Chapter 36 The Madman's Daughter

Han Xiao paused for a moment, took out her phone, and suddenly laughed: "Now that you mention it, I suddenly remembered that I haven't had milk tea since I entered the entertainment industry." Since she probably won't be able to go back to the entertainment industry, she doesn't want to wrong herself anymore. She's not going to go through all sorts of dieting and exercising for her figure and voice. From now on, she can eat and drink whatever she wants.

However, she hadn't had milk tea in a long time, and she didn't recognize many of the milk tea brands on the market. So she simply sorted them by sales volume and ordered two cups of their signature milk tea from the top three brands.

Just as Han Xiao was carefully ordering her milk tea, Zhang Mo, who had been looking down at her phone, suddenly asked in a low voice, "Do you usually order milk tea for your sister?"

Han Xiao's fingers, adorned with fully rhinestone-studded nails, froze on the screen in astonishment. Her body tensed abruptly as she looked at Zhang Mo warily: "What do you mean?"

Zhang Mo smiled and finally put down her phone: "It's nothing, just a small background check. Your ex-husband's methods for smearing you aren't actually that sophisticated."

"For example?" Han Xiao asked, raising an eyebrow.

"For example, that charity blogger who was jumping around, who repeatedly mentioned your seriously ill mother and young sister in your videos when you were 16, but in your recent videos, only your 'abandoned' father is left."

There are clearly three other people in your family, so why did you choose to 'abandon' only this father?

Anyone with a modicum of common sense would know there's more to this story.

Han Xiao sneered: "Unfortunately, there aren't many people with brains."

It was snowing outside, and the air conditioner unit of the company downstairs was humming, the sound coming through the wall panels, which had almost no sound insulation.

Zhang Mo: "Would you be interested in telling me your story? After all, if you really come to work for our company, I'll most likely have to help clear your name."

Han Xiao gave a mocking smile, like a thin layer of frost, concealing the bitterness and helplessness in her heart: "Clear my name? With me in this state, how can I clear my name?"

Zhang Mo: "It's alright, I have plenty of strength and resources."

When Zhang Mo speaks, her posture is elegant, and every movement reveals a natural composure and confidence that makes people unconsciously convinced.

Han Xiao remained silent for a long time, a struggle flashing in his eyes. Finally, he asked a very peculiar question: "Do you know what the easiest way is for a poor, ugly, and old man to change his life in a short period of time?"

Han Xiao looked at Zhang Mo, his eyes shining brightly, his words like a sharp dagger piercing straight to the heart: "He can just grab a woman with a mental illness off the street, imprison her, rape her, and force her to have a child. Then he will have a bargaining chip that appreciates in value infinitely."

Upon hearing this, Zhang Mo paused for a moment, then turned around and closed the conference room door.

“You’ve seen the video online. Although that man keeps saying how hard he worked to raise me, in reality, I was the only breadwinner in that family from the age of four.”

“Every evening, he would chain my neck and my mother’s ankle together with an iron chain and make us walk around the doorways of different houses, claiming that this kind of walk would help my mother’s condition. In reality, it was just to make people feel sorry for us and give us food, drinks and money.”

Although it was a long time ago, Han Xiao still remembered it very clearly. Several times her mother would suddenly go mad, running aimlessly in one direction. She would be mercilessly dragged along by the iron chain around her neck, her shoulders and cheeks scraped raw and bloody on the rough ground. That suffocating and desperate feeling almost permeated the first half of her life, becoming a nightmare she could never shake off.

“After he started elementary school, his income became more stable. In addition to the subsidies that the school would give regularly, he would kneel down in the principal’s office every year and say that his mother’s condition had worsened and that the family could not even afford to eat. Then a grand donation would be held, and the whole school would generously donate to help this miserable family who were like a rope that always breaks at its weakest point and misfortune that only finds the unfortunate.”

She closed her eyes, as if she were back in that unbearable past.

She will always remember that scene: she stood alone under the national flag, as "the daughter of a madman," holding a wooden donation box, accepting donations filled with sympathy, and the curious, disgusted, and mocking looks from others.

"Of course, he didn't use that money for medical treatment. He used it for whoring, drinking, and gambling. And probably because it was so easy to make money that one child wasn't enough, he gave me a little sister."

"So, this family became even more pitiful: an elderly father, a seriously ill mother, a breastfeeding sister, and a broken 'she'."

"I found it utterly absurd at the time. Wasn't this man the one who created this family full of unfortunate people?"

“When I was 16, he originally planned to sell me to a 40-year-old man who had lost his wife in exchange for a dowry of 200,000 yuan. I really didn’t want to accept such a life, so I went online to seek help and accidentally contacted that charity blogger.”

“He promised me online that he could help me and my mother get away from that man and have a new life.”

"But once he got there, he completely changed."

"They started repairing the house, sending him food, and buying him new clothes. They started advising me, saying that my father's life had been difficult and that I should be filial to him."

"He took my parents to a photo studio here, took a wedding photo, and said he had never seen such great love in his life."

A tear slid down Han Xiao's cheek, a tear a mixture of grief, pain, anger, and resentment: "Love?! That son of a bitch actually called rape love. He clearly saw with his own eyes how a woman was chained up in a pigsty full of garbage! And he still called that love!"

Since you're already wandering around anyway, what's wrong with tying you up? At least we've given you a home!

So what if you were raped? At least I gave you a bite to eat!

For the sake of the child, just bear with it.

For the sake of this family, I'll just have to bear with it.

For the sake of society, let's be patient.

If you just be patient, the whole world can be better off. Why can't you be patient?

Everyone else can tolerate it, so why can't you?!

Women's suffering is ignored by everyone in the overwhelming tide, while men are considered to be doing great things by making even the slightest contribution.