Gong Ze: …
Having just transmigrated, Gong Ze shook his head to clear it, frowned at the young boy, and asked, “What terrible thing has happened?”
The boy answered bluntly: “Your father is dead!”
Gong Ze: …
The boy: “Your brother is dead too!”
Gong Ze: …
The boy: “Haha — how wonderful!”
Gong Ze: …
Unsure whether to slap this cheeky brat, Gong Ze later learned that the child’s joy was indeed warranted.
Especially for him, it was wonderful news.
·
The mouthy little boy was the original owner’s — that is, this world’s villain’s — personal servant. Though with the reforms and opening up, people didn’t call them that anymore, the meaning was the same.
Even in modern times, people still had others serving them — like personal assistants or nannies.
But perhaps that metaphor is a bit insulting. Putting that aside, let’s talk about the world Gong Ze had just transmigrated into.
This world’s vile villain was the younger son of the wealthy Gong household in Fenshan Village.
His biological mother was Old Master Gong’s concubine.
In the early days, polygamy wasn’t illegal. Later, it became illegal, but the villain’s biological mother didn’t live to see that — she died beforehand.
The villain’s mother was beautiful. Old Master Gong adored his young, pretty concubine. The original wife, the old lady, was furious and treated the concubine harshly.
In the old era, concubines had a terrible lot.
There was a saying: if the legitimate wife spat in the concubine’s face, the concubine couldn’t even wipe it off. She had to wait for the spittle to dry on its own.
Every day, she had to kowtow to the legitimate wife.
The legitimate wife had the right to sell the concubine at will.
The kind of concubine depicted in TV dramas who struts around and lords it over the wife was extremely rare.
The legitimate wife had vicious, formidable ways.
In his childhood, the young villain and his mother had been tormented by the old lady and the old lady’s son.
Later, his mother died of illness, and he was left alone to endure the old lady’s hostility and mistreatment.
Was it possible for him not to harbor resentment?
Once, the villain had nearly been beaten to death by the eldest son. Only then did Old Master Gong find it unbearable.
After all, he was still his child.
So Old Master Gong sent the young villain away to study, far from the old lady’s clutches, for his own survival.
Later, when Gong Er returned, having completed his studies, he had knowledge, intelligence, and a handsome, impressive appearance — completely overshadowing his lecherous, trouble-making elder brother.
The old lady dreamed of strangling him even in her sleep.
But she didn’t know — the villain was no longer the child she had once bullied.
As the villain looked at Old Master Gong, the old lady, and his elder brother, a subtle smile curled on his lips…
·
“Second Master! Second Master! Why are you spacing out? Hurry to the front courtyard! Today is your lucky day!”
The young boy covered his mouth and urged him excitedly in a whisper.
He interrupted Gong Ze’s train of thought. Gong Ze glanced at him.
The boy’s name was Shuisheng — quite a sharp kid.
“You’re right.”
The old lady, wary and suspicious of Gong Er, had deliberately excluded him from the “good luck” ceremony for her own son, afraid he might try something.
So while his elder brother’s wedding was happening out front, the villain was confined to his own room, keeping out of sight.
Gong Ze stood up with Shuisheng’s help. “Let’s go.”
·
The entire village of Fenshan Village was in an uproar that day.
The wealthy Gong household had found a woman to bring their eldest son good luck, but before the ceremony could even be completed, the eldest son had died.
The wedding had turned into a funeral.
The red silk and red lanterns newly hung that day were replaced with black-and-white cloth and white lanterns.
Two men from a wealthy household had passed away at once. In the old days, men and women were not equal. Without a man to support the household, it was hard for the women left behind to hold onto the family’s wealth.
The villagers who hadn’t gotten to eat wedding feast but still got to eat funeral feast clicked their tongues.
While pulling at the white cloth and helping with the busy work, their mouths didn’t forget to chat.
“I said it didn’t count without a marriage certificate. See? The good-luck charm didn’t work. Eldest Gong still passed away.”
“Even if Eldest Gong is gone, there’s still Gong Er. The Gong family still has a male heir. Otherwise, all that wealth would be taken away by the officials, and the local thugs alone would be enough to cause trouble.”
“Gong Er is smart and accomplished, but it’s a pity he was born to the concubine. The old lady kept him so suppressed that he wasn’t even allowed to come to the feast. Now, he’s finally able to hold his head high.”
