Chapter 4
Chapter 4
The ongoing conversation between the parent and the child next door keeps stabbing Xiao Jingting right in his heart.
A burning sensation rises in the man’s chest. Knowing what that is, he quickly reaches to his chest pouch and takes out a jade pendent.
The pale cyan jade pendent immediately brings a surge of hope and joy in Xiao Jingting’s heart.
In his previous life, he owned a piece of family heirloom, a jade pendent just like the one he’s holding in his hand right now.
In the world he came from, various doomsday literary works prevailed and so did a theory about the so-called alternate universe.
Xiao Jingting once tries to confirm the genetic relationship between him and his family heirloom using a drop of his own blood. The second his blood touched the jade pendent, another universe indeed presented itself in front of him. At the time, the jade pendent opened up a space measuring merely one square meter, which amounted to be of no use. In this life, however, the other universe contains a patch of farmland, an underground spring and various plant seeds stored inside a ring by his former self.
Xiao Jingting goes through his memory once again and realizes that the previous Xiao didn’t have any jade pendent, which leads him to believe that the pendent was probably the reason why he traveled to this world.
All of sudden, he is taken over by a fit of overwhelming dizziness followed by nausea and a flood of uncontrollable craving gripping every fiber of his being, and finally, a powerful upsurge of blood in his throat. Xiao Jingting realizes his body’s addition to the Happy Powder is acting up, just like how any human body’s reaction to the recurrence of drug addiction he knows from his previous life.
Xiao Jingting keeps trembling violently as he curses the previous Xiao over and over again for getting addicted to the expensive and dangerous Happy Powder.
For a moment, he finds himself suspecting whether this is his due punishment for taking another man’s body. But if God can be his witness, he had always remained a law-abiding citizen in his previous life, yet he still traveled into a drug addict’s body and ended up suffering from that man’s mistaken.
For what’s worth, he is still alive, albeit miserably and even though he got himself into a loser’s body, things could have been much worse. Xiao Jingting tries to comfort himself this way.
Now all he needs to do is stick as long as he can and waits till this wave of addiction passes.
Xiao Jingting opens the door and sees Xu M’an, Xiao Xiaodong and Xiao Xiaofen having meal at the table in the middle of which there is nothing but a bowl of wild vegetable broth. Xiao Jingting’s appearance instantly leads Xiao Xiaodong to raise his alert, like a little hedgehog brandishing its spikes. The boy’s instinctive hostility and vigilant glare causes a guilty conscience on Xiao Jingting’s part.
With a slightly upset look, Xu Mu’an turns on his side from the table and pulls the two little boys behind him. Hiding behind his dad, Xiao Xiaofan keeps eyeing at Xiao Jingting with curiosity.
Seeing that his appearance has turned the originally cheerful mealtime shared between the three into a tense one, Xiao Jingting steps out of the door without saying anything.
Xu Mu’an feels a bit unsettled by the man’s silence.
Although Xu Mu’an seldom speaks to Xiao Jingting, he keeps himself informed of what his husband does every day because despite everything, the whole family’s livelihood is directly linked to the man of the house. Even though he knows about Xiao Jingting’s debauchery and his addiction to Happy Powder, he has nothing else to do except spending his days worrying about his husband.
From the members of a village family whose son works as a choreman at a pawnshop in town, Xu Mu’an learned that Xiao Jingting pawned off five mu of top-rate farmland, six mu of medium-rate land and four mu of low-rate land, which leaves him with only five mu of low-rate farmland.
After finding out what Xiao Jingting did about the farmland, Xu Mu’an was so enraged that he wanted to slap that man in the face, because the farmland is the only thing they can fall back on to make some money! Even if they didn’t do any farm work, they could have opted to rent the land to others.
Once again, Xu Mu’an feels frustrated about his predestined nature and can’t help but wish he were one of the wood people who are good at tending farmland, rather than being someone like him who have to make ends meet by doing things that are dangerous and risky.
“Dad, he’s gone. I can’t believe he just left,” Xiao Xiaodong says with a frowned and worried look. In his experience, it never bodes well when Xiao Jingting acts abnormally.
Xu Mu’an bites on his lips, thinking now that Xiao Jingting has been consigned to this remote place, it means he’s already been abandoned by his family. But this spoiled childe has refused to face reality and change his debauched lifestyle and instead, has kept his wishful thinking that someday his big and wealthy family would bring him back.
“He has an addition. Is it possible that he went outside to buy Happy Powder again? Wang Xiaole’s father also became addicted to that drug and the man sold his son,” Xiao Xiaodong is deeply concerned. Wang Xiaole’s father, the man he just mentioned, used to be a hired long-term help in the Xiao family. Back then when he lived in the Xiao mansion, Xiao Xiaodong and Wang Xiaole were buddies.
The boy’s suspicion toward Xiao Jingting keeps growing by the minute because of the latter’s unusual behavior just now. Xiao Xiaodong is more and more afraid that their so-called father is probably planning on selling his little brother, Xiao Xiaofan.
Xu Mu’an takes a deep breath, looking even more desperate. In fact, he was just thinking about the same thing as his elder son.
The man had thought about leaving this place with his two boys without Xiao Jingting knowing, but his indenture is still in that man’s possession. Even if he ran off with the two children, he wouldn’t be able to provide for them and end up becoming a runaway slave.
Xiao Xiaofan looks at Xiao Xiaodong and Xu Mu’an with an uncomprehending look, “Dad, big bother, has Father gone out to eat and drink again?”
Xu Mu’an takes a look at his younger son and lets outs another sigh before saying to the two boys, “Let’s just eat. We’ll talk about it later.”
Since Xiao Xiaofan is already full, he just eats a little soup while Xu Mu’an and Xiao Xiaodong finish all the rest of the food despite the unpalatable wild vegetables.