Chapter 1

Chapter 1

"001"

In the fifth year of the Dali era, Xiao Lancui died.

The youngest disabled Chief Grand Secretary in Dali's history, after five years of wielding absolute power over the court, coughed up blood and died on a winter morning.

This stemmed from his chronic leg condition, which forced him to take arsenic daily to dull the pain.

The pain that swept through his body quickly vanished, replaced by a flood of voices flooding in.

"Cuier, I'm your father."

"A man born with such a seductive look, just like your dead mother."

"Dad dotes on you so much! You're actually the bastard child of my dad and your dead mother!"

"Even if you were my real brother, I'd still despise you."

"Please, Dong Dong, don't tell anyone."

"Dong Dong, don't you love Dad the most? Then—die for me."

...

The clamor of voices roused Xiao Lancui, forcing his eyes open, his unfocused gaze slowly focusing on the pure white ceiling.

It wasn't his sedan chair, his mansion, nor the palace—it was a completely unfamiliar place.

In his dazed state, more unfamiliar knowledge that wasn't his flooded into his mind.

He had been transported into a book.

He had entered a novel about a wealthy family's adopted son, set centuries in the future.

But the adopted son he'd become—the Xiao Lancui who shared his name—wasn't the "adopted son" of the title. The true protagonist adopted son was the second young master of the Xiao family, Xiao Anfeng.

The story wasn't complicated—another case of a switcheroo.

In the original story, the adoptive father was gay. He'd parted from his beloved boyfriend for the sake of the family business. They reunited at the boyfriend's bedside in the hospital, where the dying man, in tears, entrusted his child—a baby boy under three months old—to him.

Around that time, the adoptive father's wife had just given birth to their second son.

A plan to swap one for the other formed in the adoptive father's mind.

He swapped his own biological son for his ex-boyfriend's, then brought his real son back under the pretense of adoption.

To make his wife dote more on his ex-boyfriend's child, the adoptive father deliberately let his wife's personal maid stumble onto the secret, making sure his wife knew the "adopted son" he'd brought home was his illegitimate child.

Then he openly showered Xiao Lancui with affection, blatantly playing favorites with the adopted son, making his wife jealous and bitter, so she hated Xiao Lancui to the bone while cherishing Xiao Anfeng all the more.

The adoptive father thought his secret was airtight, never realizing his eldest son had figured it out back when Xiao Anfeng was in elementary school.

The eldest son had always had an inexplicable soft spot for Xiao Anfeng since childhood. Once he learned the truth, he naturally kept it to himself, and at that moment, brotherly affection twisted into romantic love—he fell hard for Xiao Anfeng.

Thanks to the adoptive father's deliberate neglect, Xiao Anfeng grew up sensitive and fragile, feeling both distant from and jealous of Xiao Lancui. As a result, the Xiao family's fourth young master, who was obsessed with his "second brother," harbored a murderous hatred for Xiao Lancui, the "outsider" who'd wronged his second brother.

Xiao Lancui seemed to be the most favored in the Xiao family, but in truth, he'd lived under others' roofs since childhood, hated and plotted against by everyone, walking on eggshells.

But even so, the book's Xiao Lancui wouldn't have died at twenty. Yet every novel needs a push—a minor climax to move the plot along.

So on his twentieth birthday, the book's Xiao Lancui walked in on his most beloved adoptive father masturbating with Xiao Anfeng's underwear.

The book's Xiao Lancui fell into the water, ending his role in the original story with a death certificate.

It was at this moment that Xiao Lancui was transported into the book.

After the drowning in the original story, the Xiao matriarch and the fourth young master never showed up at the hospital. The other three had come to put on their act and left, waiting for the hospital to declare him dead. Now Xiao Lancui was alone in the ward.

This body had been lying there for two days. Xiao Lancui felt a bit dizzy, but he still managed to get out of bed.

His feet hit the floor, and Xiao Lancui felt a moment of daze, looking down to gently touch his legs.

At sixteen, he'd come in first on the imperial exam. Because he was exceptionally handsome, the old emperor personally demoted him to third place and betrothed him to a princess.

On the road back to his hometown to honor his ancestors, Xiao Lancui's carriage was spooked, plunging off a cliff with him in it. Xiao Lancui survived but lost the use of both legs.

Dali's laws explicitly forbade anyone with a disability from ever entering the court, and his fiancée was reassigned to his second brother.

Xiao Lancui wallowed in despair for a while, until he learned his fall from the cliff had been a premeditated plot.

On the day the princess married the Xiao family's second young master, the first auspicious snow of winter fell—a good omen.

Xiao Lancui, dressed in a white fur coat over blue robes, avoided the bustling crowd and wheeled himself to the side palace to admire the winter plum blossoms.

