Chapter 11: Supporting a Useless Brother? Not Happening!
Lin Zhifeng stumbled home in a daze, exhausted beyond words. She told Xie Laidi not to wake her for lunch, then went straight to her bedroom and collapsed onto the bed. Her completely drained body sank into a deep sleep almost instantly.
At 9:30 that evening, Wang Tingmei returned from visiting the hospital and knocked on her door, waking her up.
After sleeping for several hours, Lin Zhifeng had mostly recovered. She yawned as she felt her way through the dark toward the living room, only to find Wang Tingmei sitting alone on the sofa with a sullen expression.
“Where’s Laidi?” Lin Zhifeng asked, noticing the absence of any noise from her younger sister. She reached out to turn on a small lamp, but Wang Tingmei stopped her.
“Don’t turn it on. Save electricity.”
Wang Tingmei always spoke softly and gently to Xie Yaozu, but whenever she spoke to her two daughters, there was a constant undercurrent of resentment and gloom.
“Your brother isn’t answering his phone. I sent Laidi to go look for him. You go too.”
Xie Guibao often loitered in shady internet cafes and arcades, and wouldn’t come home until he’d spent all his money. Wang Tingmei and Li Amei were too scared to drag him back themselves, so the unpleasant task fell to the two sisters.
Lin Zhifeng was about to refuse—but since she wanted to bring Xie Laidi back, she went straight to the door to change her shoes. Just as she opened the door, Wang Tingmei’s resentful voice came from behind, filled with anger.
“Guibao called me! You were in the same classroom for the competition. He got kicked out by the teacher—so why were you still there?”
“And why is it, with so many people dead, you’re still alive?” Lin Zhifeng calmly tied her shoelaces, not even lifting her head.
Wang Tingmei slammed her hand on the table in fury, her voice rising several octaves.
“Always so sharp-tongued! Why are you so selfish? Couldn’t you have let your brother have this chance? Guibao finally had a chance to bring honor, he could have—”
She abruptly cut herself off, went quiet for a moment, then coldly barked, “Go find him. Now.”
Lin Zhifeng frowned, growing more suspicious the farther she walked down the stairs. There was something off about Wang Tingmei’s unfinished sentence—it seemed to carry a hidden meaning.
“The kind of essay Xie Guibao can write is just something like ‘How blue the sky is today.’ With that level, and you’re telling me it was ‘finally a chance to bring honor’?”
What was he supposed to do exactly? Win first place? Steal the spotlight? Win prize money? What a joke!
“Even if the contest was rigged, what power does Wang Tingmei have to get Xie Guibao chosen?”
Hengrui Group was known for its strict management. Without direct orders from the top, no one would dare rig the results.
And within Hengrui, there were only two high-level executives: the major shareholder was Qin Jiaming’s father, and the second shareholder was a mysterious figure. Lin Zhifeng had scoured the entire plot she knew, yet found no information about this person.
“Whoever it is, there’s no way they’re connected to Wang Tingmei… right?”
But the moment she recalled how Wang Tingmei earned a salary higher than the norm, a strange feeling stirred in her again.
Out on the street, the leftover heat from the day still radiated from the pavement. As Lin Zhifeng passed by Hekang Pharmacy, she was spotted by Aunt Bao.
“Zhaodi, where are you headed this late?”
“My mom sent me and my sister to look for my brother,” Lin Zhifeng replied.
“Your mom really is something—sending you girls out wandering around at night.” Aunt Bao’s eyes darted suspiciously, and she lowered her voice to ask, “Zhaodi, did your dad get involved with someone shady?”
“Huh? I don’t know.” Lin Zhifeng widened her eyes, feigning confusion.
“I heard he’s been hanging around with Er Qiangzi. That guy’s no good.”
Aunt Bao narrowed her eyes and leaned in conspiratorially. “What if your dad went into some business with him and someone caught wind of it?”
“What kind of business could my dad even do? Don’t laugh at me, Auntie, but honestly, our family’s got nothing except a few people who know how to eat,” Lin Zhifeng replied with an innocent grin, like she was poking fun at her own situation.
