Chapter 68 Second Miss This is the third time Gu Tu has been abandoned.
"Second Miss, Mr. Bian is waiting for you in the reception room."
As dawn broke and the sun rose in the west, the floor lamps in the three-story villa atop the mountain were turned off one by one. Maids and servants moved quietly through the corridors, drawing back the heavy silk jacquard curtains, allowing the gradually deepening sunlight to illuminate the villa, as if awakening a giant beast that had been crouching on the mountaintop.
Gu Tu opened her eyes at the maid's soft call and silently completed a series of tedious but now familiar morning routines. Even as the head maid pinched her chin and scrutinized her repeatedly, checking whether the more than twenty injections of fillers under her perfect features had shifted, Gu Tu simply lowered her eyes, her eyelashes casting faint shadows on her eyelids.
"You are so beautiful, no one could resist being captivated by you."
The maid's routine compliments signaled the end of this long and tiring morning ritual. Gu Tu tilted her head slightly, and the girl in the mirror, with her delicate features and flawless skin, casually turned to meet her gaze.
She saw herself smile, a smile that didn't show her teeth, with the corners of her lips pointing horizontally, her apple cheeks slightly puffed out to emphasize her under-eye bags, yet without spreading outwards and ruining the beautiful curves of her face—a perfect smile, the standard smile of an uptown lady.
Beautiful, but fake.
Just like this old Gu family house, they wanted to pursue the classical architectural style before the Great Cataclysm, but they also disliked other high-rise buildings blocking the sunlight. So, in the Shangcheng District where land is extremely valuable, they built a mountain on flat ground, with a fake mountain made of reinforced concrete under the classical building.
"Young Master Bian has been waiting for you for a long time."
The maid clearly interpreted the smile as something else, gently smoothing her stray hairs while deliberately leaving a single strand untouched.
Gu Tu didn't correct her. She stood up, and a cold profile flashed in the mirror. After the maid lowered her hand, she lowered her eyes slightly, and the smile on her lips faded a bit. She was no longer elegantly perfect, but she had a different kind of pitiful timidity and worry.
"Brother Yan..."
"You've arrived."
Just as Gu Tu was about to speak her words of surprise, she was pulled into the man's arms by his large hand. The maid tactfully withdrew, glanced at the closed door of the reception room, and then looked at Tian Shi. Her lips moved, but she suppressed her worries in her heart.
'The young lady will be back soon.'
"Brother Yan, if you do this, my sister will be unhappy."
As the surprise in the girl's eyes faded and the hand on his shoulder tightened its grip, Bian Shaoyan frowned inwardly, a hint of impatience in his heart, though he didn't show it on his face.
"Didn't I already tell you? Your engagement to your sister was decided by my grandma. I'll handle this. Be good, stop making a fuss."
"But……"
Bian Shaoyan had no patience to listen to the girl's hesitant words. He picked her up in his arms, startling her so much that she instinctively wrapped her arms around his neck and snuggled into his embrace, her doe-like eyes fixed on him.
Bian Shaoyan smiled and asked, "How's your recovery going lately?"
"Um……"
Gu Tu was easily led as Bian Shaoyan changed the subject, and she lowered her head to recall: "Dr. Liu said that I have recovered very well, but the brain area formed by artificial intervention is still very fragile, and it is best not to use my superpowers within a year."
Bian Shaoyan gently pinched Gu Tu's cheek to comfort her, then abruptly changed the subject: "I came here today to say goodbye. The company has a project and I have to go to the lower district. I probably won't have time to see you for a month or two after that."
"Lower District?"
The girl in his arms looked up in surprise, her long, distinct eyelashes fluttering like butterfly antennae. Bian Shaoyan, however, seemed to know what she was about to say, and his fingers pressed against her lips without warning.
"No, the radiation in the lower city is too high. You just had surgery, so you shouldn't even go to school. Just stay home and wait for me, okay?"
"But, but I miss my mom so much... I miss Zheng's mom so much."
A layer of mist clouded the girl's eyes, making them as clear as fine obsidian, her pupils forming a small lake.
She received basic assistance when she was stolen from the Gu family by that group of religious fanatics and thrown into a nursing home in the lower city.
But when her gene sequence couldn't match any production data in the gene bank, the attitude of the care home staff, who had previously been very professional, changed—
The fact that her gene sequence was not found in the gene bank proves that the child was born naturally, not through assisted reproductive technologies such as artificial wombs.
Nowadays, aside from drunkards and drug addicts who can't distinguish between virtual and real life, who would choose the outdated method of natural reproduction? Not to mention that with natural reproduction, the gene sequence hasn't been screened by core AI, so who knows if there might be any potential genetic defects?
This is the second time Gu Tu has been abandoned.
When Gu Tu was only three years old, she was abandoned on the edge of the city, waiting for death or a mutated creature to visit her. It was a scavenger named Zheng Qin who picked her up and raised her.
As a result, in addition to financial difficulties, Zheng Qin also suffered a lot of gossip—in the lower city, even androids knew that natural reproduction was backward and a beastly behavior that should have been eliminated by history long ago.
Originally, as Gu Tu grew up, she managed to find a high-paying waitress job in District 3 thanks to her naturally beautiful face. All she needed to do was save money to move out of the dormitory and take Zheng's mother away from the lower district, away from her nightmarish life.
