Chapter 4: First Blood

Since the young lady beside him had never been in love, she probably wasn’t the type to lose her head over romance. Most likely, she wouldn’t take any interest in a brother she’d never met.

If that was the case, a lot of things would be much easier.

Still, for various reasons, Li Zhiheng decided to bring up the most sensitive question anyway.

“Um… Miss.”

“Your…”

“First blood. Is it still there?”

Cheng Yiyi fell silent for a moment. She recovered quickly, but the corner of her mouth twitched.

Couldn’t this butler just say it outright?

Well, at least Cheng Yiyi wasn’t an unreasonable person.

The question was personal, but it really did matter.

Putting herself in the shoes of the parents she’d never met, Cheng Yiyi also didn’t want their daughter to give away her first time too early.

Once she snapped back to reality, she answered honestly.

“I’ve never done that kind of thing.”

“Also, my first kiss is still intact.”

“Did Mom and Dad ask you to ask me these questions?”

“Yes, they did.” Butler Li nodded.

“Master and Mistress care about you very much. As parents, they take questions like these seriously, but they were too embarrassed to ask you directly. After all, they searched for you for so many years and never found you. They feel awfully guilty about it.”

At that, Butler Li suddenly smiled, recalling the bashful manners of those two.

“But please understand them, Miss.”

“Because your… younger sister?”

“I suppose that’s what you could call her. Based on actual birth time, you were born a few minutes earlier.”

“Younger sister?” Cheng Yiyi caught on quickly. The sister the butler mentioned must be the fake daughter she’d never met.

Li Zhiheng went on. “Miss Shen Anyue has outstanding talent and extraordinary looks. Over the years, no one in the whole family has ever doubted her bloodline.”

“After all, someone this exceptional would be a credit to any great family.”

Hearing this, Cheng Yiyi immediately freaked out inside.

Wait, why was this starting on hell difficulty?

She hadn’t even stepped through the Shen family’s door yet!

And the rival daughter’s stat bar was already being slammed right in her face!

Cheng Yiyi had long noticed that her parents were extremely gifted when it came to academics. She never expected all those genes to be inherited by Shen Anyue.

So when Mom and Dad said, “If we’d had the chance to study back then, we’d be way more impressive than you. We could get into any university in the country…”

They really weren’t just blowing smoke.

Although, strictly speaking, they were her adoptive parents…

But did the two of them really have to make the boss their adopted daughter was about to face so overpowered from birth?

How was she supposed to compete?

The more Cheng Yiyi thought about it, the more uneasy she grew. She was terrified that once she got through the Shen family’s doors, she wouldn’t get a single cent and would still have to endure humiliation from the fake daughter.

She didn’t want that!

But on second thought, if they were set on humiliating her, could they at least pay her first?

She could actually cooperate with that…

As if something had just occurred to her, Cheng Yiyi turned to the butler. “It’s been eighteen years, hasn’t it? Didn’t my parents, the ones I’ve never met, ever do a DNA test?”

“They… did.” Knowing there was no point in hiding certain things, the butler told her the truth.

“Master and Mistress know that Shen Anyue isn’t their biological daughter. But their love for her has long since been etched into their bones.”

“Miss Shen has been outstanding since she was little. She never causes trouble. She has a gentle temperament…”

It’s over, it’s over, it’s over.

Hearing this, Cheng Yiyi felt like the sky had collapsed.

Wasn’t this plainly a white lotus?!

And the kind that parents spoil rotten!

How could any girl be that well-behaved?!

A rich girl at that, pampered and coddled since childhood.

It would already be a miracle if she didn’t have princess syndrome!

With the butler’s explanation, Cheng Yiyi understood why her biological parents had made that choice.

In the capital, the interests of the great families were deeply intertwined.

Negative news, especially something like a child not being biologically one’s own, carried enormous weight.

Not to mention Shen Anyue, a legitimate daughter who had always ranked steadily at the top.

If outsiders found out, they would absolutely make a story out of it.

The Shen family hadn’t fully grown back then. Handling or suppressing such negative news would have been a real headache.

And the other major families would definitely fan the flames.

All they needed was to hire some internet trolls, and the whole thing could be done without leaving a single trace.

It was like laying a tripwire in a gutter, with no way to trace it back.

For that reason, the Shen family kept the news under wraps while secretly searching for their true daughter, Cheng Yiyi.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard they tried, no matching information could be found in the gene databases.

Because Cheng Yiyi had never undergone a DNA test.

It wasn’t until after the college entrance exam, when her adoptive parents worried that years of working part-time might have left her with some hidden health problems, that she had a full-body checkup.

Naturally, that included blood tests and the like.

It wasn’t long after that the Shen family finally found her.

Someone was bound to ask: why not start searching years earlier?

That was because the hospital from eighteen years ago had been demolished long ago. Every piece of information had become impossible to verify.

As for why the Shen family’s daughter had been born at the same time as a commoner’s child, it was because of the Shen family’s lady, Cheng Yiyi’s biological mother.

Xie Chengyu.

She had suffered a difficult labor while passing through the area. With no other choice, she could only go to the nearest hospital for a C-section.

The Shen family back then wasn’t as enormous as it was now, but just the name alone was enough to scare the doctors at that hospital in the backwater half to death. They hurriedly prepared for the operation.

Since everything was rushed, very few people got word of it.

And exactly because of that, mistakes were made in the flurry.

No need to elaborate on what came after.

In short, it was an accident.

If anyone insisted on getting to the bottom of it, the author would cry from anxiety, die from anxiety, and explode from anxiety.

After laying everything out, the butler said, “Miss, it’s not that Master and Mistress didn’t want to find you.”

“It’s just that your genetic information wasn’t on file in any major hospital. The hospital back then was demolished long ago, and there was no way to look up the old records.”

“It was only because your recent full-body checkup uploaded your genetic data to the medical network that we were finally able to locate you.”

“Besides, the Shen family had no intention of hiding your existence.”

“Because you are the Shen family’s flesh and blood. Even if it means facing some gossip, the Shen family wants to give you your proper standing.”

“Of course, as compensation, that’s clearly not enough.”

“But please rest assured, Miss. From now on…”

The butler spoke methodically.

Cheng Yiyi, on the other hand, seemed indifferent.

Even if the Shen family didn’t acknowledge her, it was fine.

As long as they gave her some money.

Loving money might not be a good thing, but not loving money was definitely a bad thing!

She had been unlike ordinary girls since she was little.

She didn’t revel in being the center of attention. She had no interest in power. She hated heavy makeup. Her way of living simply didn’t match a girl’s image.

Instead, she acted decisively, cleanly, and neatly.

This might also have been related to her circumstances.

Her adoptive parents’ proper upbringing and the family’s not-so-good circumstances had directly forged her into someone mature and responsible at a young age.

Before she turned sixteen, she was already doing odd jobs to help support the family.

After she turned sixteen, she would work at factories during winter and summer breaks. She also ran food deliveries.

Tiring as it was, she never complained.

Cheng Yiyi’s family didn’t get along with their elders at all, so they got no help whatsoever from the grandparent generation.

Under those circumstances, she and her parents slowly improved the family’s situation. And now, while not wealthy, the family absolutely couldn’t be called poor.

After all, her family no longer had any loans.

Total assets above zero already put them ahead of half the families in the country.

Their family’s next goal was to buy a car, and Cheng Chengyuan had gotten his C1 driver’s license well in advance.

📚 Also on NHV Novels

Underdog Connection

ChaebolContemporaryObsessiveLove

Read Now →
Not interested