◎A Dog’s Mouth Can’t Spit Out Ivory—What a Disgusting Creature◎
Not only was Le Qing stunned, but even Annie’s sobbing came to an abrupt halt.
When caught in the thick of things, emotions can easily spiral out of control, especially when everything piles up at once. Le Qing couldn’t remain indifferent to her own death.
As for Annie, who had no memory of those events, her health had indeed been poor abroad over the years. Compounded by the lingering guilt instilled by the so-called "debt" the master had spoken of, she had momentarily lost her composure.
Jiang Suizhi’s words snapped everyone back to reality.
Right.
On the day they returned from visiting Jiang Yan’s grave, Annie had mentioned how she and Jiang Yan had met—at a bar. After that, Annie had lived like a wild horse freed from its reins.
If she had truly known her heart had been replaced—especially with the heart of her beloved younger sister—would she have lived like that?
She would have been afraid to take three steps without resting, let alone ten.
So, she couldn’t have had any heart-related issues.
"You didn’t actually think I came here today to calmly reason with you, did you?" Jiang Suizhi grabbed Liao Ming by the hair, forcing his hunched back to straighten before yanking him backward. He planted a foot on the hand Liao Ming had braced against the ground. "Fine, don’t talk. Just sit here. Since you dug this pit, today’s the day we bury you in it."
Liao Ming: "!!!"
"Director Qin!"
"Old Qin!" For once, Jiang Hechang managed to keep up with his son’s train of thought. He stepped forward, slinging an arm around Director Qin’s neck and blocking his view. "I just remembered there’s something I need to discuss with you. Let’s talk over there."
Director Qin: "..."
Do you really think I’m blind and deaf?
But with no one else around—not even a stray cat in sight—he only hesitated for two seconds before letting Jiang Hechang lead him away. "Ah, yes, yes. We didn’t finish our last conversation."
Sometimes, it takes a villain to deal with a villain. As long as nothing truly disastrous happened, he could afford to turn a blind eye.
"Shut him up." Jiang Suizhi motioned for a bodyguard to cover Liao Ming’s mouth, then took the shovel from another and handed it off. "Dig the pit wider."
Liao Ming’s eyes bulged in terror, as if they might pop out of their sockets.
"Money can buy a life, huh?" Jiang Suizhi smirked, unhurried, as he pulled a card from his wallet and tossed it onto Liao Ming. "I’ve got plenty. Let’s say a million for every year of your life. You and these five million can rot together."
The bodyguards exchanged stunned glances. Who was the real villain here?
How could someone say something so horrifying as if it were a joke? Their boss must have done this kind of thing before!
But no one dared disobey. Those without shovels even started digging with their bare hands.
Finally, Liao Ming couldn’t take it anymore. He bit down hard on the hand covering his mouth, and when the bodyguard reflexively loosened his grip, he screamed, "I’ll talk! I’ll talk!"
Jiang Suizhi flicked a finger backward, and the bodyguard immediately gave Liao Ming enough space to speak.
"My patience is thin," Jiang Suizhi said coldly. "This is your last chance."
Liao Ming slumped in the pit, his eyes bloodshot and hollow. "They’d already gone to the orphanage for a compatibility test. That’s why they wanted to adopt Le Qing. But she refused to go, so they couldn’t complete the adoption paperwork. I told them another child was close to her and that they could still visit often. So, they took Le Yang instead."
"And the heart?" Jiang Suizhi pressed.
"Their company was already in trouble, and with a child born with a heart condition, they were desperate to transfer assets and find a donor." Liao Ming sobbed. "They said they’d go abroad afterward—no one would ever find them. To avoid suspicion, they never registered the child under their names."
That was why, no matter how hard Jiang Hechang or Jiang Suizhi investigated later, they could only find records of the couple adopting one child.
Annie, still on the ground, picked up the small bone fragment she had stumbled upon earlier. Suddenly, her jumbled memories began to clear.
"I’ve met her," she said, her voice trembling. "I’ve met that child."
After being adopted, the couple hadn’t treated her nearly as well as they claimed. But they lavished her with gifts, encouraging her to bring them back to the orphanage to share with her "sister."
At the time, she hadn’t questioned it—until one day, a strange little girl appeared at home. Her adoptive parents forbade her from leaving the house, locking her inside for days. During that time, she talked endlessly with the girl about her life at the orphanage and her sister, Le Qing.
Then, inexplicably, her adoptive parents and the girl vanished for a long time. With no food left, she eventually sneaked out, only to pass out on the streets. When she woke up, she was in a hospital, having been found by a kind stranger.
