At the hour of Yi Si (0087), it is inauspicious to seek offspring.
The twilight before sunset is the most beautiful, the ultimate beauty of that moment before decay, which can even take some people away with it.
This is Jiang Yu's summary of her childhood. In the last few years of the Gu family's rule, she spent the most carefree period of her life, and then she was pulled out of the underground and thrown from one darkness where she could see the road clearly into another boundless darkness where she couldn't see her own hand in front of her face.
She was born on a rainy night in an underground entertainment center that was still brightly lit.
Xu Mei told her, "Your life is much better than your sister's. When you were born, your father ran to see you. When your sister was born, she only had a little fairy and a little orchid by her side."
Little Orchid was a little girl abandoned at the entrance of the building. She clutched half a piece of candy in her tiny hand, which had melted and become slippery from the sun. She was only wrapped in a thin blanket, and her skin was peeling from the sun.
When Xu Mei saw the little girl, she was only a few years old. She called over Boss Jiang and excitedly said that she was no longer the youngest child here.
Mr. Jiang sighed, picked up the little girl, and named her Little Orchid because the blanket wrapped around her had an orchid pattern on it.
The day after Little Orchid arrived, Little Fairy was born.
His mother, Cyclamen, was the top dancer in the dance hall at the time. She had long, thick, black hair styled in wavy curls and always wore a red dress that accentuated her slender waist. Her snow-white skin shone brightly under the lights. She was the most dazzling star in the entire place, and the audience below was filled with men drooling over her.
But no one knows whose saliva actually smeared the goddess's body. When a group of people carried her back, she was unconscious, naked, and her skin was covered with wounds.
A new life grew inside her, but it also drained her life force until the day the child was born, which was also the day she finally let go.
Because he was Cyclamen's son, they called him Little Fairy. He was the first child to be born and raised entirely underground, and he was a boy. The ladies in the dance hall all liked him. He was small, but he looked very manly. He would hold up a small mop and say that he would protect the ladies.
His older sisters, with their nails painted in various colors, would always poke at his face, praising his good looks and saying he would definitely charm many young girls in the future, adding that he looked a lot like his mother.
When Jiang Yu was born, Xiao Xianzi was eleven years old, but he already had a name. He took the surname Qi from the old lady who managed the bicycle shed of the nearby residential building. His name was Qi Yu.
After Qi Yu was born, Boss Jiang gave all the dancers a very serious lesson. The girls were terrified when they saw the cold and stiff Cyclamen Sister on the ground. For the next ten years, no one was able to have another child until Jiang Yu was born.
"Shu Cheng was right beside you when you were born, and he just let you grow up underground until you were six or seven? What was he doing?"
When Tu Mi heard this, she was even more excited than the other two. Perhaps it was because she had lived with Shu Cheng for a period of time after she grew up and found him disgustingly hypocritical. Now that their children had all grown up well, he had come to reap the rewards.
Qi Shuyao also turned to look at Jiang Yu, who sighed, holding one of her younger sisters in each hand.
"It's because he's a coward. He was the only son of Shu Li, who was once known as Prince Shu, but he was addicted to gambling all day long. While other men had already chosen their paths, settled down, and started families, he just stayed underground, using his words to fabricate a bright future for Xu Mei. But he didn't dare to look me in the eye. Then he would kneel down in front of the Buddha statue in the lounge, muttering something. Later, I followed Zhu Jiang and saw that after he thought he had done something wrong, he would kneel down in front of the Buddha statue for a while. Only then did I understand what they were doing. But can you believe it? A person who has committed all kinds of evil would actually kneel down and repent just because he told a few lies."
"So he's not living with his parents now. It seems his parents don't know he's run away and has the ability to take someone away from the hospital quietly."
"They really are a family; they even use the same methods to kidnap people."
"Then you'd better be careful. Last time it was your father, next time your grandfather might come and kidnap you again."
Tu Mi was still able to laugh. She lay on the table and giggled for a long time, then snuggled up to Jiang Yu's side.
"Then what happened? Why did we scatter?"
Jiang Yu finished several bottles of wine today. She twirled the empty glass and laughed self-deprecatingly.
"Of course, it's because we're girls. If we were boys, Shu Li wouldn't have scolded his son. He would have come down from the ground to pick the child up himself. Maybe he's already grooming him to be the next boss."
Qi Shuyao clasped her arms, counting the days. Her daughter was almost a year old, and she wondered if her great-grandparents would treat her well.
Suddenly, Jiang Yu put her arm around their shoulders, hugged them tightly, and couldn't stop crying.
