Chapter 52
On the other side of Haizhe City, a black car was parked inside an inconspicuous residential complex.
Shen Lei’s address was upstairs.
After considerable effort, Shen Siyun had finally found where her father truly lived, but he was nowhere to be seen.
A middle-aged woman entered through the gates holding a young child’s hand.
Shen Siyun’s expression sharpened. She opened the car door and stepped out.
The woman froze when she saw Shen Siyun. Then, recognizing her identity from that face, her expression changed drastically, becoming anxious and frightened.
She hurriedly pulled the child away.
Shen Siyun stepped forward and blocked their path.
After glancing at the child, she asked coldly, “I want to see him. Which hospital is he in?”
She was referring to her father, Shen Lei—
The man who had suddenly produced a sister identical to her.
Ever since Shen Siyun with the 芸 character appeared, Shen Lei had repeatedly claimed to be ill and refused to meet her.
Only he knew whether he had something to hide.
Shen Siyun had only one question.
Back then, everyone in the Shen family had concluded that Shen Lei had fertility problems. Even the doctors said that his managing to father Shen Siyun at all was already a blessing from their ancestors.
Yet now, another Shen Siyun had appeared.
Worse, to eliminate every escape route available to his older daughter, he had used the eight million yuan she transferred to him to bribe Wen Zhaoyun.
Wen Zhaoyun then created a rift between Guo Junya and Tan Yiqi, causing Guo Junya, Tan Yiqi, and the others to believe Shen Siyun had orchestrated everything and leaving her completely isolated.
Shen Siyun could not believe that a father would treat his biological daughter so viciously.
Yet the existence of Shen Siyun with the 芸 character repeatedly shook that belief.
If Shen Lei’s purpose was to support the younger sister by destroying the older one, then everything made sense.
Shen Siyun remembered what her mother, Zhong Yanling, had told her.
Perhaps Shen Lei had spent all these years concealing his strength and secretly cultivating Shen Siyun with the 芸 character, preparing her to replace Shen Siyun in one decisive strike.
Shen Siyun’s gaze turned cold.
She refused to believe it.
She wanted Shen Lei to admit everything personally.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The woman was extremely evasive and tried timidly to leave.
Shen Siyun simply caught hold of her.
“Auntie, I won’t hurt you. I only want to know—”
Before she could finish, she saw the woman’s face suddenly turn deathly pale as she stared behind Shen Siyun in terror.
Shen Siyun frowned and looked back.
At some point, Ms. Zhong Yanling had followed her and was now standing directly behind her.
She wore an elegant, dignified qipao that enhanced her graceful bearing, and her hair appeared freshly styled.
“Mom? Why are you here?” Shen Siyun asked.
Ms. Zhong approached with her arms folded.
She cast the woman a contemptuous glance, her eyes holding undisguised, icy hatred, as if they had been born enemies.
Shen Siyun froze.
She turned back toward the woman she was holding and studied her carefully.
A bold suspicion suddenly surfaced.
Could this woman be the mistress with whom Shen Lei had betrayed Ms. Zhong all those years ago?
“Gao Shujun, after several decades, you’re still as timid and cowardly as ever.”
Zhong Yanling’s gaze drifted toward the child she was holding.
She clicked her tongue.
“One look is enough to tell this child was adopted. He doesn’t resemble you or that man in the slightest.”
In only a few words, she transformed every sentence into a knife and drove them all into Gao Shujun.
Something struck a painful nerve.
Struggle and anguish appeared in Gao Shujun’s eyes.
“Zhong Yanling! Whatever happened between our generation has nothing to do with the next one!”
The child asked in confusion, “Mom, was I adopted? Am I not really yours and Dad’s?”
Gao Shujun covered his ears and hurriedly explained, “No, Qing’er. Don’t listen to her nonsense. You’re the biological child of your mother and father. Let’s go home!”
With that, Gao Shujun lifted the child and fled unsteadily, soon disappearing from Shen Siyun’s sight.
Zhong Yanling watched her flee and gave a contemptuous laugh.
Shen Siyun pressed her lips together.
“Mom, why did you provoke her like that? I still hadn’t managed to learn where Dad was.”
Now Gao Shujun would be even less likely to reveal Shen Lei’s location.
Zhong Yanling frowned at her words, her gaze turning cold.
