Blame the Villain – Chapter 36

The Villainous Poor Student (1)

Determined True Daughter Self-Made Entrepreneur x Black-Hearted Lotus Villain Poor Student

When Song Xuyi next woke, she found herself kneeling beside a grave mound.

            

Before her stood three newly made graves side by side, their yellow earth only just heaped over, the ground strewn with yellow paper money.

Song Xuyi shivered. She glanced around—there was no one else in sight. The sun had already sunk to the west, and thick clouds pressed down on the horizon, threatening rain. Mountains rose on all sides, and a river wound out from between the layered peaks, flowing toward the distance.

Along the riverbank lay a small village of perhaps a hundred households.

            

Winter. Bereavement. Dusk. An old village.

That was all the information Song Xuyi could piece together for now.

It was a while longer before the System came back online.

            

“Xuyi, I’m sorry!”

The moment Song Xuyi heard the System’s familiar opening line, she knew things were bad.

Sure enough, the System continued: “We’ve encountered another unknown attack…”

            

The System seemed to want to say more, but paused and stopped.

“You’ve arrived in this small world over a decade earlier than expected.”

Earlier was better than later!

            

Song Xuyi breathed a sigh of relief. Arriving early actually gave her more room to maneuver.

Only…

“You said before that you’d found the cause of the unknown attacks. Why have we been hit again…?”

            

It seemed that every world she entered, the unknown attacks followed Song Xuyi. Once or twice was manageable, but three times was too many—and this was already the third.

The System fell silent for a long time—so long that Song Xuyi thought it wouldn’t answer at all—before finally speaking, its voice hesitant.

“Xuyi, brace yourself. We may face many difficulties from here on—”

            

“Because I’ve discovered that the unknown attacks… seem to be coming from the Main God…”

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This was indeed bad news for Song Xuyi.

Why would the Main God resort to attacks against her?

            

She had already become a Task-Doer, meat on the Main God’s chopping block to be carved as he pleased. There was no need for such tricks…

But Song Xuyi had lost her usual memories and didn’t know what agreement she had reached with the Main God. Even if she sensed something amiss, there was nothing she could do.

“I’ll minimize contact frequency with the Main God until we understand everything,” the System consoled Song Xuyi. “Perhaps I’m imagining the worst. The Main God may just be experiencing a temporary system malfunction, and everything will be fine from here on…”

            

The System transmitted the plot summary to Song Xuyi:

The female lead, Song Han, was the daughter of the chairman of Song Corporation. After a heroic rescue, she fell in love with the crown prince of Xu Corporation—the male lead, Xu Feng. Xu Corporation was a national-level conglomerate that naturally looked down on a local enterprise like Song Corporation, not to mention that Song Han wasn’t the Song family’s biological daughter but their adopted one.

Xu Feng’s father vehemently opposed their relationship, using every means possible to tear them apart and creating enormous obstacles for the young couple.

            

Unwilling to give up her lover over social status, Song Han worked hard to build her own business, leaping to become a rising local entrepreneur. When Xu Corporation faced a crisis, she even provided cutting-edge technology to help them through.

Ultimately, Xu Feng’s father was impressed by Song Han and consented to their marriage.

Just as the two were about to marry and reach the perfect ending the Main God had arranged, disaster struck: Xu Corporation’s new technology malfunctioned during production, causing major casualties.

            

As the project’s primary person responsible, Xu Feng was thrown into prison. Xu Feng’s father blamed Song Han for bringing disaster upon Xu Corporation and called off the engagement on the spot.

Song Han ran herself ragged trying to get Xu Feng out of prison, only to suffer a car accident. She died after emergency treatment failed.

The villain in this story wasn’t immediately obvious, but Song Xuyi, viewing from a god’s perspective, knew the root of everything: the disastrous new technology came from Xu Corporation’s rival company. And the villain, He Siyu, was that company’s youngest R&D director—the technology had come entirely from her hands.

            

…

Following convention, the Main God had assigned Song Xuyi a decent identity this time—the daughter of Song Corporation. In the plot summary, this true daughter of the Song family was arrogant and rude, suppressing the female lead Song Han at every turn, which was one of the reasons Song Han moved out to start her own business.

