Xie Jiuan watched as Ji Yunsheng picked up the silver ornaments, wiped them carefully, and finally hung them on himself with a beaming smile. Xie Jiuan nodded.
"His mother made them for him by hand. His mother is dead."
Gu Jiangyue's eyes were full of doubts. Xie Jiuan had never voluntarily mentioned Ji Yunsheng's background before, but he felt that Ji Yunsheng would approve of him talking about it.
Ji Yunsheng was abandoned at birth and didn't even have a name. He wandered the streets and endured all kinds of humiliation. The most common words he heard were "born but not raised by a mother". Unwilling to accept such a fate, he tried every means to get into a family.
The mistress of the family was kind to Ji Yunsheng, but even so, his life was far from good. There was a young lady in this family named Ji Niandie. She disliked Ji Yunsheng and either beat or scolded him.
Ji Yunsheng never resisted. He was afraid of provoking conflicts, but that night, all the six or seven dozen people in the family died.
That night, the mistress noticed the mottled scars on Ji Yunsheng's arm, a mixture of old and new ones, hideous and terrifying. There wasn't a single unblemished piece of skin on his body wherever his clothes could cover.
The mistress truly felt sorry for him and treated him well. So she took Ji Yunsheng to argue with the master of the family, hoping that he could discipline Ji Niandie. When they arrived, they just saw Ji Niandie snuggling beside the master.
Ji Niandie's innocent face was full of smiles and she looked very cute, but the words she said made Ji Yunsheng feel as if he had fallen into an ice cellar.
"Daddy, I like Ji Yunsheng. I want him to serve me by my side for the rest of my life and be my dog. Okay?" Ji Niandie shook the master's arm and kept coquettishly pleading.
"Okay, okay, okay. He's just a family servant anyway. Whatever you say goes, Die'er."
Ji Yunsheng had never felt like this before. His heart seemed to shatter completely at that moment. He thought that as long as he endured, things would get better, but the hardships he endured were like a bottomless pit, slowly devouring him bit by bit.
The mistress was also in disbelief. She rushed forward to argue with the master, but was slapped to the ground by him. Ji Yunsheng could see her red - rimmed eyes and the eyes full of tears, but she still stubbornly tried to reason for Ji Yunsheng.
"He's just a child. How can you ruin his whole life?"
Her desperate roar only earned her another heavy slap. That night, Ji Yunsheng supported the staggering mistress back to the courtyard.
The mistress seemed to realize something. She quickly finished the clothes she had made for Ji Yunsheng. It was originally a gift for him when he came of age. She hung silver ornaments of all sizes on Ji Yunsheng's clothes and sent him out through the back door in the dead of night. By then, she was already in floods of tears.
"Yunsheng, once you're out of this door, just run. Never look back. Take these silver ornaments as travel expenses. Hurry up."
Ji Yunsheng hugged the clothes tightly in his arms. He didn't know how those people would react when they found out he had run away, and what would happen to his mother.
"Mother, come with me."
When the mistress heard Ji Yunsheng call her "mother", her tears gushed out like a broken dam. She sobbed softly, trying her best not to make a sound. Finally, she stroked Ji Yunsheng's head and then closed the door.
Ji Yunsheng remembered his mother's teachings and kept running. However, his constantly trembling legs showed his unwillingness and fear.
Just when Ji Yunsheng thought he could escape, he met the person he hated most in his life, the former master of the Medicine King Valley. Ji Yunsheng was stopped by him. Since the master had just recovered from a serious illness, he was looking for an excellent medicine ingredient, and Ji Yunsheng just caught his eye.
The valley master bent down to look at Ji Yunsheng. His voice was surprisingly alluring and gentle.
"Little friend, what's your name? Come with me and I can fulfill one of your wishes."
The naive Ji Yunsheng really thought he would help him. He urgently pointed in the direction he had just come from and shouted anxiously at them.
"I'll go with you. Please go and save my mother!"
As soon as Ji Yunsheng finished speaking, he saw the smug smiles on the lips of those people. By the time he realized what was going on, it was already too late.
As a medicine ingredient for the valley master, one couldn't have any attachments. Any attachment would become a future trouble, including relatives.
That night, the sky was filled with fire. The people from the Medicine King Valley killed more than sixty people in the Ji family. Blood spread in the spacious courtyard. The bright scenes just now disappeared without a trace, taking away the gentle and serene mother in his memory. Ji Yunsheng felt as if he had also been killed among those sixty - odd people and would be forever dead beside his mother.
Ji Yunsheng held on to the last glimmer of hope and kept searching in his mother's room. He did find someone, but it wasn't his mother. It was Ji Niandie, whom his mother had desperately protected under her body. Even so, his mother didn't abandon Ji Niandie.
When Ji Niandie saw Ji Yunsheng, she harshly questioned him.
"Why didn't you die! Why!"
Ji Yunsheng covered her mouth and said warily.
"If you keep shouting, I'll kill you."
Ji Niandie bit hard on Ji Yunsheng's hand, and her shouting didn't stop. But Ji Yunsheng still didn't kill Ji Niandie. In fact, he had never hated Ji Niandie. He only hated himself for not being able to protect his mother.
Ji Yunsheng secretly let Ji Niandie go behind everyone's backs. Then he went to find the master of the Medicine King Valley.
He became the personal disciple of the master of the Medicine King Valley, but he was unwilling to learn how to heal others. He only learned how to kill people with poisons and gu worms. The person he most wanted to save was already dead, so he wanted to take revenge.
Ji Yunsheng waited for ten years before finally saying those words.
"My unfulfilled wish back then was to see you die."
The cold light shone in the silent night. Ji Yunsheng killed the valley master. He always wore the clothes his mother had made for him. He wasn't a child born but not raised. He had a mother who was very kind to him. And not a single one of the silver ornaments on that clothes had ever been lost or used, even when Ji Yunsheng was on the verge of starvation.
Gu Jiangyue looked at Ji Yunsheng. She paused for a moment, then pulled Xie Jiuan and walked up to Ji Yunsheng. Ji Yunsheng was a bit confused.
"What are you doing?"
Gu Jiangyue didn't answer Ji Yunsheng in a hurry. Instead, she bent down, picked up the nearest silver ornament, and put it into Ji Yunsheng's hand. The moment the silver ornament landed in his hand, Ji Yunsheng seemed to realize something. He immediately turned his head to look at Xie Jiuan.
"You told her everything!?"
Xie Jiuan nodded at Ji Yunsheng, rarely being so honest.
"Yes."
While they were talking, Gu Jiangyue picked up two more silver ornaments and gave them all to Ji Yunsheng. Seeing Gu Jiangyue like this, Ji Yunsheng didn't say anything more. He just waved his hand.
"Forget it, forget it. It's not a big secret anyway. Since you've told her, so be it. But you have to treat me to a meal. I've lost weight from hunger."
Ji Yunsheng hung the silver ornaments on his body. His body was once again full of them as before. Every time he moved, there would be a series of clear sounds. Ji Yunsheng naturally put his arm around Xie Jiuan's neck. Xie Jiuan was staggered by the impact but still smiled. Then he took Gu Jiangyue and walked with Ji Yunsheng.
After all this time of preparation, Gu Zhengwan was finally dealt with. With what had happened to the Gu family today, surely no one would accept Gu Zhengwan anymore.