Chapter 149: [Passing the Imperial Examination] Failed Moral Blackmail
Walking out of the school gates, a dense crowd of parents stood waiting outside.
Wang Jiapeng, who had initially planned to find Bai Cha on the way back to chat, could only bite the bullet and head toward his own parents first.
Mother Han gestured to Bai Cha, taking her backpack and shoving an egg pancake stuffed with shredded meat into her hands along the way. It smelled pretty decent.
Bai Cha indeed hadn’t eaten her fill at lunch. Sensing nothing was wrong with the food, she began eating.
Mother Han appeared significantly gentler than she had yesterday.
The school district apartment was located right beside the campus to begin with, taking only a couple of steps to reach.
By the time they arrived at the base of the apartment building, Bai Cha had finished the egg pancake. Mother Han retrieved a bottle of milk from her bag and handed it to her.
Instinctively, Bai Cha was about to express her thanks, but she checked herself mid-thought.
Han Yingying had long lived under a suffocating brand of maternal love; she was only capable of passively enduring it, unable to feel genuine gratitude.
In fact, every single time she accepted these “acts of goodwill,” she would suffer a wave of painful self-reproach, viewing them as a crushing burden.
Therefore, she simply accepted it in silence.
The two made their way slowly up to the seventh floor.
Mother Han was thoroughly exhausted as well, carrying Bai Cha’s heavy backpack on her shoulders.
Bai Cha hesitated several times, wanting to speak up.
In the end, however, she pretended not to notice.
Because if she offered to carry it herself, Mother Han would inevitably utter something along the lines of “It’s fine, Mom isn’t tired; if you care about Mom, just study hard.”
Under such circumstances, Han Yingying would only recede into deeper silence.
This dynamic persisted until they stepped into her bedroom.
Setting the backpack down inside the room, Mother Han stroked her head with a smile, looking remarkably gentle.
“I saw it today—your teachers all praised you! All the problems you solved were correct, showing so much progress compared to before. Mom is so relieved.”
So that was why she received vastly different treatment compared to yesterday.
Keeping her head bowed, Bai Cha spoke in a low voice, “Mom, you’ve worked so hard. I will study diligently.”
The smile on Mother Han’s face grew even more radiant.
“It’s fine for Mom to suffer a bit! As long as you can make a name for yourself and stand out, that’s better than anything else!”
Bai Cha hesitated briefly, as if gathering courage from her mother’s pleasant demeanor today, and spoke up: “But I also want Mom to be nicer to yourself.”
Don’t pin all your hopes on me.
Where there are expectations, disappointment inevitably follows.
However, if Mother Han were so easily persuaded by advice, she would have fed herself properly long ago—just look at how emaciated she had become.
Sure enough, Mother Han replied, “Mom has long gotten used to it. As long as you do well, Mom is happy.”
“Alright, hurry up and get to studying!”
“Mom…” Bai Cha called out to her again just as she turned to leave.
Mother Han turned around, looking at her in confusion.
Bai Cha’s eyes fell upon her mother’s legs; there were visible injuries on them.
“What happened to the injuries on your legs?”
Seeing her look, Mother Han smiled and said, “It’s no big deal. Your studies are much more…”
“Mom—!”
Bai Cha suddenly let out a sharp, piercing cry.
Forget Mother Han, even the viewers in the bullet chat room jumped in shock.
Bai Cha’s eyes were blood-red, tears having long drenched her cheeks.
Jolted by this sudden outburst, Mother Han genuinely stood there at an utter loss for a moment.
As for Bai Cha, she had no intention of granting her any time to react.
“Mom, I beg you! I beg you, okay?! I’ve worked so hard on my studies—what for?! It’s all because I want you to be happy, because I want you to be a little better to yourself! You don’t wear shoes every day, the floor is so cold, and your health is so poor—do you know how much my heart aches every single day?! Do you know how severely this affects my studying?! Whenever I think about how hard my mother suffers for me every day, I feel so miserable I can’t even write another word!”
Spouting all of this in a single breath, Bai Cha swayed as if unable to stand from emotional agitation.
She simply stumbled forward, collapsing right into Mother Han’s embrace.