However, despite being a corporate heiress, the original body’s current circumstances were far from good…

            

Song Xuyi looked down at the patched cotton jacket on this body, the chilblained hands… and frowned as she accepted the body’s memories.

The original body was eleven years old and had lived in this village for six years.

At age five, she had gotten separated from her mother in a shopping mall and been abducted by human traffickers, sold to this remote mountain village.

            

Her buyers were a couple with a mentally disabled son. They wanted to prepare a child bride for him.

Life in the village was grindingly poor. The original body, who had never lifted a finger to do chores before, was forced to gather pigweed, cook meals, and care for the disabled boy…

Unable to endure such poverty, the original body always remembered her home address and her parents’ names. She tried to escape several times, but the mountains were too vast and deep—each time, the couple, who knew the terrain well, caught her.

            

After several savage beatings, the original body gave up and resigned herself to her fate.

Until five days ago, when the disabled son came down with a sudden high fever. The couple locked the original body in the woodshed and took their son out to seek medical help, only to be caught in a flash flood and killed on the mountain road.

The original body had just been forced by the villagers to handle the funeral arrangements for the family of three.

            

And then Song Xuyi transmigrated in…

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At this point, the original body was like an ownerless piece of property in the village. The old village head was already scheming to marry her off to his nephew—who couldn’t find a wife—once she developed a bit more.

But Song Xuyi knew the original body would be safe in the end, because the plot summary had mentioned in passing that when the female lead Song Han was in her second year of middle school, her lost younger sister was found.

            

Song Xuyi estimated that it would be less than a year before she was found and brought back.

But the original body didn’t know her fate the way Song Xuyi did. She had been utterly terrified, even wanting to smash her head against the tombstone…

Song Xuyi felt the lingering panic still residing in the body and sighed softly.

            

The black clouds on the horizon had drawn closer still. Dogs barked in the village below the mountain, and villagers returned from the fields in twos and threes, hoes slung over their shoulders.

Fearing the rain would start if she lingered, Song Xuyi made her way back down the mountain to the house in the last light of the setting sun.

This was an era when the country had begun to develop rapidly—and when the wealth gap was widening. The original body’s hometown, Flower City, being coastal, had already seized the first wave of development dividends and produced countless entrepreneurs. But the spring breeze of progress had not blown into this impoverished mountain village. Most villagers still scratched a living from the soil, barely managing to feed and clothe themselves.

            

The more valuable items in the house had been looted clean by the couple’s relatives. Fortunately, the original body had been quick-witted and hidden a few sweet potatoes and a couple of jin of brown rice in the cellar before those people arrived.

Starving, Song Xuyi didn’t dare eat too much. She quietly built a fire and steamed two small sweet potatoes.

Once the fire was going, her stiff, frozen body finally warmed a little, and the rain began to fall outside.

            

The rain came down hard, driven by howling wind. The village had no electricity. Song Xuyi sat by the fire, eating the sweet potato in small bites while thinking about her path forward…

It was winter now, and escaping would be far more dangerous. Though the original body was eleven, malnutrition from lack of food and clothing made her look no older than seven or eight. Moreover, the village head had declared that he would marry her off to his nephew in two years. The village head was the local emperor here—once he’d spoken, the unmarried men in the village wouldn’t dare harass Song Xuyi for the time being…

Even though it felt stifling, hunkering down in the village and waiting for the Song family to find her was the best option for Song Xuyi right now.

            

Song Xuyi slowly finished her sweet potato and was reaching for the other one when she suddenly heard sounds through the wind and rain…

A girl’s cries and screams were piercingly desperate—even the torrential rain couldn’t drown out the despair in her voice.

Song Xuyi frowned deeply.

            

She knew—next door, He Biao was beating his daughter again!

If the original body was an outsider in the village, then He Biao’s daughter was the most despised existence there.

He Biao was an old bachelor who had remained unmarried until he was thirty. A woman in the village had been involved with a city man who came to the countryside to gather inspiration and gave birth to a girl. That city man, full of promises, had never returned. To get a wife, He Biao had desperately courted that woman.

