Chapter 2

The next morning, the family of three went to have samples taken for the paternity test.

They opted for an expedited process, and the results would be ready by this time tomorrow.

After leaving the testing agency, Shang Tongxu drove his wife to her company first. He glanced in the rearview mirror at Zhiyi, who was leaning against the seatback with her eyes half-closed, her face pale.

His wife, sitting in the passenger seat, was looking down, scrolling through her phone, seemingly busy with work.

The car was unusually quiet.

So quiet that it was unsettling.

Usually, he was the one to lighten the mood at home, but today, he remained silent all the way to his wife’s office building.

Xiao Meihua unbuckled her seatbelt and, before getting out, turned to Zhiyi in the back seat and said, “I have a client meeting today, so I can’t stay. Your dad will handle your discharge from the hospital this afternoon.”

Zhiyi slowly opened her eyes. “My headache hasn’t improved. I’d like to stay for another couple of days.”

Xiao Meihua responded, “Then there’s no rush to leave. I’ll have your dad ask the doctor if you need any further tests.”

“Okay. Goodbye, Mom.”

Xiao Meihua nodded and, before leaving, glanced at her husband. She opened her mouth as if to say something but ultimately said nothing, then opened the car door and got out.

As the car started up again, Zhiyi closed her eyes once more. The car accident from the day before hadn’t caused her serious injuries. The doctor had said she only needed to stay in the hospital for observation for a day, and if everything was fine, she could be discharged that afternoon.

I’m not sure why, but today my headache is severe, and I feel awful all over.

Even now, she couldn’t accept the fact that she wasn’t her parents’ biological child. She couldn’t calm down.

Who were her biological parents, and where were they?

Her mind was filled with chaotic thoughts as the car stopped in the hospital parking lot.

“Zhiyi, wake up.”

Her father gently called her.

She hadn’t been sleeping at all, but she pretended to be awakened.

“Dad, I’ll go upstairs by myself. You should find a place to have breakfast.” It had been a tense morning; no one had eaten anything before going to the testing center.

Shang Tongxu instinctively wanted to say he wasn’t hungry, but then realized his daughter hadn’t eaten either. He got out of the car, taking his bag with him. “I’ll go buy some breakfast.”

Near the breakfast shop, there was a convenience store. He went in and bought a pack of cigarettes, pulled one out, and put it in his mouth, only to realize he hadn’t bought a lighter. So he went back to the store.

He never smoked, not even when he was young. The cigarette was lit, and as smoke swirled around him, he coughed but persisted in finishing it to the last puff before extinguishing it.

Back at the hospital.

Shang Zhiyi had been waiting for the elevator for quite a while. She was staying in a double-occupancy room, and when she pushed the door open, she saw someone sitting on the stool in front of her bed—white T-shirt, black sweatpants, long legs seemingly having nowhere to rest.

“Second Brother, why are you here?”

Qi Zhengchen looked up from his phone, locked the screen, tossed it onto the headboard, and as he stood up, he pulled her in front of him, looking her over from head to toe.

Shang Zhiyi smiled. “Nothing’s broken.”

“You dared to drive after donating blood!” He propped the pillow against the headboard and let her lie down on the bed.

Shang Zhiyi placed her small bag on the bedside table. The area where she was bruised still hurt, so she slowly lay back on the bed. “What time did you get here?”

“I’ve been here for almost half an hour,” Qi Zhengchen said, nodding towards the bed next to hers. “They said you were getting some tests done.” He had been waiting here ever since.

When they went to the testing center in the morning, the family member in the next bed had habitually asked if she was being discharged, to which her father had evasively replied that they were just going for a checkup.

“How did you know I was hospitalized? Even my grandparents don’t know.” Shang Zhiyi was curious.

“Aunt Xiao called me and asked me to come and keep you company. She said you’d need to stay for another two days.” Qi Zhengchen washed his hands in the bathroom and returned to sit down, picking up an orange from the table to peel.

