Chapter 99
On the computer screen, the hot search list seemed to be stained red with blood, and every entry was shocking:
[Explosive] Ling Yao's illegitimate child [Explosive] Ling Yao's mother XXX mistress [Hot] The debt of a wealthy family reveals Ling Yao's life story [Explosive] Ling's eldest son confirms the rumors
Su Rui's fingers, just as he was about to export the photos, froze in mid-air. His pupils suddenly constricted as he stared at the words in disbelief. "Illegitimate child?" "Mistress?" "Ling family?" These words, combined, pointed to someone he knew intimately, yet who seemed so strange at that moment.
He almost trembled as he clicked on those topics. Densely packed texts, blurry old photos, and the statement from "Ling's eldest son"... The vast amount of information was like a flood that broke through the dam, instantly overwhelming his cognition.
An illegitimate child... a mistress's son... an existence not acknowledged by the family...
These sharp words, like countless cold fragments, madly poured into his brain, trying to forcibly piece together a past that was completely unfamiliar to him and belonged to Ling Yao.
For a full decade, from the bleak corridors of high school to the seclusion of hotel rooms, they'd shared each other's most awkward and sweetest moments. He'd heard Ling Yao complain about the pain of training, shared his joy at fame, endured his volatile temper, and embraced his occasional vulnerabilities. He'd seen Ling Yao's complex expression of love and fear, caution and resentment, as he spoke to his mother on the phone...
He thought he understood everything about Ling Yao—his almost fragile pride, his uneasy need for constant affirmation, his reticence about his background yet his occasional sense of superiority, and his intense, sometimes suffocating desire for control.
But he never knew. Ling Yao never revealed a single word to him.
This heavy secret, which is enough to subvert everything, has been lurking silently like a huge iceberg under Ling Yao's seemingly dazzling and impeccable life, and it also lies invisibly across their seemingly close relationship.
At this moment, countless overlooked details from the past, those incomprehensible contradictions that he once found, flooded back into his mind like a tide:
Why did Ling Yao, during his adolescence, develop such a pathological obsession with preserving "face" and "status," refusing to tolerate any challenge? Why did he harbor such a frantic, even obsessive, desire for success and external recognition, as if he had something to prove? What was the source of the confusing complexities of his eyes, sometimes tinged with inferiority and sometimes with pride? Did his twisted, mingled dependence and resentment toward his mother stem from this? Even his possessiveness and need for control over himself stem from a profound insecurity, a fear of being abandoned again?
At this moment, all the scattered fragments seemed to be connected by the three words "illegitimate child", pointing to a vague but shocking answer.
Su Rui felt a sharp dizziness, as if his heart was being clenched by something, aching and swollen, and he couldn't breathe. He didn't sympathize with Ling Yao's devastating blow of public opinion, but felt a deeper, almost trembling shock.
The person he had loved, hated, and ultimately left, had, from beginning to end, been burdened with such a heavy and unbearable secret. They had once been so close, their skin touching, their breath in the same air, yet he had never truly touched the coldest, darkest part of her heart.
This secret, which even he didn't know, was finally exposed to the whole world in the most tragic and public way.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
