Chapter 181

Chapter 181: No One Runs—If You Did Wrong, You Take the Beating

The moment Jiang Tea Tea finished speaking, it was like a bucket of icy rain had been dumped over every guest’s head. Shock and panic soaked them to the bone.

Cheng Mian and Mo Jing Chun exchanged a sharp glance and immediately moved from the edge toward Jiang Tea Tea and the others.

Good. Very good.

Eight kids had been holding something this big in their hands, and they’d carried it alone. As family, Cheng Mian and Mo Jing Chun had to stand with them—protect them—move with them.

Onstage, Lang Yin Feng and Lang Luo Feng’s smug smiles froze. Staring at the warrant, Lang Yin Feng barked a reprimand, loud but hollow.

“Tea Tea—Jiang Tea Tea—you’re not a child anymore. You’re an adult. Don’t pull this spoiled nonsense. This joke isn’t funny.”

Lang Luo Feng rushed to smooth things over, smiling too widely. “Everyone, I’m so sorry. Our newly recovered daughter loves to joke. This is just her little prank—don’t take it seriously. Please, don’t take it seriously.”

The guests forced themselves to breathe, desperately shoving down their fear. But the hands holding plates and wineglasses still trembled.

“A joke… so it’s a joke,” someone said, voice shaking. “Miss Tea Tea is adorable. But… don’t make jokes like this again.”

“Exactly. You can joke about anything, but forging an arrest warrant? That’s a violation of empire law.”

“Miss Tea Tea, everyone in the Zhen Lin Empire knows Chong Ming, the Commander-in-Chief, supports empire law—he enforces it and reforms it. He hates people who violate it. Even if he values you, please—take our advice. Don’t do something like this again.”

“We’re your dad and mom’s business partners. We’ll keep quiet for their sake—we won’t report this forged warrant. But you need to understand how serious this is. If someone else reports you, you’ll suffer for it.”

One after another, they lectured her with the self-important tone of officials. The longer they talked, the louder they got, as if volume could turn fear into righteousness.

Jiang Tea Tea held the warrant aloft and slowly turned, her eyes sweeping the crowd with cool indifference.

“Open your eyes. The warrant in my hand was personally signed by Chong Ming, the Commander-in-Chief.”

“And everyone who spoke to me just now—every last one—will be treated as resisting arrest.”

“In other words: whatever crimes you’ve committed, the moment you raised your voice at me, your sentence got worse.”

The loudest guests went rigid. Their eyes locked onto the paper.

There was Chong Ming’s signature.

His bright-red seal.

The warrant was real.

Panic snapped through the crowd. People stumbled back, hurriedly setting down cups and utensils.

“We didn’t break any laws! We do legitimate business with the Lang family—legitimate dealings, legitimate friendships!”

“Yes! We’re their legitimate relatives. We were invited to a family banquet. We didn’t break any laws. Even if you have an arrest warrant signed by the Commander-in-Chief, you can’t arrest us!”

“Lang Yin Feng! Lang Luo Feng! We treated you as friends and partners—so you’re dragging us into this?”

“Fine. Fine. We can’t afford to offend you. But we can leave. We can leave right now—”

“Wait.” Lang Yin Feng’s teeth clenched.

He lunged forward and snatched the warrant from Jiang Tea Tea’s hand. Without even looking, he tore it to shreds—one last desperate attempt to salvage control.

“Everyone, there is no arrest warrant. It’s all a joke my daughter played. Please, don’t panic. Don’t leave.”

The guests hesitated, caught between terror and disbelief. Their eyes snapped back to Jiang Tea Tea.

She flicked her now-empty hand. “Lang Yin Feng. Destroying official government documents—violation of empire law. Your sentence just got worse.”

“Sui Xuan Chu. Cheng Xiao Ting. Break his legs.”

Sui Xuan Chu and Cheng Xiao Ting surged forward at once.

Lang Yin Feng fought back.

The crowd scrambled away, terrified of getting caught in the crossfire. Some people tried to flee anyway, pulling flyers from their storage buttons and launching straight up.

They didn’t make it.

A thunderous boom shook the air. A bullet clipped the flyer’s tail. It spun out and crashed onto the lawn.

The door blew open and the person inside crawled out, blood streaming down their forehead, stumbling away from the wreck.

Everyone looked up.

The sky was full of warships, fighters, and mechs—cloaked, but marked with the Barley Star garrison insignia. Everything alive within hundreds of kilometers was inside their firing range.

And it wasn’t just ships and fighters.

Red beams crisscrossed overhead, forming a killing web. Even if someone somehow punched through the aircraft blockade, those intersecting beams would slice them in half.

No one dared pull out another flyer.

All three thousand guests stood frozen, panicked, afraid to move.

A sharp crack split the air.

A scream followed.

Lang Yin Feng’s leg snapped, the sound and his howl arriving together. The crowd’s attention whipped down from the sky.

Sui Xuan Chu stomped onto Lang Yin Feng’s shattered leg while Cheng Xiao Ting snapped his arm and pinned him to the ground.

“Tea Tea… Tea Tea…” Lang Luo Feng staggered forward, voice trembling. “My daughter—what are you doing? What are you doing?”

Jiang Tea Tea blinked once. “Who’s your daughter? Me?”

“What kind of joke is that.” Her tone stayed flat. “Do you think you deserve it?”

