The Outcast: Half a Body's Worth of Debt, Did I Owe You That Much, Bro?

(The first eleven chapters are a prologue. Feel free to skip them if they're not to your taste.)

Everyone says Zhang Yude is a bastard who, for the sake of true love, was willing to bear the infamy, abandon his own child, and wander the world with his second wife and stepson.

But no one knows that, to make his grand plan work, he personally pushed the woman who would become his wife and another son onto an altar of hardship and suffering.

As his mother lay dying, enemies closed in from all sides.

Zhang Yan fought desperately against a powerful foe in a pool of blood, while Zhang Yude, weeping, unleashed his Water Filth Thunder and engulfed everything.

The rampaging thunder shattered the foolish boy's body, and fused the top-tier sword spirit of the Second Hokage completely with his flesh and blood.

In that moment, his heart broke.

Once, his grandfather Zhang Huaiyi had gone to his death alone, taking countless enemies with him to keep his family safe;

now, his stepfather and mother were trapped inside the gate, facing death together in despair, while he, the "bait," stood outside, alone with the fate of being abandoned.

He understood his stepfather's calculations, and he looked up to his grandfather's resolve.

But he knew even better that from the moment he was placed on the chessboard, he was destined to be a pawn sacrificed for the greater game.

Years later, at Nankai University.

"Zhang Chulan, I've come to find you with my mother's guilt and my father's last words."

"What makes the people you protected with your lives so special?"