Chapter 44 Twins from One Mother, One Life, One Death
The stream surface was as smooth as a mirror.
There are no antique pavilions or towers in the village; instead, there are mostly ordinary wooden houses with thick black tiles on the roofs.
The only bright spot was the ancient red bridge.
There were no lanterns lit all night, and lanterns were also rare. The people in the mountain village rested at sunset, and all was quiet.
Occasionally, the chirping of insects could be heard from the grass.
A piercing scream shattered the night in the mountains.
Lanterns lit up from all directions.
The sound was coming from a courtyard behind the red bridge.
"Let's go take a look."
Xie Wenjun grabbed Chen Liangyu's hand and walked across the red bridge.
The other houses around were dark, except for a wooden carved window that let in a dim yellow light.
Two shadowy figures were reflected in the window paper.
One person slumped to the ground, while another stood hunched over.
The old wooden door was half-open. Peeking through the crack, you could see the pregnant woman you had just met outside the pharmacy clutching her abdomen, with a pool of blood beneath her.
Presumably, "A-Yuan" is Ye Wei-Yuan, the eldest daughter of the Ye family of Jiuhua Mountain Villa.
Pei Danxing slowly knelt down.
Pain and despair intertwined in his eyes, his brows and eyes seemed to be twisted into a knot, locking away all the pain.
A low, suppressed whimper came from his throat.
A number of people gathered in the courtyard, whispering and hesitating.
"What happened between the young lady and the manor lord?"
"I don't know, and don't ask questions you shouldn't ask."
...
Hearing the commotion, the female thief who had just scaled the wall to enter the villa also rushed over.
She was still dressed in the same black clothes as during the day, with her face covered by a veil and her hair obscuring half of her face.
She strode over, pushed open the door, and as if to sting the still bright red blood on the ground, her movement froze in mid-air.
She paused abruptly, then quickly began rummaging through something.
Bottles, jars, and paper packets were scattered all over the floor. Finally, she pulled a white, flat, round bottle from her clothes, rushed to Ye Weiwan's feet, and fed her the medicine. Then, in a flurry, she righted a cup, added water, and fed it to her.
He muttered to himself, "Stop the bleeding, stop the bleeding first..."
Ye Weiwan only took a small sip of the half-cup of warm tea, just enough to dissolve the medicine pills.
Ye Weiwan pushed her away, spitting out the medicine. "I don't need your pretense. Go away! And don't ever come back!"
The female thief put another pill into her mouth, clamped her jaw, and forced her to swallow it.
"I will leave."
Her voice was hoarse from the smoke, "Today is the anniversary of Father's death..."
Ye Weiwan suddenly went berserk, "That man is your father, not mine! He only recognizes you as his daughter!"
Amidst her desperate screams, two streams of tears flowed down her face.
"Why? They were twins, and he chose to let you live while I died."
The female thief, Somo, was listless and completely unlike the bandit who robbed horses in the street during the day.
"I'm giving you back your home, your identity, and your appearance," she said.
"Return it? That was originally mine, why should you return it?" Ye Weiwan's face drained of color, turning sickly pale. "He doesn't acknowledge me, so I'll take what belongs to me myself."
She turned her gaze to Pei Danxing, "I want everything I desire."
Ye Weiwan reached out and touched Pei Danxing's face; their appearances, more than ten years apart, bore the marks of time.
She had loved the man who raised her since she was a child.
"Master, we will have children, we will have more. We definitely will!"
“Ah Wan…”
Pei Danxing closed his eyes in pain.
"Did you give her the abortion pills?" the female thief questioned Pei Danxing.
Pei Danxing neither said yes nor no.
He simply said, "A-Yuan cannot have this child. Her body cannot withstand such a huge strain from childbirth."
Ye Weiwan's lips twitched, and she tilted her head back, letting out a series of almost hysterical laughs.
She laughed at the hypocritical and callous person.
He personally brewed the medicine meant to kill their child, brought it to her, and said, "A-Yuan, be good. Drink it."
However, he was worried that her health was failing.
Ye Weiwan forced herself to drink that abortion pill. After all these years, she suddenly felt a little tired.
More than twenty years ago, Madam Ye of Jiuhua Mountain Villa went into premature labor. A day and a night passed, and the twins in her womb were still not born.
To bring good fortune to his wife and daughters, Master Ye went out to practice medicine and has not returned.
To save her unborn child's life, Madam Ye sent everyone else away, leaving only a trusted maid. She instructed the maid to prepare scissors and needle and thread, drew the bed curtains, and cut open her own belly.
Unexpectedly, the twins in her womb turned out to be freaks with two heads, four arms, and four legs.
One side of the waist and abdomen is connected.
The maid was terrified.
Madam Ye was on her deathbed and asked her maid to bring needle and thread to sew her up.
