Chapter Ninety-Four: You Were Never My Son

The guard sneered, “So you know about justice and the law of the land? Why didn’t you think of that yesterday when you were beating people?”

Aunt Lai was startled.

Only then did they realize they had been arrested over yesterday’s incident.

“This... wasn’t it just a fight? Was it really worth this?” Lin Jiantong asked, unwilling to accept it.

“A fight? You beat someone so badly and still have the nerve to call it that?” The guard looked at them with unmistakable disgust. “Enough talk. Take them all away!”

Old Mrs. Lin tried to fling herself into a scene with her two daughters-in-law, but the guard ignored them entirely. He simply ordered their mouths stuffed shut, and the whole lot was dragged away.

Lin Jiantong and Li Fulan’s two children were terrified out of their wits. Clinging to Lin Shuimei, they cried, “Cousin! What’s happening? Will Father, Mother, and Grandmother come back? What are we supposed to do?”

Lin Shuimei was already frightened and frantic, and with the two children crowding her, she grew even more irritable. She simply shoved them to the ground.

“You’re asking me? How should I know? I warned them, but nobody listened! Now that they’ve fallen to this, they had it coming!”

The two children fell hard and burst into tears again.

Lin Shuimei found the sound unbearable. She turned and left.

Their father and mother had been taken away. Would they be locked in prison?

Wasn’t that Qian San fellow imprisoned before? Word was he wouldn’t be released for five years.

Then how many years would Father and Mother get?

If Father and Mother were gone, what would become of her? She wasn’t even married yet!

No, she had to plan a way out for herself, and fast...

...

Bao Mingzhi was truly furious this time.

He hired the finest lawyer and, in open court, laid out the Lin family’s crimes in all their vileness.

In the end, Lin Shengrong and Lin Jiantong were sentenced to four years in prison, Aunt Lai to three, and Li Fulan to two.

Li Fulan insisted she had tried to break up the fight, but no one believed her.

As for Old Mrs. Lin, because of her age and because she had not actually laid hands on anyone, she was not sentenced. She was merely lectured before being sent home.

But with both sons and a daughter-in-law imprisoned, she seemed to age ten years overnight. She could hardly even walk. In the end, the constables kindly hired an ox cart and sent her back to Double Luck Village.

Lin Sangqian learned all of this from Lu Chengren, the innkeeper of a tavern, who naturally had access to the latest gossip.

At once, she joined forces with Lin Hongda and went to the yamen, where they told in full and in detail how Lin Shengrong and Lin Jiantong had once forcibly seized the house and land that rightfully belonged to their family.

In the end, they were granted permission to reclaim their house and fields.

Lin Sangqian was not greedy; she wanted only what had originally been theirs.

That evening, after Lin Hongda returned from the Yu household, he took Lin Sangqian and Liao Shuxia back to Double Luck Village to retrieve the deeds to the house and land.

Lin Wenyan and Zhao Laner stayed behind to watch the home.

As soon as they entered the village, the locals gathered around them at once, all talking at once and pressing them for news about Lin Shengrong and Lin Jiantong.

Lin Hongda simply said that they had beaten someone in town, and badly enough that they had been thrown in jail.

“I knew it! That day, a dozen constables came, and goodness, it scared the death out of me!” Aunt Wu said, patting her chest. “They were utterly reckless to dare beat someone up in town. Have they lost their minds?”

“Exactly. And now they’ve been locked up. Serves them right.”

“No wonder your old lady looked like her soul had left her when she came back that day.”

“Oh, and where’s Lin Shuimei? And the two children from Old Lin’s second son’s family?”

“Lin Shuimei, nobody knows. The two from Second Lin’s family seem to have been taken in by relatives from the Li family.”

As for Lin Shuimei, Lin Sangqian felt no particular pity for Li Fulan’s two children either.

In the original owner’s memory, those children, though still young, were just as vicious as Li Fulan herself.

When Lin Shuimei bullied her, they had helped plenty.

Now that they had lost their birth parents’ care, it could be called a punishment of sorts.

“We came today to get back the deeds to the house and land that originally belonged to us,” Liao Shuxia said.

“That’s right! You should take them back. Old Lin and his younger brother went too far. Even back then, we all thought so.”

“Those papers should be with your old lady now, shouldn’t they?”

With Old Mrs. Lin?

“Would she refuse to hand them over?” Aunt Wu asked worriedly.

“The yamen has already ruled in our favor. We’re entitled to take them back. If she refuses, then she must be ready to go back and eat prison gruel again,” Lin Sangqian said coldly.

At this, everyone felt a little satisfied.

After all, many of them had long disliked Old Mrs. Lin.

Both sons were hers, so why had she always despised the younger one so much? By rights, shouldn’t the youngest child be the most favored?

At that moment, Lin Hongda felt a faint surge of unwillingness and resentment rising in his heart.

He pressed a hand to his chest and frowned.

This was likely the lingering will of the original soul.

He knew he had to go see Old Mrs. Lin.

He needed to ask her on behalf of the original owner: why, as a mother, had she treated her own child this way?

When he reached the entrance to Lin Jiantong’s house, he turned to his wife and daughter. “Wait for me out here a moment. I’m going in to talk with her.”

The mother and daughter both understood what he meant, so they nodded and did not follow.

When Lin Hongda stepped inside, he immediately heard Old Mrs. Lin’s heart-wrenching cough.

Ever since returning from town, her health had collapsed.

She was already advanced in years, and though she had once been fairly sturdy, this blow had shattered her completely.

Over the past few days, thanks to several kind women in the village taking turns to care for her, she had managed to survive.

Otherwise, she would likely have died in this very room already.

“Cough, cough... W-who is it?” Old Mrs. Lin’s frail voice came from within. She must have heard his footsteps.

Lin Hongda drew a long breath and walked into the inner room.

Old Mrs. Lin’s hair was now streaked with gray, and she herself looked decades older.

Her clouded eyes slowly shifted. When she saw that the one who had entered was Lin Hongda, her whole body suddenly trembled. Then, with a burst of energy from nowhere, she shouted in fury, “Why is it you? Get out, get out! I don’t want to see you! Leave!”

Lin Hongda only looked at her calmly. After a long moment, he let out a cold, mocking laugh.

“So you really never regarded me as your son.”

His chest ached faintly, still carrying the emotions left behind by the original soul.

Lin Hongda understood then that the original owner had truly loved this mother, and also the father who had already passed away.

In his memories, his father had treated him fairly well. But this mother—beatings, insults, and cruelty had been as ordinary as meals.

He had once been a man who valued family deeply, but because of Old Mrs. Lin, he slowly changed. He began to stop caring about his wife and children.

Because, in his eyes, family was useless.

“Hahaha...” Old Mrs. Lin suddenly burst into wild laughter, almost mad with it. “Why should I ever have regarded you as my son? Lin Hongda, you little bastard, you were never my son in the first place!”