chapter 2
The System stared at the scene before it and didn’t dare speak.
I let out a soft breath.
A cold wind burst through the window.
It rattled the medical records on the cabinet.
Finally, it stopped on one page.
It was the home address the fake daughter, Jiang Xiaoxiao, had left behind as a relative.
“What… are you going to do?”
The System finally snapped out of it and asked me.
I said cheerfully, “Complete the so-called task.”
After I died, they all went crazy.
Jiang Xiaoxiao pressed the elevator button.
The light in the elevator flickered on and off.
It stung her eyes, and she couldn’t help complaining.
It turned out the property management of Riverside View Apartments wasn’t as good as the rumors claimed.
Oh well.
That bitch only had a few days left anyway.
Soon, she’d be the only daughter of the Jiang family.
And then her adoptive parents would naturally buy her a nicer place.
At the thought of that bitch’s bloodless face, she felt a little satisfied.
Drip.
The elevator doors opened.
Jiang Xiaoxiao looked down at her phone, replying to messages as she stepped out.
“Thud.”
Something bumped into the top of her forehead.
It didn’t hurt. It felt like fabric, but it was sticky and greasy.
She looked up.
Stumbled back a step.
At the elevator entrance hung a peace doll, strung up by a black rope.
Its burlap head drooped low, cotton bleeding through the fabric.
White flushed through with red.
Jiang Xiaoxiao had seen this doll before.
When she was twelve, she’d gone as an outstanding Young Pioneer to a poverty-stricken county in the neighboring city, deep in the mountain valleys, to visit the village children.
She hated the trip. The mountain area was damp, without electricity or running water, and nasty bugs crawled everywhere.
She only went to make her adoptive parents proud.
On the first day of the trip, the school arranged for the village children to give them handmade gifts.
The girl who gave her the gift kept her head down, too afraid to speak.
The gift was a peace doll, with a peace charm tied around its neck on a black string.
The fabric was rough, but every stitch showed care.
It didn’t matter. She’d throw it in the trash the moment the trip ended.
She took the doll carelessly and told the girl to look up.
“Thud.”
The doll fell to the ground.
She stared in shock at the village girl—there was a scar on her forehead.
Exactly like the one on the true daughter of the Jiang family, who’d been kidnapped.
She studied the girl carefully.
The girl’s skin was badly sunburned, but her features…
Her features looked like the ones in those photos, just a bit more grown.
In ten days, her adoptive parents would come for the closing ceremony.
They would see this little girl.
No. No, they couldn’t!
Why? Why did she have to show up in front of her?
Nobody was allowed to take away everything she had now!
Jiang Xiaoxiao smiled and reached out to the girl: “Come on, I’ll take you to play in my room.”
“I brought lots of toys.”
The rest of the story was simple.
The girl was accused of stealing, and the school expelled her on the spot.
Her drunk “father” waved his belt and dragged her home.