Chapter 131

Chapter 131

What exactly was the relationship between Gu Zhishu and Jia Lingyuan?

“I just looked it up. Jia Lingyuan returned to the country in 2008. If the Orphanage’s bone-age estimate wasn’t wrong, Gu Zhishu should have been born around the turn of the millennium. The timeline doesn’t really match up.”

Wen Miao let go of the mouse. “Could we be overthinking this?”

“There are too many coincidences in this whole thing from start to finish… And now we’re saying these two looking alike is also a coincidence? I don’t buy it.” As Wen Xin spoke, he turned to glance at Nan Mu. “What do you think?”

Nan Mu looked at Wen Xin but said nothing. No one knew what he was mulling over.

“Oh, right, there’s another possibility.” Wen Miao suddenly sat up straight in her chair. “They say nephews take after their uncles. Could Gu Zhishu be Jia Lingyuan’s nephew?”

“That makes sense!” Wen Xin found it extremely plausible and immediately turned back to start digging into the Jia Family’s family records.

There was no questioning Wen Xin’s hacking skills. It didn’t take long for him to get a clear picture of the Jia Family’s family information. But the Jia Family was enormous. Jia Lingyuan had plenty of cousins on his father’s side, not to mention all those distant relatives who were barely connected at all.

Looking at the dense list of names, Wen Miao and Wen Xin both fell into confusion. “There are so many people. How are we supposed to check them all? Who do we even start with?”

Wen Miao was getting a headache too. “This could take forever.”

The two of them chattered away, analyzing back and forth, while Nan Mu alone sat behind them without saying a word.

Wen Miao turned around and saw Nan Mu there. She couldn’t help poking his arm with her finger and asking, “What are you thinking about? Why aren’t you saying anything?”

“Mm…” Nan Mu rubbed his left wrist. “I’m trying to sort out the logic.”

“What logic?” Wen Miao and Wen Xin turned around at the same time, both staring at Nan Mu with curious faces.

“I haven’t completely figured it out yet.” Nan Mu smiled helplessly. Seeing that both of them insisted on hearing his thoughts, he could only begin explaining.

“If Gu Zhishu and Jia Lingyuan are relatives, then we can first rule out those really distant relatives.” Seeing that the two of them seemed a little confused, Nan Mu explained, “Gu Zhishu was a boy, and there was nothing wrong with the child. Generally speaking, there would be no reason to abandon him, right? So there are probably only two possibilities left: they couldn’t afford to raise him, or they didn’t want him. Given the Jia Family’s circumstances, not being able to afford it seems unlikely. So most likely, they didn’t want him. Why would they not want a perfectly healthy child? The only reason I can think of is that the child was illegitimate, and someone didn’t want to bring him home.”

“So, if this child was secretly abandoned, a child someone didn’t want anyone else to know about, then it couldn’t have been something everyone knew. Which means the child was either Jia Lingyuan’s own illegitimate son, or he belonged to someone extremely close to Jia Lingyuan… If you were going to abandon a child, you wouldn’t notify some barely related distant relative, would you?”

Wen Miao nodded. “That makes sense.”

Wen Xin was overjoyed and deleted a huge number of people from the family tree. “Then we can rule out a lot of them at once. How about we focus on checking these few people?”

Nan Mu hesitated for a moment. “Actually, I don’t think it’s very likely to be a cousin or some branch relative.”

Wen Miao asked, “Why not?”

Nan Mu said, “Do you remember the unresolved question we discussed at the hot pot restaurant before?”

“I do.” Wen Miao nodded. “Back then, we couldn’t figure out why they knew from the very beginning who the people matched with them were.”

The moment Wen Miao finished speaking, it was as though something occurred to her. She sucked in a sharp breath. “No way… Could it be that we’re all… abandoned illegitimate children? That would explain why they were so certain…”

Wen Xin’s mouth fell open in shock. Stammering, he said, “Gu Zhishu should just be an isolated case, right? This… abandoning illegitimate children isn’t something people make plans to do together, is it? High society is way too messy…”

Wen Miao froze for a moment, then also felt her own idea was far too outrageous.

