Chapter 472: Brother and Sister Tag-Team Song Shiwei

In the hospital.

Jiang Lai walked into Song Shiwei's hospital room, stopped a full zhang away, and said three words coldly: "You were looking for me."

Song Shiwei slowly raised her head and finally looked Jiang Lai straight in the eye.

She looked at the grown woman before her, now standing tall and graceful, cold and aloof, barely matching the crying, fussy infant in her memory.

But those eyes and brows so similar to Gu Sen's, that unfalsifiable paternity test, all indicated that the person before her was the child she had personally discarded.

This child had walked step by step from the roadside bushes to her biological parents' side, her gaze as cold as the snow twenty-eight years ago—clearly here to collect a debt.

Song Shiwei wanted to cry and laugh at the same time; she called Jiang Lai's name: "Jiang Lai, do you know that your existence is a disaster to me? Twenty-eight years ago it was, and twenty-eight years later it still is."

"Mom!" Gu Zhiyan's pupils trembled. He hadn't expected that even at this moment, his mother not only showed no remorse toward Jiang Lai but could still say words sharp as knives.

Ke Zhongyu's already cold and severe face was now as dark as the sea surface before a tsunami—seemingly calm, but with raging waves surging beneath.

Jiang Lai raised her hand and touched the back of Ke Zhongyu's hand, slightly soothing his anger.

"Your disaster wasn't caused by me, but my disaster was very much caused by you." Jiang Lai looked at Song Shiwei without averting her gaze. "Are you trying to swap concepts to shake off your own guilty conscience?"

Song Shiwei's face stiffened: "Isn't the current situation caused by you? Gu Sen wants a divorce, indulges his son in going into business, and even drove out Yin Xue. Zhi Yan won't participate in the selection, refuses the arranged marriage, and won't acknowledge his sister. This family is falling apart!"

The more frenzied Song Shiwei became, the calmer Jiang Lai grew: "The cause is you. Sow evil seeds, reap evil fruit."

"I only abandoned you!" Song Shiwei shouted angrily. "But you're making me lose everything right now!"

Jiang Lai nodded: "Mm. You deserve it."

"You!" Song Shiwei grew even angrier.

Gu Zhiyan frowned and retorted: "Mom, what are you talking about? What does any of this have to do with Jiang Lai? She has always been innocent. How can you push all the blame and responsibility onto her? I won't participate in the selection because I don't want to. I won't enter an arranged marriage because I don't want to. I won't acknowledge Gu Yinxue because I don't want to."

Song Shiwei questioned her son: "Why don't you want to? Isn't it because of her?"

Gu Zhiyan felt that suffocatingly familiar mother return, and said wearily and helplessly: "Not wanting to is reason enough. I don't want to, so I don't want to."

Song Shiwei: "Since when is 'not wanting to' a reason!"

Gu Zhiyan parted his lips, but that deep sense of powerlessness washed over him again.

He was like that tethered elephant—a small post, a thin chain binding him from calf to adult, from struggling to break free at first to gradually growing accustomed and no longer struggling, his heart dying little by little.

Jiang Lai was not Gu Zhiyan; even as a mere outsider hearing these words, she felt suffocated too.

But she had no time to comfort a grown man of thirty.

She walked toward Song Shiwei, looked down at her from above, and studied this biological mother who attributed all her own faults to others.

"You said you only abandoned me, so I only brought this matter out into the open."

"You said my father wants a divorce, Gu Zhiyan wants to go into business and won't enter an arranged marriage—one drove away Gu Yinxue, the other won't acknowledge Gu Yinxue—and all of that was caused by me?"

"Isn't it?" Song Shiwei glared at her.

Jiang Lai: "Of course not."

"She was driven out of the Gu family because she incited another person to commit a crime. Once caught, the Gu family's reputation would be completely destroyed."

"Impossible!" Song Shiwei argued with all her might. "She's in poor health, she's so well-behaved—she would absolutely never do such a thing! You said she committed murder—who did she murder?"

