Chapter 245

Chapter 245: Old Scandals From the Older Generation

As soon as Du An Rao said this, everyone in the room froze.

Mr. Liu looked questioningly at Ms. Qiu, as if asking whether she had told Du An Rao about their family situation beforehand.

Ms. Qiu saw what he meant at a glance and shook her head speechlessly, thinking: [I barely even know what is going on in your family. How could I have told Miss Du anything in advance?]

After getting this answer, Mr. Liu looked at Du An Rao with more caution and expectation.

Mr. Liu explained: “We did think about that before, but then we felt that my brother’s children are already pretty old. If we really took one of them in as our own, it might not be very suitable. And my wife and I both love children. We want to experience the hardship and joy of being parents from beginning to end, so we would rather adopt a younger child.”

[Sure enough, it was because you did not want to adopt a relative’s child that you brought deadly trouble on yourselves. People talk about blood relatives, but sometimes family can be much harsher to their own than strangers are.]

Xi Jing Yue was a little surprised, yet not all that surprised.

Outsiders do not target you because they have no conflict with you and no tangled interests, while relatives make a move on you mostly because they are after something.

Looking through history, how many relatives have turned into enemies over power and money? People die for wealth and birds die for food. That saying is not just empty words.

Du An Rao stayed silent for a long time. Only when Mr. Liu and his wife were so uneasy that they could not sit still did she finally sigh and say carefully: “What I am about to say might overturn what you believe. You can choose to believe it or not.”

“This…” The couple looked at each other, then quickly said: “Please go ahead. We will believe you.”

“From your physiognomy, you two should have had two children. Your family should have been harmonious, happy, and safe.”

“T… two children?” Hearing this, they finally could not stay calm and jumped to their feet, shaken.

“H… how is that possible? We are already this old. Children…”

“That is why I said ‘should have’. You were meant to have both a son and a daughter, and you should have had children early, but because…”

“Because of what?” At the words “a son and a daughter”, the middle?aged couple, who both loved children, could not help having their eyes fill with tears.

Especially Ms. Qi. When she thought that she should have had two adorable children calling her “Mama” in clear, sweet voices, but they had been taken away for some unknown reason, her heart felt as if two chunks had been cut out. The pain made her wish she were dead.

“What exactly was the reason?”

“Because someone changed your fate pattern.”

“What?!” The couple’s faces changed sharply, and Ms. Qiu and her son were also startled.

“Th… they can change a person’s fate pattern?”

“Yes, but the conditions are very strict. And doing this harms one’s hidden virtue. It is a crooked, evil path. If you can hide it from the Heavenly Dao, then fine. But once it is discovered, not only will the person who benefits from the Fate Pattern Swap suffer backlash, the person who helped them change the fate pattern will also carry karmic debt. In light cases their life force is badly damaged. In serious cases… they die on the spot.”

“Who is it? Who is it?”

Mr. Liu did not care how miserable an end those people might meet. He only cared about who had made his wife suffer for so many years.

Meeting Mr. Liu’s eyes, which were full of grief, Du An Rao could not bear it and said: “You already have an answer in your heart, don’t you?”

Mr. Liu trembled all over when he heard this. Ms. Qi turned to look at him in surprise and said: “Who is it? Tell me who it is.”

Mr. Liu’s eyes had been wavering, but when he saw his wife like this, he still gritted his teeth and asked: “Is it my younger brother?”

“Him?” Ms. Qi’s hand shook, her face full of disbelief. “How could it be him? How is that possible? Did you make a mistake?”

Mr. Liu turned his face away and said nothing. If he could, he wanted to be wrong more than anyone else.

But sometimes it really is like a leaf blocking your eyes. No matter how the evidence is laid out in front of you, you choose to lie to yourself and pretend not to see.

Once someone pokes through that thin layer of paper over the window, no one sees it more clearly than you do.

Ms. Qiu had not expected that after all this, it would turn out to be someone’s family scandal. But since she had already been drawn into it, as President she had to give everyone present a clear answer.

“Little Liu, since you said that, does it mean you already noticed that something was off with your brother?”

Mr. Liu ran his hand through his hair, his expression full of pain: “My brother and I actually aren’t…”

Qiu Ji Chen’s eyes lit up at the juicy gossip and he blurted out: “Not real brothers?”

Mr. Liu: “…”

Ms. Qi: “…”

The corner of Ms. Qiu’s mouth twitched. She snapped: “Qiu Ji Chen!”

“Here!”

“Shut up! If you don’t speak, no one will treat you like you’re mute!”

“Oh…” Qiu Ji Chen pretended to sew his mouth shut and did not dare say another word.

After his interruption, Mr. Liu’s mood actually felt a little lighter.

“He really is my real brother. We just have the same father but different mothers. We weren’t born from the same mother.”

“You’re half brothers? Why did you never tell me that?” Ms. Qi had always thought that her husband and his brother were twins with the same parents. Even though they did not look that much alike, she had assumed it was because they were fraternal twins.

Who would have thought that the reason they were not that similar was because they had not even come from the same womb at all?

Mr. Liu’s expression was bitter: “It was never something glorious. How could I have the nerve to tell you?”

If not for what happened today, he had planned to bury this in his heart for life.

It turned out that Mr. Liu’s father and his brother’s birth mother had been a couple who fell in love freely.

But Mr. Liu’s grandparents disliked their son’s girlfriend. They felt her looks and family background did not match their outstanding son, so they broke the couple apart and found another woman, one who liked Mr. Liu’s father and was a good match in terms of family background, to be his new partner, the woman who later gave birth to Mr. Liu.

Under the careful planning of these two elders and with Mr. Liu’s birth mother’s willing cooperation, Mr. Liu’s father accidentally slept with her and betrayed his girlfriend.

But no one had expected that before this, Mr. Liu’s father had already slept with his girlfriend, and the two women ended up pregnant at almost the same time.

Mr. Liu’s father already deeply hated his parents and Mr. Liu’s birth mother for what they had done. Even though he was forced to “take responsibility” and marry Mr. Liu’s mother, he never developed any feelings for her and never forgot the girlfriend he loved.

When he learned his girlfriend was pregnant, he was overjoyed. He even thought about throwing everything away and running away with her and their child.

Sadly, before he could act, his family found out. They locked him up, so he missed the time he had agreed on to run away with his girlfriend.

Not only that, Mr. Liu’s grandparents even went to the meeting place, humiliated the girlfriend, and told her to get rid of the baby herself.