The Glory After Rebirth [ɇÇ”Ÿä¹‹Å°Šè£] Chapter 4- 6

Chapter 4: The Legacy of Mother

After putting the jade into the hand of the dancing girl, Ling Zhang was intended to find a place to hide and enjoy the show. But when he just turned around, there came a sudden bursting pain on his head. The severe pain overwhelmed him, blurring his vision, and made him stagger to almost fall down.

“What, what happened?” Ling Zhang pressed hard on his forehead. “Why does my head hurt so badly?”

The worst thing was that his eyes were getting blurry gradually, he even couldn’t see the way ahead.

Ling Zhang was startled, panic-stricken. “It was not easy to be reborn and gain the chance of revenging against Jia Family. How can I faint here and repeat the tragedy of previous life again?”

No, absolutely not!

Ling Zhang grinded teeth hard, gasping heavily for air. He fought hard to hold himself not to fall down, and staggered to the remote corner. When he struggled to a shelter with difficulty, he had been out in a sweat.

Just after he huddled himself up, Ling Zhang could no longer hold on and lose consciousness.

After falling in a faint, Ling Zhang was still not relieved. A lot of strange things squeezed into his mind, such as small labyrinth formation, trap of claiming lives, trap of hiding, illusive trap…

Ling Zhang felt very strange with the knowledge, which he felt very familiar with but the memory was very vague in the meanwhile. It seemed the knowledge had been learned before but was dug out from the depths of his mind all at one time to force him to grasp again.

Some of the traps were painted on the paper with his naïve hands, some were drawn by stroke with someone holding his hand, some were his personal experience that he had been left to the small labyrinth formation and cried for failing to find the way out.

Who taught him these? The voice of the person was sometimes gentle, sometimes severe, which was so familiar to him that made him want to cry. The warmth and tenderness of kinship rose slowly in his heart, and he remembered, it was the voice of his mother.

“How long has it been since I heard mother’s voice?”

Since mother died of illness, father disappeared, he had not experienced the warmth and care from his parents thereafter.

He could still remember that when his mother died, there were many books left by her in the study, many of which were about traps and formations. However, all of them were burned down by his father later, for his father said that it was those books about traps that killed his mother, which were hoodoos.

His father disappeared just after burning those books. Grandfather and uncle were afraid he would be sad, so they required the family servants to mention his parents as little as possible. Gradually, nobody talked about them. Ling Zhang gradually forgot the traps and formations his mother had taught him as he received formal education in school.

What if he had insisted on learning traps and remembered them in mind? Would Ling Family be less passive in his last life? At least he would have been able to do something; in that case, would everything be different? After all, he had personally experienced the power of the small labyrinth formation laid by his mother. If he had known how to use the trap at that time, was it possible that he could buy Ling Family the opportunity to escape?

Unfortunately, there was no if, the tragedy of last life had occurred, and it could not be allowed to happen again this time.

With that decided, Ling Zhang began to try his best to recall all the knowledge about the traps bit by bit in the mind, and imprinted the knowledge deeply in his mind with all efforts.

It seemed to be a long time after Ling Zhang had thoroughly rummaged the knowledge out and bore it in mind.

Actually, only less than ten minutes passed. There was no noise in the garden outside, but someone would come soon.

Ling Zhang got out of the hiding place upon waking up with eyes becoming deeper.

“Right on time. Perhaps I should add some fuel to the flames to bring more drama,” he thought.

Chapter 5: Why Isn’t Ling Zhang Here?

Jia Yuanling’s back garden was in the style of Jiangnan gardens, tortuous and winding, elegant and quiet, which was convenient for Ling Zhang to lay the formations.

The formations his mother taught him should be used according to different conditions, some of which paid attention to the right place at the right time. But the illusive trap he was going to use did not need the help of the right time or weather but only the right place. With nobody’s disturbance, Ling Zhang was ready to validate whether the trap was as magical as his mother had stated.

To do so, according to the memory recalled just now, Ling Zhang changed the position of all the potted plants around the garden, pushed down a few small ornamental plants, and moved some fragrant potted plants to the place nearby from a corner of the back garden, and finally changed the posture of the dancer lying unconscious on the ground.

When the layout was about to finish, Ling Zhang heard a noise coming from outside, he winded up the work in a hurry and was intended to find a place to hide. However, the moment he stood up, he felt dizzy when he accidentally saw the dancer’s body. Startled, he hastened to depart from the only safe-exit in the formation.

Even Ling Zhang, the one who laid the formation, had been affected, therefore he looked forward to the effect of the trap more than ever.

At the moment, there came sounds of footsteps coming from the corner of the back garden, with a voice saying, “Father, there must be some misunderstanding. Brother Zhang is a man of virtue. He is drunk and resting in the wing room. How could he do such a thing?”

It was Jia Yuanling.

Then an angry voice fumed, “Unfilial son!” followed with a sound of someone being pushed to the ground.

“Yuanling, are you all right? Why speak for Ling Zhang?”

“Exactly, Ling Zhang dared to do such shameful things. Then he must pay for it!”