“Siyun, why shouldn’t I provoke her? What she put me through back then was far worse than what she suffered just now!”
Shen Siyun realized she had upset her mother.
As her daughter, she had spoken in defense of the mistress who once hurt her.
No matter her intention, it inevitably seemed as though she were siding with an outsider.
Guilt immediately rose inside her.
“Shen Siyun, when your father built a family with that woman and happily lived as a household of three, did he remember that you were also his daughter?
“Think carefully. He could accept an unrelated child as his son. Why would it be surprising if he cultivated a counterfeit Shen Siyun to replace you and clear the path for that son?”
Shen Siyun stood tall before her with her eyes lowered, her cool red lips pressed tightly together.
She voiced her doubt.
“Didn’t they say he couldn’t father—”
“Remember this: showing mercy to an enemy is cruelty toward yourself.”
Zhong Yanling impatiently interrupted her.
The way she looked at Shen Siyun held noticeably less warmth.
“Go back. Instead of waiting here like a fool and insisting on receiving an explanation, you should think about how to reclaim control of Jiayu.”
“Yes.”
After being lectured, Shen Siyun tightened her jaw and cast aside her obsession with obtaining an explanation.
She prepared to return and plan again.
This time, she would fight for both herself and her mother.
Seeing her attitude change, Zhong Yanling curved her lips.
“Let’s go back.”
…
By the time Shen Siyun returned to the city center, it was already evening.
She had barely left the expressway when she received an invitation to meet from Shen Siyun with the 芸 character.
Inside an upscale café, Shen Siyun sat at one end of a booth wearing a long black coat.
Her expression was cold, her long hair falling over one shoulder and her long legs crossed.
With her arms folded, she radiated an aloofness that made her seem impossible to approach.
She watched the other woman arrive late, glanced down at her watch, and pulled her red lips into a mocking curve.
“Shen Siyun, with your understanding of punctuality, you still claim you’ll take Jiayu to greater heights? That may be the greatest joke I’ve heard all year.”
The other Shen Siyun ignored the remark.
She ordered a hot coffee and sat down gracefully.
Coincidentally, the two women had dressed almost identically that day.
Even the curl and shine of their hair were nearly the same, and both wore elegant vintage jade earrings.
Passing customers could not help looking twice, secretly stunned.
Even their jawlines were astonishingly identical, as if they had been produced from the same mold.
The only difference was that one looked cold and unapproachable, while the other wore a gentle smile.
Each possessed her own charm.
Shen Siyun also noticed the resemblance.
She despised having someone appear exactly like her, as though a shameless imitator had attached herself to her.
However, she showed none of that irritation.
“Speak. Why did you ask me here?”
She went directly to the point.
The other Shen Siyun unhurriedly explained why she had arrived late.
Her pale fingers lifted the coffee, and she took a delicate sip before looking up at the woman opposite her with a radiant smile.
“My apologies. I was helping my fiancée choose furniture and decorate our new home, so I was delayed.
“Older Sister isn’t angry, is she?”
Shen Siyun’s gaze instantly turned glacial, and the atmosphere around her plummeted.
The other woman remained completely unconcerned.
She blinked, took two red invitations stamped in gold from her bag, placed a fingertip against one end, and slowly pushed them across the table.
“Older Sister, these are invitations to Jiang Yi’s and my engagement banquet.
“It will be held on the third day of next month.
“You and Ms. Zhong must attend and witness the moment we celebrate our love.
“If possible, I would especially like to receive Older Sister’s blessing in person.”
Seeing the composure of the woman opposite her begin to crack, Shen Siyun with the 芸 character smiled deeply.
“Older Sister? Surely you don’t think I’m deceiving you.
“Should I call Jiang Yi and let you confirm it personally?”
She pretended to take out her phone and slid a finger across the screen.
Before she could open her contacts, the woman opposite her could no longer remain seated.
Shen Siyun grabbed her bag and left the booth with an icy expression.
“Older Sister…”
The younger woman put away her phone and leisurely lifted her coffee.
“You’ll only continue losing everything.”
The coffee was bitter, yet she tasted the sweetness of victory.
…
Jiang Yi walked along the short road leading home with her bag in hand.
An hour earlier, she had told Song Rao about her engagement to Shen Siyun with the 芸 character.
