Chapter 2: Damn, Did We End Up Inside a Novel?
The three of them fell into another bout of silence.
Wen Yao surveyed the mess around them. Their courtyard wasn’t large, with only three rooms in total—and one of them had collapsed.
Considering the way they had died in their modern world, there was obviously no way of going back. But at least they were all together, and in that case, did it really make a difference where they were?
“Dad, Bro, do you guys have memories?” Wen Yao asked.
Wen Jun nodded. “A little, not much.”
Wen Changping, however, hesitated. “Uh… yeah, I guess.”
To be honest, he’d rather not have these memories at all.
What a damn mess.
Wen Yao narrowed her eyes at him, and suddenly, she recalled how this house had collapsed in the first place.
“Comrade Lao Wen, pretty impressive, huh? Gambling away everything you had wasn’t enough—you even wanted to sell me and my brother?” Wen Yao folded her arms and gave Wen Changping a half-smile, her tone laced with sarcasm.
The original owner of Wen Changping’s new body was a man named Wen Xiuyi, a notorious gambler known far and wide.
He had once passed the imperial exam for a scholar’s rank, which should have been a promising start. But instead, he fell in with shady people and became a complete wastrel.
He did everything except visiting brothels. He lost everything to gambling, forcing his grandparents to sell land just to pay off his debts. In the end, they were even kicked out of the family home, and these three rundown rooms were all they had left.
Their mother, Liu Shi, was the daughter of Wen Xiuyi’s teacher. Some time ago, an old childhood sweetheart of hers, now a government official, returned and offered Wen Xiuyi twenty taels of silver in exchange for a divorce agreement. She signed without hesitation, abandoned her children, and left with her old flame to enjoy a comfortable life.
Wen Xiuyi took that money and immediately gambled it all away. When he had nothing left, he set his sights on his ten-year-old daughter and sixteen-year-old son, planning to sell them off for more money. The two of them fought back fiercely, and in the struggle, they knocked down one of the house’s support beams. The house collapsed, burying all three of them alive.
And then, when they woke up, they had become… them.
Wen Yao glared at Wen Changping, who awkwardly chuckled and tried to appease her. “That was the original guy, not me! I’d rather starve to death than sell you two, I swear!”
Of course, Wen Yao knew that. But their original father? He really was a piece of trash.
“So, where the hell are we, anyway?” Wen Jun asked. He had some memories, but they were too scattered to piece together a clear answer.
Wen Yao shook her head. She had no idea either. According to her memories, the farthest place the original Wen Yao had ever been was the mountain right behind their house.
Fortunately, Wen Changping remembered more.
“I know this. This country is called Annan. The ruler up top is a guy surnamed Li. We’re in a place called Yunwu Town, and our village is called Gutong Village. There’s no record of it in history, so we’re probably not in the same world as before. Your names haven’t changed, but you’re younger now—Yao Yao, you’re only ten, and Xiao Jun, you’re sixteen. As for me, my name here is Wen Xiuyi. You two need to remember that. Also, you have a little brother. You saw him earlier—the little one. His nickname is Datou, but his real name is Wen Zhao. The old lady who took him away was your grandmother. Do you remember all that?” Wen Changping—now Wen Xiuyi—asked.
Wen Yao, however, stood frozen in place, as if struck by lightning. Her lips trembled slightly before she finally asked, “Dad… what did you just say our little brother’s name was?”
“Wen Zhao. Your grandfather named him. But since he’s still young and doesn’t speak, everyone just calls him Datou.” Wen Xiuyi looked at his daughter’s strange reaction and suddenly became nervous. “Yao Yao, what’s wrong?”
Wen Yao’s eyes darted around, and she started tugging at her hair, pacing in circles.
Wen Jun immediately grabbed her hands. “Stop pulling, or you’ll go bald.”
Wen Yao abruptly stopped, then asked, “Dad, Bro, do you remember the novel I was complaining about before we had our accident?”
The two of them nodded. Wen Yao had been talking about it because two minor characters in the book had the exact same names as her and her brother. That was the only reason she had even bothered to keep reading. But those characters only appeared in one chapter before vanishing, and the rest of the story had been so cringe-inducing that she had kept ranting about it to her father and brother for fun.
Now that she thought about it, everything was suddenly falling into place.
“My mother—I mean, the mother of this body—is surnamed Liu, right? And that childhood sweetheart of hers… his name is Meng De, isn’t it?” Wen Yao pointed at herself and asked.
Wen Xiuyi thought for a moment before nodding.
“Yeah, that’s right. He’s an official in the capital.”
The moment Wen Yao received confirmation, she lost it. “Holy shit!”
Wen Jun and Wen Xiuyi looked completely confused. “What’s wrong?”
Wen Yao glanced around. Aside from the ruins and the mess, there was nothing else around. Only then did she lower her voice and explain everything to them in hushed tones. By the end of it, she stared at them wide-eyed and declared, “Wen Zhao—our little brother—is the second male lead in that novel. The one I told you about. The one who could’ve had a successful career but ended up throwing it all away because he was obsessed with the female lead!”
“Holy shit!” Wen Jun and Wen Xiuyi’s pupils shrank in shock. That mute little kid?
Forget them—even Wen Yao herself could hardly believe that the tiny, silent boy from today would grow up to be that Wen Zhao, the one who painstakingly climbed his way to power, only to sacrifice everything for the female protagonist in the end.
It all made sense now. The novel had never given too many details about Wen Zhao’s background, but what little information was there matched their family perfectly.
Big brother Wen Jun, second sister Wen Yao. Mother Liu Shi, who remarried Meng De. Birth father Wen Xiuyi, a useless gambling addict. Wen Zhao, unable to speak until he was five but incredibly intelligent. After being taken to the capital by Liu Shi, he was molded by Meng De into a cold, ruthless strategist who would stop at nothing to achieve his goals.
The book had even hinted that, due to his striking looks, Wen Zhao had once been gifted by Meng De to a high-ranking official in exchange for political favor.
Because of these experiences, Wen Zhao had become a deeply gloomy and brooding character. The female lead had been his only ray of light, his salvation. That was why, even after rising to the highest ranks of power, he willingly sacrificed himself to help the male and female leads succeed.
After hearing all this, Wen Xiuyi couldn’t help but ask, “What about us? What happened to us in the novel?”
Wen Yao instinctively went to scratch her head, but Wen Jun yanked her hands down again. She sighed and said, “You sold me and my brother. We disappeared without a trace. Wen Zhao spent his whole life searching for us, but the author probably just forgot about us. As for you, after selling us, you gambled the money away, got into a fight, and got beaten to death.”
She added, “Apparently, no one even bothered to claim your corpse. The gambling den just threw your body into the mountains to feed the dogs.”
Wen Xiuyi: “……”
In the original novel, the three of them had only existed as part of Wen Zhao’s backstory. Their tragic fates were just there to explain his personality and motivations. After a single chapter, they were completely written out, and by the next chapter, Wen Zhao had already become the new rising star in the capital.