The maid was so frightened that her wound could not be stitched up properly. When Master Ye rushed back to the hospital, Madam Ye had already passed away, leaving behind a crying monster.
After searching through ancient medical books, Master Ye finally found a way to separate the baby's body when the child was six months old.
But only one can survive.
The larger baby had half of its abdomen cut off, and its cries gradually subsided until they were completely silenced.
Master Ye held the small body, took one last look at her, then placed her in a bamboo basket and handed her to an old woman.
To avoid affecting the lifespan of the living, infants who die young are not buried in the ancestral graveyard. Master Ye simply instructed someone to find a spot on the back mountain, dig a pit, and bury them.
Few people venture into the back mountain; it is a remote and uninhabited place. Occasionally, one might step on the remains of wild animals that have been gnawing on their prey, and the air is thick with the smell of decay.
Deep in the woods, the eerie cries of owls echo. Occasionally, a cold wind blows, rustling the leaves and withered branches.
It sends chills down your spine.
The old woman was frightened and carelessly threw the bamboo basket containing the baby's body under a tree.
That year, a major event occurred in Liangxi City: the Pei family of Lingxiao Manor was wiped out overnight.
Pei Danxing escaped by chance and hid in the back mountain of Jiuhua Mountain Villa.
This fatal disaster was caused by Pei's father's desire to curry favor with the powerful and wealthy, by presenting the court with a secret manual he had obtained from Dongyin. To avoid any mishaps, Pei's father had several apprentices practice the manual beforehand. Once he deemed it generally acceptable, he had the manual taken away, waiting for the new emperor to ascend the throne and regard him as a meritorious official who had helped him rise to power, thus bestowing upon him official rank and titles.
He had advised his father that this path was not the right one.
But the greedy father wouldn't listen to any advice.
Instead of receiving promotions and titles, he was met with masked assassins in black.
Pei Danxing crawled out of the cave where he was hiding in search of food. He saw the bamboo basket under the tree and assumed it was food that a fox hunter had brought with him when he went into the mountains to hunt.
Seeing that no one was around, he rushed over, grabbed the basket, and ran.
The wind whistled past his ears, as if someone was chasing him from behind, and he ran back to the cave without stopping.
Lifting the cloth covering the bamboo basket revealed not food, but a baby.
It appears to be a dead baby.
He was so frightened that he tripped and fell, hitting his head on the rocks. The impact seemed to cause him to hallucinate.
The dead baby in the bamboo basket seemed to let out a faint cry.
He mustered his courage and leaned closer for another look.
The baby's eyelids seemed to twitch.
As a young boy, Pei Danxing's clothes were always easily torn, so he always carried a sewing needle and thread with him. Fortunately, he still had the needle and thread with him when he fled for his life.
There are many medicinal herbs on the back mountain of Jiuhua Mountain Villa. He has studied medicine since childhood, so finding some medicinal herbs is not difficult for him.
He quickly stitched up the baby's bloodstained wound, applied herbal medicine, and used the relatively clean cloth in the bamboo basket that was used to cover the child to wrap the wound.
Without breast milk, he couldn't even get a bowl of thin porridge. So he cut his finger and fed the baby with his blood.
"Whether you can hold on or not depends on yourself," Pei Danxing thought to himself.
He had almost no hope that the child would pull through.
There is very little food on the mountain, but plenty of wild animals.
To avoid being eaten by wild animals, he carried a bamboo basket down the mountain and begged for food from house to house. If he was lucky, he might be able to get half a bowl of milk from a family with a newborn baby, which he would then feed to the little one in his basket.
Fortunately, the child survived.
He moved about the city discreetly during the day, and returned home at night to collect the remains of his family. He also lived in constant fear that the group of men in black who had slaughtered his family would find him.
Fortunately, no one pursued them anymore.
After his family members were buried, he continued to carry his bamboo basket.
He was going to another place to make a living.
Unable to beg for food on the road, he stole a steamed bun because he was so hungry. He was caught and asked for a penny for the bun. He couldn't pay, so he was beaten half to death.
Fortunately, he has always been lucky.
They encountered a traveling doctor who appreciated their talent and took them both back to his clinic.
He then became an apprentice at the clinic.
Life in the sect was not easy. Whenever he received praise from his master, he would be bullied and ostracized by his fellow disciples, both openly and secretly.
In order to have a roof over his head and porridge to eat, he began to learn to read people's expressions and flatter them. He did all the dirty and hard work by himself. In winter, he had to go to the frozen river to break the ice and wash everyone's clothes, shoes, trousers and socks. Every time he came back after washing, his hands and feet were cracked and his limbs were stiff.
When the baby girl grew to be a teenager, he took her back to Liangxi City.
The girl, dressed in clothes made from a burlap sack, followed behind him, carrying a basket to gather herbs. Her hair was styled in two neat braids on either side of her bun, and her clear, untainted eyes and brows resembled an elf fallen to earth.
