xi let out a satisfied burp, her stomach warm and full.
Her parents chatted with her for a while longer, helped her tidy up, then watched as she lay back down to rest.
Tucking the blanket around her carefully, they finally tiptoed out of the room.
Su Xi was a night owl—it was far too early for her to sleep.
Just then, she heard her phone buzz.
Reaching under her pillow, she fished it out and suddenly remembered—she’d nearly forgotten about her little character in the game.
She hurried to log in.
As soon as the game screen loaded, several messages popped up.
They were rewards from the “Repair Firewood Door” and “Thin Quilt” exchanges she’d made a few hours earlier.
Wasn’t that the thing the system had mentioned before—that if she accumulated ten of those points, she could exchange them for a koi?
Su Xi hastily closed the pop-up messages and was just about to study what all that meant when she suddenly heard approaching footsteps.
At the moment, she hadn’t yet unlocked any other screens, so the display was still fixed on her game character’s shabby woodshed.
The little hut was empty. The bedding was neatly folded. In-game, a whole day had already passed—it was now evening—and she had no idea where her little character had gone.
Wait—something was different.
Su Xi noticed that there was now a plain food box sitting on top of the wardrobe.
She tapped it with her finger.
The food box wasn’t steaming; just looking at it, one could tell it was cold and unappetizing. Who knew what was inside?
The footsteps outside the door drew closer and closer. Three seconds later, the door creaked open.
But the heads poking in weren’t her game character’s—they were two servants in coarse clothing. The one on the left had a name label floating above his head that read “Lu Jia,” and the one on the right read “Lu Yi.”
Su Xi: …
Was the game’s naming system this lazy?
Lu Jia and Lu Yi were both cartoonish paper-cut figures, and it was obvious their proportions were terrible—thick arms like lotus roots, big heads, and stubby legs.
Were these two here to steal something? But in this game, her little character’s hut was so poor—what could possibly be worth stealing?
While Su Xi was still puzzling over it, Lu Jia walked straight up to the food box, grabbed it, and said to Lu Yi with a shifty grin, “Since this is food sent for the ancestral rites—and the Madam specially had it delivered from the kitchen—this brat’s meal must be better than ours, right?”
Lu Yi’s mouth practically watered. As he spoke, the two of them opened the box together.
The moment they did, both paper-cut men froze.
And so did Su Xi outside the screen.
Inside the box—there was nothing good at all. Just some leftover scraps: a few limp, colorless greens drooping on top, and beneath them, dry bits of rice bran and stale steamed buns.
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