The inscription on the bronze tripod was still burning on his retina, and Lin Chuan's temple exploded with tearing pain.
He staggered and held on to the edge of the display cabinet. What his fingertips touched was not the cold glass of the museum, but the rough rammed earth wall.
The smell pouring into the tip of the nose has also changed - not the musty smell unique to cultural relics, but the rotten smell mixed with burnt firewood and urine.
"Does a bastard deserve the surname Ying?"
When the high-pitched ridicule hit his ears, Lin Chuan finally saw the scene in front of him clearly: a dilapidated house with drafty walls, the thatch on the roof was blown to pieces by the wind, and snow particles rustled along the cracks and fell into his neck.
He was huddled on a shabby mat in the corner, wrapped only in an old cotton shirt with exposed cotton wool. The wound on his knee was still bleeding and covered with dark red scabs.
"Lin Chuan, professor of the history department, traveled through time and became Ying Zichuan, the illegitimate son of Duke Xiao of Qin." He gritted his molar teeth and allowed the memory fragments to flow in his mind - the mother-in-law was the lowest-ranking female official in the palace. She contracted the epidemic three years ago and died, and was not even qualified to enter the ancestral hall. At the age of seventeen, she still lived in the woodshed at the edge of the cold palace, living off the scraps of food given by the palace people every day.
"Sir, while it's hot..."