Lang Luo Feng’s face went tight with fear. She spun and rushed toward Lang Xin Yi and the other siblings.

“Xin Yi! Xin Wei! Tea Tea listens to you. Tea Tea likes you the most. Hurry—help Mom talk her down.”

“We’re family. Blood is thicker than water. A joke is a joke, but this is too much—on a day this important, in front of so many guests. Don’t let them laugh at us.”

Lang Xin Yi hadn’t even managed to shake her off when Jiang Tea Tea spoke again.

“Who’s blood with you? Lang Xin Yi? Lang Xin Wei? Or Lang Xin Rui?”

“No. All seventeen children have no blood relation to you at all.” Her eyes were cold, her words clean. “You and Lang Yin Feng… your bodies are rotten to the core from greed—money, fame, power, abilities. You’re infertile. You haven’t been able to reproduce for a long time.”

“The seventeen children—including me—were all born from embryos you stole. You used forged artificial wombs to carry them.”

“After the children were born, you altered their genetic profiles and made them ‘your’ children. But you never loved them.”

“You never had love. You only wanted to tame them. Beat them. Break them.” Jiang Tea Tea’s voice didn’t waver. “You had no guilt—because you never saw them as human.”

Among the Lang family’s sixteen children on the lawn—including Lang Xin Rui and Lang Xin Ping, who’d been called back—minds went blank.

Limbs turned cold.

They moved like machines, forcing their heads to turn. They looked at Jiang Tea Tea… then at the people they’d called Dad and Mom.

Their parents had demanded everything from them—strict, brutal. If they weren’t outstanding, they were beaten or scolded, their allowance cut.

And still they’d clung to them. Still they’d wanted affection.

Now Jiang Tea Tea was saying they weren’t their parents’ children at all.

“You’re lying!” Lang Luo Feng screamed.

When she saw the children stare at her with unfamiliar hatred, she panicked. She tried to drag them back, flinging blame anywhere she could—onto Jiang Tea Tea, onto the world, onto anything but herself.

“Xin Yi! Xin Wei! You’re Mom’s son and daughter. Mom loves you the most.”

“Don’t listen to her! She’s taking revenge because your dad and I didn’t find her sooner. She’s making things up to drive a wedge between us!”

Lang Luo Feng clutched Lang Xin Yi’s arm so hard her nails dug into his skin until blood rose.

He winced, but she didn’t notice. She only wanted him to keep listening, to keep believing.

Nearby, Cheng Xiao Ting’s parents had already moved to stand beside their own child—watchful, protective, guarding against any sudden strike.

Lang Xin Yi didn’t pull his arm away. He only asked, voice steady but strained, “Mom… are we your children?”

Lang Luo Feng nodded violently. “Yes, yes, yes. You’re my children. I gave birth to all of you. Don’t listen to Jiang Tea Tea’s nonsense.”

“She hates me and your dad. She wants us to lose face in front of all these guests. Don’t believe her. Don’t believe her.”

Lang Xin Yi slowly raised his hand and pried her grip off his arm. He looked at her—and the hatred in his eyes rolled like an ocean.

“So that’s why.”

“I always wondered—how could parents not love their own children? Turns out… we were never yours.”

“I always wondered why there were so many of us—more than a dozen siblings, every one of us S-rank or above, some even 3S-rank. We were excellent in school. Excellent at work. And you still weren’t satisfied.”

“You still called us trash. You said we wasted the resources you poured into us.”

“So it’s true.” His voice tightened. “We aren’t your children. You stole us. You birthed us. And you never loved us.”

“And of course you didn’t. When you beat us, you felt nothing. When you humiliated us, you felt nothing.” His stare didn’t blink. “How could you love us?”

“No—no!” Lang Luo Feng denied it with everything she had, clinging to the children like a drowning person to driftwood.

“You’re my children. I gave birth to you.”

“When I hit you, when I scolded you, it was for your own good. To make you better. To give you a bright future.”

“Is that so?” Jiang Tea Tea cut in, cool and sharp. “Then look at this.”

She tapped her lightbrain. A massive screen projected above the lawn.

Footage played.

Lang Luo Feng lay strapped to a medical table. An embryo was implanted into her. Audio captured her conversation with the person performing the procedure.

Seventeen children—single births, twins, triplets.

Then chat logs appeared between Lang Luo Feng and Lang Yin Feng, along with archived files documenting each implantation.

Under the weight of proof, Lang Luo Feng’s frantic denial turned weak and ridiculous.

Lang Xin Wei surged forward. Her hand shook as she raised it—

And slapped Lang Luo Feng hard enough to send her sprawling.

Lang Xin Wei straddled her like a wild thing. She fisted Lang Luo Feng’s hair and slammed her palm down again and again, hysterical with grief and rage.

“Lang Luo Feng, you bastard. You poisonous monster. What right did you have to steal other people’s cub embryos and make them your children?”

“From the moment we could understand anything, you trained us, crushed us, controlled us. We never complained. We just wanted to do better—wanted you to be happy.”

“But you… you—”

“The second we made a mistake, you locked us in a pitch-black room without a single ray of light!”

“You made us fight animals—stupid, mindless animals—for food. You made us slap our own siblings. Whoever slapped harder got a bite to eat.”

“What right did you have to treat us like we weren’t even people? What right?”