Siheyuan: At the beginning, I can integrate everything!

The wind and snow swirled through the alley.

Banggeng dragged his leaden legs, inching forward step by step.

The oversized, tattered cotton-padded coat hung on his skinny frame, like an empty flour sack.

With each step he took, the cold wind blew in through his wide sleeves and collar, making him shiver.

two months.

Those two months at the First Juvenile Detention Center were like the deepest hell for him!

Every day they ate cornbread that was as hard as a rock and drank clear soup with a few vegetable leaves floating in it.

He slept in a dormitory-style room and was bullied by older and more ruthless juvenile delinquents.

His once round, chubby face is now so thin that his cheekbones are high and his chin is so sharp it could kill someone.

"Gurgle..."

A sharp, cramping pain shot through his stomach, and he felt so hungry that his vision blurred.

Banggeng gritted his teeth and stared intently at the gate of the Hongxing Courtyard in front of him.

Those eyes, which appeared unusually large due to long-term malnutrition, swirled with a chilling malice.

Step over the threshold and walk around the screen wall.

The guards standing watch in the front yard seemed not to see him, their gazes fixed coldly ahead.

Startled, Banggeng shrank back, pressed himself tightly against the wall, and scurried into the courtyard like a rat crossing the street.

"Squeak—"

The Jia family's dilapidated wooden door was pushed open.

A whiff of air mixed with the smell of musty and cheap incense ash hit me.

Qin Huairu was sitting by the brazier, mechanically throwing paper money into it.

Hearing the door open, she turned around blankly.

When I saw the skinny little boy with a shaved head standing at the door.

The paper money in Qin Huairu's hand fell into the brazier with a "plop".

"My son...!"

She let out a piercing cry, lunged forward, and tightly embraced the stick.

"My darling! How did you get so thin! You're almost unrecognizable!"

Qin Huairu cried her heart out, wiping her tears and snot all over Bang Geng's tattered cotton-padded jacket.

Hearing the commotion, Jia Zhangshi, who was lying in the inner room, also rushed out in a flurry.

"My dear grandson! My dear grandson is back!"

Jia Zhangshi's crippled finger was still wrapped in a dirty bandage.

She pushed Qin Huairu away, hugged Banggeng to her chest, and burst into tears.

"Damn it! They suffered so much in there!"

"My dear grandson, Grandma has missed you so much!"

Bang Geng was being choked so tightly by the two women that he could barely breathe.

He didn't cry, nor did he show any joy at the long-awaited reunion.

He just let them hug him blankly.

Those resentful eyes looked over Jia Zhangshi's shoulder and stared intently at the center of the table.

There, there was a black and white picture frame.

The person in the photo is his father, Jia Dongxu.

Pale white mourning couplets hung on both sides, and the ashes from the brazier drifted in the air.

"My dad...is dead?"

Banggeng's voice was hoarse, like sandpaper polishing glass—dry and devoid of warmth.

Upon hearing this, Jia Zhangshi's crying abruptly stopped, then erupted into an even more piercing wail.

"My son! You died such a terrible death!"

She suddenly raised her head, and a vicious glint flashed in her triangular eyes.

She gripped Banggeng's thin shoulders tightly, her fingers almost digging into his flesh.

"My dear grandson! You've got to remember this!"

"Your father's death, and all the suffering you endured in the juvenile detention center!"

"It's all Zhang Huaimin's fault in the front yard! That little bastard ruined our whole family!"

Jia Zhangshi gritted her teeth, spitting on Bang Geng's face.

"He's a jinx! He killed his own father, and now he's bringing bad luck to our Jia family!"

"We can't just swallow this insult!"

"You're the only man left in the Jia family. You have to avenge your father! Avenge yourself!"

Qin Huairu, who was listening nearby, was terrified and quickly pulled Jia Zhangshi back.

"Mom! Please don't say these things to the child!"

"Zhang Huaimin is now a consultant for the factory. Even the top leaders have come to visit him, and there are soldiers standing guard at the gate."

"We can't afford to mess with him! Bang Geng finally got out of trouble, please don't let him cause any more trouble!"

Qin Huairu was truly terrified.

She was driven almost mad by these successive blows, and now all she wanted was for her family to live peacefully.

"Shut up! You useless thing!"

Jia Zhangshi slapped Qin Huairu hard across the face.

"Can't afford to mess with them? Are we just going to watch that little bastard eat and drink the good life every day while our whole family starves?!"

She turned her head and continued to fan the flames wildly in Bang Geng's ear.

"My dear grandson, Grandma will tell you something."

"That little bastard's house has tons of money! And meat too!"

"He hurt you so badly, why don't you go and get something to make it up to him?"

"What belongs to the Jia family is rightfully ours to take!"

Jia Zhangshi's words were like poisonous seeds, deeply planted in Bang Geng's already twisted and dark heart.

Yes!

Why should he be eating rotten cornbread, being beaten, and being verbally abused in the juvenile detention center?

How come that child, who has no descendants, can eat White Rabbit candy in a big house and still have someone protecting him?

Why should everyone in the hospital laugh at their family just because his father died?

That's not fair! This is so unfair!

Banggeng clenched his fists tightly, his nails digging deep into his palms until blood seeped out.

He learned a lot in the juvenile detention center.

The most important one is: ruthlessness!

If you're ruthless enough, others will fear you!

"Grandma, don't worry."

Banggeng raised his head, and on his gaunt face, he squeezed out an extremely ugly, even somewhat ferocious, sneer.

"I will definitely avenge this."

"He made me suffer for two months, and I'm going to make him pay tenfold, a hundredfold!"

Looking at the murderous glint of hatred in his grandson's eyes.

Madam Jia smiled with satisfaction, but the smile, combined with the thick flesh on her face, made her look particularly terrifying.

Night fell once again.

The Hongxing Courtyard was shrouded in the heavy darkness of night and the swirling snow.

The temperature dropped below freezing.

The residents of the compound had already snuggled into their warm beds early in the morning.

Between the middle courtyard and the front courtyard, in that narrow alley that is rarely used.

It was pitch black.

Only the howling north wind whistled through the cracks in the walls, making strange noises like the wailing of ghosts and wolves.

At the very end of this alley, right next to the back window of Zhang Huaimin's east wing room.

There is a garbage dump that is usually used to store miscellaneous items and coal ash.

now.

In this musty-smelling garbage dump.

A thin figure, like a venomous snake, lay lurking menacingly.

It's a stick-shaped pun.

He wasn't wearing a cotton-padded coat, just a thin autumn shirt.

My whole body was shivering violently from the cold.

But his dead fish-like eyes were fixed on the back window of Zhang Huaimin's house, which was emitting a faint warm light.

There was no fear of the bitter cold in those eyes.

Only deep, irreconcilable malice and madness!

In his right hand.

He was tightly clutching a solid pebble, about the size of an adult's fist, which was heavy and solid!

The stone has extremely sharp edges.

He secretly hid it in his crotch while he was working in the quarry at the juvenile detention center.

He originally intended to use the stone to smash the jailer who often bullied him.

But now, he has found a better goal.

"Zhang Huaimin..."

Banggeng roared silently in his heart.

"You broke my front tooth and put me in jail!"

"Today, I'm going to smash your windows!"

"In this freezing weather, I see you don't have windows in your house, how are you going to freeze to death, you little wretched child!"