Jiang Tinglan really wanted to have a proper talk with her mother…
Suddenly, Chen Yuru turned to look at her and immediately demanded, “Why did you skip school?”
Jiang Tinglan instinctively lowered her head. “I… There was a girl who asked me to come out with her.”
Chen Yuru glanced around but didn’t see anyone. “Where is she?”
Jiang Tinglan felt a little wronged. “She ran off when we started arguing. She tricked me. I thought she was in the same boat as me, but it turned out she had no loyalty at all…”
Chen Yuru let out a cold laugh. “Do you even have a brain? Someone tells you to skip class, and you just do it? You’re always shouting about dropping out and rebelling against me. At your age, you can be tricked even at school. If you really dropped out and entered society, you’d be cheated even worse!”
Jiang Tinglan’s face went pale. The tenderness that had just welled up inside her was instantly blocked off again.
Chen Yuru was exhausted to the extreme. “I have an important meeting tomorrow, and a mountain of work to finish tonight. And then you skip evening study and run off to play with some classmate whose background you know nothing about!”
Jiang Mingyuan stood beside them without saying a word.
The grievance in Jiang Tinglan’s heart surfaced once more. She shouted through her tears, “So all your hard work and money-making are for my sake, huh? Fine, I won’t go anymore! I’ll drop out for good! That’ll save you money, won’t it?”
Looking at her defiant expression, Chen Yuru felt her blood pressure shoot up. “Fine! Tomorrow I’ll go to your school and find the board chairman. I’ll arrange your withdrawal myself!”
She turned around, opened the car door, and started the engine.
Her daughter could casually threaten to stop going to school, but Chen Yuru couldn’t simply stop going to work.
The black sedan merged into the traffic flowing through the night without the slightest pause, soon disappearing at the end of the road.
Only Jiang Tinglan and her father, Jiang Mingyuan, remained by the roadside.
Jiang Mingyuan comforted her. “Don’t be angry. Your mother’s always been like that—she is rather domineering… Come on, I’ll take you out for a late-night snack.”
Jiang Tinglan stared at him numbly, not knowing what to say.
After being shocked by that female classmate’s “Do I look like your dad?” earlier that day, she suddenly realized that perhaps her mother wasn’t incapable of loving her after all. And perhaps her father didn’t love her quite as much as she had thought.
Watching the distance in his daughter’s eyes, Jiang Mingyuan seemed to understand what she was thinking.
He gave a bitter smile. “Do you think your father is useless and weak?”
Jiang Tinglan said nothing, which was clearly as good as an admission.
Jiang Mingyuan sighed. “The adult world isn’t as simple as you imagine. Back then, your mother insisted on going to the big city to make a name for herself. You needed someone to look after you, so what could we do? I gave up my secure government position to take care of you full-time.”
“That was a government post, you know… You should understand how valuable it was, right?”
“But after your mother started making money, her temper grew worse and worse. She became so domineering that everyone had to accommodate her. She also forgot the career sacrifices I’d made for her. Whenever I argued with her, it inevitably erupted into a huge fight, and you were the one who got hurt in the end.”
“I got used to taking a step back in everything I did. It wasn’t because I was weak. In a family, someone has to consider the bigger picture… That’s why I gradually developed this personality.”
The suspicions Jiang Tinglan had harbored toward her father were pushed back down once again.
She suddenly felt that perhaps her father’s weakness hadn’t been innate. Perhaps it had been forced upon him by her domineering mother.
Jiang Mingyuan smiled. “Come on. Let’s get something to eat.”
Jiang Tinglan nodded. “Okay!”
-
Not far away.
After the others had left, Yu Xiaxing crawled out of the bushes as well.
She had recorded everything from start to finish. After all, she was the one who had brought Jiang Tinglan out of school. If a real confrontation broke out, she would certainly be held responsible.
That was why she had hidden there the entire time. If things truly turned ugly, she could jump out immediately—and she would also have the video as evidence.
Yu Xiaxing had more or less figured Jiang Tinglan out. The girl had no mind of her own; anyone could fool her.
