Chapter Ninety-Six: The Human Heart (Please Bookmark)

All day today, Fang Yujia had been trapped in a state of helpless panic. That morning, Zhang Lan had brought a young man to see her and actually tried to force her to marry him.

In the past, perhaps she might have considered it. But now she would not hesitate for a moment, because she was no longer the person she had once been. Her mindset had changed profoundly; she would no longer submit meekly to whatever came her way.

If it were only a forced marriage, so be it. In any case, such a thing would not become reality overnight. At most, she would worry; she would never feel so helpless and terrified. What truly left her lost and frightened was the shocking truth she had discovered: she was not Zhang Lan’s biological daughter.

She had lived twenty-three full years believing she had a happy family and siblings, only to look back and realize it had all been a mirage. In an instant, she had gone from the young mistress of the Fang family to a pitiful orphan with nowhere to turn.

Fortunately, she had always been remarkably resilient, or that sudden thunderbolt might truly have driven her mad.

She was not foolish, and she knew exactly what this meant. In the past, if the Fang family had tried to force her into marriage, she might at least have believed they would spare her to some extent for the sake of blood ties. But now she had completely abandoned that naïve notion.

A family like the Fangs, with its glittering status but no real industry of its own, lived entirely on power and influence. They would not care in the least about the feelings of an adopted daughter; all they would care about were naked interests.

She was merely a frail woman. Outwardly, she seemed to stand at the peak of success, the president of Shanghai Xiao Pharmaceuticals, but all of that had been granted to her by others, and taking it back would require only a single word.

Since the Fang family had dared to force the marriage, they must have had the tacit approval of the old patriarch. Otherwise they would never have acted so recklessly. Once she lost the protection of the Xiao family, she would have to face the coercion of the Fang family and the Chu family alone, and even the Xiao family might join the ranks demanding a family marriage alliance.

How could an ordinary woman withstand the pressure of three great families? In front of them, she was nothing at all.

If she did not want to remarry, there was probably only one path left: suicide. But she was unwilling, and even more, she despised the idea of burying her head in the sand. After twenty-three years of such plain, tasteless existence, why should she not be allowed to pursue something of her own?

That morning, when she learned she was not Zhang Lan’s biological daughter, she had cried, felt helpless, and been lost in confusion. And at that moment, the first person she thought of was her younger brother-in-law, Xiao Cheng.

If she had lost all her relatives, then Xiao Cheng was the only person who truly cared about her, even to the point of risking his life for her.

She knew what kind of man Xiao Cheng was: outrageously lustful, never happy without women. But if anyone said he had done all this because he coveted her beauty, she would never believe it. Xiao Cheng had never intended for her to know any of it; all of that had been deduced by her own speculation.

Besides, whether her brother-in-law was wildly lecherous or utterly unscrupulous, she did not care. She only knew that, more than anyone else, he was pure in his concern for her. That alone was enough.

Yet faced with the pressure of the three great families, she would have no way out. If she remarried into the Chu family, then by then Xiao Cheng would no longer be her younger brother-in-law.

At that thought, Fang Yujia steadied her resolve once more: she would never remarry. She had already lost everything; she could not lose this "relative" of hers as well.

And besides, why should the Fang family force her to remarry and she simply have to obey? Just because they had raised her?

If the Fangs had not treated her this way, then even after learning she was not Zhang Lan’s biological daughter, she would still have regarded her adoptive parents as her real parents. But Zhang Lan had treated her no better than a commodity to be bought and sold. Could such people still be called parents?

After Zhang Lan left, she had called Xiao Cheng several times, but his phone had remained switched off, and she could not reach him at all.

In the afternoon, when she heard the doorbell, her heart leapt with joy, thinking Xiao Cheng had returned. But when she opened the door, it was unexpectedly a girl of sixteen or seventeen. The girl addressed her by name at once and said she was Xiao Cheng’s classmate, so Fang Yujia had let her in.

She had intended to ask the girl where Xiao Cheng had gone, but there had never been a chance. The girl had barely entered before she began talking nonstop, winding around the subject until Fang Yujia finally realized she was a go-between sent by the Chu family, merely posing as Xiao Cheng’s classmate.

