Chapter 32: Inverted V Ending

Chapter 32: Inverted V Ending

Have you ever felt what it's like when death is just a second away?

A blizzard, accompanied by howling northern winds, enveloped everything. The cold was so harsh that even breathing was a struggle. The snow buried everything, including the baby’s desperate cries, which were torn apart by the biting wind before they could carry any farther.

No one could hear the cries of a baby abandoned by his birth mother in a trash dump on that frigid winter night. But he clearly remembered how a mother’s figure gradually disappeared from his sight.

That blue figure, which had haunted Ye Mingzhao’s memory for years, would slowly fade from his world in countless nightmares, one frame at a time.

Endless darkness and bone-chilling cold enveloped his small body.

The weaker the cries became, the less likely anyone would come to his rescue. Instead, wild dogs with bared teeth emerged to hunt.

They followed the faint cries and the weak beating of a heart to find a baby rapidly losing body heat, wrapped in the snowstorm. For some reason, they didn’t attack him but instead huddled close to the baby.

Their dirty, matted fur clung tightly to the baby’s soft and fragile skin. Their warm, wet tongues licked the baby’s cheeks exposed to the biting wind. The warmth from the wild dogs slowly seeped into the baby’s frozen, blue body.

As dawn broke and the darkness lifted, a scavenger stumbled upon the abandoned bundle in the trash dump.

The baby, teetering on the edge of death, was finally rescued.

But instead of a fresh start, he faced one illness after another, as if his suffering would never end.

The torment was just beginning. For the next three years in the orphanage, he endured constant fevers, illnesses, nightmares, and endless tears.

For a long time, Ye Mingzhao hated his hyperthymesia.

In the cycle of what was either a memory or a nightmare, he repeatedly experienced the abandonment. He watched that blue figure disappear from his sight again and again. In the darkness, wild dogs with bared teeth approached him time after time. Sometimes, they would nestle by his side, just like in reality. But in most nightmares, they would pounce on him the moment they found him, viciously tearing and devouring his body.

Nightmares repeatedly invaded his mind. Little Ye Mingzhao couldn’t be sure whether in the next nightmare, the wild dogs would choose to save him or eat him. He couldn’t be sure whether the scavenger would appear in time.

He was too young to have the wisdom to distinguish between nightmares and reality.

But one thing remained constant: the fact that his birth mother had thrown him away in the trash dump.

This cycle of nightmares continued until the orphanage director found him a new family.

Little Ye Mingzhao was carefully held in the arms of his new mother, who was elegant and graceful. His tall new father handed him a furry stuffed dog and said with a smile, “We’re going home.”

At that moment, Ye Mingzhao felt a faint “click” in his ear, as if the clock that had been stuck finally began to move slowly.

He was given a new name, Ye Mingzhao. Bright and brilliant, illuminated by daylight.

He had a new mother who would hold him in her arms when he was awakened by nightmares, soothing his frightened cries with gentle kisses.

He had a new father who would bring him gifts after work, lift him high, and ask if he had taken his medicine properly that day.

He had a new brother who would rush to his bed after school to share stories from school, new toys, and even a piece of cake specially saved from lunch.

Ye Mingzhao often felt that his real life started at age three. The memories before that should have been locked away. After all, most people only start to remember things between the ages of three and six.

Eighteen years later, the figure that had slowly faded from his memory reappeared before him.

“I’ve seen your photo,” Ye Mingzhao said with a gentle smile to the woman kneeling on the ground. His tone was calm, “You are Jiang Shangyun’s mother.”

“I saw your family photo in his friend circle.”

At the mention of Jiang Shangyun’s name, the woman’s expression suddenly became flustered. She struggled to lift her head and look up at Ye Mingzhao, but all she saw was a shadow enveloped in light.

He stood there against the light, making it impossible for Ruan Cuimei to see his face clearly.

The four members of the Ye family sitting beside him were completely bewildered. Mrs. Ye asked, "Who is Jiang Shangyun? Zhaozhao, do you know this woman?"

"Yeah," Ye Mingzhao nodded to Mrs. Ye and, bypassing the woman kneeling on the ground in a daze, sat down next to her. "Jiang Shangyun is a contestant in the costume design competition who has been part of the production team."

The Ye family, of course, was well aware of the two design competitions Ye Mingzhao had organized under the name of the film crew. They nodded absentmindedly, muttering how small the world could be.

Ruan Cuimei felt the same way. For a moment, she even regretted coming here.

Ye Mingzhao's gaze rested on the woman, and after a thoughtful silence, he suddenly asked, "Do you love your child?"

Before Ruan Cuimei could respond, Ye Mingzhao clarified, "I mean Jiang Shangyun."

Ruan Cuimei seemed to misunderstand. Hearing Ye Mingzhao's words, she suddenly became agitated. "Don't you—"

She was cut off mid-sentence by an urgent knock on the door.

The person knocked urgently and, without waiting for permission, rushed in by turning the doorknob.

Jiang Shangyun's out-of-breath figure appeared in the doorway, followed by the curious gazes of the film crew members behind him.

"Mom, why are you here?" Jiang Shangyun's eyes were filled with shock and confusion as he stared directly at the woman kneeling on the ground. "Why are you on your knees?"

The moment the words left his mouth, Jiang Shangyun had an epiphany. Snippets of casual conversations he had with Ye Mingzhao on set began to surface in his mind.

"The truly cruel twist would be if the villain's biological parents were ordinary, good people."

"They can possess all the virtues in the world, and still abandon their child without burden."

"As long as the abandoned child doesn't meet their expectations."

"So, the person who abandoned Ye Mingzhao," Jiang Shangyun swallowed hard with difficulty, hesitating for a moment before asking with a numb expression, "was you, right?"

