The arrival of Luo Hu and the others was so unexpected that the Jiang family's lively, chaotic living room went instantly still. Everyone stared in tense disbelief.
What was happening? Was the family head about to intervene in their private affairs? Had they unknowingly offended him somehow?
That thought alone was enough to drain the color from Jiang Xiusu's and Jiang Jingcheng's faces.
They looked at the stone-faced Luo Hu, then at the grievance-filled Ling Yun. Their expressions darkened.
Their minds raced through possibilities. Luo Hu was Jiang Xiuqing's personal bodyguard. As a bodyguard, he would never have walked into another household without the family head's explicit permission. Walking in unannounced like this — without notifying the actual owner of the house — was a public slap in the face.
Being slapped like this in front of witnesses was not going to put Jiang Xiusu in a good mood.
"Ling Yun — what is going on? Why would your uncle want to move you into the main house? Did you say something to him?" Jiang Xiusu knew the Fourth Master had always doted on Ling Yun, but the timing — with his biological son just coming home — made no sense to him. He spoke with severe solemnity, his face dark as a storm.
Ling Yun lowered his eyes. His long lashes trembled for a long moment before he raised them again with a faint, detached smile. He said quietly, "May I ask — what do you think I said?"
He did not call Jiang Xiusu Dad this time. With Yang Qing's existence, nothing between them could ever go back to what it had been.
This house was no longer his home.
Jiang Xiusu immediately knew his impulsive question had been hurtful. He should have tried to repair things — he knew it. But someone accustomed to being in a position of authority couldn't bring himself to apologize to Ling Yun. He pressed his eyebrows together, staring at Ling Yun in silence. No follow-up question. No answer given.
"Young Lord Ling — shall we leave now, or would you like a moment to pack?"
Luo Hu and the others at the door hadn't involved themselves in the family dispute. When the room had settled to quiet, he addressed Ling Yun.
"Let's go, Uncle Luo."
Without looking at anyone in the room, Ling Yun turned and walked out. He had come with nothing, and he would leave with nothing. So be it.
For him, what had just happened in that single unguarded instant said everything about where he stood in this house, and how fragile trust became when blood ties were gone. There was no point in fighting the inevitable.
He had no more attachment to leave behind. No attachment meant no regret. The more you'd loved something, the more completely you could let it die.
Ling Yun said he'd go now. Luo Hu didn't argue — he escorted Ling Yun out, leaving the house in complete silence.
One minute. Five minutes. The Jiang family living room remained silent.
Yang Qing swallowed the anxiously pooling saliva in his throat. He snuck a sideways glance at Jiang Xiusu's ashen expression and shrank closer to Wu Meiyun in alarm. He knew who Luo Hu was. He knew who the family head's "Fourth Uncle" was. That person was the absolute pinnacle in his previous life — someone he'd only looked up at from below. The true power holder of the entire Jiang clan. The family head.
Even Jiang Xiusu became meek and deferential before that man. One word from the family head, and Jiang Xiusu could be completely sidelined. Had he miscalculated?
Yang Qing was shaking badly enough that his fingernails dug deep into Wu Meiyun's thigh.
"Yangyang — don't be afraid. Mom is here."
The sting of pain jolted Wu Meiyun out of her own panic. She patted Yang Qing's back in silent comfort. She'd been frightened to watch Ling Yun follow Luo Hu away — but when she thought it through carefully, her nerves steadied.
The baby-switching had not been her fault. She had raised someone else's child for eighteen years, giving that child nothing but the best. And now she was merely reclaiming her own biological son. She hadn't harmed the Jiang family's interests. She hadn't done anything to Ling Yun. She had no reason to feel guilty.
She would stand her ground even before the family head himself.
With Wu Meiyun still holding him tightly, Yang Qing wisely said nothing, and buried his face against her knee.
Better to make himself invisible for now.
Wu Meiyun's voice had broken through the others' shock. Jiang Xiusu and Jiang Jingcheng exchanged a look, both fighting to keep their tempers in check.
Jiang Xiusu didn't want to look at the trouble-causing Yang Qing. But Jiang Jingcheng had no such inhibition — he sent a glare straight at the back of Yang Qing's head. He still couldn't understand how his mother could let herself turn so hostile toward Ling Yun. Ling Yun was a child they had all raised with genuine love. Before any of this business with blood ties, the four of them had been a truly close family — close enough that the rest of the Jiang clan had been envious.
But Yang Qing's arrival had changed everything. Made everyone unrecognizable.
What the hell had even happened?
"Jingcheng!" Wu Meiyun, hypersensitive in her protective maternal state, snapped at Jiang Jingcheng the moment she spotted his glare at Yang Qing.
Jiang Jingcheng bit down hard and looked away. Fine. He couldn't afford to make enemies.
"Yang Qing — it's late. Go to your room and rest." The way Wu Meiyun was acting was making Jiang Xiusu sick too. Every time he thought of Ling Yun being taken away by the family head's people, his mind was racing through one calculation after another, each thread pulled tighter than the last.
"Xiusu." Wu Meiyun glared at her husband.
"Meiyun — let Yang Qing rest." This time Jiang Xiusu didn't give Wu Meiyun an inch, his tone harder, his look at her deep and shadowed with something that flashed and was gone.
Wu Meiyun's heart lurched. She didn't dare argue.
Yang Qing had already sensed the shift. He stood up, said his polite good-nights to everyone, and obediently made his way upstairs. The moment he rounded the second-floor landing and was out of sight, every trace of his gentle, cooperative expression twisted away.