Shang Zhiyi bit her lip, and after a moment of hesitation, she said, “I didn’t go for a checkup earlier.” In a voice only the two of them could hear, she added, “I went to get a paternity test. I’m not my parents’ biological child. The blood types don’t match; we only found out when I donated blood.”

Qi Zhengchen was stunned. The half-peeled orange in his hand slipped and rolled under the bed.

Her eyes were dark, her expression forlorn, and her lips were pale—she didn’t look like she was joking at all.

He wished she was joking.

No wonder she’d had a car accident.

Qi Zhengchen bent down to pick up the orange, exhaling sharply as he did so. When he retrieved it, he unintentionally squeezed it too hard, causing juice to drip all over his hand.

“I’ll peel you another one.” He tossed the orange into the trash and went to wash his hands.

After washing his hands, he splashed water on his face. If he found it hard to accept, she must be feeling even worse.

Qi Zhengchen returned to her bedside and started peeling another orange. She loved green oranges, the sourer, the better.

Words of comfort seemed unnecessary. His hands paused mid-peel, and he looked at her. “In the worst-case scenario, if your biological parents can’t afford your tuition and living expenses abroad, you still have me.” He knew she wouldn’t easily take his money. “I’ll lend it to you. You can pay me back whenever you can. You’ll finish your master’s in just a few years, and then you’ll be able to support yourself.”

She was bright, having skipped grades in middle school. Now she was already in her senior year of college.

“It’s not about the tuition; I have a scholarship,” Shang Zhiyi said after a brief silence. “Parent-child relationships are built from a young age. It’s hard to develop a deep bond with unfamiliar parents when you’re older…”

She paused, then pointed to her head. “I have a mild concussion, so I’m a bit incoherent.”

“I understand,” Qi Zhengchen replied.

What she was most worried about was that after finding her biological parents, they wouldn’t develop any strong feelings for her. She had been raised by her grandparents when she was young. When her younger sister was born when she was five, Aunt Xiao clearly favored the younger daughter—a bias even he, as an outsider, could see.

Uncle Shang indulged the younger daughter as well, just less obviously.

Having never received such affection, she craved her parents’ love.

But sometimes, the more you desire something, the harder it is to obtain.

He handed her the peeled orange and suddenly remembered something. He took out a wet wipe with his other hand and gave it to her to clean her hands first.

The freshly picked green oranges, sour with a hint of sweetness, tasted like nothing to Shang Zhiyi.

—

Finally, the long 24 hours passed, each second feeling like a year. Shang Tongxu received the paternity test results, and no miracle occurred—they had no biological relationship with Zhiyi.

He couldn’t remember how he got back to the parking lot, and it took him two tries to open the car door.

Xiao Meihua sat in the passenger seat, clutching her purse tightly on her lap. There was no need to ask; she could tell from her husband’s expression what the result was.

She gradually calmed down and took the paternity test report. She had given birth at a private hospital in Hong Kong, and with 20 years having passed, it would be difficult to demand an explanation from the hospital based solely on a report. Going through legal channels could take years before the truth came out.

The pain was unbearable, and no one could wait that long.

Closing the report, she took out her phone.

“What do you plan to do next?” Shang Tongxu asked his wife.

Xiao Meihua looked down as she scrolled through her contacts. “We’ll have to ask Qi Zhengchen’s parents for help.”

Her father and Qi Zhengchen’s grandfather were old colleagues at the same research institute. The two families had once lived in the same residential complex and had been neighbors. Due to differences in personality, she and Qi Zhengchen’s mother had never been close. After Qi Zhengchen’s mother married into a wealthy family, their contact became even more limited, with only the occasional greeting when she returned home. That was the extent of their relationship.

However, the elders of both families maintained close contact, and Zhiyi and Qi Zhengchen grew up playing together.

When the call connected, they exchanged a few polite words.

Since she needed help, she didn’t beat around the bush and quickly explained what had happened over the past two days. On the other end of the line, Qi Zhengchen’s mother was so shocked that she was at a loss for words.

