Chapter 301: Go to Hell

Chapter 301: Chapter 301: Go to Hell

Ji Huan hadn’t expected Song Jing to return today.

Seeing him travel-worn and with sunken cheeks, she knew just how hard he had been working.

But she was seething with anger at the moment and found it hard to even force a smile. She only managed to say dryly, "You... should rest."

With that, she strode out of the courtyard without a backward glance.

Song Jing froze for a moment. ’This is bad,’ he thought, turning to chase after her.

"Jing’er!" Mrs. Meng shouted at him. "If you walk out that door today, don’t you dare call me your mother ever again!"

Song Jing’s steps halted abruptly.

He turned back, his expression a mixture of helplessness and anxiety.

He knew his mother’s temper better than anyone and could only suppress the urge to run after Ji Huan.

Besides, it was broad daylight. Chasing after her now would only subject Ji Huan to more gossip.

The momentary panic subsided. Song Jing forced himself to calm down and focus on the situation at hand.

"Mother, why was Ji Huan here? What did you say to her?"

"Are you questioning me?" Mrs. Meng’s voice suddenly turned shrill. "Why was she here? Don’t you know?"

Song Jing’s suspicions were confirmed.

’Mother knows about me and Ji Huan. That’s why she deliberately summoned her here...’

He pressed his lips together, momentarily speechless.

Seeing his reaction, Mrs. Meng had no more doubts.

The fury that Ji Huan had provoked earlier now erupted. She walked over, bolted the courtyard gate shut, and dragged Song Jing all the way into the main hall.

This time, before Mrs. Meng could even speak, Song Jing knelt down, his back straight.

His action did nothing to appease her anger; instead, it only inflamed her more.

She turned sideways and pointed at the ancestral tablets on the altar table. "Don’t you have anything to say to me and your father?"

"I do." Song Jing looked up, his gaze fixed straight ahead. "Father, Mother, I love Ji Huan, and I want to marry her."

His words were firm and unwavering, without a hint of hesitation.

"You... you..." Mrs. Meng clutched her chest, her hand trembling as she pointed at him.

Fearing for her health, Song Jing started to rise to support her, but Mrs. Meng sharply ordered him to stay kneeling.

"Fine, I’ll kneel. Just don’t get worked up..."

"So you still know how to care about your mother? You still remember you have a mother! You..."

Mrs. Meng shouted these two sentences, then couldn’t speak for a long moment.

When Tian Jiao had come to tell her that Ji Huan was seducing Song Jing and had already succeeded, Mrs. Meng hadn’t taken it to heart.

She had even found it utterly absurd. Song Jing and Ji Huan had never interacted in their daily lives. Even if they had, it was impossible for Song Jing to fall for someone like Ji Huan.

The feud between Tian Jiao and Ji Huan was common knowledge. It was one thing for them to fight, but to drag her son into it? Mrs. Meng had been deeply disgusted.

But she never expected that just as Tian Jiao left, Guo Ling would arrive.

Both had their own agendas, but they both coincidentally mentioned the same name.

Mrs. Meng had managed to remain composed through Guo Ling’s mix of threats and promises, but an offhand comment Guo Ling made as she was leaving sent Mrs. Meng into a panic.

She had run to Song Jing’s room and ransacked it, turning it upside down. She didn’t find any woman’s belongings, but inside one of the books, she discovered a piece of paper.

It was an ordinary piece of paper. One side had an essay written from memory, but the other was densely filled with Ji Huan’s name, written over and over again.

She knew the handwriting all too well—it was Song Jing’s.

Mrs. Meng could no longer sit still, which led to today’s confrontation.

She had been utterly confident that with her greater life experience, it would be effortless to humiliate Ji Huan, to shame her so badly that she would flee in disgrace and never dare to dream of Song Jing again.

Who would have thought that a slip of a girl could be so difficult to deal with!

If Mrs. Meng had felt only a tiny sliver of alarm before meeting Ji Huan, then after their meeting, her sense of crisis had shot up to the absolute maximum.

Especially with her son’s unwavering attitude...

Mrs. Meng took a deep breath and said decisively, "I don’t care when you two started or how far you’ve gone. Starting today, you will break it off with Ji Huan. Break it off completely."

Without a moment’s thought, Song Jing shook his head. "Impossible."

"This is not up for discussion!" Mrs. Meng slammed her hand on the table several times. "You must break it off! Right now!"

"Mother!" Song Jing was still trying to persuade her. "Ji Huan is a good person. She’s a really good person. Please don’t believe the rumors out there. She’s intelligent, kind, and reasonable. People who don’t know her might think she’s aloof and unfeeling, but she’s actually very soft-hearted. She does everything she can to be good to the people around her..."

"Enough!" Mrs. Meng cut him off. She couldn’t bear to hear a single good word about Ji Huan from her son’s mouth.

"I don’t know if she’s good or not, but in any case, she cannot have any connection to our family! You are forbidden from mentioning her again! And you are certainly forbidden from seeing her again!"

Mrs. Meng’s refusal to understand Ji Huan, and her refusal to even communicate with him, left Song Jing feeling completely powerless.

"Mother, you once said... You said that as long as I passed the exam to become a Scholar, I could have anything I wanted."

"You can have anything you want, and you can have anyone you want. But not her."

"Why not!" Mrs. Meng’s stubbornness was agonizing for Song Jing. The words were almost a shout.