"Yujia, sister-in-law, let’s just go out for a meal together. My brother is really a very good man. You could try getting to know him," the girl said with a smile.

Fang Yujia’s face remained cold as she replied calmly, "Finished speaking? Then leave my home at once."

"Yujia, sister-in-law, don’t be like that. I really like you. Let’s change the topic... Where did you buy that dress?"

"......"

Fang Yujia believed her own endurance was excellent, but even she could not stand this girl’s shameless pestering, not to mention the girl kept calling her sister-in-law. Those two words were not something to be thrown around casually.

Just then, she suddenly heard someone knock at the door. She was a little surprised, because very few people chose to knock instead of using the doorbell. Only her younger brother-in-law seemed unable to break that bad habit.

Fang Yujia hurried to her feet, went to the door, and opened it.

Outside stood a young man who looked somewhat lean but fresh and clean. A trace of faint worry rested between his brows; his eyes were clear, and he was neither handsome nor ugly, dressed in an extremely casual manner. Aside from the quiet, composed air about him, there was nothing particularly striking about him.

The person at the door was none other than Xiao Cheng, whom Fang Yujia had been thinking about for a long time.

She looked at her younger brother-in-law and, after more than ten days apart, saw that he seemed a little thinner, a little darker, and a little more worn. It must have been very hard for him outside, she thought. And if he had been injured, it must have been even harder to bear.

Looking at Xiao Cheng, she suddenly felt a sharp ache in her heart, and the urge to cry rose up all over again.

This time, she wanted to cry not because of the forced marriage, and not because she was not Zhang Lan’s biological daughter, but because of Xiao Cheng.

The moment she saw him, she suddenly felt that all her own troubles were no longer troubles at all, and all her grievances no longer grievances.

Remarriage would not kill her, and being adopted was not death either. Yet just over ten days ago, Xiao Cheng had truly come within a hair’s breadth of dying for her and had returned from the brink. And before that? She had always misunderstood him, always disliked him, but Xiao Cheng had never once complained. Even after doing so much for her, he had never thought to claim any credit.

Fang Yujia held back her tears and, for a moment, did not know what to say.

The instant the door opened, Xiao Cheng saw his sister-in-law and could not help but freeze.

Fang Yujia was wearing an elegant beige long dress in a British style. Her figure was exquisitely graceful, and the generous curves that usually remained understated were drawn out by the fitted gown, making her proportions quite striking. Though she could not compare with Ning Jingzhe’s overwhelming and majestic fullness, she was still extraordinarily eye-catching.

Her waist was slender enough to encircle with one hand, and beneath the hem of the dress, a stretch of pale, smooth calf could be seen. On her feet were a pair of delicate, pure-white thick-heeled shoes, lending her an even more noble air.

Xiao Cheng stared at his sister-in-law and could not help but be momentarily dazed. Fang Yujia was already extremely beautiful, but dressed like this she was even more dazzling.

He was astonished, thinking to himself that even an iron tree might bloom at last. Had his sister-in-law actually learned how to dress herself?

For quite a while he could not make sense of it. In the memories of his past life, until the Fang family was destroyed, Fang Yujia had never specially dressed herself up. She had always worn plain clothes, with her hair in a ponytail, her face bare of makeup every day. So what had prompted her today? Was it because of the blind date?

"Yujie, you look absolutely beautiful today!" Xiao Cheng praised her without the slightest stinginess, though after saying it he felt the words carried a slight ambiguity. Why had he added those two words, "today"? Did that mean she had not been beautiful before?

Whew, at last I got this chapter written. It’s a little literary, a little bitter, practically on the level of a tearful evening drama. Sigh, sigh! But I wrote it with tremendous excitement, because this was a scene I had long been brewing from the very beginning of the book. I myself have been looking forward to it for ages, and now that I’ve finally written it, I can’t help but breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Haha, you can mock me all you want, sneer at me, and trample on me if you like, but I’m still going to write it this way! Rolling on the ground and begging for votes!