After a casual dinner, everyone ate a little. It was clear that Qiao Yuan didn’t look too well, and he seemed weak. He was helped back to his room by Lu Ye.
Tang Zhou bumped into Lu Ye on his way back to his room, who seemed to be in a hurry. He asked, “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to buy some cold medicine and two pairs of new shoes. Your shoes must be wet as well. Do you want to get a pair too?”
The quality of the shoes they were wearing was far from good. Even though they might not be able to find something of the same quality around, wearing them for two days should be fine.
Tang Zhou initially had this intention, but after Fu Shen bought him a shoe dryer, he gave up on that idea.
“I don’t need to.”
“Then what will you wear tomorrow?”
“I have a shoe dryer. It should be dry by tomorrow.”
“……”
Lu Ye scrutinized him with a strange look. “You weren’t this simple before.”
Tang Zhou’s expression didn’t chnge. “I’m preparing in advance for life after bankruptcy.”
Lu Ye was left speechless, waved his hand, and turned to leave.
Tang Zhou sighed imperceptibly as he looked at Lu Ye, who was now cheerful.
He didn’t want the things from his dreams to become a reality.
“Lu Ye.”
The handsome young man turned around. “Want to buy more shoes?”
“No,” Tang Zhou smiled. “When you come back, I have something to tell you.”
Lu Ye adjusted his expression, didn’t ask further, and simply nodded in agreement.
Back in the room, Fu Shen sat on the couch, quietly playing with his phone, deep in thought.
Thinking about the email he received from “Mouse Loves Rice,” Tang Zhou couldn’t help but feel guilty.
Everything that happened in his dream was related to Fu Shen in some way, but the mastermind behind it was definitely not him.
Sitting on the opposite couch, Tang Zhou casually said, “Thank you and your teammates for today’s thing.”
Fu Shen raised his head in surprise, finding it unusual.
Tang Shen was saying something like this.
Tang Zhou wasn’t genuinely aloof and unapproachable; otherwise, in his dream, he wouldn’t have foolishly filled in the holes Tang Zhen made and even got himself involved.
Moreover, Fu Shen had witnessed all his troubles, and in front of him, Tang Zhou didn’t need to carry the weight of being the heir of the Tang family.
“I heard that you guys came to participate in a competition. How did it go?”
Seeing that he was interested in chatting, Fu Shen couldn’t help but put down his phone and sat up a little straighter.
“We can consider it a task completed.”
Tang Zhou: “……”
Getting an award is definitely the goal of the school’s task, and completing the task means getting the award, although he didn’t know what it was.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Lf vlvc’a jrx oegatfg jcv mtjcufv atf abqlm, “Qtja vb sbe atlcx bo Hljb Tejc?”
Me Vtfc gjlrfv tlr fsfygbkr rilutais.
“Olnfis jcv mtffgoei, rlwqif jcv fcaterljralm.”
Kjcu Itbe mijrqfv tlr tjcvr abufatfg, atf olcufgalqr bo tlr gluta tjcv qlcmtlcu atf qjiw bo tlr ifoa tjcv,rewwbclcu eq jii tlr mbegjuf ab rqfjx ogjcxis, “Oe Tf tjr jikjsr ofia atja sbe wluta tega Hljb Tejc, jcv tf’r j yla kjgs bo sbe. P erfv ab tjnf rbwf qgfpevlmfr yfobgf, rb ws jaalaevf abkjgvr sbe kjrc’a ugfja. P’w nfgs rbggs.”
He was sincerely apologizing, and regardless of whether his prejudice has hurt Fu Shen or not, he should apologize for it.
Fu Shen clearly didn’t expect this sudden turn of events and was momentarily stunned. He remained silent for a while before regaining his composure and replied, “No need.”
He had no strong feelings towards Qiao Yuan, neither positive nor negative. Even if Qiao Yuan might get involved in the future, he wouldn’t care at all.
He doesn’t need such a hypocritical apology.
Tang Zhou wasn’t the type to back down in times of trouble. Seeing Fu Shen’s somewhat repulsive attitude, he immediately laid down the gauntlet.
“Qiao Cheng’an, he’s the one you want to seek revenge against.” Facing Fu Shen’s suddenly deepening gaze, Tang Zhou calmly continued, “You approached Qiao Yuan before, and it was for…”
“I approached him?” Fu Shen answered, and as if he had heard a joke, his tone laced with a hint of amusement.
Tang Zhou hesitated for a moment, unsure of how to proceed due to Fu Shen’s reaction. He continued with some skepticism, “Lu Ye mentioned that every time he went to see Qiao Yuan, you were there. It doesn’t look like a coincidence.”