"At that time, the man surnamed Gu was killed, and his two children were being hunted down. The whole of Jingyang was in chaos. The underground dance hall was forced to close, and everyone was kicked out. The Shu family, which was hiding behind the Gu family, also fell from power. Shu Li fled with his wife and children. Because his son was unmarried, no one knew that he, the eldest son of the prestigious Shu family, would be hiding several daughters underground. At that time, Tu Mi was still in my belly, but I didn't know that. I was also sent to Boss Jiang's place. It was an autumn night, I think. It was dark, and Boss Jiang secretly took me back to the dance hall to try to move the Buddha statue inside. The main door was blocked, so we climbed in from the small platform at the back. When we climbed in, we originally wanted to go straight downstairs, but we heard noises from upstairs. It was still a very loud argument, so we secretly ran upstairs to see what was going on. We saw my mother, holding a little girl in her arms. She was so tiny and was smiling at me..."
Tu Mi cautiously glanced at Qi Shuyao, as if she already knew what was going to happen next.
Qi Shuyao showed no expression; she simply looked at Jiang Yu, waiting for her to continue.
"...But Xu Mei was crying. She was like a madwoman. The two people beside her couldn't hold her down. She was holding the child in her arms and was about to jump off the platform with her."
Who are the two people next to me?
"Qi Yu and Xiao Lan, I guess."
Qi Shuyao broke free from Jiang Yu's hand, leaned back in her chair, and nonchalantly swirled her wine glass before downing two glasses in a row.
"She had gone mad at the time. She couldn't find anyone from the Shu family. She was raising two children by herself, and now it's clear she's pregnant with another one. The Lin family had already taken over, and they were pursuing her relentlessly. If she were caught, it would be worse than death. But those were two lives too. No one would stand idly by. They pulled her back, but she threw the child into Qi Yu's arms."
When that weight pressed down on Qi Yu's palm, he was caught off guard and almost dropped the little bundle of flesh to the ground. The little girl in his arms was less than half a year old, but she was unusually quiet, with a curved smile on her lips, smiling at everyone.
Her mother was crying and screaming frantically beside her, but her little hands were clutching his wrinkled collar, and she kept squeezing into his arms. She seemed to be hungry, her little face pressed against his chest. After searching for a long time without finding anything, she finally burst into tears.
The daughter's cries intensified Xu Mei's madness. She grabbed a small pebble from the ground and threw it at the source of the sound. Qi Yu turned around quickly, and the pebble hit his shoulder.
"There won't be a single person on my side in this world. Everyone is using me. I'm a burden to everyone. What he, you, all those men say is like farts. They'll disappear in the blink of an eye. He's gone far away. He's dead, isn't he? And you? Didn't you say you wouldn't go anywhere and would stay with me? Where have you been these past few days? Do you know she's been crying and trying to find you? You two are closer than me. She's only five months old. As for me, I've been with you since you were born, not missing a single day. Didn't you say you loved me the most...?"
She gasped for breath, clutching her back as she fell to the ground, her eyes fixed on the tall, thin boy standing before her. He had his arms completely shielding the little girl in his embrace, with only one of her small hands peeking out.
"Don't you want to live either?" It was his clear voice before his voice completely changed.
"I want to live! Who said I'm going to die? Remember this, I will definitely... Tell her to stop crying!"
Her voice was hoarse and hysterical as she grabbed nearby pebbles and threw them at him, blood trickling from her torn throat.
"Go away, all of you go away! Take her with you and get out! Don't come back, don't let me see you again, I hate her so much! It's all because of her!"
Even Xiao Lan, who was standing behind, was hit by the rubble and had to dodge everywhere, but Qi Yu didn't dodge at all. He just pulled his arms together to cover up the increasingly intense crying of the little girl in his arms, and walked straight down.
Xiao Lan didn't know what to do. She glanced at Xu Mei with some fear and followed Qi Yu downstairs. There was a sharp stone stuck in his wrist. She went over and took it off, but saw a tear fall from his eye and into the little girl's mouth. Her soft, thin lips sucked on the tear and she actually laughed again.
Jiang Yu didn't know why she could remember the scene from that day so clearly, replaying it in her mind over the years, capturing even the distant details perfectly.
That was the day her image of her mother crumbled in her mind.
Tu Mi heard half of it, then ran over and hugged Qi Shuyao, pressing her head against her chest, trying to whisper to interrupt Jiang Yu.
"Sis, sister! Why are you saying these things? Stop talking!"
“I want you to see her true nature. Don’t be fooled by a few sweet words. She’s married now, and who knows, she might suddenly have a maternal instinct and want her children around her. She’s had the chance to take the children back all these years, but she didn’t want to, she didn’t like it. It’s her constraint. She has no feelings of family or love, only herself.”
Tu Mi readily agreed.
“She came to see me before my club was even finished being renovated. I don’t know how she found me there, but she insisted that I go with her. She said she had found me a man with a bright future, and I would never have to worry about food or clothing in the future.”
"You didn't agree to her request, did you?"
"How could that be? If I promised her, how could the shop even open?"
"That's what she told me too. Zhu Jiangxi is useless to her. She wants me to marry the son of her current husband's boss. I have no say in my own life."
"What kind of ability does this person have to get married so easily?"
“That’s not important. What I’m thinking is that she and Shu Cheng may have been in contact all these years.”
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