A figure darted out from the path and dropped to his knees before him with a thud.

"Top Scholar, I want to study."

The old emperor had five sons but hadn't yet named a crown prince. His youngest, the fifth prince, was born from a drunken night between the old emperor and a palace maid. Disgusted by the mother's lowly status, the emperor ignored the fifth prince completely, naming him "Ao" and never laying eyes on him again.

In the backstabbing depths of the palace, a prince of fourteen looked like a child under ten, shivering in thin clothing in the dead of winter.

Yet his dark eyes gleamed with ferocity as he knelt upright in the snow, like a small beast poised to strike.

Xiao Lancui gazed at Lu Ao, his thin lips cold as ice. "Say that again. What do you want?"

Lu Ao froze, meeting those clear, cold eyes, and gritted his teeth. "To be emperor."

Slender, almost translucent fingers reached out to him.

With a smile like melting ice and snow, he said to Lu Ao—

"Rise, Your Majesty."

From then on, he was Lu Ao's teacher and his strategist. When Lu Ao turned twenty-two, the old emperor died suddenly, and the new emperor took the throne. Xiao Lancui, disabled as he was, entered the court and became the youngest Chief Grand Secretary in history.

That very day, at Xiao Lancui's order, the century-old Xiao family was wiped out, erased completely from history.

Wielding absolute power and carrying out ruthless purges, he sent memorial after memorial to the new emperor, but they vanished like stones dropped into the sea, unable to shake Xiao Lancui's position one bit.

There would be time. Those who wanted to replace Xiao Lancui began to wait, believing power would eventually drive a wedge between the new emperor and his imperial tutor.

Yet three years passed, and the new emperor and Xiao Lancui's relationship stayed the same. Every year, the new emperor put out bounties for famous doctors and tried countless medicines to cure Xiao Lancui's legs, even issuing an imperial edict promising to split the realm with him if he were cured.

Back when Xiao Lancui's legs were crippled, the pain was agonizing, and only warm wine mixed with arsenic could give him a single peaceful hour of sleep. Taking arsenic every day, Xiao Lancui's health steadily declined. The imperial physician secretly reported to the new emperor, "Lord Xiao might not make it through this winter."

The new emperor left the palace that very night to search for medicine. The next day, Xiao Lancui received a pill delivered by a rider on horseback. After taking it, he vomited blood and died on his way to court.

So this is what it feels like to have legs, huh?

Xiao Lancui took a step forward, but whether it was because his legs had been disabled for so long that he'd forgotten how to walk, or because this body was too weak to support him, he fell to the ground.

A nurse heard the commotion and came in, only to witness the man in the hospital bed slowly sitting up. She gasped and stood frozen, unable to react.

The man who'd been handed a critical illness notice—was awake!

Xiao Lancui was back in bed before the nurse entered. The original owner of this body was in a bad way. Whatever he needed to figure out could wait until he'd dealt with the situation at hand.

Xiao Lancui raised his eyes, murmuring with a calm, confused air, "Who are you... and who am I?"

—simple, and the most effective approach.

The original owner had witnessed his adoptive father's shady dealings and was set up to "accidentally" fall overboard during a sea voyage.

To survive for now, he needed to "forget" all about it.

And then there was the matter of his personality, so different from the original owner's. People's behavior and thought patterns are all different. A day or two might not expose him, but over time, suspicion was bound to arise. It was hard enough to fool strangers, let alone a family that lived together day in and day out.

Amnesia as an excuse for a personality change—barely passable, but decent enough.

Within half an hour, three people showed up at the ward, not counting the hospital director and the doctors.

Xiao Lancui looked straight at the three of them. It was perfectly normal for someone with amnesia to study his supposed "family members."

His dry, chapped lips parted slightly. "Are you... Father?"

Xiao Jingli, pushing 50, had good genes and took care of himself. Dressed impeccably, he looked like he was in his early thirties—more like a brother to his eldest son, Xiao Liqin.

Xiao Lancui's question was aimed at Xiao Liqin. Xiao Liqin's forehead veins bulged, and he spat out four cold words: "I'm your brother."

Xiao Jingli studied Xiao Lancui for a moment, then stepped forward and took his hand. It was ice-cold, devoid of any warmth. His eyes welled up. "Son, I'm your father."

"Cough, cough..." Xiao Lancui coughed twice, his already pale complexion turning an even sicklier white. He apologized quietly, "Sorry, I really don't remember anything."

"It's fine." Xiao Jingli ruffled his hair, smiling with red-rimmed eyes. "Nothing else matters. What matters is that you're awake."

Xiao Lancui's gaze finally landed on the third person—the book's protagonist shou, Xiao Anfeng.