As soon as those words left his mouth, he noticed something in Fu Shen’s expression, and then it dawned on him that something was amiss.
Based on Lu Ye’s possessiveness towards Qiao Yuan, he must have believed that Fu Shen had feelings for Qiao Yuan. This led him to investigate him, and upon discovering the father-son relationship between Fu Shen and Qiao Cheng’an, he came up with the conspiracy theory that Fu Shen intended to harm Qiao Yuan.
It might sound a bit stupid, but Lu Ye’s emotions for Qiao Yuan border on obsession, making his thought process somewhat irrational.
Lu Ye’s subjectivity influenced Tang Zhou as well. Tang Zhou already had a strong aversion to illegitimate children, especially those who hadn’t accepted their own status. When he learned that Fu Shen was Qiao Cheng’an’s abandoned son, he developed some biases, even if he hadn’t seen Fu Shen in person.
Later, when Fu Shen approached him for the investment, Tang Zhou had mixed feelings. On one hand, he was somewhat interested in the project, but on the other, he was reluctant to invest in an “ambitious illegitimate child.” In this dilemma, he proposed the condition that Fu Shen should serve as his personal assistant.
It was ultimately a case of paranoid anger, driven by childishness.
Nevertheless, the Fu Shen in his dreams made him experience the role of an assistant, serving as a taste of his own medicine, which he considered to be the consequences of his own evil.
However, now, Fu Shen’s counter-question made him suddenly realize that, apart from bias and misplaced anger, he had made another mistake—being overly influenced.
Lu Ye’s view of Fu Shen had always been heavily subjective, colored by his intense feelings for Qiao Yuan, which could be described as “love-struck.”
The sneer in Fu Shen’s eyes became more and more obvious, and Tang Zhou’s face suddenly burned in red. The overwhelming sense of shame made it impossible for him to dare to look at Fu Shen’s eyes at all.
“Tang Senior, you can think whatever you want about me as long as it doesn’t affect the project development.”
Fu Shen didn’t want to provide further explanations and stood up to leave.
“Fu Shen.”
Tang Zhou suddenly grasped his wrist, and it seemed to be the first time he had called Fu Shen’s name so seriously.
Fu Shen’s hand remained still as he looked down at Tang Zhou on the sofa.
The young man looked up, soft strands of hair obediently clinging to his earlobes and temples. His eyebrows slightly furrowed, and the light brown eyes reflected the bright ceiling lights, shining surprisingly brightly.
He wanted to speak but hesitated, unable to articulate his thoughts, saying nothing for a long time.
The knock on the door next door woke up the two. Tang Zhou instinctively loosened his grip, lowering his head like an abandoned child, hiding alone in the corner hugging his knees and holding back tears.
Fu Shen pinched the wrist that had just been held. His gaze sank slightly.
“I’ll go out for a moment,” Tang Zhou stood up abruptly. And before Fu Shen could react, his figure disappeared outside the door.
He leaned against the hallway wall, suddenly feeling the urge to smoke.
To be honest, he and Fu Shen were only in a cooperative relationship, and there was no need to hold grudges over past events.
He didn’t need to care, and Fu Shen wouldn’t either.
But he just felt a little annoyed, a self-loathing kind of irritation.
Lu Ye returned with a cold face, and as he saw Tang Zhou lingering in the corridor, he couldn’t help but ask, “What are you doing?”
Tang Zhou retorted, “What’s wrong with you?”
Why did his face turn so dark after going out for a while?
Lu Ye was in a somewhat depressed mood and was looking for someone to talk to.
“I’ll put the stuff inside first, and we can find a place to talk later.”
At the end of the hotel corridor, there was an open empty space where very few people came. The two stood in front of the window, both expressionless.
Unable to hold it in any longer, Lu Ye furrowed his brows tightly, “Do you know who I saw?”
“Who?”
“Xiao Yuan’s father.”
Tang Zhou’s intuition told him something was wrong, “President Qiao came to Fancheng?”
“Not only did he come, but he also brought that secretary of his, and they…” Lu Ye gritted his teeth, unable to continue.
Once he thought about how much Qiao Yuan admired his father, Lu Ye couldn’t bear to tell Qiao Yuan about these nasty things.
Tang Zhou waited in silence.
Lu Ye’s face turned completely dark, “As if having Fu Shen as his illegitimate son isn’t enough for him, he also has to cheat on his wife. It’s so damn disgusting. Tang Zhou, I still don’t understand, what do you really think about Fu Shen? Aren’t you the one who hates these kinds of people the most?”
The rain curtain was continuous outside the window, and Tang Zhou let out a light sigh and asked, “Do you think Qiao Yuan is the only victim?”