Pei Danxing discovered by chance that this child had an exceptional talent for medicine, no less than he had been in his youth. Before the Pei family's misfortune, he was known as the "Little Divine Doctor."
After that, he consciously taught her to read and recognize medicine. She had a physical disability, so it would be best if she could learn a skill to support herself.
“Master,” she looked up at him and asked, “why are you Master and not Father?”
Pei Danxing smiled and said, "If Azhu wants to call me father, that's fine too."
She grew up in a bamboo basket, so Pei Danxing named her Azhu.
Zuo You and A Zhu were children he had raised; it seemed fitting that she called him "Father." And who else but him would be the one to escort her to her wedding in the future?
The girl said, "That won't do, I still want to marry my master."
Pei Danxing said, "No, that won't do. However, Master will choose a good husband for Azhu who will love and cherish you."
After he finished speaking, he noticed a hint of displeasure on the girl's face, so he hunted a pheasant and prepared it for her to eat at dinner.
He didn't remember the taste of that dinner.
When she woke up, she found herself lying naked on A-Zhu's bed, with traces of blood on the messy bed.
He suddenly sat up and shrank into the corner, startling the sleeping girl awake.
"Master, can we marry now?"
The girl smiled innocently, but Pei Danxing felt a chill run down his spine.
From then on, he and Ah Zhu ate separately.
He started teaching Azhu how to do laundry; previously, he had always hand-washed her clothes.
He would also bolt his bedroom door when he went to sleep.
Everything seemed to be in vain, because Ah-Zhu was pregnant.
He tricked her into drinking a bowl of abortion pills, killing their first child.
By chance, he learned that Madam Ye of Jiuhua Mountain Villa had given birth to twins, but now only had one daughter. Remembering that he had found Azhu in the back mountain of Jiuhua Mountain Villa, he wanted to find out if Azhu's background was related to the Ye family.
Just then, Master Ye came down the mountain to distribute medicine, and he took Azhu with him.
I saw Ye Weiwan, the eldest daughter of the Ye family, whose face was exactly the same as Azhu's.
Ah Zhu naturally saw it too.
She went to the manor to claim kinship, but Master Ye insisted that his wife had only given birth to one child and refused to acknowledge her.
Twins, one born, one dead. She clenched her fist.
That night, a fire broke out at Jiuhua Mountain Villa, and the villa owner, Ye, perished in the flames.
She watched the fire grow larger and larger, just like the hatred that had sprouted and grown wildly in her heart.
They are siblings from the same mother, so why does the person who looks exactly like her receive so much love and attention?
She watched as she rushed into the fire, trying to rescue their father from under the burning wooden beams, but was burned in the face by the falling flames and trapped under the bricks and tiles.
Bucket after bucket of water was poured on it, but the fire did not diminish in the slightest. No one dared to rush into the fire to rescue people.
Pei Danxing arrived and pulled "Ye Weiwan" out of the fire. Her ten fingers were blistered.
"A-Zhu, what have you done?"
For the first time in his life, he lost his temper with her.
“Master, I didn’t start the fire,” A-Zhu said.
She simply locked the door from the outside as the fire was lit.
"Also, my name isn't A-Zhu anymore. From now on, I'm Ye Wei-Wan. Master, I have a home now. Aren't you happy for me?"
She got what she wanted: everything about "Ye Weiwan"—her identity, her name, and her home.
Things kept collapsing and exploding in the fire, the thick smoke acrid and choking, making it almost impossible to breathe. The flames behind him continued to lick at the houses and trees, Pei Danxing's back was burning hot, but his heart was growing colder and colder.
It seems he didn't raise the child well.
"Master, marry me. Let's get married."
She said.
They weren't really married; they hadn't gone through the traditional wedding ceremony.
Sometimes, Pei Danxing wanted to let go of all the hatred in his heart and just want to warm wine and tea with her, to stay together and cherish each other.
He was tormented, yet he allowed Ye Weiwan to do as she pleased. His love had no boundaries.
But on the matter of having children, he never compromised.
Ye Weiwan is missing a kidney. Her body, in such a state, cannot withstand the ravages of pregnancy and childbirth.
Compared to losing his beloved forever, he didn't mind dying without children.
Pei Danxing held Ye Weiwan, who was covered in blood, in his arms and rested his chin on her forehead.
She no longer wanted to be called "A-Zhu," so he complied with her wishes and called her "A-Yuan."
After Ye Weiwan learned everything that year, she told her, "My nickname is Aying, and my mother's surname is Zhu. From now on, I will change my name."
shadow.
It's hard to say whether she or she is whose shadow.
For Pei Danxing, the biggest regret was that if those things hadn't happened more than twenty years ago, he might have been able to marry this girl properly and make her his wife.
Author's note: Thank you for reading this far!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com