            

The woman couldn’t raise her daughter alone and, seeing that He Biao seemed honest, married him—taking her daughter along, who then took the surname He.

The first couple of years of marriage were fine. But later, because the woman’s body had been damaged during childbirth and she couldn’t conceive again, He Biao’s attitude toward both mother and daughter changed—from verbal abuse to physical violence…

Half a year ago, the woman died of illness, and He Biao vented all his rage on the girl she’d left behind.

            

The villagers knew He Biao was abusing the child, but not a single person stood up for justice. In their eyes, this was He Biao’s family business. The fact that He Biao gave this unrelated wild child a bite to eat was already remarkable kindness…

The cries from next door continued…

Song Xuyi’s temples throbbed, veins pulsing thump thump.

            

The original body had actually been quite fond of the older girl next door. When the original body first arrived in the village, everyone had tried to keep her locked away there. Only that girl, when the original body cried, would secretly bring her wild mulberries and hazelnuts from the mountains…

—The original body had been powerless to help with what happened next door, but Song Xuyi was different. Song Xuyi had received the highest education; she couldn’t stand by and watch a child suffer such abuse.

Song Xuyi bit her lower lip, pulled on the heavy straw rain cape, and barefoot and shivering, dashed into the curtain of rain.

            

Dimly, the System seemed to say something, but the rain was too deafening—Song Xuyi didn’t catch it.

Wind slammed the doorframe slap slap, and He Biao’s curses rang out incessantly:

“You’re just like your mom—a stinking bitch, a filthy woman!”

            

“Cry, cry, cry! Keep crying…”

“Wait two years—if you can’t give me a son, I’ll send you underground to see your bitch of a mother…”

Song Xuyi was horrified. She hadn’t expected He Biao to harbor such filthy intentions. She stood outside the window, watching the drunk He Biao yanking at the girl huddled in the corner, her heart pulled taut as a wire…

            

Fortunately, He Biao didn’t do anything else after that. He pinched his nose, slapped the girl, cursed “Stinks to high heaven,” then drunkenly collapsed onto the bed and started snoring…

But Song Xuyi didn’t let go of the heavy stone in her heart.

The girl was older than the original body—about thirteen by now. She’d survived this time, but next time…

            

The girl didn’t have another year to wait like Song Xuyi did.

“I’m taking her and escaping!” Song Xuyi made the decision on the spot.

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The door wasn’t shut. Song Xuyi pushed it open easily, and the girl in the corner immediately looked up, alert. In the dim glow of the kerosene lamp, Song Xuyi saw a pair of eyes as fierce as a wolf’s—

            

Song Xuyi’s heart lurched for a moment, but when she looked again, the girl’s eyes were red and swollen, her gaze holding nothing but inquiry.

She must have been mistaken.

The girl’s face was covered in grime, her features indistinguishable. Up close, there was a noticeable stench about her…

            

She hadn’t spoken a word. Her eyes were somewhat hollow, yet she remained watchful of Song Xuyi’s every move.

Lightning flashed and thunder cracked outside. Wind and rain lashed together, the rain pouring as if to drown heaven and earth…

The girl watched the young girl from beyond the mountains, wearing a straw rain cape far too big for her, carefully push open the door and clumsily crouch down before her. She seemed to be suppressing something, her trembling hand gripping hers…

            

The young girl’s local dialect wasn’t fluent—soft and strange-sounding—yet it was the most beautiful sound the girl had ever heard in her life.

“—Jiejie, I’ll take you away.”

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The author has something to say:

            

A new story begins, and this is the setting…

Guess whether it’ll be a happy ending or a bad ending?

Also, on a whim, I’ve started a crack fic in my column called 《I Cultivate the Ruthless Dao (Quick Transmigration)》—roughly about someone who can’t win the girl when acting like a proper person, but after taking a knock to the head, somehow ends up with the beauty. Interested darlings, feel free to bookmark it~

            

The new story probably won’t dish out any angst. Look at my sincere big eyes~(●.●)

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