Chapter 18: Why Wasn’t Gu Yang in His Dream…
Yu Bai still had no idea what was going on. Looking completely dumbfounded, he caught one of the falling sheets and glanced at its contents.
Wow. Wow. Wow.
Was Madam Nie sharing a brain with Gu Yang or something?
This was way too dramatic. Was she planning to divorce after pulling off this stunt?
Nie Runhua stared at the scene in disbelief. He was so stunned that he failed to react in time.
His assistant, on the other hand, shouted at the top of his lungs for everyone to close their eyes and not look, while frantically jumping up to snatch papers out of the air.
After running around in a sweat, he gathered a few copies from the ground and handed them to his boss, panting. “Boss, I tried my best—but I really couldn’t stop it!”
Only then did Nie Runhua snap out of it. The crowd around them was already whispering; there was clearly no way to keep this under wraps anymore.
Madam Nie had come downstairs. He looked at her with a complicated expression and gave a bitter smile.
“Rulan, after all these years, you still can’t let it go?”
“But it’s A-Ying’s birthday. Even if he’s not your biological child, you raised him for so many years. He’s called you ‘Mom’ all this time. Why not leave him some dignity?”
Madam Nie glanced at him, closed her eyes, took a deep breath—and slapped him across the face.
She pointed at Nie Ying, who had followed her down looking as if the sky had collapsed.
“You raised a fine son.”
“Mom…” Nie Ying called out in panic, trying to salvage the situation. “I didn’t mean to talk back to you.”
Her slap hadn’t been hard. The red mark on Nie Runhua’s face was faint—but his anger flared instantly.
“I am not your mother!” Madam Nie raised her voice. “Your mother was the maid who tended this garden twenty years ago.”
“Do you want to know what kind of person your mother was?”
Nie Runhua hadn’t expected her to reveal even that. His expression darkened as he grabbed her wrist. “Rulan, we agreed on this back then. Stop making a scene.”
She couldn’t shake him off, but she continued anyway.
“She was an honest woman. Worked every day, barely spoke. Too bad my deadbeat husband couldn’t act like a human being—if he saw a woman, he just had to test his little thing.” She shook her head mockingly. “And sure enough, it worked.”
“Rulan! What nonsense are you spouting!” Nie Runhua completely lost composure, gripping her wrist hard enough to crush bone.
“Shot after shot of progesterone. Her belly covered in needle marks. I thought the child would be defective. But you were lucky—no congenital illness at all. Strong as an ox. A real medical miracle.”
“Fu Rulan!”
“I’ll say it! Why shouldn’t I?!” Madam Nie sneered. “Nie Runhua, you bastard. What promises did you make when you married me twenty years ago? And what did you do? Got drunk and took it out on me, then ran around chasing other women!”
“That’s because you—”
“Because of me? You were the one who called me a hen that couldn’t lay eggs! You kept belittling me and never once examined yourself. I agreed to IVF with you. The doctors searched forever before finding one viable sperm.”
“Nie Runhua, you’re the one with weak sperm!”
His face changed drastically. He raised his hand to strike her, but his younger brother hurriedly stepped in to block him.
“Hey, hey, brother—talk it out. Don’t hit her.”
He wedged himself between them, trying to calm Nie Runhua while keeping them apart.
Madam Nie’s emotions erupted like never before. She had endured like a corpse for years—now everything burst out at once.
She stood there alone, as if her ears were covered by a membrane. The surrounding gossip sounded distant and muffled.
Yu Bai watched the scene awkwardly, forced to hear far more than he ever wanted—especially with elders involved.
Gu Yang poured a glass of water from the table and handed it over casually.
Madam Nie took it, drank a few sips, and her trembling hands steadied.
The motion between them was so natural that Yu Bai took a few seconds to process it.
Given the situation, Gu Yang’s gesture almost looked like encouragement—have some water, then continue tearing into him.
Nie Ying shot Gu Yang a venomous look. At the same time, a flicker of hope rose in his heart.
