Chang Geng remembered that she was wearing a long red dress that was stained with blood. She used the oil and Ziliujin that the head of the bandits secretly stored to burn the place down to the ground, then left with him.

In his short lifespan of more than ten years, Xiu Niang had attempted to kill him repeatedly, gave him poisonous wine, stabbed him with a knife, tied him to a horse, and then dragged him along behind it. There were even countless late nights, where he would be jolted awake, finding that his limbs were powerless, because Xiu Niang had been trying to suffocate him with a quilt...

However, every time, she would always stop right at the edge of the cliff, preserving his puny life in the end.

This also left him with an unrealistic fantasy.

Chang Geng said with as much calmness as he could muster: "You think too much, I have never thought of you as my mother. But I have always felt that the reason you despised me was that I am the stain that the bandits left on you."

Xiu Niang sat in front of the mirror, her face becoming paler and paler. After a long time, she suddenly sighed:

"Little child, I have wronged you."

At that moment, Chang Geng's thousands of layers of defense and resentment almost collapsed; and he realized that this simple sentence was enough to easily resolve the grievances from his childhood until now.

The fourteen-year-old boy used all his strength to hold back his tears, then asked tiredly: "What do you wish to achieve by telling me this now? Has your conscience told you to detoxify me? Or to simply kill me off?"

Xiu Niang looked at him with a strange expression, as if the boy was a valuable artifact: "You knew..."

Chang Geng: "I certainly know that from the day we arrived at Yanhui Town, I haven't been able to sleep without nightmares. Even if it's simply for a daytime nap, I will still, undoubtedly, wake up from bad dreams."

The night before was the only exception - Chang Geng's thoughts ran astray for a brief moment. He suddenly regretted that he got mad at Shiliu.

Chang Geng: "I have never made any grand achievements, but I have never done any immoral deeds either; how can there be so many ghosts that come knocking on my door at midnight? Or is there a strange disease that causes nightmares every night?"

An unusual and wicked smile formed on Xiu Niang's bright red lips, her eyes slowly falling onto the iron wristband exposed on Chang Geng's wrist. There was a sharp glint in her eyes like a pair of poisonous arrowheads: "What else do you know?"

Chang Geng subconsciously withdrew the iron wristband into his sleeve, as if even a glance from her could taint the object.