RUHIP Chapter 003

“He, he is…”

Seemingly not expecting Lin Ye to suddenly ask him like this, Yun Xiaoshu was momentarily stunned, then stammered for a long time but didn’t manage to say anything. He felt that admitting such a person was his older brother was simply too humiliating.

Yun Jiu looked at Yun Xiaoshu lowering his head, and a trace of bitterness flashed through his heart.

“I’m his older brother.”

Upon hearing Yun Jiu’s words, Yun Xiaoshu immediately looked at him angrily and resentfully. He was tilting his head to look at Yun Jiu, so Lin Ye just happened to not see his expression. Therefore, at this moment, he didn’t hide it at all, and looked at Yun Jiu with eyes that were practically filled with hatred. Even Yun Jiu, who had long gotten used to being treated this way, was startled by this look from Yun Xiaoshu.

Yun Jiu had never thought that his younger brother would look at him with such a terrifying expression.

Lin Ye glanced at Yun Xiaoshu with displeasure and said, “Since he is your older brother, how can you speak to your older brother in such an overbearing and commanding way?”

Hearing the displeasure in Lin Ye’s tone, Yun Xiaoshu immediately felt extremely wronged.

What he had seen since childhood was his father and A-mo treating Yun Jiu coldly and indifferently. So he felt that acting like this wasn’t wrong at all. Over time, he hadn’t even called Yun Jiu ‘gege’ (older brother).

Now, suddenly hearing Lin Ye say that Yun Jiu was his older brother, Yun Xiaoshu instantly felt aggrieved beyond words.

“A-mo said that Yun Jiu is just an ox in the family, there’s no need to pay too much attention to him. Lin Ye gege, you’ve only just come to the village, you don’t know Yun Jiu’s situation. Once you know what kind of person he is, you won’t sympathize with him like this anymore.”

Lin Ye immediately found it laughable.

What kind of family treats their own child like an ox?

It couldn’t help but make him think of himself. Although he also looked after the whole family like an ox, at least everyone still treated him as a person. Perhaps due to this shared fate, Lin Ye couldn’t help but glance at Yun Jiu again, and instead felt even more disgusted by Yun Xiaoshu’s pitiful appearance.

“This snow is getting heavier and heavier. You’ve chopped so much firewood — you must be frozen out here, right? You’d better hurry back.”

Lin Ye looked at the snow that was falling heavier and heavier. He was an ability-user, and ever since his ability awakened, he no longer feared cold or heat. But ordinary people were different — staying out here for so long would easily lead to sickness.

Yun Jiu very obediently picked up the firewood on his back, then glanced at Yun Xiaoshu and was about to walk in the direction of home.

But Lin Ye didn’t speak to Yun Xiaoshu. People like him—who only know how to take and don’t know gratitude—were what he had loathed most in his past life, and in this life, he would rather die than have anything to do with them again.

Yun Jiu looked at the direction Lin Ye was heading, hesitated for a moment, then hurried to catch up and said:
“Um, the firewood over there is all gone. If you’re going to collect firewood, it’s better to go somewhere else.”

Lin Ye gave Yun Jiu a smile, then turned and walked in another direction.

After that, Yun Jiu returned home, and sure enough, got scolded by Yun Xiaoshu again.

When Yun Xu-shi saw her most beloved little ger with red eyes, he didn’t care about right or wrong, and immediately started beating and scolding Yun Jiu.

These past few days, Yun Jiu had been sleeping on the floor. In the dead of winter, even someone with a strong body couldn’t take sleeping on the ground. What’s more, he had been eating very little for days, while doing lots of heavy and dirty work — Yun Jiu’s condition was already very bad. Now after being beaten and scolded by his family again, he was even punished with no food for an entire day.
By nightfall, Yun Jiu started burning with a high fever.

The next day, when Yun Xu-shi called Yun Jiu to get up and work, Yun Jiu didn’t make a sound.