Her adoptive parents returned, and when she tried to see Le Qing again, they told her the girl had died in an accident.
She couldn’t believe it—how could her sister, who had promised to grow up with her, be gone so soon? Before ever finding a loving family?
She blamed herself for failing to protect her, for breaking her promise.
So later, she resolutely changed her name to Le Qing, vowing to live for both of them—to embrace the freedom her sister had yearned for. Her adoptive parents, indifferent to her anyway, didn’t care what she called herself.
But she never expected them to die in that house.
Everyone assumed it was a suicide after their bankruptcy. But she knew the truth—they had been packing to flee.
She was the one who should have died there.
In the end, their own schemes backfired, and she escaped through a window, relying on the survival skills she’d honed from years of scavenging and evading street thugs and authorities.
From then on, she was truly alone.
Le Qing asked, "What was that child’s name?"
Annie’s hand suddenly stiffened, gripping Le Qing’s wrist tightly. "The couple called her… Eve."
The name had stuck with her—no one else around her had an English name.
No wonder…
No wonder someone had come to her before her death, knowing so much about her and Le Qing.
Because she had been the one to tell Eve everything—holding her hand, showing her Le Qing’s photos, recounting their stories.
If it had been someone else from the orphanage, they would have despised Le Qing. They wouldn’t have gone to the lengths of getting plastic surgery to look like her, nor would they have ended up destitute abroad.
Only Eve.
She had taken Le Qing’s heart but never cherished it. Instead, she stole Le Qing’s face and, in her darkest hour, took her child too.
"I really didn’t lie to you!" Liao Ming was so distraught he could barely speak. At this moment, going to prison seemed preferable to being buried alive by these people. "For all these years, I haven’t been able to sleep at night because of that child’s eyes. I truly know I was wrong."
Le Qing gently patted Annie’s back and said coldly, "No wrongdoer ever truly understands what they’ve done."
Jiang Suizhi asked, "Where is that Eve?"
But the next second, Le Qing tugged at his sleeve and shook her head slightly.
He lowered his gaze and stood up, keeping his foot firmly planted on Liao Ming’s hand. His tone was indifferent as he said, "Call Director Qin back."
His eyes lingered on the hand beneath his foot, the fingertips turning white. He wanted to cut it off.
But Le Qing was still here. He couldn’t let her see.
A long time later, he lightly tapped the shoulder of the bodyguard holding the shovel and turned to help Le Qing up from the ground.
"Wait," Le Qing said, carefully gathering the pieces of the broken clay jar and the scattered ashes.
Seeing her actions, Liao Ming suddenly went mad. "No, you’re dead! Your heart is gone! How could you possibly come back to life?!"
Le Qing didn’t even glance at him, nor did she bother to respond.
Of course, she hadn’t come back to life. She had died completely, only to inexplicably find herself in another world, growing up in a place where no one else existed.
As for her return…
Her sudden appearance in this world, in that household, and her ability to assume that person’s identity wasn’t without reason.
According to Nora’s account and the stories later told by Lin Shengxi and the others about "Le Qing," Eve had lived recklessly. If the person who had received her heart had truly died, allowing her to return from that other world and take over this life, it wasn’t impossible.
Otherwise, there was no explanation for someone vanishing without a trace.
Eve had been so desperate to use her face and identity—perhaps this was a fitting end for her.
Maybe that person had also crossed into the world where Le Qing had grown up. But so what? There, she would still have nothing, no survival skills at all. Not that any of it mattered to Le Qing anymore.
Even as Liao Ming was taken away, he never got the answers he sought.
Le Qing quietly gathered the ashes of her five-year-old self and placed them back into the broken jar, holding it as she stood.
Jiang Suizhi asked, "Take it back?"
"No," Le Qing said. "Just find a random place and scatter them."
There was a small river nearby, and a hill—the same one where she and her sister had once flown kites.
Scattering them there would be a farewell to the life of five-year-old Le Qing.
Now, she was starting anew.
"Jie," she murmured, her expression softening. "You’ll stay with me, right?"
Annie stood beside her, never once letting go of her hand. "Always. I’ll always be with you."
The old path they once took was now overgrown, barely visible. Le Qing walked ahead, clearing the way, while Annie followed behind, cradling the jar.
Her cane occasionally bumped against her sister’s heel.
Just like when her tiny sister used to trail behind her, stumbling every few steps and crashing into her back.
Back then, her sister had said, "Because it’s you, Jie, I’m not afraid of anything."