In the future, Xiao Anfeng would reclaim his ancestral surname and become Shen Anfeng, a rising star whose mere glance could shake all of Jing City three times over. He'd get tangled up with the other male lead and a bunch of supporting characters, eventually marrying the male lead in wedded bliss.

Their eyes met, and Xiao Anfeng spoke first. "I'm your second brother, Xiao Anfeng."

He was 21, a few months older than Xiao Lancui. Standing 182 cm tall with naturally flirtatious peach-blossom eyes, he always kept his buttons fastened to the top—an ascetic, elite style, exactly like his late father.

In the original book, Xiao Anfeng had no idea about the truth behind Xiao Lancui's fall into the sea at this point. He'd always viewed Xiao Lancui with a mix of jealousy and indifference. He only came to the hospital because Xiao Jingli told him to.

Back when Xiao Anfeng didn't know his true identity, he was full of reverence and affection for Xiao Jingli, doing everything he could to please this father who "didn't love him."

Xiao Lancui pulled his hand back from Xiao Jingli's grip, his face showing obvious wariness and tension. "I'm sorry, I still can't remember..."

Xiao Jingli turned to the hospital director, who signaled for a doctor to explain. "Mr. Xiao, before you arrived, we ran tests on your third son. The seawater affected his hippocampus, causing functional impairment. Combined with acute stress disorder from the fall, any number of factors could have caused the amnesia. These memories might come back, or they might never return. There's no cure for it right now."

The doctor continued, "Also, after falling into the sea, he inhaled a lot of seawater. There's now a shadow of infection on his lungs. Once his body can handle it in a few days, we'll need to run tests to confirm the infection. Only after the results come back can we formulate a specific treatment plan."

Xiao Jingli nodded. "The amnesia doesn't matter, but you have to treat his body and get him healthy."

The hospital director smiled obsequiously. "Rest assured, that's our duty."

Xiao Jingli turned back to look at Xiao Lancui, naturally tidying his messy hair. In Xiao Anfeng's eyes, his gaze darkened a few shades, his knuckles turning white from clenching.

"Don't worry, your father will handle everything. Your only task is to recover." Xiao Jingli said, his voice full of tenderness. "Nothing makes me happier than knowing you're still alive."

Xiao Lancui finally showed a hint of closeness. He quietly squeezed Xiao Jingli's hand, then quickly withdrew it, nodding with a look of embarrassment. "Mm."

Xiao Jingli first sent the hospital director and doctors out, then said a few more caring words before leaving with Xiao Liqin and Xiao Anfeng.

Xiao Liqin had only come to the hospital to see Xiao Anfeng. His beloved Xiao Anfeng had just entered his senior year and started interning at the Xiao Corporation, so busy that they could barely meet once in days. He had to endure his disgust and come to the hospital to see Xiao Lancui just to get a glimpse of him.

Now that he could leave, Xiao Liqin was the first to stride out. Xiao Anfeng, however, maintained his composure, though his smile didn't reach his eyes. "Third brother, rest well. I've requested leave from school for you. I'll come see you in a few days."

And he too walked out.

Xiao Jingli was the last. Like a devoted father, he gave Xiao Lancui detailed instructions several times before leaving. At the door, he suddenly turned back and called out.

"Dong Dong."

Dong Dong was the childhood name of Xiao Lancui in the original book, given because he was born in winter.

Xiao Lancui remained perfectly still. After two or three seconds, he slowly lifted his eyelids and looked blankly toward the hospital room door. "What did you say?"

Xiao Jingli smiled. "Nothing. Rest well. I'll come see you tomorrow."

Xiao Jingli went out and closed the door.

Xiao Lancui didn't let the confusion and helplessness fade from his face. He was accustomed to never showing any weakness, even when alone.

This body was truly too weak. He rested for a while, then threw off the covers and got out of bed again.

This time he was fully prepared. Being able to walk again after so many years, he was inevitably as clumsy and unfamiliar as a newborn. At least he wouldn't fall again. Slowly walking into the bathroom, he finally saw his new body in the mirror.

No wonder he had been reborn into the body of Xiao Lancui in the book.

Apart from sharing the same name, their appearances were also similar.

He had taken poison for years, leaving him gaunt and pale, every bone visible against his skin.

The Xiao Lancui in the book was the same—his biological mother, Mrs. Xiao, had been feeding him slow-acting poison since childhood. At the most youthful age, 182 cm tall, his frame was far thinner than his peers, skin and bones. Even the not-oversized hospital gown hung loose and baggy on him. His face was smaller than a palm, making his naturally striking black eyes appear overly large, their pupils pitch-black and lifeless—a hollow shell without a soul.

"Rest in peace."

Xiao Lancui moved his lips silently, speaking to his reflection in the mirror, and to the innocent young man who had died unjustly.

"Your revenge—I'll take it from here."