The cannon fodder just wants to survive until the end

My name is Pei Jingfeng. I was born in the Pei family, a famous family in Beijing. My mother is my father’s third wife. Outsiders say that my mother’s family married her into the Pei family as a second wife for power.

But I know that is not the case. My mother loves my father. Although my father also likes my mother, he has too many things in his eyes, including the rise and fall of the entire Pei family, many affairs in the court, his close friends, and his strong ambition for power.

Those things are so important to my father, which makes my mother seem so insignificant in his eyes.

My mother fell in love with my father when he went to Jiangnan for business. Despite the advice of her family, she resolutely became my father's second wife, a man who was 20 years older than her and had two wives.

From then on, the mother only had eyes for her father. She treated her father's children as her own, cut off contact with her friends, and devoted herself to managing the Pei Mansion.

Later, I was born. I was a smart child and knew that my father did not like my mother as much as I imagined. In order to make my father pay more attention to my mother, I showed amazing talent at a young age.

My father was very happy. Just as I expected, he came to my mother's house more often than before. Although he mostly came to see me, my mother was still happier than before.

My father's brothers from his previous wife were also very kind to me. They had grown up and didn't often come to the backyard, so I often went to the front yard to find them.

Every time my brothers came back from outside, they would bring me delicious food and fun things, and sometimes they would take me out to play with servants following them.

My brothers took me to the streets for the first time, my eldest brother taught me how to write for the first time, and I memorized my first poem in front of my second brother.

At that time, I felt that there was no happier child than me.

I thought it would always be like this, but when I was ten years old, my brothers stopped being close to me. Later, I caught people from their maternal family saying bad things about me, and my brothers didn’t stop them. I knew there was no way we could go back.

Later, when I was thirteen years old, I passed the imperial examination and became a scholar. My father was very happy and said happily that there would be someone to carry on the family tradition. From then on, my brothers became even more distant from me.

I was a little sad. My intelligence made me know the reason for everything too early. I didn't want to be a stranger with my brother, but I couldn't change anything unless I gave up my talent.

I can't be an ordinary person. I still have my mother. I have to grow up quickly and become someone who can protect my mother. If my mother doesn't like the Pei Mansion anymore in the future, I will take her away.

For the sake of my mother, I can only give up expecting love from my brothers.

Sometimes I think that I am already so smart, and it doesn’t matter if I don’t have the closeness of my brothers. I want to become a man who can stand on his own feet.

Later, when I was fifteen, I passed the imperial examination. My father made a grand arrangement for me, as if he wanted to announce it to the world. He also hired famous teachers to teach me, as if he was training me to be the next head of the family.

When my brothers met me again, they just nodded and said nothing. But I told them that I didn’t want to be the next head of the Pei family, but they didn’t believe me. After that, I never said that kind of thing to them again, because they wouldn’t believe it anyway.

When I was 19 years old, I took the imperial examination. For the sake of my brothers' future, my brothers' uncle's family designed to injure my hand two days before the examination.

It’s okay if I write less often in the future, but it will be impossible for me to take the imperial examination.

They ruined me and my future, and when I first found out, I wanted to confront my brothers in person, but in my heart, I felt that there was no way my brothers would send someone to do this to me.

So I tested my brothers, and the result I got made me not know whether to cry or laugh. It was indeed not my brothers who sent people to hurt me, but my brothers were aware of the situation.

They knew someone was going to hurt me, but they didn't stop it. My father got furious when I was hurt and ordered a thorough investigation.

Later, I heard from the doctor that my hand was basically useless, so my father didn't investigate the matter in detail. He just symbolically punished my brothers and gave me up.

I wasn't actually very sad. I had already known what kind of person my father was, and I had expected that he would be like this.

But I didn't expect that something would happen to my mother at this time. She had a difficult labor when giving birth to me and almost died. She has been relying on good medicine to nourish herself over the years.

This time, when my mother heard about my accident, she fell ill all of a sudden. She had been unhealthy to begin with, and now she couldn’t get up. Only a dozen days after my accident, my mother passed away.

I felt my heart suddenly become empty. I had no mother, no father, no future, no brothers. I had nothing overnight.

I saw my mother for the last time. She said she knew I was very tired and what I had done for her over the years. She wanted me to have a good future, so she didn't stop me from doing what I did.

I didn't expect that it would harm me. My mother said that she hoped that after her death, I would leave the capital and go to Jiangnan where my maternal grandfather lived, and leave this sad place.

She hoped that I could bury her in Jiangnan if possible. She said that she felt sorry for her parents and me in her life, and hoped that after her death she could stay in Jiangnan with her parents to atone for her sins.

I promised my mother that I would take her ashes back to Jiangnan after her death. However, I also severed my relationship with the Pei family. I didn't want to have any other relationship with the Pei family except the surname.

I don't want to take revenge on my brothers anymore, I'll just treat it as a return of their love and care when I was a child.

When I left, it was the day when the results of the imperial examination were announced. People all over the capital were very happy on this important day.

The families who passed the exam were setting off firecrackers. If my hand was okay, I should have a share of this, I thought about it as I left.

In the end, it has nothing to do with me. I and the people in this city seem to be from two different worlds. My world is lonely and I am the only one there.

I packed up my things and took my mother's dowry, urn, and the servants who came with her as a dowry and returned to Jiangnan. There was no one left in my maternal grandfather's house at that time, so I buried my mother next to my grandparents.

I think my mother must have wanted to leave the Pei Mansion and stay with my grandparents in the end.

I didn't know what to do at first. Although I didn't have much of a desire to survive, the people who had been with my mother before still had to stay alive. Those elderly people were old, and some of them didn't have children. They watched me grow up, and I couldn't leave them without anyone to support them when they were old.

So I started trying to do business. I did have some talent for business. In just a few months, I got my business on track and my wealth increased several times.