Chapter 54

Chen Jue also thanked him: "Thanks, I've got it."

Sharp-eyed Zhou Hehua caught their rare exchange and let out an "ooh": "Didn't think Huo Lin had it in him to be so thoughtful. You even took out the fish bones for him."

Zhao Chun quickly gave her a piece of fish: "Here, eat."

Zhou Hehua patted him: "Who said anything about you? I was saying Huo Lin's changed, huh—he was never this thoughtful before!"

Huo Jilin looked at her: "How would you know what I was like before? Ain't I supposed to be good to my man in our own house?"

Why was this woman so damn nosy? And sharp-eyed at that.

Zhou Hehua had nothing to say to that—she sure couldn't barge into their room to watch their married life.

Chen Jue tuned out their squabbling.

Huo Jilin was a far cry from the original Huo Lin. Even with the same face and the same cold stare, Huo Jilin's personality couldn't be contained—sooner or later, it would show his real self, and the villagers would catch on eventually that he was a whole different person.

Chen Jue, for that matter, hadn't hidden his own soul-swap from the get-go either. It's just that he'd lost his spouse then, and folks felt sorry for him, so nobody gave it a second thought.

Thanks to the good wine Huo Jilin bought and the big promises he dished out, the meal dragged on till the sun perched on the hilltop before folks finally headed home, already slinging arms around each other.

Zhou Dajiang slung an arm around his dad and said, "Pops, I'm gonna bust my ass with Dalin from now on, make bank! And look after you!"

Even the guy who used to be tongue-tied was shooting his mouth off now. He couldn't even recognize his own dad—go figure. Booze really works wonders.

"This boy drank so much he don't even know his own pa!" Aunt Zhang shook her head, chuckling as she cleared the plates.

Zhou Qingzhu turned to his dad too: "Pa, you alright? You still know who I am, right?"

Uncle Liu had gotten drunk this time too. While the others were busy being buddy-buddy and nobody was watching, Chen Jue had poured him a glass so he could have a proper toast with Zhou Qingshan.

Uncle Liu used to smoke a pipe, but he'd given it up since he couldn't afford the tobacco. But with that much weight on him, he needed an outlet—so drinking it was. Drown your sorrows, right?

For once, Uncle Liu didn't turn it down. He clinked cups with Zhou Qingshan and knocked it back in one shot. Chen Jue refilled his cup, and he downed that too. After three straight cups, he finally gave his son's shoulder a heavy slap: "Good, good, it's all good now. From here on out, everything's gonna be alright!"

Zhou Qingshan put an arm around his dad's bony back, eyes getting red: "Pa, you've had it rough all these years. I've been dead weight on you. From today, I'm gonna hold this family together."

Zhou Qingzhu held his little girl and said, "Yeah, let's bring sister-in-law home. She's been waiting on you all along. Let's make a real family again."

His sister-in-law never remarried. Life at her folks' place was rough on her. Last market day, she was selling her embroidered hankies, and she'd gotten so skinny.

Zhou Qingzhu didn't dare go up to her, but his sister-in-law had sharp eyes and caught him.

She grabbed him and asked how Qingshan was, how the kid was. Then she started crying mid-sentence. What mama don't miss her own kid?

Zhou Qingshan hesitated. Chen Jue poured him a drink, and he tossed it back. Setting the cup down, he wiped his mouth and said, "Okay!"

Whether it was liquid courage or the booze digging up feelings he'd buried deep, Zhou Qingshan finally owned up to what he really felt—he still missed his wife.

Once everyone was gone and it was getting dark, Huo Jilin led Old Horse Ancestor, who'd been tied up outside, into the new stable and said to it, "What do you think?"

The stable was brand spanking new, even had a stone trough. It wasn't up to modern standards, but given the circumstances, it was the best you could get—just like tonight's meal: plenty of grub and the strongest booze money could buy.

When Huo Jilin set his mind to something, he went all out.

So Old Horse Ancestor showed it was happy, poking its head out and snorting.

Chen Jue sat in the yard, watched the horse for a bit, then turned to look at the sunset.

The lively scene just now ebbed away like a tide, like it'd dragged his energy out with it. The warmth he'd forced himself to muster dissipated.

Tides rise and fall; gatherings and partings are perfectly normal. He couldn't only look at the lively moments, and he couldn't rely on the outside world to save him. He had to pull himself out of this—that was the only true self-rescue.

Chen Jue repeated this to himself over and over.

With depression, you had to look at life itself, merge yourself into nature, feel the changing of the four seasons, and accept the birth and fall of life.

After blooming comes withering. Only when the flower wilts does the fruit form. That's nature.

Accept this process. Accept that you will eventually die. No need to rush...

Huo Jilin stood by Old Horse Ancestor, watching Chen Jue. He'd been watching for a while now, and Chen Jue hadn't even noticed him.

Chen Jue's expression was very off. It had been off for days.

When there was no threat of a green hat, Huo Jilin was a very calm person.

In fact, ever since they'd returned from Chen Jue's parents' home, he'd sensed something was wrong with Chen Jue. But because of the green hat issue, they'd argued, and over the past few days, he'd simply decided to observe Chen Jue.

