Siheyuan: At Ten, I Saved My Mother, Then Killed the Yi Family's Brat

He Yuzhu is reborn in a Beijing courtyard in 1945. At just ten years old, he witnesses He Daqing run off to serve the Japanese city defense commander. When he breaks into Yi Zhonghai’s house to have Yi’s wife deliver the baby, Jia Zhangshi is squatting by the wall, cracking sunflower seeds. The newly ten-year-old boy grabs a rolling pin and blocks the courtyard gate, sneering, “Anyone who dares plot to make my mother suffer a difficult labor, I’ll send your whole family off to serve as side dishes for the Japanese city defense commander.” The neighbors, all waiting to mock the family for having no heirs, have never seen a ten-year-old who could cut off a family line even more ruthlessly than Xu Damao’s father.