Everyone gossiped.
After a while, a young boy from the Gong family ran out and shouted, “Second Master is here!”
The crowd immediately looked over with curiosity.
The man who stepped over the threshold of the main hall wore a neat, grey-blue Zhongshan suit. His jet-black hair was slicked back with pomade, revealing a clear, defined hairline.
He walked through the gate in trousers and leather shoes.
Beneath a pale, cool-complexioned face, his long, narrow eyes — resembling the eyes of Buddha in Tang dynasty murals — were pitch black, carrying an aloof, detached compassion that set him apart from the crowd.
He was as elegant as a crane, as steady as a mountain.
Who would have thought such a man — so striking in both bearing and appearance — existed?
The crowd, watching the usually unseen Gong Er, forgot to breathe.
Only then did they remember that the former master had sent the younger son away to study to prevent the old lady from killing him.
In those days, people held a certain awe for intellectuals.
The gossips from moments ago tugged at their dusty, soiled clothes, suddenly feeling awkward, and clamped their mouths shut.
The old lady sat in the main hall.
Two elderly maids rubbed her back and arms.
Both the patriarch and the eldest son had died on the same day. Even after fainting, the old lady had been prodded awake and forced to sit at the head to preside over the funeral arrangements.
Seeing the dazzling Gong Er enter, the old lady felt so enraged she nearly spat blood.
It was precisely because she knew how outstanding this non-biological younger son was that she had kept him confined to the back courtyard — to prevent him from outshining her own son.
But now, with only this male heir left in the household, she had no choice but to let him come out.
No matter how much hatred she felt, the old lady still had to put on a tearful act. She extended her hand and called out, “Second son…”
Hearing this sorrowful, aged call, Gong Ze’s brow twitched. Then he hurried forward a couple of steps and took the old lady’s hand. “Mother.”
The old lady wept, “Your father and your elder brother are gone. Our family will have to rely on you from now on.”
She had been pretending at first, but by the end, the sorrow became real.
“Don’t worry, Mother. I will take charge of Father and Elder Brother’s funerals. I’ll see them off with the proper pomp and ceremony.” Gong Ze pretended to grieve, his eyes red.
“Good, good. Then I can rest easy…”
When the coffins arrived and the mourning hall was set up, the sight of the two coffins overwhelmed the old lady with grief. But instead of calling for her husband, she cried out, “My son—”
She wailed a few more times, then fainted again in the arms of the old maids.
The people around her were in chaos, lifting her and carrying her out.
With the head of the household out of the picture, the village chief and the respected clan elders exchanged glances, then stepped forward to speak with Gong Ze.
The sharp-witted Shuisheng, standing beside Gong Ze, rolled his eyes and said, “Second Master, sit down. Don’t be upset. If you faint from grief, who will our family rely on?”
Then, moving quickly, he guided Gong Ze into the high master’s chair.
As soon as Gong Ze sat down, his new position as head of the household was sealed.
Gong Ze glanced at the fawning, smirking boy, then turned and spoke unhurriedly to the waiting elders.
“Everyone, please don’t be anxious. Everything is chaotic in the Gong household right now. I will have to rely on the village chief and the clan elders for guidance on the proper protocols…”
At the same time, he called out in his mind:
“System.”
[Ding——]
[World jump complete. Your system is now online. Hello, System Hello Big is at your service.]
Accompanied by two classic electronic chimes, a little golden ball with long chicken wings popped out.
The moment the system saw Gong Ze, it went crazy.
[You still have the nerve to call me?! You heartless bastard, aaaaaah!]
Seeing the little system, Gong Ze narrowed his eyes with a guilty conscience. “…What did I do?”
[How can you even ask?! In the last world, if you had just listened to me, it wouldn’t have failed. But at the last moment, you had to cause trouble! And that’s not all — after you failed and left, the next strategist should have come in to continue the mission.]
[But instead, you slaughtered everyone in that world, leaving nothing but the title!]
[And then, right at the very end — you even killed the title! Waaah waaah waaah.]
The system clutched its head and wailed.
Gong Ze: “…”
Gong Ze: “…What was the title?”
The system sniffled: [The Life of Sang You.]
Gong Ze: “…”
After a moment of silence, Gong Ze placed his hand on the little golden ball’s head and patted it gently. “…Don’t cry. Isn’t there still ‘a life’?”
