Chapter 1

Chapter 1: You Sold Your Daughters Right Off the Bat—What Gives You the Right to Have Three Wives? “Don’t bite! Don’t bite!” “Easy! Please!” “Why don’t you dare do that to them? Sob… All you ever do is bully me!” Zhang Xiangyang’s eyes flew open, his head spinning violently. He hurriedly looked down—and realized he was holding a completely naked woman in his arms. She had fair skin and striking features, but there was no hiding the loathing in her eyes. “Had enough?” “If you have, get the hell off me!” Zhang Xiangyang shuddered without thinking. The next instant, a jumble of memories forcibly flooded his mind. Had he really been reborn? Back in 1977, in Dahe Village! But the faint excitement he’d felt vanished at once. Zhang Xiangyang was beside himself. He’d been a businessman worth over a hundred million in his previous life. How had he ended up reborn as such a worthless piece of trash this time around?! He lived for food and drink, visited prostitutes, gambled, smoked, swindled, cheated, abducted people, and stole—this bastard had every vice in the book! “Damn it, he had a gorgeous wife like this and still went out fooling around every day? Was the original owner of this body a fucking idiot?” Looking at the beautiful woman in his arms, Zhang Xiangyang wanted to slap this body of his. “You don’t support the family, you don’t work the fields, and you spend whole days holed up in the gambling den! Tell me, where did you get the money to gamble?” Li Yuxiang’s eyes were red. She pinched the head of Zhang Xiangyang’s penis in retaliation. “Big Sister and Second Sister were right. We should’ve divorced a piece of human garbage like you long ago!” “Bang—” Just then, the courtyard gate burst open under a powerful shove. A moment later came his mother Liu Cuihua’s hysterical wailing. “Zhang Xiangyang! You damned beast! Get out here!” “How did I give birth to such a heartless thing? You’ve done something unforgivable—you traded your own two daughters for gambling money! I’m going to beat you to death today! Waaaaah, I’m too ashamed to face your father in the afterlife!” At the sound of the commotion outside, Li Yuxiang froze on the kang. She shoved Zhang Xiangyang away and scrambled to her feet. “Pah! So that’s where you got the gambling money!” “You even sold Yaya and Dandan? You really are a fucking scumbag!” After cursing him out, Li Yuxiang, the third of the women, slammed the door behind her and left. Zhang Xiangyang was left alone in a moment of post-sex clarity. He rubbed his temples. What kind of melodramatic mess was this? Selling his daughters right off the bat? Had the original guy mistaken the criminal code for a get-rich-quick guide? Taking a deep breath, Zhang Xiangyang began sorting through the chaotic memories in his mind. Yesterday afternoon, the original Zhang Xiangyang’s gambling itch had struck, but he didn’t even have a single five-jiao “textile worker” note in his pocket. So he’d set his sights on Yaya, the daughter of his first ex-wife, and Dandan, the daughter of his second ex-wife. While the rest of the family was working their private plot, the bastard had coaxed and tricked the two little girls, both under five, and sold them to Liu the Lame, an old bachelor from the neighboring village, for ten yuan. That night, Zhang Xiangyang had been caught red-handed cheating at the gambling table by the gambling-den owner! The man had confiscated all his money and had his thugs beat him half to death with clubs. He’d come home covered in injuries, but instead of reflecting on what he’d done, Zhang Xiangyang had taken all his anger out on Li Yuxiang, the third of the women! “Damn it!” “Everyone else can have children to trade for money. Why can’t you do your part? You can’t even lay an egg!” So, while his mother and his other two ex-wives were out searching the whole village for the girls, the original Zhang Xiangyang had pinned Li Yuxiang to the kang and forced himself on her. “Fuck. No wonder a guy like that died young.” Zhang Xiangyang couldn’t help swearing. A guy as outstanding as him had been reborn in the body of this piece of trash. The connections the original owner’s ancestors had built in the underworld must have been unbelievable! No. Now that he’d been reborn, he couldn’t let this kind of disgraceful thing happen again. With that thought, he hurriedly climbed off the kang, shoved his feet into his cloth shoes, and ran outside. But the moment he pushed open the wooden door to the main room, Zhang Xiangyang froze in utter shock. In the narrow, dilapidated earthen courtyard, besides his mother Liu Cuihua, who was wiping away tears, stood three women so beautiful they seemed unreal. Besides Li Yuxiang, the third of the women, who had just run out, the other two were naturally his first ex-wife Lin Xiulan and his second ex-wife Su Hongying. Zhang Xiangyang couldn’t believe his eyes. He rubbed his bruised eye sockets hard before he could accept that he wasn’t seeing things. These three women looked exactly like the three women he’d loved but never won over in his previous life: his middle-school, high-school, and university crushes! And now they were his ex-wives! Zhang Xiangyang’s heart began to race. Fate. This had to be fate. Heaven hadn’t just given him a second chance at life—it had delivered all the regrets of his previous life to him in one package. “I’ll beat you to death, you heartless bastard! I had to spend the burial savings your father left us just to buy your two daughters back!” Seeing Zhang Xiangyang standing there in his disheveled state, Liu Cuihua was overcome by both old and new grievances. She grabbed the broom in the corner and brought it down on Zhang Xiangyang over and over. “You’ve squandered every last bit of money, you beast! We can’t even afford a grain of sorghum now!” “Are you really going to be satisfied only when every last one of us starves to death?!” The rough broom bristles stung like fire against his skin, but Zhang Xiangyang didn’t dodge a single blow. He looked at his three ex-wives, all gaunt and drawn, and his two daughters, so thin they were little more than skin and bones. The regrets of his previous life and the guilt of this one made his heart clench painfully. “Mother, I’ll change!” Zhang Xiangyang suddenly reached out and grabbed the broom as it came down. His gaze swept over the women he’d loved so dearly in his previous life. His voice was firmer than it had ever been. “Don’t worry. From now on, I’ll make sure you all have enough to eat!” With that, he turned and ducked into the half-collapsed shack. “You beast!” Watching Zhang Xiangyang rummage frantically around the house, the old woman felt as if she could hardly breathe. “We don’t even have a single mao left! What are you looking for?” “You’re not thinking of pawning this wreck of a house to win back your losses, are you?” At Liu Cuihua’s words, despair filled the eyes of his three ex-wives. In prosperous times, a woman was worth a fortune in gold; in troubled times, half a flatbread. Staying under the same roof after a divorce was a choice made out of necessity in those days. But if the beast took even their last rickety little shelter to gamble away, then death was all that awaited them! “I gave birth to this beast! I’ve wronged these three girls!” “Today, even if it costs me my life, I’ll take you down with me!” Just as Liu Cuihua raised a kitchen knife to strike, a large hand came down firmly on her shoulder. Zhang Xiangyang brushed the dust off himself, his face breaking into a radiant smile. “Heh-heh! Mother, look what I found!”