"Me." Jiang Lai looked coldly at Song Shiwei. "The person she incited was Lin Shutong, and the person she tried to kill was me. Gu Yinxue knew about my relationship with you long before you recognized me. She secretly did two paternity tests in B City and A City, and both had your samples."

"If you don't even know when she took the samples, it seems she never truly regarded you as her mother."

Song Shiwei felt as if struck by lightning.

She shook her head.

She didn't believe it.

"Where's the evidence? Where's the evidence!"

Song Shiwei got whatever she asked for—Ke Zhongyu had become remarkably practiced at handing over evidence.

With the evidence before her, Song Shiwei didn't dare look again.

Ke Zhongyu gave a cold laugh. She had to look whether she wanted to or not. He tossed the evidence onto Gu Zhiyan: "Hand it to her yourself."

Gu Zhiyan passed the evidence over: "It's true. Mom, Yin Xue is nothing like what we saw. She fooled all of us—especially you and me."

"I don't believe it." Song Shiwei still said the same thing.

Gu Zhiyan: "You don't believe me either?"

Song Shiwei immediately said no.

Jiang Lai added from the side: "Gu Yinxue attended the court hearing involving me, Lin Shutong, and Shen Xun. She knew Lin Shutong had intruded into another person's family and carried nearly two hundred million in debt. She knew Lin Shutong moved between men while carrying a virus, and still set Lin Shutong up with your son."

Thud.

Song Shiwei fell off the hospital bed.

Her ears could only catch the word "virus." As Gu Zhiyan frowned and came to help her up, she grabbed his arm, tilted her head up, and pressed: "What is she saying? What is she spouting nonsense about! What virus? Didn't I tell you two to break up? Aren't you two long out of contact!"

"Mom, get up first." Gu Zhiyan helped her up and seated her.

Song Shiwei slapped Gu Zhiyan in her panic: "Zhi Yan, say something!"

She reached out to point at Jiang Lai, but Ke Zhongyu swept a thoroughly intimidating glance her way, and her fingers could only curl back as she continued demanding: "What is Jiang Lai spouting nonsense about!"

Gu Zhiyan lowered his eyes: "She isn't spouting nonsense."

He had originally planned to wait until his mother's condition stabilized before bringing it up, but the current situation left no room for silence.

It wasn't that Jiang Lai's words had pushed him here, but he realized that if he didn't expose Gu Yinxue's heartlessness, his mother would keep thinking how devoted Gu Yinxue was, and would go on using words and looks to hurt an innocent person.

He was his mother's son; he knew best how suffocating his mother's words and looks could be.

"Mom, wake up. Gu Yinxue tried to kill Jiang Lai—your adopted daughter tried to kill your biological daughter!"

"Gu Yinxue also teamed up with Lin Shutong to deceive me—your adopted daughter wanted to harm your biological son too!"

After shouting those two lines, Gu Zhiyan's volume gradually dropped: "Lin Shutong has a sexually transmitted disease. I think I've been infected."

Jiang Lai and Ke Zhongyu looked at Gu Zhiyan in surprise—they hadn't expected him to say it himself.

Song Shiwei's body stiffened as if turned to stone.

Gu Zhiyan: "Mom, you know that if I caught this disease, I wouldn't pass my medical exam, and Qu Mei could never marry someone with an illness."

"The path you chose for me won't work. I can't fulfill your wish to make amends to Father."

"Father doesn't need you to make amends."

"And I am not a tool for you to make amends to Father."

"Jiang Lai being a girl is even less of a reason for you to abandon her."

"I actually didn't quite understand Father's decision to divorce at this age, because you've been together most of your lives, because Father did so much for you, but now I think I understand, because..."

Because he also wanted to leave Mother.

An elephant shackled into learned helplessness suddenly found the courage to break free of its chains.

Such courage struck a deep blow to the elephant trainer who had been deceiving herself all along.

Song Shiwei didn't faint, but her throat suddenly could produce no sound.