“My family was very poor when I was little. When my dad got married, Old Madam Wang and her husband were biased, so he had practically nothing when he married my mom. After the wedding, they were even driven out of the family home that my eldest uncle had taken over, and Mom and Dad had to rent a place. By the time I was old enough to remember things, the four of us were still living in that cramped apartment of less than forty square meters. Life was hard. Some meals didn’t even have a few liang of meat, but we were still happy. Then my little sister was born.”
Wang Cheng had thought he had forgotten most of it, but once he deliberately searched his memory, the past came back with startling clarity, like a video being rewound, one scene after another flashing vividly before his eyes.
“When my sister was born, I was six and my elder brother was eight. Don’t let our age fool you. We already ate plenty at every meal. My parents doted on us and couldn’t bear to let us go hungry, so whenever the family had even a little money, they never stinted on food. Our income was low, but we could still barely get by. Even after another child arrived, Mom and Dad gritted their teeth and carried on. They finally managed to raise my sister until she was two, and then a disaster crushed my dad.”
Looking back now, Wang Cheng still thought fate had truly played with them. It was because of that incident that he eventually left the warm home and became the old monk’s disciple.
At the time, Papa Wang worked in a factory. His income was meager, but the entire family of five depended on that wage to survive. When Wang Cheng was eight, however, the factory shut down and Papa Wang lost his job. Work was not easy to find then. Without that income, their household fell into immediate difficulty.
Eventually they had almost no choice left. Their rice was nearly gone, and without money to buy rice or flour, the whole family would starve. For their sake, Papa Wang swallowed his pride and went to Eldest Uncle and Second Uncle for help. Both claimed their own households were barely keeping the pot boiling and refused to lend him anything. Old Madam Wang and her husband, despite being his parents, simply looked the other way. After that, Papa Wang never went to them again.
For the sake of the three siblings, Papa Wang washed dishes, carried plates, worked stalls, cut timber, took temporary labor jobs, and did practically every kind of hard physical work there was. Yet the money he earned each month was only about half his old factory wage. Mama Wang also tried every possible way to make money. While other people lived comfortably, their family spent every day scrambling just to put three meals on the table.
Their elder brother matured early, but a ten-year-old could only do so much. Every day he went out collecting scrap or searched the hills for things he could sell. Wang Cheng was old enough to understand too and wanted to help lighten the load, but two-year-old Wang Ziyu needed someone to watch her, so that responsibility fell to him. One day, both adults were out working for money. After they left, Wang Ning’an told Wang Cheng he was going out to look for scrap and instructed him to take good care of their little sister. Wang Cheng agreed. Two hours later, however, he could no longer sit still.
At eight, Wang Cheng was already unusually mature, just like Wang Ning’an. He understood very clearly that the children were a burden on the family. Wanting to reduce the pressure on his parents, he thought of going into the hills to pick wild vegetables or mushrooms to sell. He had seen adults do it before. But he had to take care of his little sister, so what could he do? He brought her with him. At two, Wang Ziyu could already walk on her own. So Wang Cheng held his little sister with one hand, carried a small basket in the other, and took her up the mountain. Two tiny children entering the mountains without an adult and coming back safely would practically require their ancestors’ protection.
Elio’s Notes: Earlier in Chapter 2, the Chinese source says Wang Cheng was seven when he was sent to the old monk. This chapter’s recollection makes him eight. The translation preserves both source statements rather than silently harmonizing them.
Wang Ning’an was the first to discover they were missing. His luck had been poor that day and he had collected very little scrap, so he returned home early after selling it. When he ran out to search, he happened to meet Papa Wang and Mama Wang on their way home. Hearing that both children had disappeared, the adults panicked and searched all over the village. Eventually, a villager told them he had seen two children heading toward the mountains, the older around eight and the younger only two. They had to be theirs.
Papa Wang and Mama Wang went pale with fright and stumbled in the direction the villager indicated. But before they could enter the mountain, they saw an old monk walking down from the foothills carrying two children. Those children were Wang Cheng and Wang Ziyu. Something had happened not long after the siblings entered the mountain, and they had been lucky enough to encounter the old monk.
After the situation was explained, Papa Wang and Mama Wang thanked the old monk over and over and even invited him home for a meal. The old monk refused. Instead, he made a request that left the couple stunned: he wanted to accept Wang Cheng as his disciple and have him inherit his teachings.
Becoming the old monk’s disciple meant becoming a monk as well. How could Papa Wang and Mama Wang possibly agree to send their son away to become one? But the old monk had saved their children, so they did not reject him outright. Later, he offered another condition that benefited the family. Once Wang Cheng became his disciple, he would give the family a yearly allowance as compensation for Wang Cheng helping clean and do chores around the temple. If he accepted Wang Cheng as a disciple, there would naturally be miscellaneous work for him to do. To Papa Wang and Mama Wang, though, the arrangement felt too much like selling their son, so they could not bring themselves to agree.
By then, Wang Cheng’s elder brother was old enough to understand. He thought the deal was not bad at all. If becoming the old monk’s disciple and helping with chores could reduce the family’s burden, it seemed worthwhile. So he voluntarily told his parents he was willing to go in Wang Cheng’s place.
