Chapter 75: Chapter 75: Handed Over To The Couple?
After the police left, and Zhang Yuxiu was taken away, the ancestral mansion fell silent.
The atmosphere was moody, and sorrowful. Huo Fei glared at Huo Feng before she left the living room, with tears still in her eyes.
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Yue Ning walked into the room with a plate of food in her hands. She saw Huo Feng standing by the window side, an unlit cigarette between his fingers, while he stared at the starless sky.
"Huo Feng," she called out, and he turned to her.
He frowned seeing the tray in her hands.
"You haven’t had anything to eat all day, so I figured you should have something to eat."
"I am not hungry." Huo Feng rejected her blankly.
Yue Ning raised her brows, and placed the tray on the center table. Afterwards, she sat on the sofa with folded arms, saying, "since you don’t want to eat, how about we both starve ourselves?"
Huo Feng narrowed his eyes, his sharp gaze was fixated on her. "You haven’t had anything to eat?" He demanded.
"How can I eat when my husband hasn’t eaten?" Yue Ning calmly replied his question with a question of hers.
Huo Feng was stunned. Once again, Yue Ning proved to be different.
Yue Ning sighed, rose to her feet, and walked to him. She came to stand in front of him. Yue Ning was taller than most females with a height of 170cm, but when she stood in front of Huo Feng who was 191cm, she had to look up to meet his eyes.
"I understand that you are grieving, we all are. But Grandmother would not wish for you to break down." She paused, staring into his eyes before she continued. "She’d rather you eat, and live well. So please, if not for anyone’s sake, eat for Grandma."
Huo Feng was quiet for a while. He knew what she said was the truth. He didn’t have an appetite, but he could only eat so as not to make things difficult for her.
Yue Ning’s tense shoulders relaxed when she saw him walk to the sofa.
"How about you join me. You haven’t eaten as well."
Huo Feng’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts, and as if on cue, her stomach grumbled loudly.
’Would you look at that? Your stomach doesn’t want to cooperate with you.’ The system teased her playfully.
Yue Ning rolled her eyes before taking a seat beside him. She had spent a great deal of energy to convince Huo Yan to eat. It would be a lie to say she wasn’t famished.
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After dinner, Yue Ning and Huo Feng were on the bed, each busy with their own tasks. The atmosphere was quiet and harmonious.
All of a sudden, Huo Feng spoke up, breaking the silence between them. "I just recalled. I was about to show you something regarding your identity before all these happened."
"I remember," Yue Ning whispered.
Huo Feng slid the folder across the bed toward her. "This is what I found when I dug into the Yue couple."
Yue Ning hesitated before opening it. Her eyes swept across the neatly arranged documents, and her breath caught in her throat when she reached the older records.
There were bank transfer slips with the earliest dating back more than twenty years. Each one showed a fixed amount being deposited into the Yue couple’s account every month. The sender’s identity had been deliberately erased, but the pattern was undeniable.
Her hand trembled as she flipped to another page. It was a signed statement: "In exchange for the agreed monthly allowance, we will take responsibility for the child’s upbringing." The signature at the bottom undeniably belonged to Father Yue.
Yue Ning’s chest tightened. "So... it’s true. I wasn’t their daughter. I was handed to them?" Although Yue Ning felt that she was in the world of the novel, she was still ultimately hurt.
The system’s voice was unusually quiet. ’Host, someone entrusted you to the Yue family, but they made it about money, not love. That’s why you never felt like you belonged.’
Huo Feng studied her face. "The records stop after you turned eighteen. Whoever paid them vanished after that. No more transfers."
Her lips curved into a bitter smile. "Which means I was only worth keeping until the money ran out."
She clutched the papers tighter, her eyes stinging. Memories of her cold "parents," their constant comparisons, their lack of affection—all of it suddenly made sense.
But one question burned above the rest.
"Who was the one paying them?" she whispered.
Huo Feng’s gaze darkened. "That’s what I intend to find out. And once I do, we’ll know who really wanted you protected and why."
"Or perhaps... I wasn’t to be protected." Yue Ning murmured under her breath.
Huo Feng gazed deeply at her, unable to utter a word of consolation.
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Lu Jiang looked at the folder in his hands, and his eyes turned cold.
"Dad, from what the investigation carried out, Yue Ning was handed over to the Yue couple at the time Xiao Ning went missing."
"The pictures might be old, but I’ll never forget how she looked, and besides, there is a bracelet tied around her wrist." Lu Quan paused, his eyes deepening. "I remember the bracelet very well. I got it for her."
The study turned silent, tension filling the air.
"Yue Ning might be... our Xiao Ning?" Lu Jiang finally asked, breaking the silence between them.
"Yes." Lu Quan admitted. "But to confirm this, we would have to meet with the Yue couple."
"Request a meeting with them." Lu Jiang instructed. "I want to know who they are working for. My instincts tell me that Xiao Ning’s disappearance wasn’t just a mistake."
"Are you trying to say this is someone’s doing?" Lu Quan was smart.
Lu Jiang nodded heavily. "I won’t spare whoever is behind this."
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Huo Mingjie sat on the sofa in his room which was filled with darkness.
His eyes were red as he took large puffs of the cigarette in his hand. Beside him was an ashtray which was filled with cigarette butts, showing that he had been smoking for a long time.
All of a sudden, his phone buzzed, breaking the silence in his room.
He frowned, and extinguished the cigarette in between his fingers before picking up his phone.
His frown deepened when he realized that he had gotten a message from an unknown number. Nevertheless, he still read it.
The message read: "Are you interested in destroying Huo Feng? Then, work with me."
The message was simple, and straightforward.
Huo Mingjie stared at the message for a long time, before swiftly typing a reply.