Now it was clear there was indeed a problem.

And that made sense—anyone pushed down the stairs to their death, then transmigrating to another world and finding themselves pregnant as a man, wouldn't be calm about it.

The fact that Chen Jue could accept it so calmly was itself the problem.

He would space out often. Sometimes when he came out to dry herbs, he'd stare blankly at the mountains while doing it.

Right now was the same. He leaned back in his chair, gazing at the distant mountains.

Motionless, both hands hanging empty. If not for the evening breeze lifting his clothes, you'd think he was a statue.

In the glow of the setting sun, his face was rendered too pale, like a pure portrait on sketch paper, drawn by an artist with crisp strokes, creating stark contrasts of light and shadow. And so he was like the silent mountains behind him in the sunset—half still, half buried deep.

Anyone seeing this scene would think he was in despair, but you couldn't approach him either, because the coldness in his eyes was enough to keep others at a distance.

The genius whose very bones were carved with arrogance, who had insisted on his views back then when countless people condemned him as cold-blooded under his papers.

Silent before his patriarchal father, because he no longer cared.

For things he didn't care about, he didn't even have the interest to give them a second glance.

As if he didn't belong to this world, as if he scorned it, he had unilaterally cut ties with it.

His personality was like his name—resolute. Better to be shattered jade than whole tile.

Huo Jilin's brow unconsciously furrowed. Before, when Chen Jue stood against him and disagreed with his opinions, he'd felt uncomfortable.

But now, discovering that Chen Jue couldn't even be bothered to speak, he felt even more uncomfortable—truly uncomfortable. A suffocating tightness in his chest that forced him to take a deep breath.

After the tightness passed, Huo Jilin walked to face Chen Jue, crouched down to eye level, and asked directly: "Feeling hopeless? Don't want to live anymore?"

His words cut straight to the point. Chen Jue's brow furrowed as expected, and he retorted, "You're the one who feels hopeless."

The retort came a beat late, like a delayed attempt at cover-up.

Huo Jilin looked at him seriously and said, "Was today not a happy day? Zhou Qingshan came to you himself, thanked you for your medical skills, acknowledged your skill—shouldn't that make you glad?"

He didn't let Chen Jue get a word in and concluded, "But you're not happy."

Chen Jue wanted to say he *had* been happy—and being happy at some point still counts.

But Huo Jilin clearly wasn't giving him a chance to talk.

He went on, "That day we went back to your family's place, I thought you'd be pissed."

This time he paused after speaking, and Chen Jue asked curiously, "What was there at my family's place to be angry about?"

Huo Jilin's heart sank. Just as he'd figured—Chen Jue didn't care about anything anymore.

"Those words your dad said that day—I looked into the backstory of this body of yours on the side."

"What backstory?" Chen Jue looked at him strangely. Was Huo Jilin so used to being a CEO in his past life that he had to run a background check on everyone?

Huo Jilin reached out and rested his hand on the armrest of Chen Jue's chair, looking at him and enunciating every word: "A wandering Taoist said you have weak ties to all six relations and bring bad luck to your kin. That's why, from your accident up to now, they haven't come to see you all this time."

Huo Jilin left out the part about "bringing bad luck to a husband"—after all, Chen Jue had already "brought him over" with his bad luck.

Good job, too. Bringing him over was a great move.

Honestly, it wasn't really a background check—he could've learned all this just by asking around the village.

Chen Jue's dad was a textbook chauvinist. After finding out he'd fathered a boy who brought bad luck to all six relations, he was miserable and took it out on Chen Jue and the mother who birthed him, always muttering stuff like, "Why did I have a jinx for a kid? You trying to kill me?" and similar words.

The villagers loved spreading these stories.

The Chen family, because their ancestors had been in the medicinal herb purchasing business, had some savings.

Even in the well-off Chen Family Village, they were considered loaded.

People always resent the rich, and the villagers were happy to watch the drama unfold, so they all knew Chen Jue's business and blew the rumors way out of proportion.

Chen Jue's dad believed it even more. Scared Chen Jue would bring him bad luck and kill him, he sent Chen Jue to a Taoist temple up in the mountains.

Even when Chen Jue turned fifteen—the age for matchmaking—he still refused to bring him home. Chen Jue's dad, with his lofty moral stance, said, "He brings bad luck to all six relations. Who would I marry him off to? Wouldn't marrying him off harm the other family?! Let him stay quietly in that Taoist temple and not come out."

If Chen Jue hadn't been saved by Huo Lin while gathering herbs, he'd still be in that Taoist temple.

This was the reason Huo Jilin had told Chen Jue before that he couldn't leave this place.

Chen Jue's family couldn't be his fallback. Chen Jue couldn't leave him.

This wasn't a modern society where an ID card could take you anywhere. With Chen Jue's current identity, forging a new path wasn't easy.

Chen Jue didn't know Huo Jilin was thinking about this. He only fell silent for a moment. Whether by coincidence or not, the original owner was much like him. He'd thought this life would be different from the last—that he'd have parents—but in the end, his ties to kin were still thin.

In short, he was an orphan. And that was how it should've been.

Chen Jue looked at Huo Jilin: "What are you trying to say?"

A background check always has a purpose, right?