Because she overthought Yun Duo's simple words, Zhou Huiyu's eyes welled up with tears again. Gu Shaoyong's heart was also heavy. After a long while, he nodded and said with some difficulty, "Okay, that's good. It's my fault... I came late and made you suffer."

As she spoke, she felt a deep sorrow in her heart. She had thought that finding her daughter would be the end of the world, but now that she was truly facing it, speaking up was incredibly difficult.

For a moment, the silence inside the car was eerily profound.

After a long pause, Yun Duo couldn't help but say softly, "Sir and Madam, what brings you here? It's getting late, and Grandpa and Grandma will worry if I go home too late."

“Child, we…”

Let us tell you a story.

Upon hearing Yun Duo's words, Zhou Huiyu couldn't help but want to say, "We are your family," but before she could finish, Gu Shaoyong interrupted her.

Thinking that she had finally mustered the courage to tell her daughter the truth, but her husband stopped her, Zhou Huiyu couldn't help but give Gu Shaoyong a resentful look.

Gu Shaoyong patted Zhou Huiyu reassuringly once again, and then said, "I'll get straight to the point, it won't take up too much of your time. If you're still in a hurry, I can have someone drive us, and we can talk on the way."

"Then you go first," Yun Duo whispered.

"Okay." Gu Shaoyong nodded, and indeed chose to keep it brief.

“Eight years ago, I was working in Qingping County. My wife and I lived there at the time. She was pregnant and about to give birth. Because of my work, I couldn’t leave Qingping County for too long, and I didn’t want her to leave my protection. So, she gave birth at the county hospital in Qingping County.”

“At the time, I thought I had Qingping County under control and everything was in my grasp. I never imagined that anyone would dare to make trouble during my wife’s childbirth. So… although I had the hospital investigated, it wasn’t thorough. This led to a disaster that I’ve regretted for many years.”

“My wife…had her labor time artificially prolonged, creating the illusion of a difficult birth, and my child almost lost his life because he stayed in his mother’s body for too long.”

"Of course, I only found this out now."

"Actually, at the time, the doctor who delivered the baby handed my wife and me a boy who had died in utero due to complications during childbirth..."

“My wife was devastated and fainted. When she woke up, she kept saying that her baby was fine and asked the doctor to give her back her baby. I was also very sad, after all, it was my first child, but… I buried that stillborn baby myself, so I didn’t know that what my wife said was an intuition brought on by the mother’s instinct. I just thought, like everyone else, that she was suffering from postpartum depression due to excessive grief…”

“I was busy taking my wife back for treatment, busy getting her away from Qingping County, this sad place. Because of her illness, which was getting worse day by day, I dared not mention this place in front of her... I even intentionally ignored this place and ignored what had happened here.”

"So... it wasn't until recently that I learned, by a very accidental chance, that there was a young girl in Qingping County who looked a lot like my wife."