Not long after, the current An Yuchen arrived, received the memories of the original body, and adapted well. Although the original body's physical fitness was poor, he remembered the martial arts moves. That day, he became ruthless and used his skills to teach everyone in the same prison a good lesson.
From then on, no one dared to provoke him easily. He sat in a corner every day, meditating and cultivating his internal energy. This practice lasted for ten years.
In fact, with his martial arts skills, he could have escaped from here without a trace. However, he still wanted to live a normal life with Wu Caiwei and did not want to be wanted by others all the time.
Unconsciously, he arrived at the entrance of the An family's house. He knocked on the door, and an old voice immediately replied, "Who is it?"
"Mother, it's me." As soon as An Yuchen heard this familiar voice, he knew it was Mother An.
The person in the courtyard was stunned for a moment, followed by the sound of something being knocked over. The next moment, the door was flung open. Su Dan Novel Network.
Mother An, trembling, looked at her son standing in front of her. "My son," she cried out, and quickly hugged him, sobbing heartily, before welcoming him inside.
As soon as he entered the courtyard, An Yuchen saw clothes piled up like a mountain and looked at his mother in confusion, "I remember our family wasn't this poor."
Mother An looked at him a little embarrassed. "After you left, many things happened at home, and it's hard to explain in a moment. You'll understand slowly."
After thinking for a moment, she continued, "Time passes so quickly. Ten years have passed in a blink of an eye. We only saw each other at the very beginning. We haven't seen each other for more than nine years. It's not that your parents didn't want to visit you, but too many things happened at home. Every time we went to the prison, we were severely extorted by the jailers, and we couldn't afford the silver."
When the original body was alive, he always wondered what had happened to his parents that they didn't visit him. Judging by Mother An's clothes, which were patched and re-patched, something major had indeed happened to the family.
Mother An held her son's hand, constantly expressing her longing, and introduced the younger children in the family to him.
The little ones had heard about their uncle, but people always spoke of him with negative remarks, which caused them to be bullied outside. However, their grandparents told them that their uncle was framed. For a moment, they didn't know who was right and stared at him with curious, wide eyes, not daring to approach easily.
Time flew by unnoticed until noon. The three sons who were working outside returned and saw An Yuchen, their eyes welling up with tears of excitement, "He's finally out."
An Yuchen quickly comforted them. Mother An was happy today and, for once, fried a few eggs.
Sitting at the dinner table, the children looked at the plate of eggs and silently drooled, but none of them reached out to take one.
Seeing how poor the family was, An Yuchen looked at his father in confusion, "What exactly happened to our family? We were quite well-off when I left."
"Alas, don't mention it. Father was truly blind to arrange such a marriage for you. They proposed it themselves back then. I thought that since the Wang family had relatives who were officials in the capital, they could help you when you embarked on your official career. I never expected it to harm you and our family." Father An regretted it immensely when he mentioned this.
"So it was Wang Meng's doing? Why exactly?" This question was arguably the original body's greatest obsession. He thought about it every day in prison but couldn't come up with a clear answer.
"She had her eyes set on the general and wanted to become the general's wife, so of course, she had to get rid of you, the stumbling block." Elder Brother An spoke of this with righteous indignation.
The original body's fiancée was named Wang Meng. They were childhood sweethearts, and they often exchanged gifts. Both families were pleased. He thought he would grow old with her, but one day, the yamen runners showed up at his door, saying he had stolen something from the Zhang family.
He vehemently denied it, but they found evidence in his room. An Yuchen panicked at that moment because it was a gift from Wang Meng, who had called it their token of love and asked him to keep it safe.
"This is mine," An Yuchen quickly ran over and hugged the painting to his chest.
"Is it yours? You've already confessed so quickly?" The yamen runner looked at him with disdain, not expecting the little prodigy to be such a person.
"What did I confess to? I didn't take anyone else's things." An Yuchen didn't react immediately, mainly because he had never thought that Wang Meng's gift would be problematic.
The yamen runner looked at him and sneered, making a gesture, and several people immediately came forward, dragging him out.
It was at this moment that An Yuchen realized something was wrong. "I'm being framed. That painting was given to me by my fiancée."
Father An quickly gave the yamen runners several silver ingots. "Gentlemen, are you sure there's been a mistake? We know our son's character, and we know he would never do such a thing."
The yamen runners, considering the silver ingots, patiently explained, "Now that someone has accused him of theft, we can't do anything about it. We can only take him to the court for the magistrate to decide."
When he arrived at the court, he saw an unexpected person, Wang Meng.
"Meng'er, why are you here? It's not fun here, go home quickly." An Yuchen's heart sank when he saw her, afraid that it would harm her reputation if a woman entered the court, so he urged her to go home.
Wang Meng didn't even look at him and said with unusual calmness, "Your Honor, he stole the painting."
An Yuchen looked at her in disbelief. "You gave me that painting, how can you say I stole it?"
"You say I gave it to you. Do you have witnesses or evidence?"
An Yuchen suddenly realized that she had personally handed him the painting that day and told him it was a secret between the two of them, asking him to keep it safe and not let anyone know. He suddenly collapsed to the ground, muttering, "Why? Why did you frame me?"
No one answered. In the end, he was sentenced to ten years.
A few days later, the Wang family personally came to the door, demanding to break off the engagement. The An family refused and had a big argument with them. "You Wang family ruined my son like this, and now you want to break off the engagement and marry someone else? Do you think it's that easy?"
"Are you dissatisfied with the magistrate's judgment? The witnesses and evidence are all there. Our Wang family doesn't want to marry a thief." After speaking, they directly placed the betrothal gifts on the ground and turned to leave.
Father An was so angry that he fainted on the spot. Not long after, they heard that the Wang family was engaged to the Zhang family, who had accused their son.
Father An immediately realized that this was a trap set by them to break off the engagement. He never dared to mention this to his son, always reporting good news and not bad news, for fear that his son would not be able to bear the blow.
Originally, the An family had a few shops, but they also encountered successive problems and lost many lawsuits, forcing them to compensate the shops to others.