'What a stubborn, foolish child.'
'This world is destined to have geniuses, and it's destined to have mortals. If you can't keep up, why bother chasing? Why insist on beating your head against a wall until you're broken and battered...'
As Jiang Lan integrated this portion of memories, he couldn't help but feel a swirl of complex emotions.
In the original plot, the Jiang Lan who first appeared was a worthless second-generation heir—ignorant, incompetent, and a bully who threw his weight around. He was a lecherous, arrogant, and domineering coward.
Who could have imagined that in his youth, he was humble and courteous, gentle as jade, kind and obedient, with a warm smile that could make any girl who saw him blush for the whole day.
He never slacked, driven by the desire to not disappoint his parents and to keep pace with his sister.
Unfortunately, at the age of nine, he was struck by a mysterious, severe illness that left him in a coma for three full days.
After that illness, he lost all his cultivation and became a cripple, unable to ever cultivate again.
Even now, the original Jiang Lan's memories contained nothing about that severe illness.
He only knew that after the illness, his body had become incredibly weak, and he would periodically suffer from excruciating agony.
At first, his mother would seek out various famous physicians to diagnose him and prescribe medicine, which brought him temporary relief.
Until one day, he noticed something was wrong from the terrified look in a handmaiden's eyes. He interrogated her and finally learned that the 'medicine' he had been taking was, in fact, human blood...
From that day forward, he began to resist taking the medicine, disgusted.
Even when the attacks came and the pain was so agonizing he wished for death, he would grit his teeth and bear it in silence, uncaring even if he fainted from the torment.
He only remembered that during that period, the handmaidens in the courtyard were frequently replaced. New faces arrived daily, and just as often, others would disappear.
His mother tried to persuade him to drink the medicine, but he remained defiant, refusing to touch a single drop.
It was the first time he had ever seen his mother—a woman revered by all—wiping away tears and telling him she was sorry. Even his father stood by, sighing helplessly.
He didn't understand what it all meant... He just kept training diligently every day, trying to restore his cultivation, even though it was completely useless.
But the final blow that crushed the last sliver of hope in his heart, plunging him into utter despair, was the sudden return of his sister—the one his mother claimed had left for an Immortal Sect to cultivate years ago.
But this sister was no longer the close sibling he once knew.
The expression she gave him was bone-chillingly cold, so apathetic it was devoid of all emotion. It was the way one might look at a filthy rat in a gutter, or a cockroach in a pile of trash.
At the time, Jiang Lan had no idea why his sister was acting this way.
'Is it because I can't cultivate anymore? Because I've become a cripple... Is that why she despises me so much?'
The next moment, his cautious question was answered not with words, but with the blindingly white gleam of a Long Sword...
The Long Sword pierced his chest. A spray of crimson blood blurred his vision, staining the maple leaves that drifted down into the courtyard.
The pain of the wound was nothing compared to the endless torment of his illness he had endured.
But his heart still ached with a pain far worse—a soul-crushing, despair-inducing agony.
With that single thrust of the sword, all the perseverance and hope he had clung to shattered like an illusion.
In the final moments before his consciousness faded, his mind was filled with endless confusion and bewilderment.
'Why would she kill me? The sister who was once as gentle as water, who promised she would marry me when we grew up.'
...
His parents returned just in time. They saved his life, but they could not save his spirit.
From that day on, the humble, gentle, kind, and obedient Jiang Lan was dead.
He became the most infamous profligate in the Great Xia Imperial Capital, indulging in debauchery, living a dissolute life, arrogant and domineering.
As Jiang Lan integrated this part of the memory, although he hadn't experienced it himself, he could feel the burning, intense anger, the confusion, the bewilderment, and finally, the utter despair of a heart turned to ash.
'He had just gotten sick. Why did everything change after he woke up...?'
If he didn't know the plot, Jiang Lan might have felt the same way—as angry and confused as the body's original owner.
But because he knew the plot, he understood why Jiang Ruxian had been so ruthless, why she had chosen to kill him.
That so-called 'severe illness' was, in fact, not an illness at all.
Instead, unable to bear watching him grow increasingly depressed, taciturn, and withdrawn, his mother had taken matters into her own hands and carved out Jiang Ruxian's Seven-Aperture Exquisite Immortal Heart.
She then used an Immortal Dao Secret Skill to transplant it into his body, lying to him that Jiang Ruxian had left for an Immortal Sect to cultivate while he was sick.
The Immortal Heart rejects foreign bodies and cannot be contained by a mortal frame. Transplanting it is easy; removing it is not.
In the end, her efforts backfired spectacularly. Jiang Lan, once a peerless Celestial Pride, was forcibly turned into a cripple unable to cultivate, who instead had to constantly endure a heart-devouring agony.
As for why Jiang Lan had no memory of this, it was because his mother had personally erased it.
Initially, his mother had wanted to erase all his memories of Jiang Ruxian.
But she feared it would damage his Divine Soul, so she only erased the memory of the heart's removal and transplantation.
Meanwhile, Jiang Ruxian, whose Seven-Aperture Exquisite Immortal Heart had been taken, did not die. On the contrary, she survived, thanks to their father's compassion.
Her powerful immortal physique even allowed her to reconstruct her Immortal Heart, and her cultivation soared to new heights.
「Years later.」
When she once again set foot in the Imperial Capital, she waited for an opportunity when Jiang Lan's parents were away from the Prime Minister's Mansion. Then she returned to her former courtyard, found Jiang Lan, and sought to repay the theft of her heart with a single strike of her sword.
Unfortunately for her, Jiang Lan was lucky that day and survived.
'But whether I'm going by my understanding of Jiang Ruxian or by what I know of the plot to come, Jiang Ruxian will definitely try to kill me again.'
Jiang Lan's brow furrowed. He gently touched his chest, as if he could still feel the piercing pain.
In the later stages of the original plot, all the conflicts between Jiang Ruxian and the protagonist, Lin Fan, were because of him.
After he was killed by Lin Fan, Jiang Ruxian lost her target for revenge. That was why she unleashed all her fury and killing intent on Lin Fan instead.
Jiang Lan, understanding the plot, knew this was all a huge misunderstanding from the start.
Jiang Ruxian mistakenly believed he was the one who had taken her Immortal Heart, which was the source of her hatred and disgust for him.
But in reality, what did the original Jiang Lan even know?
He knew nothing. He was kept in the dark from start to finish.
Even when Jiang Ruxian cruelly tried to kill him, he was completely unaware of the reasons why. He had already endured years of torment from his condition, been reduced to a cripple, and suffered agonizing pain.
In reality, he was a victim too.
If Jiang Ruxian had only trusted him a little more back then, if she had just asked a single question, the misunderstanding could have been cleared up.
Perhaps that humble, courteous, kind, and gentle boy, Jiang Lan, could have held on to his last glimmer of light instead of spiraling into depravity.
But such is the cruel irony of fate.