She heard an online influencer criticizing East Asian mothers, and immediately began hating her own mother.
Yu Xiaxing casually said a few things like “Do I look like your dad?” and she immediately began hating her father.
Then her father comforted her with a few words, and she went right back to taking his side.
Besides, Yu Xiaxing had only met her parents for a little over ten minutes. Any judgment she made would inevitably be one-sided, so what could she possibly persuade Jiang Tinglan about?
That was why Yu Xiaxing’s original plan for the evening had been to create an outside conflict, then abandon Jiang Tinglan and make her face her parents directly.
Family matters should be handled by the family themselves.
Unexpectedly, she had happened to run into a passerby who helped her create the conflict. Perfect.
From Yu Xiaxing’s perspective as an outsider, everyone in this family had problems.
The mother’s love was too heavy. She arranged everything so tightly that she left her daughter under pressure like a storm.
And the father… The father was strange too. How could any father be so irresponsible toward his daughter?
His daughter wanted to drop out of school, and he neither stopped her nor objected. He even seemed to support her.
Could he have a lover and illegitimate children outside the family, and be deliberately trying to ruin this daughter?
Curious, Yu Xiaxing secretly snapped a photo of Jiang Mingyuan and sent it to Ruan Tian.
“If there’s still no progress on Huo Mian’s side, help me investigate whether this parent has any illegitimate children outside the marriage.”
Ruan Tian replied, “Huo Mian really is difficult to investigate. I watched her for ages, and she just stayed at the nursing center taking care of her mother. She’s been perfectly well-behaved.”
“Fine, I’ll investigate this parent first. Investigating affairs and illegitimate children is what I’m best at!”
Yu Xiaxing replied, “Thanks.”
Now that everything was over, and Chen Yuru had even said she would personally go to the school tomorrow to arrange Jiang Tinglan’s withdrawal, Yu Xiaxing sighed quietly.
“As expected, even the teachers and principal couldn’t persuade her to stay. There was no way I could have either.”
Chen Yuru was also one of Shengde’s small benefactors. If Yu Xiaxing really managed to uncover something about her husband, it could be considered a way of giving something back to one of their benefactors.
-
By the time Yu Xiaxing returned to Yuyuan, it was almost ten o’clock.
The main building of Yuyuan was brightly lit. As she passed through the garden, she saw Yu Zhining and Yu Lingyi standing beneath a pavilion, talking.
Yu Lingyi’s tone was somewhat exasperated. “Third Brother, I’m your biological sister. I’m only asking you to serve as a medical consultant and check whether this medical detail in my script is accurate. It’s just one sentence. Do you really have to make me go through the formal process?”
Yu Zhining’s expression was impassive. “You want to put my name in the credits of the show you’re filming, under the words ‘medical consultant.’ That would imply that I approved some of the show’s professional content. If viewers copy something they see and there’s a problem, wouldn’t that make me responsible for harming them?”
“Then I won’t list your name, and I won’t give you any benefits. I’ll simply tell the platform during the filing process that we consulted a professional doctor…”
“Since that’s the case, why should I do the work for you?”
“I’m your biological sister, born to the same parents!”
Yu Zhining calmly added, “You’re also a competitor in the inheritance contest. Why would I help improve the professional quality and reputation of your project when there’s nothing in it for me?”
Yu Lingyi fell silent. She had no answer to that.
Standing not far away, Yu Xiaxing heard the exchange and felt a surge of relief. She gave her third brother a thumbs-up in her heart.
Wonderful! Third Brother really was the kind of person who treasured his reputation.
Whether she was his biological sister or his cousin, the moment professional endorsement was involved, he absolutely refused to leave himself even the slightest room for risk.
Calm, rational, and ruthless—he was simply born to be an heir!
Ever since Yu Lingyi had sent her fiancé off to be sterilized, his attitude toward her had grown strangely clingy. How could someone like that possibly be her opponent?
The third brother was still the best choice. He was practically made for getting rid of her!
Yu Xiaxing was just about to sneak past them while the two were distracted, but Yu Lingyi had already spotted her…
