Dream of the Red Chamber: Madam, please have some self-respect!

The Great Han.

The first day of the twelfth lunar month in the fifth year of Tianyou.

Shenjing, the western part of the city.

Under the west corridor beside the vermilion high walls of Rongguo Mansion, turn right past the stone gate archway, and walk straight in to the end, where a shabby little courtyard is huddled.

The cold wind of December was like a knife, sweeping across the corridor and seeping through the windows. The tiny candle flame inside flickered on and off, as if it might be extinguished at any moment.

The room was cold and everything seemed old: a wooden bed with peeling paint, a square table with a missing corner, a porcelain pot with a cracked spout, and a wooden chair with four legs of different heights.

Meanwhile, by candlelight, fourteen-year-old Jia Yun, wrapped in an old cotton robe that had been washed until it turned white, was hunched over his desk, writing furiously.

His fingers were red and swollen from the cold, and several joints had developed purplish-red chilblains, making it stiff and painful to hold the pen. But he seemed oblivious to it, his entire focus concentrated on the tip of the pen.

Jia Yun left lines of slender, neat handwriting on the rough pages—it was the "Complete Collection of Neo-Confucianism" and "Commentary on the Four Books" that he had borrowed from Master Bao, and he needed to copy them down quickly.

If Jia Qiang, Jia Qin, and others who usually played with him in the corridor saw him working so hard, they would probably laugh at him for changing his nature and learning the ways of those "corrupt officials."

"Yun-ge'er, take a break and rest your eyes, your hands... your hands are freezing!" Mother Bu brought in a bowl of lukewarm water that was barely steaming. She immediately noticed the chilblains all over her son's hands, and tears streamed down her face like broken beads.

"You didn't even save some of that bamboo charcoal for your own warmth. How can your body withstand such strenuous work..."

"Mother, it's alright. Exchanging that charcoal for these paper, pens, and candles is already worthwhile. Besides, in previous winters, we never had charcoal in our house, and we still managed. Uncle Bao was kind enough to give us some, but there wasn't much bamboo charcoal to begin with, and it burned out in a day or two." Jia Yun put down his pen and comforted her gently.

Although both were members of the Jia family, their circumstances were worlds apart. Some lived in luxury with fine clothes and generous monthly stipends; others, however, could only toil for a living in the muddy ground beneath these high walls.

Jia Yun's father died early, and the meager family fortune was quickly squandered by the ruthless relatives and friends in the clan. Now, he and his mother, Bu Shi, are left to depend on each other, truly a case of "even a clever wife can't make porridge without rice."

Ironically, despite bearing the empty title of "great-grandson of the Jia family," he received no real benefit whatsoever in this cold and indifferent mansion.

Looking at her son's hands, which were red from the cold, and thinking of the family's situation, Mrs. Bu hesitated for a long time before speaking softly.

"Yun-ge'er, I know you have ambition. But... the rice jar is almost empty, and I've lost two families this month from my laundry work... We still don't know what our food will be like after spring. You... you're fourteen now, and many people your age in the clan have already found jobs..."

Upon hearing this, Jia Yun felt a pang of sorrow in her heart.

He put down his pen, grasped his mother's rough hand, and said gently, "Mother, I understand what you mean. I promise you that I will take the imperial examination next February. If I am lucky enough to pass, I will achieve the title of a student, which will benefit our clan. If... if I fail, I will never again be preoccupied with books. I will immediately find a proper job and never let you worry about daily necessities again."

Hearing her son's earnest words, and knowing that he always had his own ideas, Madam Bu could only nod with tears in her eyes: "I'm not forcing you, it's just that these days... I'm afraid you'll ruin your health, and I'm afraid I'll hold you back... Fine, since you have this ambition, I'll support you even if it means suffering more!"

Looking at her son's thin yet determined profile, Mrs. Bu suddenly felt a sense of disorientation.

She recalled the harrowing scene from six months ago—when Yun-ge'er went out every day to find work after leaving the clan school to supplement the family income, but he didn't return home until late that evening.

Until someone rushed in to report that Yun-ge had been knocked unconscious by a stone in the back alley on his way home, and that blood was everywhere.

Upon hearing this, she rushed out like a madwoman, only to find her son lying on the ground, his face ashen and barely breathing. Even the doctor who came later shook his head after taking his pulse and said, "Prepare for his funeral."

He had only lived peacefully for ten years, so how did he encounter such a calamity again?

Bu refused to believe in fate, so she held her son's cold body and cried for a whole hour in the summer night, calling out his soul again and again.

Perhaps it was divine intervention, but Jia Yun was actually pulled back from the brink of death.

But since that day, the child has been like a different person.

After Jia Yun recovered from his injury, he stopped mentioning finding work and instead took out his dusty books and started reading them again, word by word.

Faced with such an undeserved calamity, Madam Bu naturally demanded an explanation. However, whenever she went to the Shenjing Prefecture to appeal her case, the officials would make all sorts of excuses as soon as they heard that it was a case of an attack on a collateral branch of the Jia family.

There has been no follow-up to this day.

When everyone first saw that Jia Yun wasn't looking for work but instead started reading again, they were all just watching a show.

Now that you're all grown up, you want to study? Where were you before? Besides, if you really had that talent, you should have shown it long ago. Why did it have to come to this?