Aunt Bao hadn’t thought much of it at first, but when she heard Lin Zhifeng’s words, her heart suddenly skipped a beat. Her eyes flickered as she avoided Lin Zhifeng’s gaze, laughing awkwardly.
“I was just saying nonsense. You go find your brother and sister now.”
From that look on her face, Lin Zhifeng immediately knew—this sharp-nosed woman had clearly thought of the idea of s*lling a daughter.
“I’m off then, Aunt Bao,” she said cheerfully, pretending not to notice anything strange. As she turned and walked away, just a few steps later, she heard a nearly inaudible sigh from behind her:
“What a sin…”
…
When she reached the entrance of the black-market internet café, Lin Zhifeng saw Xie Laidi standing next to a computer. Xie Guibao was crouched over with one pudgy leg propped up, completely absorbed in a game.
“Laidi, come home with me.”
“Mom told me to bring him home,” Xie Laidi signed helplessly, clearly not wanting to go back and listen to Wang Tingmei’s scolding. She had just stayed here instead.
“Forget him.” Lin Zhifeng didn’t even glance at Xie Guibao and simply grabbed Laidi’s hand to leave.
Xie Guibao was so immersed in the game that he stayed in the same position the whole time, eyes glued to the screen, completely ignoring them.
On the way home, Xie Laidi lightly tapped Lin Zhifeng with her finger, biting her lip as she signed: “Let’s wait downstairs a bit. Mom’s acting weird today.”
“You think so too?” Lin Zhifeng’s expression darkened.
“Did she say anything about the contest when you left?”
Now she was sure she wasn’t just being paranoid—something was definitely up with Wang Tingmei.
Xie Laidi nodded and began to sign about what happened before she left the house.
“Mom asked if I wanted to win a prize. I nodded, and she got upset. She said we shouldn’t have entered at all, that the opportunity to bring honor should’ve gone to our brother. She even said that even if we did win, it’d be useless because sooner or later we’d belong to someone else’s family.”
Lin Zhifeng fell silent.
Wang Tingmei definitely knows about the plan to s*ll her daughter.
That didn’t surprise her anymore. Based on her suspicions, Li Amei and Xie Guibao probably knew too.
Strangely, Wang Tingmei seemed unusually confident that Xie Guibao could win a prize.
“Have you noticed anything odd these past few days?” Lin Zhifeng asked. She had been coming home just to sleep lately and hadn’t paid attention to Wang Tingmei’s early departures and late returns.
Xie Laidi, on the other hand, liked to wake up early to read and often prepared breakfast, so she interacted with Wang Tingmei more.
“The morning before yesterday,” Xie Laidi signed, “Mom had just gone downstairs when a car stopped at the door. I was reading by the window and saw her talking to someone inside.”
“What kind of car? Did you see who it was?”
Xie Laidi had only noticed that it was a black sedan—she couldn’t make out the person inside. Wang Tingmei had glanced around nervously while talking to them, clearly anxious.
Wang Tingmei treated Xie Yaozu like a treasure, and would never cheat on him. Which made her panicked behavior even more suspicious.
There were plenty of wealthy developers in the county, and black sedans were everywhere. But based on Wang Tingmei’s unusual certainty about the contest results, it was likely that the person in the car was someone from Hengrui Group.
What exactly was Wang Tingmei’s relationship with that person? Lin Zhifeng couldn’t figure it out.
As the two of them reached the building downstairs, they silently agreed not to go back in and face that cold face. Lin Zhifeng sat on the stairwell, resting her chin on her hand. She seemed lost in thought, but was actually dragging out the system for questioning.
“Pull up Wang Tingmei’s hidden storyline.”
“The system does not have precise search functionality.”
“Aren’t you proud of that?” Lin Zhifeng retorted, then sealed it off again and forcefully reached into the plot archive herself. As expected, all she initially saw was the Bai Ruyue family drama.
With no other options, she flipped through the archive with low expectations—only to stumble across something surprisingly useful.