Faced with her son's accusation, Ruan Cuimei opened her mouth but couldn't utter a single word.

Jiang Shangyun's accusation was too direct, brutally tearing away the veil she had been hiding behind, forcing her to confront the past she had refused to acknowledge.

She hung her head in embarrassment, though she had mentally prepared herself before coming.

Ruan Cuimei had imagined kneeling before Ye Mingzhao, begging for forgiveness, and being rejected. She had braced herself for the possibility of Ye Mingzhao's relentless revenge. But she had never expected that these accusations would come from the mouth of her other son.

The atmosphere in the rest area became stifling and heavy.

Ye Mingzhao sat comfortably on the sofa, watching the unfolding scene with great interest. Even when Jiang Shangyun asked painfully, "Why did you abandon your child?" Ye Mingzhao merely adjusted his posture, observing the mother-son confrontation with a more relaxed stance.

All of these reactions filled Ruan Cuimei with anger and shame. While she felt utterly humiliated, a sense of resentment began to slowly fester within her.

Ye Mingzhao was well aware of such emotions.

When faced with something difficult to accept, people often instinctively adopt a denial attitude to protect themselves.

It was the most basic and primitive defense mechanism in psychology.

"I didn't do anything wrong," "It's all someone else's fault," "Things aren't what you think—"

"It's not what you think!" Ruan Cuimei clutched her son's hand and quickly defended herself, "I had my reasons."

Her eyes instinctively drifted to Ye Mingzhao, only to find him lost in thought, his chin resting on his right hand.

The emotions Ruan Cuimei had been building up for so long suddenly caught in her throat. She was astonished to realize that every reaction of Ye Mingzhao, since their meeting, had been unexpected.

Twenty-one years later, facing the mother who had abandoned him, Ye Mingzhao showed no emotion—no resentment, no hatred, no confusion, not even a hint of curiosity.

He looked at Ruan Cuimei as if she were a clown putting on a show, entertained by her performance but completely unmoved.

"What's wrong?" Noticing the sudden silence in the room, Ye Mingzhao snapped out of his reverie and nodded at the emotionally complex Ruan Cuimei. "Please, continue."

To ease the awkward atmosphere, Ye Mingzhao even thoughtfully added, "We are all curious about why you abandoned your own child all those years ago."

Hearing Ye Mingzhao's almost narration-like inquiry, Ruan Cuimei's expression became difficult to describe.

She suddenly realized that the son she had abandoned for more than two decades seemed to not care about her at all.

"Please don't speak to me in that tone," Ruan Cuimei wept silently, like a mother unable to bear the pain, humbly pleading with her estranged son. "I know you hate me. But I hope you can give me a chance to make amends."

"Sure, why not?"

The overly straightforward response shocked not only Ruan Cuimei but also the Ye family, who looked over in surprise.

Under everyone's gaze, Ye Mingzhao expressionlessly stated, "According to Article 261 of the Criminal Law, anyone who has a duty to care for someone who is elderly, young, sick, or otherwise unable to live independently, and refuses to do so, can face up to five years in prison, detention, or probation."

His friendly gaze then fell on Ruan Cuimei's face. "Would you like to turn yourself in now, or wait until the results of the paternity test come out before turning yourself in?"

Ruan Cuimei's mouth fell open in shock as she stared at Ye Mingzhao.

Ye Mingzhao didn’t wait for Ruan Cuimei’s response. His eyes shifted to Jiang Shangyun again, curiously asking, "Do you think your mother should be legally punished?"

Jiang Shangyun's expression froze.

Ye Mingzhao quietly observed the reactions of both mother and son.

When he was very young, Ye Mingzhao had often pondered the reason why he was abandoned by his own flesh and blood. Eventually, he blamed it on his own weakness and incompetence.

If only he could crawl, he wouldn’t have been confined to a small blanket, helplessly watching himself be abandoned. He would have struggled to follow that blue figure, slowly crawling out of that dark and cold dumpsite. He wouldn’t have had to wait for a stray dog to warm him or for a scavenger to discover him.

If as Ye Mingzhao grew older and learned to read, he realized that being abandoned by his parents wasn’t his fault. The law clearly stated that child abandonment was a crime.

In the original story, where Chu Hengyi is the main character, Ye Mingzhao, as a villain abandoned by his parents, faced universal condemnation for his revenge against them. This bizarre plot twist left Ye Mingzhao struggling to understand.

No one pursued the real perpetrators of abandonment. They sympathized with the offenders, celebrated the victim's tragic fate, and spread the news. They allowed the offenders to step on his bones and reach the peak of their lives. As if he was born to be a bad seed, and abandoning him was the right thing to do. They deserved to be rewarded for it.

But was that really the case?

Ye Mingzhao quietly looked at Jiang Shangyun. Jiang Shangyun, a boy raised in a loving home, seemed to embody the right values, a healthy mindset, abundant empathy, and a strong sense of justice.

How would he view his mother’s decision to abandon her own child?

Would he try to cover up his mother’s mistakes, or would he confront her past head-on?

Was he like his mother, or was he her opposite?

What kind of answer does Ruan Cuimei expect from Jiang Shangyun, as a continuation of her legacy?

Do you really want your son, who you've raised and shaped, to end up just as hypocritical and despicable as you?

Or do you hope he stays the kind, just person you taught him to be, even if he can't come to terms with the truth being exposed—how hypocritical and despicable you really are?

If your son, whom you’ve raised with so much effort, completely turns his back on you—

Ye Mingzhao’s gaze slowly moved to Ruan Cuimei’s face.

What then? Would it tear you apart?