But what no one knew was that after that accident, a new soul had already taken over the body. In his previous life, Jia Yun was a renowned surgeon under the operating lights, achieving international fame at a young age.

But a later act of bravery was tragically cut short by the icy river, which swallowed him whole. When he opened his eyes again, he was Jia Yun, an insignificant distant relative of the Rongguo Mansion.

After waking up, Jia Yun sorted out the memories of this body, looked at the dire poverty of his home, and combined it with his understanding of the history of this world, he immediately understood his situation.

The imperial examination was his only way out in this life.

It is now the fifth year of Tianyou in the Great Han Dynasty... how similar it is to the fifth year of Tianqi in the previous life.

The same emperor bestowed the title of Prince Xin upon his younger brother, the same Jurchens were rampant in Liaodong, and there was even a powerful eunuch named Wei Zhongxian.

Of course, there are also differences, namely that the current emperor's surname is Chen, not Zhu.

Surprisingly, the emperors and events of the dynasties after Chen Taizu established the Great Zhou at the end of the Yuan Dynasty were not much different from those of the Ming Dynasty.

If we use the Ming Dynasty of the previous life as a mirror for comparison, then nineteen years later, the rebel leader Li Zicheng will break through Beijing, the Jurchens will also move south, and the Jia family mansion, which seems to be as prosperous as a blazing fire, will eventually collapse.

Imperial examinations, official rank and fame.

This was the only way out that Jia Yun could think of before the raging flood struck.

Upon realizing this, Jia Yun couldn't help but smirk self-deprecatingly. In his previous life, he had studied diligently for over a decade, finally achieving success. Now, after transmigrating, he had to start all over again.

Besides the money needed to prepare for the imperial examinations, Jia Yun's biggest crisis right now is the inexplicable attack that happened half a year ago.

Jia Yun knew in her heart that what happened half a year ago was by no means an accident.

A few days before the incident, he vaguely sensed that someone was following him. What's even stranger is that the capital's evasive attitude towards the case clearly indicated that someone had given him instructions.

Who exactly wants him dead?

Jia Yun initially suspected that one of the masters in the mansion was responsible. After all, there were quite a few sordid things happening in this huge mansion in the original story. Apart from the pair of stone lions at the gate, there seemed to be nothing clean in the Jia family mansion.

The scandals between Jia Zhen and his daughter-in-law Qin Keqing in the East Mansion, the affair between Master Lian and You Erjie, Wang Xifeng's loan sharking that drove someone to suicide, and Jia She's pursuit of a few fans that led to the ruin of Shi Daizi's family...

Admittedly, none of the above-mentioned events had occurred yet, but they still gave a glimpse into the filth within the Jia family.

But the four words he heard before falling into a coma, "You think you're worthy?", were full of contempt, and he couldn't understand them at all.

"Those heartless bastards in this mansion, they all can't stand to see us doing well," Madam Bu complained, wiping away her tears. "The other day, that brat Jia Qin deliberately poured water in front of our door, causing it to freeze, and I almost fell. Jia Qiang is even worse, spreading rumors outside that you're frequenting Second Mistress Lian's place so much that you're only doing it to see the young lady..."

"At least... you are a proper master of this mansion, yet you live... you live less respectably than those well-regarded servants..." The more Madam Bu thought about it, the more heartbroken she became, choking back tears and unable to speak.

"Mother, please don't say that," Jia Yun said, her heart aching, but she forced a relaxed smile. "Look at all the people who freeze to death in those mass graves outside Beijing every winter. The fact that we have this small roof over our heads is a blessing that many people can only dream of. It's just that I'm an unfilial son, causing my mother to suffer along with me."

Jia Yun looked up at his mother, a woman in her early thirties whose temples were already streaked with gray.

Jia Yun was never an important figure in the Jia family, and in the book of his previous life, he was just an insignificant supporting character. Only now did he realize how heavy the weight of even a few words in the book could be on a person's shoulders.

He forced a smile and comforted her in a relaxed tone, "Mother, please stop crying. If you keep crying, you won't look good. You must believe in your son; I will definitely make something of myself in the future. When that time comes, I will definitely replace you with more than a dozen clever maids and servants to serve you, so that you can go out without getting your feet dirty and enjoy a life of leisure at home every day, making up for all the suffering of the past ten years."

Mrs. Bu was so amused by him that she wanted to both cry and laugh, and before she knew it, a snot bubble popped out of her nose.

The large man immediately blushed with embarrassment and pretended to hit him: "You monkey, always so glib and shameless!"

Jia Yun smiled and dodged away, but his gaze towards the window unconsciously darkened. Besides studying for the imperial examinations, he also had to guard against the unknown dangers.

The words "You don't deserve it" were like a thorn, deeply embedded in his heart.

What should it be paired with?

Does he deserve to live? Does he deserve to study? Does he deserve the surname Jia?

Jia Yun stopped thinking about anything else and sat back down on the cold square stool. But just as he reached for the brush, he discovered that the ink in the inkstone had somehow solidified into a thin layer of ice.

Jia Yun is determined to have this honor!

He not only had to take the exam, but he had to make a name for himself. He wanted to show everyone who had looked down on him, insulted him, and harmed him!

The flickering candlelight illuminated the boy's resolute profile and the three moles behind his ears.

However, the wind and snow outside the window seemed to be getting even heavier.