"Was it... the Ji Family's pharmacist??"
Ji Xi stopped eating, putting down the pastry as he stared wide-eyed at Madam Yu across from him.
Madam Yu nodded kindly. "Yes."
"Did you see her with your own eyes? And you just drank her potion and recovered??"
"Not exactly. I only interacted with the junior pharmacist sent by the Ji Family—I never met the one who created the restorative potion."
"As for the potion... the pharmacist relayed that it wasn’t her creation, but rather a legacy from someone before her."
Madam Yu explained patiently.
When Ji Xi left the sanatorium, his expression remained dazed.
He still hadn’t processed the fact that Madam Yu had recovered so effortlessly.
But before his astonishment could settle, someone suddenly grabbed him. "There you are!!"
Startled, Ji Xi instinctively tried to pull away. When he turned around and saw the man’s face, his eyes lit up with recognition and joy.
"It’s you!!"
He knew this face.
It was someone who worked for his father.
"Did Dad send you to find me?"
The man grunted impatiently and dragged him away without another word.
Four hours later, Ji Xi was face-to-face with Ji Wanting.
"Mom!!"
Ji Xi rushed toward her, but hesitated under Mu Xiu’s watchful glare, not daring to get too close.
He knelt on the floor, looking up at Ji Wanting with hopeful eyes.
Mom had come for him.
She still cared about him after all.
As for why she hadn’t come sooner after he was captured, Ji Xi’s subconscious brushed it aside.
A child starved for affection could forget every painful moment with just the slightest scrap of love.
Ji Wanting gazed down at Ji Xi’s eager, pleading face—so similar to Ji Nian’s—and her expression remained unchanged. "Ji Xi, my good child."
They stood in an old, long-abandoned house deep in the mountains.
Despite its dilapidated exterior, the interior was lavishly furnished.
Mu Xiu had that kind of skill—even if they lived in a straw hut, he would ensure Ji Wanting had only the best.
After a dispassionate glance at Ji Xi, Mu Xiu removed his apron and set the freshly cooked meal on the table.
His hands, roughened from years of labor, were always gloved when he fed Ji Wanting, lest their coarseness offend her.
He fed her without a word, completely ignoring Ji Xi.
Ji Xi was used to it.
Where Ji Wanting was concerned, Mu Xiu saw nothing else.
"Mom, why do I feel this strange familiarity with Ji Nian?"
Now that he was back with Ji Wanting, Ji Xi finally voiced the question that had haunted him.
At this, Ji Wanting smiled—sweetly, eerily.
She didn’t look a day over forty, as if time itself had paused to preserve her beauty.
"Because you were split from her."
The answer left Ji Xi momentarily stunned.
Ji Wanting kept watching him, though her mind drifted to years past.
Back then, she had just woken up, her body wrapped in bandages, unable to speak. Only Little Zhen had stayed by her side.
Mu Xiu had somehow retrieved his severed head, extracting the brain to preserve it in a container.
Then one afternoon, Mu Xiu returned, cradling a wrinkled newborn in his arms.
Disgusted, she had ordered him to discard it.
But Mu Xiu said it was Ji Tingzhou’s child.
Suddenly, the insignificant little creature took on new meaning.
This was Ji Family blood.
Her niece.
Mu Xiu had brought the child back as a plaything for her to vent her hatred, but after a few days of amusement, Ji Wanting lost interest.
Around that time, a deranged old man in their organization—one obsessed with soul transference after his daughter’s death—took the child when no one else cared for it.
Later, when his experiments failed and Ji Wanting whimsically decided she wanted a child of her own—another with Ji blood—
Ji Xi came into existence.
A mere experiment born of Ji Wanting’s fleeting fancy, he was raised in a lab, studied like a specimen.
As he grew, his talent for potion-making became apparent.
Talent...
Ji Wanting snapped out of her reverie with a low, chilling laugh.
Ignoring Ji Xi’s ashen face, she turned to Mu Xiu, who was holding a spoon, her eyes sparkling with delight. "Wow..."
Not only had a child who should have died inexplicably returned to life—
But the talent they had tried to steal from her was still intact?
"So Ji Nian... is Xiao Zhou’s pharmacist after all."
Ji Xi, drowning in the weight of the truth, jolted back to awareness.
If he was a copy of Ji Nian...
Then...
Then...
He couldn’t bear to finish the thought.
He had always known how he was born—that he was a monster.
But this was the first time he realized he was a counterfeit, carved from someone else.
Even the talent he prided himself on might have been stolen.
Ji Xi’s lips trembled, tears welling as he looked at Ji Wanting—pleading, desperate.
But his emotions went unseen.
Though three people stood in the room, not one acknowledged his pain.
...
"Mu Xiu fled to Cang Mountain—his last hideout."
The man knelt on the ground, battered. Every time he tried to straighten, a boot slammed into his back, forcing him down.
"If we don’t find them, you’ll wish you were dead."
Zhiliao’s voice was ice, devoid of emotion, yet it made the man shudder.
Had Ji Xi been there, he would have recognized him—Mu Xiu’s right-hand man, the one who had come for him earlier.
Now, the man groveled before Zhiliao, begging for mercy.
Even a life behind bars was better than death.
And for that, he had Mu Xiu to thank.
If not for Ji Wanting’s refusal to leave the city, Mu Xiu would have fled far beyond reach—giving him no chance to betray them.
With the lead in hand, Zhiliao set off immediately.
But what she found was unexpected.
Kicking open the door, she scanned the courtyard before stepping inside.
The yard, littered with dead leaves and dust, was eerily silent—save for the startled flutter of birds at her intrusion.
Her ears twitched.
There was movement inside.
She kicked the next door open with brutal force, sending dust swirling.
When the air cleared, what Zhiliao saw was—
Shen Qingtang, bound to a chair, mouth taped shut, frantically shaking her head at her.