Song Rao had first expressed disbelief that two completely identical people could exist.
Only afterward did she ask whether Jiang Yi had ever regarded the younger sister as a substitute, even for a single moment.
Jiang Yi recalled her answer and gave a soft sigh.
She continued toward home.
After only a few steps, a familiar figure entered her vision.
Jiang Yi froze, then curved her lips faintly.
“Why haven’t you gone back yet? Didn’t you say you had to work overtime at the company?”
After speaking, she waited for an answer that never came.
Only belatedly did she realize this was not Shen Siyun with the 芸 character.
It was the older sister, Shen Siyun with the 雲 character.
The two had dressed too similarly.
When neither spoke, Jiang Yi found them even more difficult to distinguish.
Shen Siyun strode toward her in tall boots, her eyes filled with darkness as dense as ink.
“…Are you truly going to become engaged to her?”
Jiang Yi slowly nodded.
“Yes.”
Without warning, the woman before her raised her voice.
Every trace of self-control shattered upon hearing that one word.
She demanded with cold mockery, “Then what am I?”
Shen Siyun was half a head taller.
Yet Jiang Yi could not understand her at that moment.
The woman lifted her chin slightly and concealed her gaze, leaving Jiang Yi unable to see what lay within it.
Her red lips were hidden in the dim light, carrying a desolate sadness.
Jiang Yi released a soft breath, her heart complicated.
She no longer wanted to exhaust herself trying to guess what this woman thought.
She had spent two years guessing.
She was tired.
Shen Siyun herself had said that Jiang Yi had found a replacement for her.
Why had she come now to ask such things?
“Shen Siyun… Unless something unexpected happens, this should be the end of everything between us.
“Perhaps, as you said, in this competition, I favor your younger sister more.
“So I chose her.”
Shen Siyun stared deeply at her.
“During the time you’ve spent with her, was there even one second when you mistook her for me?”
Jiang Yi said nothing.
Seeing her silence, Shen Siyun relaxed slightly.
At least this meant Jiang Yi still held her in her heart.
She raised her arms and pulled Jiang Yi into her embrace.
Her chin rested beside Jiang Yi’s sensitive ear, gently rubbing against it as she coaxed her in a hoarse voice.
“Jiang Yi, stop acting out of anger with me, all right?”
The woman in her arms suddenly spoke.
“Shen Siyun, your voices are different. I can distinguish you from her.”
Therefore, there was no possibility that she had ever mistaken the other woman for Shen Siyun.
The cold night wind swept over their clothes.
The woman before Jiang Yi began breathing heavily, as though trying to digest something unbelievable and unbearably bitter.
Jiang Yi raised her hands and struggled to push her away.
Instead, Shen Siyun tightened her embrace.
A panicked voice sounded above her head, filled with unmistakable desperation and urgency.
“Jiang Yi, let’s get married! We’ll get married right now!”
Jiang Yi’s delicate fingertips suddenly contracted.
Coldness spread upward from them and entered every limb and bone.
Shen Siyun seized her fingers.
Seeming to notice how cold they were, she lifted them toward her lips and breathed warm air over them.
Then she tried to pull Jiang Yi toward the car.
“We’ll go to the Civil Affairs Bureau and register. I’ll never make you angry again, Jiang Yi.”
The instant Shen Siyun opened the car door, Jiang Yi pulled free and lowered her eyes.
“Shen Siyun, marriage is a sacred ceremony to me…
“Please don’t say something like this merely because you’re angry with your sister.”
“I’m not. I’m sincere, Jiang Yi. Believe me.”
Shen Siyun hurriedly tried to explain.
Jiang Yi raised her eyes, her voice hoarse.
“Shen Siyun, I’m not a three-year-old child.
“You’re asking to marry me at this exact moment…
“Do you truly believe I would think you were sincere?”
She returned the question to Shen Siyun and successfully silenced her.
Jiang Yi laughed bitterly inside.
She had loved this woman for two years, yet in the end, the proposal she received was made impulsively out of jealousy—
All because of the younger sister.
A deathly silence spread between them.
The wind stung Jiang Yi’s face.
She wanted to go home.
She had barely moved when she heard an almost inaudible sob, concealed within the howling wind and gone in an instant.
Jiang Yi froze.