“My mind is a complete mess right now, and I haven’t dared to tell my parents yet because I’m afraid they won’t be able to handle it. The only person I could think of was you. I’m sorry to trouble you.”

“It’s no trouble at all. Don’t worry, I’ll contact someone right away and find out what the process is.”

After comforting her a bit more, Qi Zhengchen’s mother hurriedly ended the call.

When they returned to the hospital from the testing center, neither of them got out of the car.

She was too physically and mentally exhausted to move, while her husband didn’t know how to face Zhiyi. As noon approached, Zhiyi hadn’t called them. Being so smart, she had probably already guessed the result of the paternity test.

During this time, her husband left for more than half an hour, and when he returned to the car, he smelled of smoke.

Xiao Meihua had a splitting headache and couldn’t stand even a hint of smoke, so she grumbled, “It smells awful.”

Shang Tongxu rolled down the car window to let the smoke out and turned to look at his wife in the passenger seat. “It’s already been twenty years since the mix-up. We don’t need to rush today. Shouldn’t we comfort Zhiyi first? Have you thought about how she feels? She cares about you the most, but you don’t seem to care about her at all—whether she’s feeling hurt or not.”

Xiao Meihua, already full of pent-up frustration, exploded at his accusation. “What do you mean, Shang Tongxu? Only you care about her? Only you feel bad? Don’t you think I’m hurting too? Twenty years! I watched her grow up day by day, took her to the hospital in the middle of the night when she was sick, and stayed up with her all night. Whatever she wanted, I made sure she had it. She attended international schools all the way through—do you think money just falls from the sky? Shang Tongxu, can’t you have a bit of conscience?”

Her eyes were red as she forced back her tears.

“The child I carried for ten months—I’ve never even held her. Where is she? What does she look like? Is she doing well? Is it wrong for me to want to know? Is it wrong for me to want to find her? Shang Tongxu, tell me, what did I do wrong?”

Shang Tongxu was silent for a long time. “Don’t take what I just said to heart; I didn’t think before I spoke.”

His wife wasn’t wrong for wanting to find their child.

Xiao Meihua didn’t bother responding and instead called her secretary to arrange her work. Given the current situation, she could only take the annual leave she had been saving up, which she had planned to use in August to accompany their younger daughter to a summer school in London.

Plans could never keep up with the changes in life.

Shang Tongxu glanced at the time; it was five minutes to noon. “Let’s go upstairs. We shouldn’t keep Zhiyi waiting.”

Xiao Meihua got out of the car, her legs feeling as light as if they had lost all strength.

Seeing his wife walk in the opposite direction of the hospital building, Shang Tongxu asked, “Aren’t you going to the ward?”

“I’m going to buy some green oranges.” She had only taken a few steps when her phone vibrated.

Only three hours had passed since she called Qi Zhengchen’s mother, and she didn’t expect to hear back so soon.

“Meihua, we’ve found something. I had someone check the records, and it turns out that on the night of the C-section, there were only two girls born to your families. Logically, there shouldn’t have been a mix-up. It’s hard to understand what went wrong. The main problem is that too much time has passed. Some of the doctors and nurses have retired, while others have moved abroad for health reasons. It was difficult to contact one nurse, but she had no memory of what happened back then.”

Xiao Meihua was both anxious and excited. “So, can we contact that family now? Where are they from?”

“Zhengchen’s father is working on that. I called to update you because I know you’re anxious.” There was a brief pause. “You should be prepared.”

Xiao Meihua’s heart sank. “What’s wrong?”

“The couple who raised your child is Xu Xiangyi and his wife. You attend financial forums regularly, so you must know of Xu Xiangyi.”

How could she not know? Xu Xiangyi was a man with many accolades—a financial tycoon, the richest man in the country, a philanthropist, and one of the most charismatic entrepreneurs in the business world. He was known for his sharp and insightful investments, and now he was a major shareholder in several leading publicly traded companies.

Moreover, the group he founded was financially robust and had never gone public, so no one knew his exact net worth.

If Xu Xiangyi was indeed the adoptive father of her biological daughter, would her daughter even want to come back?