Upon hearing the opening remarks from the elderly couple of the Shen family, Zhou Qiqi's heart sank. Sure enough, Zhouzhou's background held a secret.
She took a deep breath, calmed her turbulent emotions, and waited quietly for what was to come.
Shen Zhenbang hesitated for a moment before finally making up his mind and slowly speaking:
"Qiqi, to tell you the truth, Zhouzhou's original name was indeed not Shen Duzhou, and she... she is indeed not Huaiyue and Weiwei's biological daughter."
Despite having some suspicions, Zhou Qiqi still felt a dull ache in her heart when her father-in-law confirmed it.
She clenched her fists tightly, forcing herself to calm down. Taking a deep breath, she fixed her gaze on her in-laws and asked:
"Dad, Mom, what exactly happened? Please tell me slowly, I'm listening."
"This story begins three years ago..."
Shen Zhenbang and Qin Peilan exchanged a glance, their eyes filled with reminiscence.
Now, with the passage of time, when the elderly couple reminisces about this painful event, although their expressions are somber, they can face it with equanimity and are no longer as heartbroken as before.
Qin Peilan picked up the conversation and said:
"When we first saw this child at the military hospital, we felt... something was wrong."
It was a very subtle feeling, hard to explain, perhaps what is known as a blood connection.
The child is three years old and is extremely thin and frail because he has been raised in a village controlled by drug traffickers for a long time.
But upon closer inspection, his facial features do not bear much resemblance to Shen Huaiyue or Lin Wei.
Later, Shen Zhenbang took note of this and, taking the opportunity of expressing his gratitude and learning about the situation, subtly inquired with the police officer in charge of the case in Y Province.
This inquiry led to another heartbreaking story.
It turns out that a colleague from the local public security bureau of Y province was also on the undercover mission with Shen Huaiyue and Lin Wei.
This comrade had an even more difficult life. Both his parents were soldiers who died on the battlefield at a young age, and he had no other relatives left.
His wife was caught in a shootout between drug dealers and police on her way to the hospital to give birth. She was hit by a stray bullet and could not be saved, leaving behind their newborn daughter.
Filled with grief and indignation, this comrade vowed to avenge his lover and volunteered to participate in that undercover operation.
He originally intended to entrust his child to the organization and venture out alone, but the drug dealers were extremely cunning.
They only accept people with families or "vulnerabilities" as a means of control.
Left with no other choice, he had to take his young daughter with him.
Fortunately, they were arranged to stay with Shen Huaiyue and Lin Wei in a separate cabin far from the center of the village.
For more than three years, the two girls, who were about the same age, ate together, slept together, and grew up under the careful care and constant worry of several adults.
That bond had long transcended blood ties; the five adults loved the two children equally.
On the day of the incident, the drug dealers suddenly attacked and kidnapped both children.
Amid the chaos, several children from the villages were also imprisoned in the dungeon.
What exactly happened in the prison cell at that time is probably unknown to anyone except Shen Huaiyue and Lin Wei.
All people know is that when the reinforcements finally arrived and struggled to lift the charred and broken beams and walls, what they saw was the tragic scene of Shen Huaiyue and Lin Wei desperately protecting the five children with their bodies.
Of those children, only the one held tightly in Shen Huaiyue's arms still had a faint breath left.
With his last shred of consciousness, Shen Huaiyue entrusted the child in his arms to the police officers, asking them to pass on a message to Shen Zhenbang and Qin Peilan.
As Qin Peilan spoke, tears welled up in her eyes. She wiped them away forcefully, her voice choked with emotion as she said:
“I know my own son... When Huaiyue entrusted him with his last wishes, he didn’t say ‘take good care of Zhouzhou’... he said ‘take good care of Duzhou’... Before, when he talked to us on the phone about the child, he always called him ‘Zhouzhou’ affectionately. This subtle difference gave your father and me a jolt!”
Shen Zhenbang nodded heavily and continued:
"Yes! We strongly suspected at the time that the only surviving child... might not be our biological granddaughter, Shen Duzhou!"
However, these two children had been growing up in the village for three years, and now most of the villagers had been burned to death, so there was no way to find out the truth.
While the elderly couple stayed by their child's side at the hospital, never leaving him who had survived the ordeal, they also entrusted their old comrades in the local area to investigate secretly.
Ultimately, all the clues pointed to the orphaned comrade who had sacrificed his life.
Shen Zhenbang took a deep breath and stated the key evidence:
“We managed to find the medical records from the time of the rescue. A doctor we knew told us quietly that the child’s blood type did not match Huaiyue’s or Weiwei’s, but it did match the blood type of the fallen comrade and his deceased lover.”
With tears in her eyes, Qin Peilan added another detail:
"Furthermore, we later found an old village chief who had contact with that comrade to verify this. The old village chief recalled that the comrade had mentioned in casual conversation that his family had an ancestral mark: a light red birthmark on the sole of their child's foot, shaped like a small butterfly..."
"A butterfly-shaped birthmark?!"
Zhou Qiqi let out a soft cry.
She had bathed Zhouzhou so many times, she knew those little feet all too well.
There was indeed a birthmark on the sole of her right foot, and it wasn't small either, resembling a tiny butterfly about to take flight.
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