“And Auntie Sheng.”
Qiao Yuan’s mother’s surname is Sheng.
Tang Zhou shook his head slightly.
“Have you ever thought that Fu Shen is also a victim?”
Lu Ye’s investigation was not very detailed. He only knew about the father-son relationship between Fu Shen and Qiao Cheng’an but didn’t know exactly what happened back then.
People’s hearts are biased.
In Lu Ye’s eyes, Qiao Yuan was simple and well-behaved, and naturally had a lot of good qualities, while Fu Shen, with his deep scheming, seemed to have intentions of occupying the nest of magpies..
Tang Zhou’s words shocked him.
“What are you talking about?”
Tang Zhou looked pale as he handed him the email on his phone to read.
“Twenty years ago, Qiao Cheng’an abandoned his girlfriend and chose Auntie Sheng, who had a good family background, just like that.”
At that time, Qiao Cheng’an deceived Fu Shen’s mother, saying that he was going to the big city to make money and would come back to take her once he earned enough.
Shortly after he left, Fu Shen’s mother found out she was pregnant and tried to contact him, but was unable to reach him.
She didn’t know that Qiao Cheng’an had unilaterally cut off contact and she, being worried that something might have happened to him, not long after giving birth to her child, succumbed to depression, losing her life.
Fu Shen’s grandfather could only endure the grief and raised Fu Shen on his own.
One day, the old man happened to see Qiao Cheng’an in the newspaper, transformed into the powerful head of the Sheng Clan. It was then that he understood.
Thinking about the pain and regret his daughter experienced before her death, the old man couldn’t come to terms with it for a while. He passed away due to a sudden illness. After his death, he still tightly held that newspaper in his hand.
At that time, Fu Shen was just in junior high school when he suddenly lost his only family. It felt like the entire sky had turned dark.
His grandfather’s body has always been strong, and he wouldn’t have died so suddenly unless subjected to a tremendous shock.
Fu Shen carefully looked through the newspaper until he heard a neighbor exclaim, “Isn’t this that Qiao kid from back then?” Only then did he suddenly reacted and asked for a thorough explanation.
So, it turned out that he didn’t have a father, as that person simply doesn’t deserve to be called a human being.
He buried the hatred deep in his heart, studied and worked desperately, with the sole motivation of:
Someday, he’d make that scumbag pay the price he deserved.
The rain outside the window gradually subsided, and a beam of light seemed to break through the clouds on the horizon.
Lu Ye remained silent for a long time.
Tang Zhou took back his phone.
“Qiao Cheng’an has played the role of the good son-in-law, husband, and father for so many years. Grandpa Sheng has only one daughter, Auntie Sheng, and now most of the Sheng family is already in Qiao Cheng’an’s hands. Do you think it’s appropriate to still keep this secret from Qiao Yuan?”
“But Xiao Yuan, he…”
“He’s an adult.” Tang Zhou’s gaze was stern. “If you don’t want the Sheng family to be ruined by Qiao Cheng’an, both Qiao Yuan and Auntie Sheng cannot continue to be kept in the dark.”
Lu Ye clenched his fists, his voice trembling slightly.
“Give me a little more time.”
The translator has something to say…
Hey!! I almost forgot to upload today’s ch lolol. But here we are!
And omg y’all, honestly everyone’s parents here are truly horrible. If I first wanted to get into the novel to beat up Tang Zhou’s dad… yeah I think what I wanna do rn to Xiao Yuan& Fu Shen’s dad might break the Geneva convention or something cuz ughh… 
I hope you all like the chapter! If there’s anything to fix lmk
Is there any good Dads?
Truly what I’ve been asking myself 😭seems like everyone got their dads in the same damn store in black friday or something…
+1, LMAOO
They should know the truth about thet scum! And it’s never a children’s falut that they are illegitimate, only their parents!
Thank You for the new chapter (๑ơ ₃ ơ)♥
Wth.. Ling Ye. Just because your biased feelings to Yuan. Doesn’t mean that you should hold back the truth from coming out. Everyone should know, so it would not blow up later into a bigger mess once it does come out to light and everyone finds out that Ling Ye and Tang Zhou already knew the whole truth. It was Long Ye who put Fu Shen in a bad light.
I can already tell that there is angst and heartbreak ahead in this story.
Ok, I’m confused, did the author forget what they named the character? Is Tang Zhou’s friend’s name Lu Ye, Liu Ye or Ling Ye? If not for the context, I’d have thought he talked to 3 diff people! 🤣 Thank you for the chappie!
Lollll, I think I even saw Lan Ye as well 😂😂
Children deserve to know about their parent’s deeds if that so called parent is lower than an animal..