Pressing her lips together, she slowly looked up.
In the darkness, she saw a crystalline tear slide down the woman’s cheek and fall onto the pale back of the hand Shen Siyun had not yet returned to her pocket.
Realizing what she had seen, Jiang Yi’s throat moved.
It felt as though a ball of cotton had lodged inside, creating an overwhelming urge to flee as quickly as possible.
The next second, the woman’s voice came from above her.
Perhaps after being wounded once, she feared another rejection.
Her tone carried cautious uncertainty and the final shred of courage remaining after she had risked everything.
“Do you really… not like me at all anymore?”
Shen Siyun lowered her eyes.
Jiang Yi clearly saw the tears inside those dark, profound eyes.
Her chest tightened, and she temporarily lost her voice.
Under the cold night sky, the streetlights spread a thin glow, stretching the two figures beside the black car into long shadows.
Ink-dark, slightly curled hair moved gently in the wind.
An exquisitely smooth jawline slowly lowered.
The moment their four lips met, the lamplight connected the ends of their shadows.
Shen Siyun traced the shape of Jiang Yi’s lips and felt their soft peaks.
Wave after wave of sweet sensation spread through her.
She slowly closed her eyes.
It seemed as though brilliant fireworks were blooming throughout her mind.
Yet the next moment, Jiang Yi’s cold voice uttered a calm, emotionless word.
“Yes.”
In an instant, Shen Siyun was dragged into hell.
She stared at Jiang Yi in disbelief.
Jiang Yi had said that she no longer liked Shen Siyun at all.
Jiang Yi looked at her quietly, as though she had merely spoken the most ordinary sentence imaginable.
Then she calmly turned and walked away.
Shen Siyun reached out to catch her, but grasped nothing.
Every trace of color drained from her red lips.
…
That night, the wine cabinet inside the apartment was opened.
Bottle after bottle of red wine was uncorked until the entire home was filled with its thick fragrance.
Expensive and rare wines were wasted everywhere—
Across the floor, over the bed, and inside the bathtub where they had once bathed together.
No surface remained untouched by the red liquid.
Shen Siyun sat naked in the bathtub.
Scattered clothes and several open bottles of wine lay outside it.
She finished one bottle and casually reached for another.
In the process, she knocked over one or two uncorked bottles.
Wine poured freely across the tiles and streamed toward the drain.
Her black hair was also soaked with it.
Shen Siyun rested her head against one end of the bathtub and stared at the glaring white light overhead.
Suddenly, she remembered a video call Jiang Yi had once made.
During that call, Jiang Yi had also lain naked in the bathtub.
She had smiled charmingly through the screen while picking up bottle after bottle of Shen Siyun’s treasured red wine and pouring it over her own body…
Shen Siyun lowered the bottle from her lips.
Imitating Jiang Yi from her memory, she poured the wine over herself.
The liquid spread from her collarbones and flowed downward.
And then…
Then Jiang Yi had called for her to come home and asked whether she wanted a taste…
Shen Siyun gave a quiet laugh.
Perhaps the alcohol gave her courage.
She reached for her phone and struggled to open WeChat before finding the familiar profile picture.
She opened the conversation and pressed the video-call button.
She wondered what she should say when Jiang Yi answered.
Far away, Jiang Yi was nearly asleep in her soft bed when her phone suddenly startled her awake.
She sat up and picked it up.
The moment she unlocked the screen, a video-call request appeared.
It was Shen Siyun again.
Had Jiang Yi not made herself clear enough?
Her eyes darkened as she accepted the call.
The instant the image filled with alcohol and naked temptation appeared, her eyelid twitched sharply.
Seeing that the call had connected, Shen Siyun finally saw the face she had longed for.
Her red lips lifted triumphantly.
She was about to speak when Jiang Yi ended the call without warning.
It was like a basin of cold water thrown directly into her face, clearing her mind for a moment.
They had ended everything.
Tonight.
Jiang Yi was going to marry her younger sister.
She no longer wanted the older sister.
From now on, Jiang Yi would no longer desire Shen Siyun.
She would desire that counterfeit Shen Siyun with the 芸 character and be interested in her body instead.
They would do countless things together.
And there would never again be a place for Shen Siyun among them.
Comments 0
You must be logged in to comment.
No comments yet. Be the first!