I Became the Older Brother of the Heroine in an Abusive Novel

The autumn wind brought stray drops of rain as it blew through the window shutter.
It whirled a few yellow bamboo leaves, which landed on the pearwood desk.
The stray fragments of rain landed on Jun Huailang’s face, and he hazily woke up.

Unexpectedly, he found himself in the place he knew best in his twenty-some years of living.
In front of him, the carved wooden shutter was open to reveal the lotus pond in his courtyard.
Ten stalks of decorative bamboo swayed by the window.
It was a traditional and proper scene.

He was sitting at his desk, and had dozed off against his arm.
There were many scrolls piled on the desk, and a ministry book was open in front of him.
At the corner of the desk was a Ru porcelain[1] brush-washing bowl his father had managed to obtain from Huzhou.
The guqin[2] he’d played since childhood leaned on a rack by the table.
On the couch under the window rested a jade chessboard.
It was even set up in the middle of a chess problem he had been solving.

This was the study he had used for more than twenty years.
It was familiar and peaceful, but despite that, incited a sense of unreality.

Jun Huailang stared blankly in the original spot for a moment.
The house was still, only the sound of rain hitting the lotus rustling outside. 

He… didn’t he die?

His parents passed, his younger brother dead protecting the city, the entire Jun family exterminated.
The cold rain and butcher knife at Xuanwu Gate, his sister’s humiliation…

In this place of tranquility, it was as if nothing had ever happened.

He impulsively looked down at his hand. 

His hands were slender and soft, with pale skin and delicate joints.
They seemed to be the hands of a child no older than ten.

But clenched in the palm of his hand was a wrinkled scrap of paper. 

Jun Huailang’s pupils shrank, and he hastily unfolded the scrap.

It was a corner of a page from that book full of strange words.
They were clearly Chinese characters, but missing many strokes.
He’d grabbed it by accident, and it was still wet from rainwater.

At the top it said: “Xue Yan’s lips curved into a cold arc.
He grasped her chin and…”

Jun Huailang’s gaze trembled with fear. 

It wasn’t a dream.

What he remembered, it all really happened.
But he didn’t know whether he was in the underworld now, or…

As he was thinking, someone opened the door and walked in.

Jun Huailang hid the scrap of paper back in the palm of his hand.
He looked up and saw a fourteen or fifteen-year-old boy wearing close-fitting work clothes,[3] smiling as he entered.

“Eldest Young Master, the Anhui ink you wanted is here!” He said.

“… Fuyi?” Jun Huailang was taken aback.

Fuyi was his book boy.
Only younger than him by a year, they had grown up together.
On the day the Yongning mansion had been raided and Jun Huailang arrested, Fuyi was hacked to death by the Brocade Guard[4] while protecting him. 

How could Fuyi still be alive, and why did he look so young?

Fuyi didn’t notice the shock and doubt in his eyes at all.
He approached the desk with the piece of Anhui ink and began to grind ink for him in practiced motions.

”The ink in this courtyard ran out, so this servant specially went to the master’s study to fetch it for you.
It’s not the same as what you normally use, and I don’t know if you will be accustomed to it…” 

A light flashed in Jun Huailang’s mind.

After he finished reading that book, several immortals had appeared from the void and taken him away.
Judging from those immortal’s words, by luck or coincidence he must’ve gone somewhere he shouldn’t have.

And before his consciousness disappeared, he had faintly heard one of the immortals say he was sent to the wrong place.

Could it be that… he had already died and was supposed to be reincarnated in the underworld, but was mistakenly sent back a few years?

Jun Huailang looked at his hand clenched around the scrap of paper, and became more and more certain of his guess. 

So nothing had happened yet.
He was still young, his parents still alive, and his sister hadn’t…

Thinking of this, his gaze turned cold.

Xue Yan.

That brute was just a little beast right now. 

Fortunately, several immortals favored him and gave him such a clear opportunity to settle old accounts and enemies.
Thinking of this, Jun Huailang tightened his fingers and gripped the page tightly.

By the table, Fuyi was still unaware.
He talked as he ground the ink, babbling without stopping.
“Just now, this servant met Qingce from the Young Miss’s courtyard.
Qingce said that a wild cat killed the bird Young Miss was raising, and she cried for half the day! Qingce is so worried, they have to go to the palace for the Mid-Autumn Festival at night.
If the Young Miss’s eyes are swollen, what should she do…”

The sparrow.

Jun Huailang paused, and was able to match up the time with his previous life.

In the previous life, Jun Linghuan had raised a small yellow bird for more than a year, and it was very precious to her.
In the end, the bird had been bitten to death by a wild cat, and Jun Linghuan had been heartbroken.
He’d even had to coax her for ages.

Since then, Jun Linghuan had never raised birds again. 

If he remembered correctly, this year must be the 18th year of Qingping, and Jun Huailang was sixteen.
On this day in his previous life, he had fallen asleep in front of the window.
Chilled by the cold wind, he developed a fever and missed the palace banquet. 

Jun Huailang’s eyes darkened.

He remembered that in the book, Xue Yan once sent a bird to Jun Linghuan.
The bird had been locked in a jewel-encrusted gold cage, with a gold chain binding its claws.
Jun Linghuan refused it by every means possible, which offended Xue Yan.
But who knew that beast had such perverse hobbies! He somehow made an identical pair of chains, and forcibly shackled Jun Linghuan’s ankle. 

Thinking of this, Jun Huailang gritted