‘The Black-Haired Healer’ begins when Tang Miyuan, hailing from the Sichuan Tang clan, sustains heavy injuries in a battle with the leader of the Demonic Cult and falls off a cliff.
Awakening in this world, she utilizes her knowledge of poisons to work as a healer, and by chance ends up treating Damian, who has been reduced to a cripple and a fool.
Regaining his sanity, Damian awakens as a grand archmage fitting an apex alpha, and kills his abusive stepmother, Meiyou.
He goes on to live as the legitimate second young master of the Vesper family, but because his temperament has become severely warped, he fails to get along with his family.
Furthermore, consumed by resentment over what happened to him and hatred for the world, he dabbles in dark magic and founds a dark organization dedicated to resurrecting the Demon King.
Anyway, Damian wasn’t the point.
The point was that he was being dragged away as a stand-in for the idiotic Damian.
In the novel, the explanation for this role consisted of nothing more than a brief conversation between the villain’s brother, Callix, and Damian.
When Damian, having returned to the North, poured out his grievances asking why he hadn’t been looked for all this time, Callix had replied:
[Meiyou set up a stand-in for you. Since I and Father had to leave for the battlefield when you were an infant, we didn’t know what you looked like, so we had no choice but to be fooled.]
[Then where is that stand-in right now?]
[I killed them. The fake’s name appeared on me. My name, on a mere beta.]
His stomach churned as if he had indigestion, and cold sweat broke out.
Thinking he was just scared, his mother wiped the sweat pooling on his forehead and continuously patted his back, whispering that everything would be okay.
A “name” was both a blessing and a curse to a mage.
Not all Gems could suppress mana overload to the same degree.
A “matching rate” existed between a mage and a Gem, and if that matched by over 90%, a name would manifest.
Therefore, mages considered it their lifelong wish to find their name.
Meeting such a person meant being forever liberated from the cursed shackles of mana overload.
However, there was a major catch to this.
The name manifested regardless of the genders of the two people.
Since mages were limited to those of imperial and noble birth, they were born as alphas or omegas.
Yet because Gems were born among non-mages, betas made up a large proportion of them.
Alphas and omegas could not have children with betas—not even between an alpha man and a beta woman.
And once a name appeared, no matter how much intimacy one shared with anyone other than that name, children could never be conceived.
In short, if the name turned out to be a beta, the family line would be severed.
In such cases, the best solution was to kill one’s name.
That way, the partner’s name naturally vanished from the body, making it possible to conceive children with someone else.
From a noble’s perspective, no matter how high the compatibility with a Gem bearing their name, continuing the family line was paramount, and a new Gem could always be found, so whenever they found a beta name, they killed them on sight.
The naming phenomenon occurred extremely rarely, yet he had breached those astronomical odds to become an extraordinarily unlucky supporting character stumbling straight into a death flag.
His vision went dark.
The world was utterly plotting against him.
With every revolution of the carriage wheels, it felt like he was drawing closer to the scaffold.
His young body must have been far too frail to withstand such extreme stress, as a sudden wave of nausea surged up.
Vomiting retches onto the carriage floor, Shushu passed out with foam bubbling at his lips.
In his dream, Shushu was being kicked by someone.
It hurt so much that it felt entirely like reality.
Covered in dust after rolling on the bare ground, he curled his body up as tightly as possible to endure the violence, which felt as merciless as an iron flail.
Just as his consciousness grew hazy from the horrific pain and he thought he was about to die, the rainstorm of kicks finally stopped.
As if still not venting his fury, the man heaved his thick chest like a bull, exhaling ragged breaths.
[I never thought an inferior thing who couldn’t even manifest as an alpha would be my younger brother. But as expected, it’s true. You know what happens when you impersonate a noble, don’t you?]
[Brother, Elder Brother, please save me.]
Shushu reached out and grabbed the hem of Callix’s trousers.
Even when stretched to their absolute limit, a seven-year-old child’s hands were smaller than maple leaves, yet the hands gripping those trousers were as large as a grown adult’s, making him instantly realize this was not reality.
[Who is your brother? Do you look like a commoner to me like you?]
He trampled Shushu’s hand beneath his shiny polished leather boots.
[Aaaah!]
Callix grabbed Shushu’s hair and jerked his head upward. His face, soaked in tears, was both poignant and beautiful.
[The crime of impersonating my younger brother will be punished at the guillotine!]
Shaking him by the hair, Callix flung Shushu’s head aside as if discarding filthy trash.
Sobbing and weeping, Shushu woke up from the dream as he felt his mother’s lips softly pressing against his cheek.
“My baby, it’s okay. Mommy will protect you. Mommy will protect you.”
Emissary in the warmth of his mother, who was frantically kissing him to soothe him, Shushu silently resolved that he would never die like he did in the original novel.
Outside the carriage window, the scenery was flashing by at high speed.
If he jumped out here, he’d either end up crippled or dead.
Therefore, he needed to devise another method.
The kidnappers wanted him, so the right thing to do was at least send his mother back home.
If it were discovered that he was a fake, his mother would be dragged to the guillotine alongside him.
“Mom, get off.”
“Huh?”
“Mister, please drop my mom off at the nearest village.”
The kidnappers, addressed as “mister,” muttered to one another, “Did he just call you?” as each desperately pretended they weren’t the one being called.
“What are you talking about? Shushu, stay quiet. Where do you think you’re going alone? You have to come with Mom.”
While the original novel mentioned that Callix killed Damian’s stand-in, there was no mention that the stand-in’s mother was killed as well.
That carried only one meaning: his mother had already died before Callix even disposed of her.
Meiyou would never leave alone a mother trying to protect her child.
She was a wicked woman who had abused even an infant.
She would undoubtedly slaughter his mother right before his eyes.
After all, to Meiyou, the mother was a threatening piece of evidence exposing her lie.
