Western Xia Dynasty, Ganzhou, Yongle County, Longmen Town.
The ancestral home of the Cui family.
The dilapidated house had been neglected for countless years, half of it exposed to the elements, and not a single decent piece of furniture.
It was mealtime when the wooden gate of the courtyard was pushed open.
A gaunt, ghost-like man struggled and slowly crawled out of the courtyard. Exhausted, he lay down by the wood gate and stopped moving.
Not long after, Aunt Zhang from the town returned from working in the fields. When she saw him, she exclaimed, "Is that Jin Yi?"
Other neighbors came over to see, making a lot of noise.
"Oh dear, it really is Jin Yi, what happened to it?"
That face, once so beautiful it looked like a monster, now had no flesh at all; it looked like a skeleton, and its neck seemed so fragile it could break at the slightest touch.
Aunt Zhang couldn't resist, so she quickly went home and brought back half a bowl of porridge, along with a spoonful of brown sugar.
His husband, Old Zhang, frowned and said, "We don't even have enough to eat at home. The Cui family has given us so much money, but they don't care about him and just leave him here to fend for himself. Why should we do this?"
Aunt Zhang pleaded, "Husband, we'll just consider it an act of kindness...it's still a life!"
She knelt down, gently lifted Jin Yi's head, and placed the porridge near his mouth, urging him to drink it.
When Aunt Zhang saw his hands, they could no longer be called hands; they were just skeletal fingers.
After giving him half a bowl of porridge, Aunt Zhang didn't dare touch him, fearing she might break his arms or legs. However, in Ganzhou, the August winds had already begun to blow, and the ground was very cold.
Aunt Zhang asked Old Zhang to help carry him into the Cui family's ancestral home.
The two of them easily carried the person inside.
"Oh dear, what will we do now?" Aunt Zhang said, looking at the dying Jin Yi. "It's only been half a year!"
Half a year ago, someone from the main branch of the Cui family suddenly came from the capital. A luxurious carriage brought a young man in fine clothes to Longmen Town, gave him some instructions, gave Cui Fude, the head of a collateral branch of the Cui family, a bag of silver, and then never came back.
Longmen Town was dirt poor, and everyone was incredibly envious when they saw Cui Fude suddenly receive so much money.
"Old Cui, is this your master's family?"
Cui Fude said proudly, "Yes, it's the eldest son of Vice Minister Cui. We haven't seen each other for so many years."
The neighbor scoffed, "How many years has it been?"
Have you ever seen it?
Even the main branch of the Cui family doesn't recognize you, right? Vice Minister Cui has been an official in the capital for almost forty years and hasn't returned.
"How much money did the Vice Minister give you? It looks quite heavy." The neighbor's eyes were fixed on the silver, and Cui Fude hurriedly told his wife to hide it.
"The money isn't for us to spend, it's for this purpose." He pointed to the young nobleman who had come.
The young man was only seventeen or eighteen years old, tall and slender, with an astonishingly handsome appearance.
She has fair skin, long and narrow phoenix eyes, amber in color with a hint of brown, like the shimmering lake water under the setting sun. When she smiles, two dimples appear on her cheeks. She has a very beautiful and captivating appearance.
Most importantly, at seventeen or eighteen, a man should be of marriageable age. No matter what, he should have some worldliness in his eyes, especially since this young man in front of him doesn't look like an ordinary family's child.
But he only saw pure kindness, as harmless as a fawn.
Everyone immediately had some guesses.
So someone tentatively asked him, "What's your name? Where are you from?"
There was a hint of confusion in his eyes, and he asked innocently, "Name, oh name, hee hee..."
Everyone: ......
Turns out he was an idiot!
Cui Fude said, "Don't ask anymore. Everyone should be more tolerant of him in the future and stay away from him. Our clan said that he is the son of a wealthy family and should not be touched or beaten."
Later, as the young man ran around the town, everyone soon noticed that his fine clothes were gone, and he had been dressed in Cui Dalang's coarse cloth clothes.
Some people also heard Cui Fude call him "Jinyi", but they didn't know if it was "Jinyi", "Jinyi", or "Jinyi".
Anyway, everyone in town called him Jinyi.
At first, they were jealous of the fool's good fortune, his good looks, and his wealthy family background. But gradually they realized that no one came to visit him.
Cui Fude then hid all the silver given to him by the Cui family, and made Jin Yi eat gruel as well. He was only given one meal a day, and Jin Yi kept crying out that he was hungry.
Cui Fude got annoyed and, tapping his pipe, cursed, "You want to eat for free without doing anything? Just bear with it!"
Cui Dalang couldn't take it anymore, so he gave him a good beating, scaring him so much that he never dared to complain of being hungry again.
A person can only be beaten zero times or countless times. Since that first time, being beaten and scolded every day has become commonplace for Jin Yi.
His tattered clothes couldn't change his handsome appearance, and some girls in town would often linger around him.
Zhang Yingying, the daughter of the Zhang family who lived three households away from the Cui family, frequently visited the Cui family. Anyone who wasn't blind could see that she was trying to get close to Jin Yi.
Zhang Yingying was the most beautiful girl in town, and Cui Chenyun, the son of the village head, had long intended to be engaged to her.
Seeing Zhang Yingying getting closer to Jin Yi, Cui Chenyun was furious. He came to Cui Fude several times, speaking in a very unfriendly tone: "Second Uncle Cui, you're keeping an eye on Jin Yi. Can you afford to ruin Yingying's reputation?"
Cui Fude had always been trying to curry favor with the village head and Cui Chenyun, who was a constable in the county and also received a government salary.
With a gloomy face, Cui Fude said to Cui Dalang, "Lock it up."
From that time on, Jin Yi was locked up by Cui Dalang. Later, Jin Yi was starving and stole a boiled egg from Cui Dalang's son. Cui Dalang beat him to death, breaking his legs, and locked him up in the ancestral house to fend for himself.
When Cui Chenyun visited the ancestral home that time, he found that Jin Yi's leg was broken and he was unconscious on the dilapidated bed. His once alluring face was now filthy. He said nothing and turned away.
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