Chapter 62: Meng Zhi
From the moment Meng Zhi could remember, she was often and always abused.
If she had to describe her world, her entire life, in one word, it would be misery.
Not because she had suffered too much. Rather, she had simply seen the darkest side of humanity for as long as she could remember.
When she was born, one of the most famous philosophers and fortune-tellers of that era had looked directly at her father and declared that she was a calamity.
A calamity upon humanity. Meng Zhi didn’t believe him.
After all, she had been nothing more than a three-year-old child desperately trying to survive. But her father had believed him.
He had once placed all his hopes on his daughter, believing that her beauty and gender would allow him to marry her off several times and use those marriages to climb the social ladder.
Now, it felt as though his entire future had collapsed. If that wasn’t enough, the fortune-teller seemed determined to ruin Meng Zhi’s life.
He spread the prophecy throughout the neighbouring houses, claiming that the little girl would one day bring disaster upon humanity.
Meng Zhi had no idea how badly those words would affect her. She still remembered tugging at her father’s clothes and looking up at him with tearful eyes.
"Father, I swear I won’t be any kind of calamity. Please believe me."
Her father had gritted his teeth. In the end, he decided to ignore the fortune-teller’s words. He even tried to suppress the rumours.
But it was already too late. Everyone had heard about Meng Zhi’s supposed destiny.
Several families immediately broke off their children’s engagements with her. Meng Zhi wasn’t particularly bothered.
She was still too young to understand what an engagement truly meant. She simply thought that losing one or two fiancés couldn’t possibly be a big deal.
She was wrong. Very soon, all of her childhood playmates began distancing themselves from her. Even the girls she had once considered friends stopped approaching her.
Meng Zhi didn’t understand. She didn’t know what she had done wrong. One day, she finally walked up to her father and asked softly,
"Father, can you tell me what my mistake is?"
Her father looked down at her. His expression was serious, and the words he spoke remained deeply engraved in her mind even years later.
"Little Meng, if you want to survive in this world with your current reputation, you need to be kinder to people."
Meng Zhi listened carefully. "If I become kinder, will everyone like me?"
Her father hesitated. Then he nodded. "Yes."
That single word became the foundation of her entire childhood. Meng Zhi believed him.
She thought that if she pleased everyone and never caused trouble, even if she was wronged, the world would eventually accept her.
So she became nicer. She began giving her food to her playmates. She smiled at them even when they mocked her.
She apologised even when she hadn’t done anything wrong. And when they hit her, she endured it. At first, she cried. Then she gradually stopped.
After all, wasn’t this what being kind meant? As long as she didn’t make a fuss, everyone would eventually like her.
That was what her father had told her. It wasn’t until she was seven that she began experiencing constant abuse.
By ten, she didn’t even realise that what was happening to her was abnormal. Her childhood playmates treated her like a punching bag.
Whenever they were angry, frustrated, or upset about something, they vented their emotions on her. They would slap her, kick her, pull her hair, and sometimes beat her until bruises covered her body.
And Meng Zhi simply endured it. After all, they were still her friends. Weren’t they?
Even Zhuan Yun, her closest fiancé and the only one who had never broken off their engagement, treated her the same way.
He would beat her whenever he was angry. He would take away her allowance. Sometimes, he would do bad things with her body.
Yet Meng Zhi continued to believe that he cared about her because he hadn’t abandoned her. That alone was enough for her childish mind to consider him kind.
At first, however, she couldn’t endure it quietly. She would return home with tears streaming down her face and throw herself against her father’s leg.
"They bully me too much."
Her little hands would clutch his clothes tightly. "Can’t we leave this place?"
Her voice would tremble. "If we go somewhere else, they won’t know about my reputation. They won’t bully me there."
But her father always refused. Meng Zhi didn’t understand why. Later, she learned the truth.
The fortune-teller had warned her father that wherever he went, as long as Meng Zhi remained by his side, misfortune would follow him.
Her father hadn’t believed it at first. But from the time Meng Zhi was three until she turned ten, one misfortune after another had struck him.
The stable, respectable job that had once given him authority was gone. His savings disappeared after he fell victim to a carefully planned scam.
Several opportunities that should have secured his future mysteriously collapsed. It was as though misfortune had truly followed him after Meng Zhi’s birth.
He had ignored it for years. But by the time Meng Zhi turned ten, he could no longer pretend that everything was a coincidence.
Meng Zhi, however, knew nothing about any of this. Whenever she saw her father upset, she would approach him and comfort him.
"Father, don’t be sad."
She would smile despite the bruises on her own body. "Everything will become better."
Until one day, she returned home with a new set of bruises. She had barely stepped through the door when she noticed something strange.
Her father had always possessed a steady presence. But that day, there was a fresh scar across his face. His eyes were dark.
The moment he saw Meng Zhi, something inside him seemed to snap. He walked toward her. Meng Zhi instinctively smiled.
"Father..."
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