Now, though she couldn’t see, Annie wasn’t afraid of falling either—because the person standing in front of her was the one she had longed for across two lifetimes.
The one she valued more than her own life, the one she had spent two lifetimes failing. The one she had told her father about the night she reunited with Le Qing—that she would transfer her citizenship back to China, share a household registry with her, and give her a family.
"My name is Le Yang," she said with a faint smile.
Before she had taken her sister’s name, she had been called Le Yang.
It was the name her sister had given her on this very hill, wishing she would one day soar as high as the sun.
She lifted her head. "From now on, I’ll be Le Yang again."
Ahead of her, Le Qing’s steps faltered slightly. Unseen by her sister, her eyes reddened as she nodded softly. "Okay."
Without any outside help, the two took a long time to reach the hilltop, where they stood side by side.
Le Yang felt the wind against her face. "Has it changed down there?"
It was spring. There should have been people flying kites.
But the area had grown desolate, far from the city. Most had moved away, and the once-flat grassland was now overrun with weeds.
Le Qing was about to say yes when she suddenly spotted movement among the overgrowth.
Her gaze froze.
Then, one by one, kites began rising from the weeds—one, two, three…
Just like all those years ago, there were more kites than she could count, of every shape and color, tethered by strings as they climbed higher and higher.
At this hour, how could there be so many people flying kites in such a remote place?
A realization dawned on her.
With trembling hands, she pulled out her phone and dialed the number saved in her contacts as "AAAAA."
"Jiang Suizhi," she said, her voice cracking without her realizing it. "It’s you, isn’t it?"
The line was silent for several seconds, save for the man’s uneven breathing.
"Didn’t I tell you?" His voice, laced with laughter, mingled with the rustling of grass. "Just keep moving forward. Leave the rest to me."
He would never be her burden. He would follow her, clear every obstacle, and help her soar wherever she wished.
All she had to do was be herself.
Her obsession wasn’t just about the kites she never got to fly, nor was it for anyone else’s sake. It was for the child trapped at five years old, the one who had waited in vain for hope.
"From now on, don’t tell anyone ‘it’s okay,’" Jiang Suizhi said, his voice softer than she’d ever heard it. "You come first. To me, you always will."
He couldn’t fathom how others felt hearing her repeat those words, but in that moment, it had shattered him. She was like the scattered ashes—no matter how carefully he tried to gather them, some would always slip through his fingers.
Even when her own life was taken, even when resentment festered, she would still tell herself "it’s okay" for the sake of those she loved.
Over and over, she had consoled herself, made peace with her pain.
He didn’t know how she had managed it—how, with no one to lean on, she had repeatedly mustered the strength to endure such despair.
"No one has the right to say ‘sorry’ to you," Jiang Suizhi said, lifting his gaze to the two small figures atop the hill. Even from this distance, he could pick out the one who mattered most. "Be angry. Be hurt. I’ll take care of everything."
Hearing his voice, the tears Le Qing had held back all day finally spilled over.
Silently, they traced her cheeks.
She was grateful, deeply grateful that the reality wasn’t what she had initially feared.
No matter how hard she tried to tell herself it was fine, she couldn’t help but ache for herself—yet she couldn’t bring herself to blame the people closest to her.
She couldn’t forgive her five-year-old self.
Only now did she realize she hadn’t just failed to forgive that little girl—she hadn’t forgiven her present self either.
But Jiang Suizhi was telling her she could move forward boldly, without hesitation.
Telling her she didn’t have to say it was fine.
"Can you see it?" Jiang Suizhi asked over the phone. "The highest, most eye-catching red kite—the one I flew. Do you see it?"
Le Qing looked up and immediately spotted the towering phoenix-shaped kite at the center, its wings spread wide. "I see it."
She couldn’t resist asking, "How did you manage that?"
With so many kites in the sky.
"I bought out all the kites from the shops around here," Jiang Suizhi said. "Pay someone 500 bucks to fly a kite, and you’ll have no shortage of volunteers."
As Jiang Suizhi had said before—he was never short on money.
Le Qing laughed. "Isn’t that wasteful?"
Hearing her laugh, Jiang Suizhi chuckled too. "What’s the point of making money if not to spend it on the people you love? It’s not like I work just to inherit Jiang Hechang’s fortune."
Jiang Hechang, who was currently huffing and puffing as he ran through the weeds trying to keep his own kite airborne: "..."
He’d had enough. With one well-aimed kick to his youngest son’s backside, he finally released years of pent-up frustration.
That brat never knew when to shut his mouth.