System Nǐ Hǎo Dà: …
System Nǐ Hǎo Dà: …Waaah Q皿Q!
Are those human words?
Are they? Are you even human?!
The scumbag’s tenderness was always perfunctory. After a casual pat-ruffle, he said, “Give me all the data. Be good.”
Damn.
After cursing the scumbag Gong eight hundred times in her heart, System Nǐ Hǎo Dà tearfully transmitted the background information to Gong Ze’s mind.
Gong Ze flipped through it.
The current historical period had not yet experienced the massive “rustication” movement or the Cultural Revolution. Telegrams, televisions, telephones, and cars were just beginning to appear in the big cities.
There were plenty of bicycles, though.
After all, it was the 19XXs.
Gong Ze joked, “So the title could be ‘Reborn in the 90s, I Got Rich’?”
Because this era was the best time to get rich, to grab opportunities.
The system: …There’s a one-digit difference between these two ’90s, okay?
At the beginning of the story, the protagonist bottom — a starving, homeless little beggar — wanders to Fenshan Village.
The protagonist bottom’s name is Lu Youling.
His family met with disaster; everyone died, so he started wandering.
In this era, there were too many people like Lu Youling, as wars raged everywhere.
Entire villages had been massacred.
The protagonist bottom, Lu Youling, had a face as beautiful as a woman’s. To avoid harm while wandering, he always smeared dirt on himself.
Just as he was about to starve and pass out, he heard a middle-aged man sighing and speaking to someone nearby.
The man said he was looking to buy a girl of a certain age and birth date to bring good luck to the master’s eldest son, but after searching for a long time, he hadn’t found anyone.
Desperate for a bite of food to survive, Lu Youling summoned an astonishing burst of will to live and lunged forward. He was so hungry his voice was thin and weak, sounding like a girl’s, and claimed to have that birthdate. Then he passed out from hunger.
Normally, the steward would have been suspicious.
But he couldn’t find a suitable person anywhere, so — with a glimmer of hope — he brought Lu Youling back anyway.
Gong Ze and the system had seen the rest.
[Maybe that Taoist priest wasn’t lying. He did predict the day the eldest son would die. We just don’t know whether the good-luck charm failed, or if it was because Lu Youling lied about his gender and birthdate.]
The system said.
Gong Ze flipped to the next page of the plot and raised an eyebrow. “He’s pretty clever.”
After eating his fill, Lu Youling survived. Trembling, he dressed as a woman and put on the wedding gown. To avoid exposure, he spoke as little as possible, taking things one step at a time.
But who could have known — the moment he entered the house, the man he was supposed to marry dropped dead.
He knew that if his male identity were revealed, they would blame the death on him and beat him to death.
He tried to run while the Gong family was busy with the funeral, but nearly got caught by the villagers helping out. He could only retreat anxiously and continue to pretend to be a woman, living on in the Gong household.
When the old lady saw him eating and drinking well while sulking in silence, she vented her grief over losing her son and her resentment onto Lu Youling.
He hadn’t even gone through the ceremony — there was no feast, no marriage certificate — yet the old lady insisted he become a widow for her son.
Later, she felt it was too annoying that Lu Youling was living so well while her son was alone and miserable in the underworld. She even wanted him to be buried with her dead son in a ghost marriage.
Lu Youling didn’t want to.
But he was just a beggar they had picked up, an outsider — helpless and alone in Fenshan Village.
In a desperate moment, he pointed at the villain, Gong Er, and claimed that he was already carrying Gong Er’s child.
Everyone was shocked.
The old lady nearly died of rage.
The villain, Gong Er, of course denied it. But until the truth could be verified, no one dared to act rashly.
So they simply locked him up.
Lu Youling knew his lie wouldn’t hold up — one touch from a doctor’s pulse and it would be over. So that night, after a series of thrilling, dangerous maneuvers, he escaped the Gong family’s watch and ran…
Thus encountering the protagonist gong.
Gong Ze hadn’t finished reading the rest of the story when Shuisheng ran in from outside.
“Second Master, you’d better come quickly. The old lady is making a scene. She’s insisting that the bride, that Lu someone, either pay with her life or become a lifelong widow for the eldest master.”
Gong Ze stood up.
It’s the plot!
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