Yun Xu-shi started yelling in the courtyard, “Truly a lazy good-for-nothing. No wonder he was kicked back here. Ugly to begin with, and always sleeping in — serves him right!”

Yun Xu-shi cursed one sentence after another. The neighbors of the Yun family, who had been hearing her yelling every day lately, had long since grown fed up with it.

So someone walked up to the gate of Yun Dali’s house and said to Yun Xu-shi: “Enough already. Who in Yun Family Village doesn’t know that Yun Jiu is capable of working? You’ve been making him work every day these past few days, and he hasn’t complained even once. That kid is honest and hardworking. If he’s not up right now, he’s probably just exhausted. You should stop scolding him so much.”

The one speaking was Yun Yang-shi, the husband of Yun Erniu who lived next door to Yun Dali’s house.

Yun Yang-shi was four or five years younger than Yun Xu-shi, only about thirty years old this year. He looked fairly decent and was kind-hearted.

Yun Jiu had suffered since childhood in Yun Dali’s household — and he had seen it all along. Usually, the two families didn’t interact much, so Yun Yang-shi didn’t feel it was his place to say anything. But now that Yun Jiu had suddenly been sent back, and Yun Xu-shi had been scolding nonstop every day, it was giving everyone headaches.

Yun Xu-shi gave Yun Yang-shi a sideways glance. He had always been a sharp-tongued and mean person and looked down on this neighbor of his.

“Our family’s matters — you’d best stay out of them.”

As Yun Xu-shi spoke, he suddenly slammed the main door shut, his attitude unbearably arrogant.

Yun Yang-shi stared at that door and laughed angrily. This person really was unbelievably annoying.

Yun Xu-shi opened the door to the grain room and saw Yun Jiu’s face burning red with fever. He spat viciously and said, “Ptui ptui ptui, that Yang Xing’er really hit the mark — what a jinxing mouth. Good things never come true, bad things always come true with him.”

In the days that followed, Yun Jiu’s fever would go down for a while, then come back again — again and again, with no end in sight.

Yun Dali’s family was unwilling to spend money on medicine for him, so they found an old folk remedy and boiled soot from the bottom of the pot for Yun Jiu to drink. But Yun Jiu still showed no signs of getting better.
After serving Yun Jiu two or three times, Yun Xiaoxiang became impatient.

Yun Yushan, who had never interacted with Yun Jiu until now, suddenly thought of something at this moment. He pulled his A-mo aside and whispered for a long time. After hearing what Yun Yushan said, Yun Xu-shi suddenly became a bit hesitant.

“Wouldn’t this be too, too…” Yun Xu-shi dragged out her words for a long time, but still couldn’t say the phrase “too cruel” out loud. After all, the idea came from her own son — if she said it was too cruel, wouldn’t that be slapping her own son in the face?

But Yun Yushan showed little emotion. “If we don’t do this, and he ends up dying at home, who knows what the village will say about our family then? If I want to obtain a scholarly title in the future, reputation is extremely important.”

Thinking about her son’s future prospects, Yun Xushi gritted her teeth and agreed.

These past few days, Lin Ye had been tending to his flowers and plants every day. Although it was winter, there were still quite a few flowers and plants in his house — thanks to his wood-type ability, they were growing quite well.

When he first arrived in Yunjia Village, this house was built with the money he earned selling herbs.

Lin Ye’s home was built in the style of an old Beijing siheyuan (courtyard house): six rooms with blue bricks and large tiled roofs forming a rectangular shape. The courtyard inside was paved with bricks, so even on rainy or snowy days, it remained very clean and tidy. Entering from the main gate led to a corridor with a roof.

Lin Ye had placed several flower pots on both sides of the corridor, but since it was winter now, those flowers and plants were already gone.

Walking through the corridor brought you into the rectangular courtyard, which wasn’t very big — only around fifty square meters. In the center was a strangely-shaped large stone, which Lin Ye had moved there just because he found it interesting. Next to the big stone, about three square meters of land had been left, and Lin Ye fenced it off with a small fence, using it to grow some flowers and plants.