But who would have thought that when Bian Shaoyan's former fiancée, Du Yu, insisted on leaving the Upper City to experience life, she smashed up the hotel in a fit of rage because Bian Shaoyan glanced at her. She was also sent to the hospital due to the effects of her supernatural abilities.
When Gu Tu woke up in the treatment pod, her nasal cavity was filled with the bitter smell of medicine and disinfectant. The first thing that came to her mind was not anger, but panic.
She had no idea how lucky she would be to find another high-paying job, nor how she would be able to pay off the hospital bills. Her bright future was destroyed by a cold snort from the young lady of the upper city, but the following news also completely ruined her bitter but fulfilling past.
She wasn't some drug addict or drunkard who unintentionally created social trash, but rather the actual controller of Langge Communications, one of the top companies in the remote Upper District of District 01, and the daughter of the Gu family who was switched at birth by a religious fanatic more than ten years ago.
Even the bestselling science fiction novels in the Lower City wouldn't dare to write like this. They've probably never even been to the Upper City in their lives, and their imagination of the Upper City is all about skyscrapers and endless streams of cars.
If you hadn't seen it with your own eyes, who would believe that in the best location of the Upper City, where even breathing costs money and land is incredibly valuable, someone would have luxuriously erected a mountain just to be among the first to enjoy the sunshine?
She must be dreaming.
She was dazed and confused as she was led to Madam Gu, who even her crying exuded elegance and grace. In a daze, she was dressed in a dress that she couldn't afford even with three hundred years' worth of wages, and inexplicably became the second young lady of the Gu family.
It wasn't until she received the news that Zheng Qin had accepted funds from the Gu family and that it had nothing to do with her that Gu Tu felt as if she had been doused with cold water, and suddenly sobered up.
This is the third time Gu Tu has been abandoned.
"She was the one who rejected you first, wasn't she?"
Bian Shaoyan frowned and interrupted Gu Tu in an unyielding tone, "Let's not talk about her anymore. There's another matter I need to discuss with you. Those lunatics at the Ocean Research Center have issued another 'Clean Sea Order'."
Upon hearing a certain term, the girl in his arms trembled. Bian Shaoyan was extremely impatient and disdainful, but still gently comforted her, "Nobody knows what those religious fanatics are thinking. You're not feeling well, so don't run around too much lately, okay?"
"Perfect timing. Didn't Aunt Gu's experiment about spacetime rifts fail? You can avoid those lunatics for now and stop helping out at the company."
“...Brother Yan”.
The girl in his arms had stopped trembling at some point and wasn't looking at him anymore. From this angle, Bian Shaoyan could only see Gu Tu's eyelashes, which were like two small fans, and a small patch of snow-white skin peeking out from her collar. His gaze darkened, and then he heard a flat, emotionless question:
"Did you come here today to act as your sister's mediator?"
Bian Shaoyan felt a chill run down his spine. He frowned, banishing this inexplicable emotion, and coaxed in a low voice, "I know you have a problem with Gu Xi. She acted impulsively before and did some things that hurt you, but after all, that incident had a huge impact on her..."
"Brother Yan, you don't need to say anything."
Gu Tu shook her head, struggling to stand up from the man's arms. A lock of hair, which no one had noticed, fell across her cheek. She didn't bother to brush it away, holding back her grievances and tears. "Tell my sister not to worry. I won't take anything that isn't mine. I won't take anything from my sister!"
Realizing what had happened, the man stood up, barely suppressing his anger. He offered a few more explanations, but seeing that Gu Tu was determined to embarrass him, he kicked over the coffee table and left, still seething with rage.
The maids quietly entered, quickly cleaned up the mess, and left without giving a second glance, leaving Gu Tu alone in the empty reception room.
Gu Tu lowered her eyes to look at the ground. The grievance on her face from being doubted by someone close to her, and the impulse aroused by the trampling of her self-esteem, gradually subsided. All her outward emotions were put into the container called her body, thread by thread.
In the end, all that remained was a chillingly indifferent attitude, like an audience member watching a boring and vulgar performance with detachment.
"Oh, what kind of scoundrel is this? He's upset our young lady again?"
Gu Tu's eyes darted around, reflecting the image of a woman who had appeared out of nowhere on the sofa. She gently corrected him:
"You're mistaken, I am the second young lady."
"But everyone in the city knows that the Gu family only has one daughter, so where did this second young lady come from?"
The woman who suddenly appeared looked around the somewhat empty reception room with great interest, then reached out and pinched Gu Tu's chin, her tone filled with genuine doubt:
"Besides, I remember when they randomly grabbed a child to replace you, that child should have been younger than you, right?"
The woman scrutinized him for a while, then, noticing Gu Tu's bored expression, she curled her lip and, in a tone as if announcing a truth, explained her great discovery to Gu Tu:
"So no matter how you look at it, you're still the young lady."
What do you want from me?
Gu Tu, too lazy to pay attention to You Shi's crazy arguments about who was the eldest and second young lady, finally changed her expression, frowning slightly:
“The project you asked me to cover up has disrupted my plans, and now I can no longer interfere with Lange.”
"Oh dear, Miss, what nonsense are you talking about? If you were serious, ten Gu Xis wouldn't be as good as one of your fingers."
Upon hearing this, a strange smile appeared on that exquisitely beautiful, almost inhuman face: "But... isn't this exactly what that person wanted to see? If the villain is easily defeated, the readers will give the novel a bad review."
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Author's Note: Let's follow the original storyline a bit.
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