They were on their guard against him!
"Little Uncle — when are you coming home? I miss you." Back at the main Jiang house, sitting on the wide sofa, Ling Yun rubbed his reddened eyes and tried very hard not to cry as he sent a wheedling message to Jiang Xiuqing.
A deeply ingrained habit from childhood, effortlessly natural.
"Ling Yun — when you wake up tomorrow morning, you'll see me. That's a promise." On the plane, Jiang Xiuqing had just put a hand up to cut off the mid-flight board meeting the moment the phone appeared, then dismissed the executives with a wave.
The senior management team — who had been pulled back to China from overseas specifically to finish this half-completed meeting — all exchanged knowing looks, stood up, and moved to the rear of the plane.
"Is it that little troublemaker again?"
"Yes — that little troublemaker."
"I keep hearing about the little troublemaker day in and day out, and I've never actually seen him. What does he look like? I'm so curious." This was from a foreign executive who had never visited China.
"Consider yourself lucky you haven't."
The domestic executives gave their curious overseas colleagues a sincere collective warning.
"That terrifying?"
The overseas staff collectively inhaled and snuck a glance toward the front of the plane. The murmuring stopped there.
"Little Uncle, you're tricking me. I'm eighteen already — not a little kid. You can't do the old you'll see me when you wake up routine anymore. You're lying. I don't believe it." Ling Yun was not satisfied with that answer. He took a bite of fresh fruit a servant had just brought and lay on the sofa, restless and irritable, rolling back and forth.
His waist, where his shirt rode up, revealed a pale, lean, and muscled strip of skin.
Quite eye-catching.
Hearing Ling Yun's unapologetic reprimand, the usually cold and remote Jiang Xiuqing — in the presence of outsiders, at least — couldn't hold back a smile. He undid the very top button of his shirt, his mood lightening. "I know our Ling Yun has grown up. That's exactly why everything Little Uncle says is true — not a trick."
As children, Ling Yun had stuck to him like glue, following him everywhere. But sometimes he had needed to go overseas to inspect operations. With no way around it, he'd made promises — endless promises — to finally get the boy to let him leave. And then, before he'd even finished the work trip, the calls and video chats would come. To keep from disrupting his work, he'd had to soothe Ling Yun, even resorting to the old sleep and I'll be there when you wake up line. He hadn't realized Ling Yun was still holding that grudge.
"Little Uncle, actually — you can take a few more days. Heh heh…"
Ling Yun had been full of complaints he'd wanted to throw at Jiang Xiuqing — but when he thought it through, he found he didn't have the heart to say any of them.
Jiang Xiuqing had no Jiang blood connection to him. He couldn't resent Jiang Xiuqing for taking back his own nephew. It would be too petty.
And more critically — his right to call Jiang Xiuqing little uncle depended on the Jiang surname. If he wasn't a Jiang, he had no right to any of this warmth.
That thought ruined Ling Yun's mood entirely.
"Ling Yun — it's late. Sleep well. When you wake up, your little uncle will be there." Jiang Xiuqing knew perfectly well what state Ling Yun was in. But with the distance between them, words could only do so much.
"Okay. Good night, Little Uncle."
Afraid of saying the wrong thing, Ling Yun ended the call with a reluctant farewell.
Jiang Xiuqing stared at the disconnected screen for several silent seconds before standing.
"Resume the meeting." His special assistant, who had been watching for any sign, gave the executives the summons the instant he saw Jiang Xiuqing rise. The executives had been hauled back from overseas for a meeting only to have it moved to the plane — what a mess.
The assistant stole a glance at the roiling clouds outside the window and mentally elevated Ling Yun's status another several notches.
Do not offend. Must be deferred to.
Because the only person in the world who could make the typically iron-cold Jiang family head drop everything and fly home over a single phone call was this little troublemaker — and no one else.
At five in the morning, the door to the master bedroom of the Jiang main house swung open. A tall shadow entered the room. No lights were switched on. Moving through the brightness of the moon outside the window, the figure approached the bed and looked down at the person already sprawled across more than half of it. A smile appeared.
"Little fool. You were upset and didn't even think to come tell me."
He reached out and lightly tapped Ling Yun's nose with one finger. Then Jiang Xiuqing went to wash up.
Ten or so minutes later, carrying a faint trace of water in the air around him, Jiang Xiuqing returned to the bedroom, pulled back the covers, and carefully lay down beside Ling Yun.
Without any prompting, Ling Yun's sleeping body seemed to have a mind of its own — rolling until it fit itself perfectly into the arm Jiang Xiuqing had extended, his sprawling sleep posture resolving into something proper.
A quiet laugh. Jiang Xiuqing pulled Ling Yun close, pressed his lips to the boy's forehead, and closed his eyes.
He'd been working continuously for forty-eight hours. Even iron wore down eventually. Here, with a familiar person in a familiar place, he let himself sink into sleep. The paternity test, the blood ties — all of that could wait until he woke up.
"Ah — Little Uncle — you really came back!"
The next morning, before his eyes were even open, Ling Yun let out a cry of delight.
"Shh — sleep a little more with Little Uncle." Another kiss to Ling Yun's forehead. Jiang Xiuqing didn't open his eyes — just drew Ling Yun back in and went back to sleep.
Being kissed on the forehead, Ling Yun blinked his lively eyes. He smiled so wide his whole face lit up.
