Xu Moran was an orphan, so he could understand the feelings of that unfortunate district chief back then. Living at the bottom of society, making such a decision was perfectly normal.

That unfortunate district chief probably knew that he would rarely have the chance to talk to people so much again, so he poured out all the things he had kept in his heart for so many years.

"Later, not long after we got married, my wife became pregnant, and my mother-in-law kept her promise and transferred me to a government agency. At first, I was just a regular employee doing odd jobs. People in the agency were polite to me on the surface, but behind my back they were all talking behind my back and laughing at me. I knew all of this, but what harm could those behind-the-back laughs do to me? None. As long as I didn't care, no matter how harsh the sarcasm was, it couldn't hurt me in the slightest. As the saying goes, the master leads you to the door, but the cultivation is up to you. Although my mother-in-law brought me into the officialdom, I still had to rely on myself to really move forward. Well, now that things have come to this, no matter how glorious I was in the past, it's all in the past. Let's go and accept the severe punishment that the law has to give me."

Xu Moran didn't know what was wrong with her. She hadn't said anything until suddenly she thought of something, "What about the child your wife gave birth to?"

She remembered clearly that he had just mentioned his wife's pregnancy, a woman with a family history of congenital mental illness. She suddenly wondered whether the child should be kept or terminated.

The unlucky district chief was clearly surprised that Xu Moran would ask him this question. He gave her a deep look and said, "I asked more than one neurology expert, and their answers were basically the same: the chances of the child developing a mental illness are fifty-fifty."

Xu Moran frowned. "What do you mean by 'half and half'?"

The unfortunate district chief thought of his child, and the sadness on his face was genuine. "The neurologist told me with certainty that if a woman has a family history of congenital mental illness and her husband is a normal person, from a genetic point of view, whether the child will inherit the mental illness depends on the sex of the fetus in the womb. That is to say, if it is a son, then he will inherit the mental illness 100% of the time, and if it is a daughter, then she is safe."

Xu Moran felt inexplicably nervous. "So...is your wife carrying a boy or a girl?"

The unlucky district chief let out a long sigh. "When she was six months pregnant, I took her for a checkup, and it was a girl."

Xu Moran, a listener of stories, couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief upon hearing this answer.

Hearing Xu Moran's sigh of relief, the unlucky district chief smiled at her and said, "Young lady, I feel like you were more nervous than I was back then."

Xu Moran remained silent, because the unlucky bureau chief was right; she, who was merely listening to the story, was indeed nervous.

The unlucky district chief didn't care whether Xu Moran answered his question or not, and continued, "Now that it's confirmed to be a daughter, I'm relieved. Life goes on like this. When my wife isn't having an episode, she's very gentle and virtuous. She's not only considerate to her husband, but also very filial to my parents. Later, for the sake of the child, she stopped taking the medication to suppress her mental problems. She had more and more episodes, but I never disliked her because no matter how she had an episode, she always remembered that she had a child in her belly and always carefully protected her belly. A week before her due date, I received an assignment to go on a business trip."

At this point, the unfortunate district chief glanced at Xu Moran again, his eyes filled with obvious sadness, helplessness, and regret. "I didn't expect her to have a premature birth, and I certainly didn't expect that she would fall ill after giving birth and directly harm our daughter."

"Your daughter..." Xu Moran asked the unlucky district chief cautiously.

The unfortunate district head said sorrowfully, "She fell ill after childbirth... and threw our newborn daughter... straight off the building. When I received the news, I was frantic and rushed back overnight. Unfortunately, I still couldn't see my daughter one last time. She was my only child in this life. Since then, I've been heartbroken and just eat and drink all day. Young lady, you might think that at my age, being just a district head is a terrible job. But if you look at my resume, you'll know that more than twenty years ago, I was already the vice mayor. Later, I was gradually demoted to district head. After my daughter, whom I never met, passed away, my wife came to her senses and, knowing what she had done, also jumped off a building and died. Since then, I feel that my life has lost all hope. I just drift through each day, waiting to die."

Xu Moran never expected that this unfortunate district chief had such a sad past. The look in his eyes was no longer the contempt he had for corrupt officials, but sympathy.

The unlucky district chief suddenly asked Xu Moran, "Young lady, are you in your early twenties today?"

Xu Moran nodded. "I'm twenty-two years old this year."

The chapter you are currently reading, Chapter 47: Agreeing to the Request, of "Picking Up an Older Brother as My Husband" is only a small portion. To read the full version, please search on Baidu: "香满路言情m.bookxml". Then search for "Picking Up an Older Brother as My Husband".