The room directly facing the stone was Lin A-mo’s. On the left and right of Lin A-mo’s room were two empty rooms each — meant for Lin Ye’s future children to live in. Lin Ye’s own room was on the left — a relatively large room — and next to it was his study. The kitchen was on the right side of the stone, where there were three rooms in total:
one for storing miscellaneous items and grain, another smaller one which was temporarily unused.

The reason Lin Ye was so well-liked, aside from his handsome appearance, was also because of this big house.
To wealthy people, it might be nothing — but to ordinary farming households, it was a “mansion.”

Wood-type abilities had many advantages — for example, they could accelerate the growth of many medicinal herbs.

Last time, Lin Ye had sold one He Shou Wu root¹T/N: Polygonum multiflorum root, a well-known traditional herb that is used as the main component of powders, decoctions or infusions for the treatments, along with some Banlangen²T/N: a traditional Chinese medicine used for its antiviral and antibacterial properties, particularly for respiratory infections and fevers and other medicinal herbs.

All together, the bits and pieces sold for nearly eighty taels of silver. Fifteen taels were used to build the house, thirty taels were used to buy three acres of good farmland next to the house. Then, in order to register his household in Yunjia Village, he spent nearly three taels of silver greasing the officials. After the house was built, he spent another tael or so to treat the villagers to a meal.

Now, Lin Ye had less than ten taels left on hand — the remaining twenty taels had been handed over to Lin A-mo.

Lin Ye spent money freely, and because of that, Lin A-mo had nagged him quite a bit — saying that those twenty taels must be hidden away properly, to be used later for marrying a ger for Lin Ye, which left Lin Ye both amused and helpless.

“Xiao Ye, Xiao Ye?”

Lin A-mo’s voice sounded from outside.

The green light in Lin Ye’s hand faded, and he quickly turned over and jumped off the bed.

“What is it, A-mo?”

As soon as he opened the door, he saw Lin A-mo standing outside with a worried look on his face. “Xiao Ye, something seems to have happened in the village. Can you go and take a look?”

Lin A-mo didn’t have good legs and feet, and there was still snow on the ground outside. He had heard the noise outside and was afraid that something might have gone wrong.

Lin Ye agreed and put on his coat to head out, but was pulled back by Lin A-mo.

“You’re already a grown-up, going out without properly putting on your clothes — what if you get sick? What will you do then?” Lin A-ma scolded him with his mouth, but with his hands he was buttoning Lin Ye’s coat properly. Only then did he let him go.

Lin Ye couldn’t help but feel a warmth in his heart.

Compared to Lin A-mo, those so-called relatives he used to have only knew how to order him around to do this and that. The blame lay in him being too strong — he hadn’t let those people suffer even the slightest bit in the apocalypse, which made them think the apocalypse wasn’t a big deal. He still remembered one of his nephews — insisted on crying and fussing for an egg. In an environment like the apocalypse, just for a single egg, he had run all over a small city.

This one wanted eggs, that one wanted milk — every single one of them treated him like a servant.

They would say that powerful people should protect the weak — and if you didn’t, then you were selfish and cold-hearted.

During that time, Lin Ye didn’t sleep for many days in a row, his eyes bloodshot from exhaustion.

And his weak and incompetent mother — other than crying, all she ever did was tell him to endure.

Endure?

In the end, they pushed him to death — and those people probably ended up dead themselves. He had no way to abandon his own biological parents, and his biological parents couldn’t abandon their own parents, and their parents couldn’t abandon their own children. So one family turned into a big extended family — and that big family grew larger and larger.

Everyone thought: he’s an ability-user, so he should go out and kill zombies, he should find food for them, he should work himself to death for their sake?

Everyone treated him with fake kindness, just to get what they wanted from him.

But no one ever asked — was he tired? Did he want to rest?

Tired.

I was tired.