“Mom, I beg you… I’m really trying my hardest, but I truly can’t stop worrying about you…”
Mother Han struggled slightly under her daughter’s weight; after all, her own body was exceptionally frail and thin as well.
She sank onto her knees half-way, wrapping her arms around Bai Cha while crying herself.
“Mom is really fine! Mom isn’t suffering at all, Mom is doing great—really! Nothing is wrong with Mom at all, so don’t overthink things! Just study hard, that’s all you need to do!”
Bai Cha let out a silent sigh in her heart.
It failed. As expected, it didn’t work.
Moral blackmail of this degree wasn’t going to make Mother Han feel uncomfortable or guilty.
For Mother Han, she had long transferred her entire emotional pillar onto her daughter.
As long as her daughter didn’t collapse, she viewed every sacrifice she made as entirely worthwhile—it was a genuine, deep-seated belief that even if she sacrificed everything, even if she carved off her own flesh and bone to feed her daughter, she wouldn’t feel a single shred of pain.
However, if her daughter were gone, this emotional reliance would likely only twist into something grotesque.
After all, having poured out so much without receiving any return would bring unbearable agony.
This was far more troublesome to handle than Papa Gu had been.
Bai Cha straightened herself back up, Mother Han tenderly wiping away her tears.
“Yingying, Mom is really fine—I don’t mind any of it. Don’t overthink things, you just need to focus on your studies, understand?”
Bai Cha looked at her in silence, then lowered her head, standing up without a word to pick up her backpack and begin working through practice papers.
Mother Han wiped away her own tears with a look of relief and departed.
A short while later, another bowl of traditional Chinese medicine was brought inside.
“Drink your medicine.”
“I don’t want to drink this. Yesterday after drinking it, I felt so dizzy I couldn’t even focus on solving problems.”
Bai Cha spoke in a low tone, without so much as casting a glance at the medicine bowl.
“How could that be? This recipe was shared in the parents’ group chat—the ingredients inside are super expensive! Just these ten doses cost Mom half a month’s salary!”
Bai Cha raised her eyes to look at her.
“Medicine formulas are supposed to be prescribed based on specific symptoms to begin with. Maybe my body just can’t handle these ingredients. You should try reselling it to the other parents in the group.”
Mother Han looked at the bowl of medicine with renewed hesitation.
“Does it really make you dizzy? You can’t lie to Mom! There’s good stuff inside—ginseng, Fleeceflower root, all very expensive! How could it make you dizzy?”
Bai Cha sighed inwardly.
Expensive doesn’t automatically mean it’s good for me. Even with the finest ingredients, it still depends on whether an individual’s constitution can tolerate it.
However, she couldn’t say those words out loud.
Because between health and studies, the latter was undeniably more important within this instance.
“I really feel dizzy. I even had hallucinations while solving problems today! I saw blood constantly dripping onto my paper, and no matter how much I wiped, I couldn’t wipe it clean! It caused me to leave my paper half-unfinished, and I didn’t even have time to double-check certain parts—only to realize when handing it in that there was no blood at all…”
As she spoke these words, Bai Cha felt a sudden chill run down her spine.
She temporarily ignored that sensation.
Mother Han had indeed noticed her repeatedly wiping her test paper with tissues today.
She had found it somewhat odd at the time, but since the camera lens couldn’t zoom in clearly on the paper, she hadn’t paid it much mind—especially given that the teacher praised her afterward.
Mother Han finally believed that this medicine would hinder her studies.
“Alright then, we won’t drink this medicine anymore. I’ll pour it out, and I’ll see if I can sell the remaining doses in the group chat. It really was too expensive… Sigh, this month’s wages haven’t been paid out yet, and rent is due again soon…”
Muttering as she spoke, she stepped out of the room.
Bai Cha resumed working through her problems, while Mother Han… once again pressed her face against the slit of the door to monitor her.
[Ah… Why is she still watching?!]
[I thought the streamer’s move would at least put the mother’s mind at ease so she’d stop monitoring! This is way too creepy!]
[At least she doesn’t have to drink the medicine anymore! Everyone else is still being forced to drink that stuff.]
[How do you even clear this instance, though? By actually becoming the top scorer?]
[By killing Mom and Dad?]