He was firm about it and carefully explained to their parents all the advantages of becoming the old monk’s disciple. Wang Cheng’s elder brother had already been very clever as a child, and in the end he genuinely persuaded their parents. But the old monk refused. He said he wanted only Wang Cheng and no one else. Wang Cheng was not as clever as Wang Ning’an back then. He was still a child, and once he heard he would have to live apart from his family, he became unhappy and sulked for several days. It was only after Wang Ning’an patiently persuaded him that he finally nodded in agreement. His brother comforted him by saying that even if he became the old monk’s disciple, he could still come home often. As it turned out, once he went up the mountain, the old monk hardly ever let him come down.
The old monk himself rarely descended the mountain, usually only once every half month or month, and even then only to buy daily necessities. He was extremely strict with Wang Cheng. Many things were most effective if taught from childhood, so every day was packed full from morning to night. Wang Cheng had no time to come down the mountain and not much time to brood either.
Papa Wang and Mama Wang always felt guilty toward him. If they had been more capable, he would never have needed to become the old monk’s disciple. Later, as Wang Ning’an and Wang Ziyu grew older and the family situation improved somewhat, the couple often asked the siblings to take good food up the mountain for Wang Cheng. Most of the time, however, they still could not actually see him.
When Wang Cheng was fourteen or fifteen, the family’s finances were much better than when he was little. Papa Wang and Mama Wang asked the old monk to let him attend middle school and offered to pay the tuition themselves. Wang Cheng had never gone to elementary school. They had suggested it before, but the old monk refused, saying he would teach the boy to read and write himself. He truly did, though Wang Cheng always felt that the reason his grades never reached the same level as his elder brother’s and younger sister’s was because he had never attended elementary school and therefore lacked a proper foundation.
Fortunately, the old monk later agreed. So Wang Cheng’s family paid for his middle school and high school education. He later tested into university but did not go. One reason was that he did not want to add another burden to the household. The other was that the old monk’s health had already begun to decline. The old monk had always been strict with him, but he had genuinely cared for Wang Cheng. His way of showing it was simply different. Wang Cheng had not understood that when he was young. As he grew older, he did.
Even so, seeing each other only after long intervals inevitably created a layer of distance between Wang Cheng and his parents. He was no longer like the child who used to trail behind Papa Wang calling him Dad with complete intimacy. Madam Zhang also played a part in that.
After Wang Cheng was finally allowed to come down the mountain, he ran into Madam Zhang several times. She had been at odds with his parents since they were young, so every time she saw Wang Cheng, she spoke badly about them. Wang Cheng had not been abandoned by his parents at all, yet Madam Zhang constantly called him pitiful. She even hinted that if all children were equally precious, why had Wang Ning’an not been sent away instead? Why did it have to be Wang Cheng? Wang Cheng thought she was stupid beyond saving. He had already been eight when he went to live with the old monk. Eight was old enough to understand what happened. How could he possibly believe her words? But after what happened last night, Wang Cheng finally understood the true meaning behind Madam Zhang’s old remark that “people are never completely impartial.” She had actually been hinting all along that he was not his parents’ biological son.
“All these years, I never once felt my parents treated the three of us unfairly. Even when life was that difficult, they never thought of sending me away. Sometimes my elder brother went hungry, but they still didn’t let me go hungry. My parents always said an older brother should give way to his younger siblings.” Wang Cheng tipped his head back and looked at Chu Yifeng. “Tell me, how can parents who treated me that well not be my biological parents?”
Chu Yifeng rubbed his head. “Maybe Heaven thought you were too handsome, so it wanted to give you an even better family.”
Wang Cheng rolled his eyes. “I’m being serious. Besides, I already think my parents are great. By your logic, my elder brother is handsome too.”
“Your elder brother is already very capable. A better birth would only be icing on the cake for him.”
Wang Cheng narrowed his eyes. “Are you saying I’m not capable?”
“How could that be?” Chu Yifeng shrugged. “You’re very capable now too. You managed to get yourself a perfect boyfriend like me. That’s good fortune accumulated from your previous life.”
“Boss Chu, getting smug now, are you? We’re sleeping in separate rooms tonight.”
Wang Cheng immediately sat up and made as though to leave.
Chu Yifeng caught him around the waist.
“I meant it was my good fortune accumulated from a previous life.”
“That’s more like it.” Wang Cheng sat back down. His personality really was very different from Wang Ning’an’s, largely because the old monk had influenced him so deeply. Otherwise, given the way their family had lived when they were children, Wang Cheng might now have been just as driven by money as Wang Ning’an.
“What are you planning to do now?”
“What else can I do? I don’t plan to go home for a while. I need some time to process everything first.”
Wang Cheng still had no idea how to face the parents who had abruptly become unrelated to him by blood.
As though remembering something, Chu Yifeng asked, “Don’t you want to find your biological parents?”
At those words, Wang Cheng’s expression turned complicated. “Twenty-five years have passed. How am I supposed to find them? If I really have fate with them, we’ll meet sooner or later.”