But if that wasn’t the case, then the question of how the others had confirmed their matching targets still remained unexplained.
Besides, even with one’s own biological child, organ matching was only a matter of having a higher compatibility rate. It didn’t mean the match would be one hundred percent perfect.

Wen Miao thought it over and over, but she still couldn’t make sense of it. She even started doubting herself. “Um… are we sure we’re looking at this from the right angle? I keep feeling like we got off on the wrong foot from the very beginning.”

She looked at the two of them-one digging through information, the other deep in thought-and couldn’t help nudging their chairs with her foot. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

Wen Xin said, “I don’t know what to say. My head’s a mess right now too.”

Nan Mu said, “Assuming what you just said is true, and everyone who was abandoned was an illegitimate child, then in the current situation, the only person we can verify that with is you.”

Wen Miao looked completely baffled. “Huh? What do you mean?”

Nan Mu looked her in the eyes. “Gu Zhishu and the others have all disappeared, so there’s no way to do paternity testing on them. But you can. As long as we prove you’re related to Meng Ran, that proves your guess was right.”

“What? You actually believe we’re all illegitimate children?”

Wen Xin was so anxious he nearly jumped in place. To him, that had just been some random joke Wen Miao tossed out. How could something like that be possible?

It was impossible!

But Nan Mu didn’t look like he was treating it as a joke at all. He even said, “So why not verify it?”

Wen Xin was speechless. After thinking for a long while, he finally found a point to refute it with. “Wait. Can we think about whether this makes sense? Think about it. According to Wen Miao, everyone was an illegitimate child, couldn’t be brought into the open, and was abandoned because of that. Then wouldn’t the relationship between Wen Miao and Meng Ran be mother and daughter? But Wen Miao isn’t Xu Lei’s daughter, so that’s why she was thrown away, right?”

When neither of the two across from him responded, Wen Xin could only keep going on his own. “Fine! Then let me ask you this: would Xu Lei, knowing full well that Meng Ran had cheated on him, still kill people just to save Meng Ran?”

Nan Mu lowered his head and rubbed his chin. Wen Xin wasn’t wrong. That point really didn’t quite add up.

Seeing even Nan Mu lower his head, Wen Xin grew a little smug. “That’s why I’m saying there’s really no need to do that paternity test, okay? It doesn’t make sense!”

Wen Miao couldn’t stand Wen Xin looking so pleased with himself, and she especially couldn’t stand seeing Nan Mu get bullied. “Why is it impossible? Maybe Xu Lei is just completely blinded by love. Maybe he loves Meng Ran so much he can’t pull himself out of it.”

Wen Xin choked with frustration. “There are really people that blinded by love?”

Wen Miao huffed. “Who knows? Maybe you just happened to run into one.”

Nan Mu asked, “Do you know whether Xu Lei and Meng Ran have a child? About how old would they be?”

Wen Miao shook her head. “I didn’t look into that…”

Wen Xin said, “The two of them don’t have children. I heard Xu Ziran talk about it before. He said Meng Ran got pregnant once when she was young, but because she’d been in the laboratory for so long, the pregnancy stopped developing and the child was removed. After that, he never heard anything about Meng Ran having children. Xu Ziran said Meng Ran doesn’t like people bringing up children, but Xu Lei once stated that their family had chosen to be DINKs. Still, there were rumors in the company saying Meng Ran’s body was damaged by that miscarriage and she couldn’t have children anymore.”

Nan Mu asked, “Do you know what year the miscarriage happened?”

Wen Xin said, “I think they said it was her third year after joining the company…”

As he spoke, Wen Xin opened the calendar on the computer and calculated the time by year. “Looks like it was around 1997…”

“Huh?” Wen Miao said in confusion. “Then that doesn’t really fit, does it? If Meng Ran lost the ability to have children back in 1997, then I definitely have nothing to do with her. When they tested our bone ages back then, weren’t we all about the same age? I should’ve been born around the turn of the millennium too…”