Hiding in the dark, Ling Zhang watched their acting with sulky face, and the anger repressed in his heart flared up. Jia Yuanling was still acting at this moment! What a marvelous show!

“How stupid I was to not even see through who he really is!” thought Ling Zhang.

“Master, they are here!” Someone shouted.

It seemed that they had found the dancing girl; presumably, they should have stepped into the illusive trap.

Ling Zhang took a few steps forward to get out of the shelter, so that he could see the situation in the trap without being noticed.

Among the crowd, it was Jia Family’s current chief Jia Yin who stood in the lead, behind whom were the guests visiting Jia Family, such as the local magistrate Tao Feng and his son Tao Yi, the chief of He Family, He Zhongming, living in the east of the city, several other men of high status, and even some harems!

Logically speaking, these were outsiders that should not have appeared in such a private occasion. Perhaps Jia Yuanling wanted to make Ling Zhang’s “scandal” known to all, so he designedly led the guests here.

The situation in previous life was too chaotic for Ling Zhang to distinguish the people around. Ling Zhang could only remember there had been a lot of people watching his embarrassment, as if all the people in Tanyang had been there. And their despite and curses were still fresh in his mind.

This time he was able to discern their faces clearly and matched them to the contemptuous faces in memory of previous life one by one finally. Gradually, Ling Zhang’s eyes became cold.

“Ah…” A woman screamed suddenly. “Over there!”

“Oh my god! How could this be? It’s true.”

“Bitch! You bitch!” Seeing the unconscious dancing girl covered with traces of sex, Jia Yin was too angry to say a word, his face turning red and neck veins bulging, “The damn bitch! I’m going to kill her!”

“How did this happen? Brother Zhang really did…” Jia Yuanling was about to say something but choked down his words as if his neck was grabbed by somebody when he saw there was only a dancing girl lying on the ground, his face distorted. “No. You said it was Ling Zhang who fornicated with this woman, but where is he?”

“Yeah, who was the one committed adultery with the dancing girl actually?”

Chapter 6: Keep Your Damned Eyes Open

“Are you looking for me?”

Just while these people were talking, Ling Zhang suddenly appeared behind all of them. He looked neat and tidy. Apart from a whiff of alcohol, he did not show any inappropriateness, let alone the so-called traces left after fornicating with a woman.

“When I was resting in the wing-room, I heard great noise here and my name being called far away. What happened?”

There followed an extremely awkward silence after his words. No one expected that Ling Zhang would suddenly appear and he looked as if nothing had happened.

“Ling Zhang, how dare you show up!” Immediately someone pointed at Ling Zhang and cursed, “Yuanling regards you as a brother, but you betrayed him to have an affair with his father’s concubine!”

Others immediately woke up to that, looking suspiciously and contemptuously at Ling Zhang.

Ling Zhang snorted coldly and his face sank down as he queried, “What are you talking about?”

“You know what you have done and do you need us to speak it out?” The people around Jia Yuanling tried their best to make a scene.

Ling Zhang’s eyes chilled down as he suddenly stepped forward. Before everyone could react, he kicked hard at that man’s lower abdomen. There was a bang. The man was kicked backwards and fell, screaming out of pain.

Everyone was stunned by this kick from Ling Zhang.

“Who the hell you think you are? How dare you slander me? Keep your snobbish eyes open to see who I am! How dare you offend Ling family?” Ling Zhang said in cold tone, looking down at the person who was kicked down on the ground. The anger and murderous intent in his eyes were clearly visible, and the fierce momentum frightened everyone to say nothing.

“How dare you…you kick me?” The man sat up awkwardly, and when he saw Ling Zhang’s eyes, he stammered without even the gut to stand up.

“How presumptuous of you to hurt my guest! Where do you think you are? You pay no respect to Jia family.” As the owner of Jia family, Jia Yin was the first to recover from shock.

Ling Zhang turned to look at him. His cold and fierce eyes made Jia Yin and all the people behind him feel chilly and unconsciously took a step backward.

“Where? I just think your Jia family is a big joke. Is there a father’s concubine who would sneak into his son’s yard? Are your son’s guards all dead? Either the gatekeeper intentionally let her in, or the woman had the means to get in easily. Either way, it only proves that she has been here more than once. Need I remind you of what shameful things she has done?”

“And this place is only a wall away from the main hall. Can’t the people in the main hall hear the movement here? You’d better look into the sordid relationship between your concubine and your son. He played her into a coma, and he wanted to use me as a scapegoat? Although I am here alone today, I am not the one to be bullied.”

“What do you mean?” Jia Yin was so angry that his fingers trembled. His eyes, which were fixed fiercely at Ling Zhang, burst with anger as if he were going to eat Ling Zhang alive.

“Are you deaf?” Ling Zhang was not a bit intimidated by his glare at all. “I said your son and the people around him were the ones who have committed adultery with the concubine.”

After Ling Zhang said this, everyone was shocked and looked suspiciously at Jia Yuanling and the people around him.

At this point, all were shocked as they just noticed that Jia Yuanling and several other people standing near the concubine flushed, their breathing quickening and their eyes reddening as if they were caught by a seizure.