They had done IVF. That meant they had conceived a child.
Everything Gu Yang said must be a lie. His mother was just playing a cruel joke.
“That child…” Madam Nie’s voice softened, as if drifting back in time. “We forced him into this world. Several times the pregnancy nearly stopped developing. That man insisted on keeping it.”
“But during that time, I kept dreaming,” she said, her face full of sorrow. “I dreamed I gave birth to an unhealthy baby. Because we insisted, he might have to suffer endless pain—and we never once asked whether he wanted to come into this world.”
Even after so many years, the memory left her shaken.
“So I secretly had an abortion. I thought… forget it. Just forget it.”
Lifted high, then slammed down again—Nie Ying had now experienced that twice. As if stepping into thin air, he blurted out hoarsely:
“Why did you abort him? Did you ever think—that child should have been me?!”
That sentence was the final straw.
Madam Nie stared at him in horror, staggering as if about to collapse. Gu Yang reached out and steadied her.
He lowered his gaze, silent. Even his inner thoughts were unusually quiet.
He almost looked obedient.
Yu Bai had noticed before—Gu Yang looked down on all humanity equally, but he showed a strange patience toward older women, especially mothers.
It once made Yu Bai secretly wonder whether Gu Yang had some kind of married-woman kink.
Nie Ying was completely unhinged now. He stared at Gu Yang.
“Are you satisfied?”
“Seeing me like this—are you satisfied?”
“You’re still the Nie family’s eldest young master,” Gu Yang replied lightly, that faint, hard-to-pin-down sarcasm in his tone. “What’s so humiliating?”
Nie Ying hated that expression most of all.
“Our Young Master Nie just can’t stand that he’s the son of a maid,” Ye Chen chimed in smoothly. “Hurts his noble identity.”
The word “maid” was a trigger. Nie Ying exploded instantly, swinging his fist—but his two cousins grabbed and restrained him.
Watching the scene play out almost identically to another one not far away earlier, Gu Yang turned his head away in disdain.
“Genes really are powerful.”
The birthday banquet was thoroughly ruined. They didn’t stay long.
But such a spectacular show would surely become gossip within their circle by tomorrow.
On the way home, Gu Yang belatedly realized something.
The plot had diverged from the novel again.
Originally, Madam Nie was supposed to give the DNA report to Nie Ying after the banquet. He would tear it up on the spot, storm out of the house, skip school for days, spiral into self-destruction—until the Nie family brought him back.
Just like what had happened at the Ying family’s before—Liu Chaoyin had been exposed earlier than in the book.
Gu Yang couldn’t figure it out, but he didn’t dwell on it.
Even if the process changed, the ending was the same.
—
Song Yinxing had a long dream.
In it, everything was normal. He enrolled at Guanli High School. Scholarships and subsidies eased his financial pressure.
One afternoon after school, he encountered a student in uniform surrounded by boys from his own school.
He knew the leader—some Nie—was a notorious troublemaker.
He shouldn’t interfere. Life had already taught him to stay indifferent.
But in the end, he still called the police.
They found out.
Nie and his cronies came looking for trouble. Amid laughter and jeers, he couldn’t produce the money. He was forced to kneel.
He worked desperately to earn enough to pay for the shoes. Just when he thought it was over, Nie showed up again.
That usually flamboyant face was filled with terrifying hostility.
Nie looked down at him.
“I heard your mom used to work as a maid?”
“So you’re a maid’s son?”
The cronies mocked him—how dare a maid’s child study with them?
The hostility on Nie’s face deepened.
He suddenly went mad and beat the one who said it, beating him until his eyes rolled back. Even the vice principal was alarmed.
As he was dragged away, he heard the lunatic say:
“We’ve got plenty of time.”
Song Yinxing struggled out of the nightmare.
Dawn was just breaking. He sat upright in bed, eyes dark and unfocused, taking a long time to recover.
The dream felt far too real. Even the details matched up.
But why…
Why wasn’t Gu Yang in his dream?
