Chapter 11: The Prodigal Returns, Bearing Meat to Apologize with Firewood!

Lu Qingshan stepped into the house, the cold piercing to the bone, as if he had walked into an ice cellar.

The water in the barrel had frozen a thin layer of ice, like a sheet of window paper.

He clenched his fist and slammed it down hard onto the ice surface!

Crack!

Ice shards splashed everywhere.

He scooped up the cold water mixed with ice chips using a ladle and abruptly poured it over his face.

Hiss—

The piercing cold exploded instantly, from scalp numb to soles, making his whole body shudder.

The paste-like confusion in his head was finally subdued somewhat by this sudden dousing of cold water.

He quickly took off the torn cotton jacket stained with roe deer blood and reeking of fishy odor.

He walked to the kang and began rummaging through boxes and cabinets.

He needed to change clothes.

He could no longer look like a savage who had just crawled out of a pile of corpses.

Nor could he appear like a fearsome demon come to collect a debt.

Finally, he pulled out a neatly folded old cotton jacket from the bottom of the box.

Patches upon patches covered it, the stitching crooked and uneven—clearly Lin Yue'e's handiwork.

But Yue E had washed it clean.

He silently put it on.

Facing the blurry reflection in the water barrel, he roughly tousled his bird‑nest‑like hair, then vigorously rubbed his face, trying to smooth the hostility between his brows.

He needed to look like a person.

At least, he couldn't look so frightening, so disgraceful.

He walked to the pile of roe deer meat in the courtyard, took a deep breath, his eyes resolute.

He drew his firewood knife, gritted his teeth, and began picking through the meat.

Finally, he cut off a whole hind leg.

This leg meat was the thickest, with a nice mix of fat and lean, clear beautiful grain, and weighed about seventeen or eighteen catties.

This was definitely one of the best cuts of meat on the whole roe deer.

He found several sheets of yellowed but clean oil paper, layered them, and carefully wrapped the meat.

His movements were so gentle, as if he were wrapping some priceless treasure.

Holding the meat, he walked to the courtyard gate, where his steps halted.

He lifted his head and gazed at the sky.

The leaden sky hung low and oppressive, making it hard to breathe.

He opened his mouth and drew in a lungful of icy air.

He hoped the biting north wind would dispel the suffocating frustration and shame pent up in his chest.

Go to the Lin family.

Those three words were like three great mountains, weighing heavily on his chest, almost making him unable to breathe.

All the wretched deeds of his past life surged up like a tide.

His father‑in‑law's utterly disappointed gaze, his mother‑in‑law secretly wiping tears behind his back, and Yue E's barely concealed resentment each time she returned from her maiden home…

Scene after scene flashed through his mind like a movie, each one cutting his heart like a knife.

With each memory, his steps grew heavier.

But today he must face it, he must go!

For what?

Is it for the two cold blankets on the kang?

Is it for Xiao Xue, who when forcibly taken away, lost her voice to sobs and cried out heart‑rending 'Daddy'?

Yes, but more so for himself!

To atone for his past‑life sins, to be able to straighten his back, to live again like a human being!

The Lin family's home is in Qianyingcun, beside the county road, separated by two ridges, a walk of about half an hour.

In winter the mountain path is even more treacherous.

Thick snow covered the ankles, and beneath the icy crust lay sharp ice shards.

Each step sank soft and unsteady, requiring constant vigilance against slipping.

The bitter wind scraped face and hands like a knife, with snow pellets stinging painfully.

Lu Qingshan cradled the heavy bundle of roe deer meat, braving the wind and snow, moving forward with uneven steps.

He walked very slowly, with great difficulty.

Each step felt like he was crushing those absurd past years underfoot.

Heavy, slow, yet imbued with an irrevocable resolve.

He didn't know how long he had walked before cresting the final bald ridge.

At last the low‑lying rooftops of Qianyingcun appeared at the edge of his vision.

The familiar earthen walls of the Lin family compound gradually came into focus.

Thick snow blanketed the wall tops, and the bare branches of the old scholar tree in the courtyard swayed lonely in the cold wind.

Only from the askew chimney rose a thin wisp of gray‑white cooking smoke.

The smoke drifted slowly beneath the overcast sky, carrying a faint hint of human warmth.

But Lu Qingshan's heart, however, as he drew nearer to that courtyard wall, grew increasingly tense, and his steps became heavier.

Finally, he stood before the mottled wooden door of the Lin family.

The door was shut tight; the cracks in the door panels resembled the weathered wrinkles on an old man's face, exuding a sense of coldness and aloofness.

He raised his hand, almost numb from the cold, and hesitated before the door for a full half minute.

In the end, he still gently knocked on the door ring.

"Dong, dong-dong."

The knocking was not loud, but in this quiet snowscape it sounded especially jarring, even carrying a barely perceptible tremor.

After knocking two rounds in succession and waiting a moment, a disorderly footsteps came from the courtyard, along with a few fierce barks.

"Clatter," the heavy wooden bolt behind the door was violently pulled open.

"Who is it? In broad daylight, are you trying to summon death?!"

The door creaked open a crack, and a weathered, angular face peered out.

The wrinkles on his face looked as if carved by knife and axe, and his eyes were sharp.

It was his father-in-law, Lin Huainian.

A former soldier of several years, the old man had a foul and stubborn temper, famous throughout the surrounding villages as a stubborn mule.

When Lin Huainian saw that it was Lu Qingshan standing outside the door, he first froze for a moment.

Immediately, his already sharp eyes seemed to ignite a powder keg, erupting in blazing fury with a sudden 'whoosh'!

"You beast! Do you still have the nerve to come here?!"

Lin Huainian almost roared, his voice like a thunderclap exploding from flat ground.

His face instantly darkened to the point where water could be wrung from it, like the sky before a storm.

He suddenly flung the door wide open, then backward grabbed the firewood stick standing by the door!

That stick was thick and long, one end charred black; he gripped it tightly and without hesitation thrust it viciously toward Lu Qingshan's nose!

The stick exuded a scorching heat and the smell of furnace smoke, jabbing straight at Lu Qingshan's eyes with an undisguised ferocity.

"Get out! Get out right now! We Lin family have no son-in-law like you! Don't force me to break your dog legs!"

Spittle mixed with icy cold wind struck Lu Qingshan's face from head to toe.

That blackened firewood stick was about to poke into his eyeball.

If it were the former Lu Qingshan, being scolded at the nose by his father-in-law and threatened with a stick, he would have surely flown into a rage.

He would either have argued back stubbornly or have been scared silly and run away with urine and feces.

But today, he did not dodge, did not run, and certainly did not talk back.

He merely stared at the firewood stick within arm's reach and at his father-in-law's face twisted by violent rage.

Then he straightened his body and knelt down before Lin Huainian!

Like an old pine tree forced to bend its trunk by a raging blizzard, its trunk bent but its roots still clung desperately to the ground beneath.

Regardless of the bone‑chilling wind piercing his neck like a knife, or his father‑in‑law's thunderous curses lashing his dignity like a whip.

"Thud!"

A muffled thud.

Lu Qingshan's knees slammed heavily onto the cold, hard snow before the door.

His knees struck the icy shards beneath the snow crust, a piercing pain shooting through his thin cotton pants straight to the bone.

The pain made him gasp a breath of cold air, and cold sweat instantly beaded on his forehead.

But he gritted his teeth, his back straight as a spear, and remained kneeling motionless.