"’Do not marry the eldest daughter whose mother has passed, for she has not been taught proper conduct.’ You’re an educated man. Don’t tell me you don’t understand what that means."

Of course, Song Jing understood.

It meant that one should not marry the eldest daughter of a deceased mother, for without a mother’s guidance since childhood, her character was considered unreliable.

"She wasn’t raised without guidance. Her mother raised her for over a decade before she passed away. And since then, Ji Huan has grown up very well on her own."

"Then why did her mother die? And how did her father have that ’accident’? And her own brother—of the three of them, one is dead and one is lost, yet she’s the only one living just fine. If that isn’t a hard, jinxed fate, what is? And what about those matches Aunt Kang found for her? The families were perfectly fine before, but as soon as she was about to marry into them, disaster struck. How do you explain that?"

"Mother! Natural disasters, human calamities, life and death—these are things no one wants but no one can avoid! What does any of that have to do with Ji Huan? ’The Master did not speak of the strange or supernatural.’ How can you believe the words of those fortune tellers!"

"She was also rejected by the Jiang family! The Jiang family didn’t even want her, yet you’re picking up their leftovers! Aren’t you afraid of being laughed at?!"

"The Jiang family broke the engagement because Jiang Wu was blind to her worth! What does that have to do with Ji Huan? If others want to laugh, let them laugh. What does that have to do with me?"

Every time Mrs. Meng made a point, Song Jing refuted it. Her face gradually turned pale with rage, and her anger surged higher and higher.

"But she established her own household as a woman! And she comes with that burden of a brother! A man should marry a virtuous wife, not saddle himself with baggage!"

"I don’t see him as a burden. Besides, Ji Huan has a resilient spirit and is used to being independent. She wouldn’t be a burden to anyone."

Mrs. Meng was exasperated. "What on earth is so worthy about her that you’d do this! What tricks did she use to bewitch you..."

Song Jing frowned. "She didn’t need to use any tricks. I was the one who pursued her."

"You... you, are you trying to kill me with anger!"

"Mother..." Song Jing’s voice softened. "Mother, I’ve never asked you for anything my whole life. This is the only thing I’ll ever ask. Let me marry Ji Huan. From now on, I’ll listen to you in everything else. I swear I’ll pass the examinations and become an Advanced Scholar..."

"If you marry her, you’ll never become an Advanced Scholar!"

Song Jing froze. "Why do you say that?"

Mrs. Meng leaned on the table, panting heavily as she tried to suppress her fury. Then she told him about how the Academic Administrator’s daughter had taken a fancy to him and had sent someone to act as a matchmaker.

"Jing’er, you know your mother isn’t a social climber. We don’t have to covet the benefits of marrying the Academic Administrator’s daughter, but at the very least, we should find someone with a clean family background, right? Not only can Ji Huan offer you no help in your official career, but her status as the head of a female-led household is a hidden liability. The court might not be cracking down on it now, but that lenient policy may not last forever. In the future, when you hold a high position, this could very well become a weakness for your enemies to attack."

After hearing this, Song Jing finally understood why the Academic Administrator had personally overseen the examination this time, and why he had kept him behind for a private chat afterward.

He had told him to give his all in the provincial exam but not to put too much pressure on himself, treating this year as a practice run. He had also said that after the provincial exam, there was no need to return to the county school; he could report directly to the prefectural academy.

So it was all because of...

But he had never even met the Academic Administrator’s daughter. Where did this ridiculous infatuation come from?

Song Jing had many questions, but he still tried to console Mrs. Meng. "Even if he is the Academic Administrator, he can’t control everything. If he could truly guarantee my success, he wouldn’t be telling me to go to the prefectural academy, nor would he be talking about a ’practice run.’ And taking a step back, even if he really is all-powerful, the worst that can happen is that I stop here. Our original goal was just for me to become a Scholar, anyway. I’m not greedy. I can find a job teaching at a school or figure out a way to open a carpentry shop. I can always support you and Ji—"

SLAP—

The familiar, crisp sound rang out again, and Song Jing’s words came to an abrupt halt.

After landing the slap with uncontrollable rage, Mrs. Meng roared like a madwoman, "What kind of bewitching potion has she fed you that you’ve forgotten who you are?!"

Song Jing came to his senses and touched his numb cheek. He no longer had the heart to remind his mother of her past promise.

"There’s no bewitching potion. All I know is that I will marry no one but Ji Huan! The Academic Administrator’s daughter, some ’maiden with a clean background’—they can all go to hell!"

Song Jing’s absolute defiance snapped the last thread of reason in Mrs. Meng’s mind. She clutched her head, spun around, and left the main hall, muttering to herself.

When she returned, she was holding an "instrument of punishment"—several thorny vines bundled together.

It was covered in dust. In the past, it was only ever brought out when Song Jing had committed what Mrs. Meng considered a cardinal sin.

Song Jing’s gaze fell upon it. His eyelid twitched involuntarily, but his back only straightened further.

He was a grown man now. He would no longer be afraid of this thing, and he certainly would not yield to it.

The time that followed seemed to slow to a crawl.

The closed doors of the main hall, the dim space, the sound of vines striking flesh, and the occasional muffled grunt that escaped.

Interspersed with a woman’s hysterical questions.

"Will you marry her?!"

"Won’t marry..."

"Will you break it off?!"

"No... won’t break..."

"I... I’ll beat you to death!!!"