When Shi Huai opened his eyes, he saw a deathly pale woman’s face staring fixedly down at him.
Her eyes were filled with fear and disgust, and she kept muttering words like “monster” and “freak.”
Before he could make sense of his situation, her hands closed around his neck. The strength in them was far beyond what a woman who had just given birth should have possessed.
“Die… It’ll be better if you die. You can’t stay. This thing can’t be allowed to live…”
The woman’s voice trembled as tears pattered down onto Shi Huai’s face.
Yet her hands did not loosen in the slightest.
Shi Huai instinctively tried to struggle, only to discover that he had no control over this body at all.
His limbs were as limp as noodles. He could not even cry out. All he could feel was his throat slowly being squeezed shut as the world before his eyes gradually darkened.
Just when he thought he was about to die this miserably, a cold mechanical voice exploded inside his mind—
“Ding! The Appearance Enhancement System has been successfully bound to the host. Host’s current appearance score: 0—ugly beyond belief, revolting to behold. This system has never seen a human being this hideous. One appearance attribute point will be awarded automatically each month.”
Shi Huai was on the verge of suffocating, yet the system notification somehow infuriated him into regaining consciousness.
He could barely breathe, and this thing had given him an appearance-enhancement system?
The woman was still strangling him, muttering under her breath.
“There was something wrong when I was carrying you. I dreamed of black fog every night. The midwife said you were bound to be a bringer of disaster. And look at you… look at what you’ve become…”
Shi Huai struggled desperately to draw breath. A faint “h-hk” escaped his throat, like a kitten with someone’s foot pressed down on its neck.
Just then, a frantic series of footsteps sounded outside the door. The next moment, the door was kicked open, and an old but thunderously powerful voice rang out:
“Stop! What are you doing?”
The woman flinched at the shout, and the strength in her hands slackened slightly.
Shi Huai seized the opportunity to cough violently. The sensation of air rushing back into his throat nearly made him pass out again.
A white-haired old woman rushed in and snatched Shi Huai from the woman’s grasp. But when she lowered her head and saw him, she froze in place.
In those murky old eyes, Shi Huai saw the exact same expression he had seen on the woman’s face.
Fear, disgust, and the horror of someone who had just seen a ghost.
The old woman’s hands trembled, but she still gritted her teeth and wrapped Shi Huai in her arms. Then she turned and glared at the woman on the bed.
“No matter what, he’s still a life! You’re his own mother. How could you bring yourself to do that?”
The woman lay sprawled on the bed, tears streaming down her face. Her voice was hoarse.
“Mother, look at his face… Just look! How is that something a human child should have?”
“The midwife said he wouldn’t live past three days. Rather than let him live and suffer, we might as well…”
“Enough!”
The old woman cut her off sharply, but her gaze still drifted back to Shi Huai’s face. Her pupils contracted ever so slightly.
Shi Huai had no idea what his face looked like, but judging from the women’s reactions, he was probably ugly to an almost supernatural degree.
He calmly assessed the situation.
He had transmigrated into the body of a newborn baby. His birth mother had tried to strangle him, while his grandmother—or perhaps his maternal grandmother—didn’t seem particularly eager to care for him either.
The system had given him a useless ability that would increase his appearance by one point only once a month.
And as an infant hideous enough to horrify people, there was a good chance he wouldn’t even survive three days.
Fine. This opening was worse than transmigrating into a eunuch.
In the end, the old woman did not return Shi Huai to his mother. Instead, she carried him into the woodshed next door.
She wrapped him in an old padded jacket, tossed him onto a pile of dry grass, and left after saying, “Whether he lives or dies is up to his own fate.”
Shi Huai lay on the hay, listening to the hushed whispers outside the door.
The woman was crying. The old woman was sighing. There was also a man’s voice, kept very low, saying things like “bad luck” and “shameful.”
He closed his eyes and cursed the system’s ancestors for eighteen generations in his mind.
“Ding! A sharp emotional fluctuation has been detected in the host. Reminder: The Appearance Enhancement System is a passive-growth cheat ability and cannot actively provide any other abilities. Please maintain a calm state of mind and wait patiently for your appearance to improve.”
Shi Huai took a deep breath and told himself to stay calm. Calm…
Calm, my ass!
He was a dying infant. Even if he managed to survive until his appearance score was maxed out, what was he supposed to live on for the next decade or more?
His face?
Oh, right. With a face like his, he could probably scare people away on sight. Even begging would be a disadvantage.
However, fate apparently felt that his trials had not yet been difficult enough.
Early the next morning, the old woman walked into the woodshed carrying a bundle. With an expressionless face, she said one thing to him.
“Your birth father has arrived. He’s waiting outside to take you away.”
Shi Huai froze. Before he could react, the old woman had already stuffed him, bundle and all, into the arms of a middle-aged man.
The man wore a dark indigo brocade robe with a jade belt around his waist. His features were dignified, and he was clearly a wealthy gentleman.
But when his eyes swept across Shi Huai’s face, the disgust that rose from the depths of his being was impossible to conceal.
“That’s it?”
The man frowned at the old woman. “You said this child looks like me?”
The old woman replied coldly, “Take a proper look. The shape of his brows and eyes—isn’t it exactly the same as yours when you were young?”
The man lowered his head and glanced at Shi Huai again. The corner of his mouth twitched as he held the baby farther away, as though afraid of getting something filthy on himself.
“That face… It’s just too…”
“Marquis,” the old woman interrupted, her tone suddenly turning meaningful.
“When you were recovering from your injuries in our village all those years ago, you personally promised my daughter that you would never mistreat her for the rest of your life. Now that the child has been born, if you refuse to acknowledge him, where am I supposed to go to seek justice?”
Shi Huai’s mind went blank.
The Marquis?
His cheap father was a marquis?
The man—the Marquis—went pale. In the end, he gritted his teeth, shoved Shi Huai into the arms of an attendant, and tossed out one final sentence.
“Fine. I’ll take him. You and your daughter are never to come looking for me again.”
The old woman grabbed his sleeve.
“Wait. The child doesn’t even have a name.”
The Marquis waved impatiently.
“Give him whatever name you like. Call him Shi Huai.”
With that, he turned and walked away without looking back.
Shi Huai was held by an expressionless attendant as they rode through the biting wind. Cold air rushed against his face while he watched the village grow smaller and smaller behind them.
He had only one thought:
The care his father had put into naming him was probably about the same as the thought he put into randomly choosing a flavor when ordering takeout.
The attendant brought him to the front of an imposing residence. A plaque hung above the vermilion gates.
Four large characters were written upon it—
“Yongning Marquis Residence.”
