“I wish you eighteen sons in one birth, and every last one of them a rebellious brat.”
Childbearing System: Received! Arranging it now!
Xu Shichu: ?!
In the end, the boomerang had come back to hit her.
The instant the system shoved a Childbearing Pill into her mouth, Xu Shichu reacted quickly and spat out “thirteen sons” with a single “Ptooey!” But she still ended up carrying five babies.
When she opened her eyes again, she was standing in a lavish banquet hall.
The hall glittered with gold; guests exchanged toasts amid a sea of elegant clothes and carefully styled hair.
A familiar voice suddenly rang out in her mind.
【Host, it’s thirteen years later. Your second son, Xu Jingheng, has been drugged in the lounge on the east side of the second floor.】
Xu Shichu froze.
When she’d left, her son had only been five. Had thirteen years really passed in the time it took to close and open her eyes?
But she had no time to think about it now. Following the system’s directions, she hurried upstairs.
She had appeared in the banquet hall out of nowhere and already stood out against the crowd’s elegant finery. Now, when she suddenly sprinted upstairs, the guests all turned to look.
“Who is that? I’ve never seen her before.”
“She looks kind of familiar…”
“She’s in such a hurry. Did something happen upstairs?”
A few guests exchanged glances, curiosity and gossip shining in their eyes. “Should we go take a look?”
“Come on. If something really has happened, we might be able to help.”
As they murmured among themselves, the guests followed after her. Xu Shichu had already left them behind and raced to the end of the second-floor corridor, where she stopped in front of a closed guest-room door.
The system’s urgent voice sounded again.
【It’s this room. Your second son and the Song family’s biological daughter are alone inside. If we wait much longer, people will arrive to catch them together in the room.】
Xu Shichu’s expression darkened. Her eyes narrowed dangerously, and a chill radiated from her.
She backed up a few steps, then put all her strength into a kick.
A loud bang rang out.
The guest-room door flew open under her kick.
“Ah—”
The girl inside, her clothes disheveled, immediately turned at the noise. Her face was full of alarm, and she shrank back like a startled rabbit. “Who are you?”
Xu Shichu’s gaze swept past her and landed on the young man lying on the bed, his face deathly pale.
Two buttons on his shirt had been undone, leaving the collar slack and his clothes in disarray.
Fine beads of sweat covered his forehead. He looked as if all the strength had been drained from his body, leaving him limp and weak.
On closer inspection, his arm seemed to have been cut by a blade, and a small patch of blood had spread across the bed.
At the noise, Xu Jingheng struggled to prop himself up and look over. His words came out broken and slurred. “Help… help me.”
Xu Shichu’s heart clenched. A long account of the story’s plot flooded into her mind.
It turned out that her second son, Xu Jingheng, was the male lead of a romance about a man desperately trying to win back the woman he had lost, and the neglected biological daughter of the Song family standing before her was the heroine.
The Song family’s biological daughter, Song Ruoruo, had been lost for years and wasn’t reunited with her family until she was sixteen. After returning, she discovered that the family had a much-loved fake daughter.
Spoiled by the family’s affection, the fake daughter made life difficult for her at every turn. She had claimed not only Song Ruoruo’s parents’ affection but also her childhood betrothed—Xu Jingheng, the male lead.
But Song Ruoruo fell in love with Xu Jingheng at first sight. She pursued him relentlessly for two years, but he remained as cold as ice.
This was the point in the story when the heroine planned to drug the male lead at a school-admission banquet.
After tonight, the male and female leads would be forced to get engaged.
But their relationship wouldn’t improve after the engagement. Instead, it would mark the beginning of a painful romance.
The two of them would spend hundreds of chapters tangled up in a push-and-pull relationship, until the heroine finally gave up.
Only then would the male lead belatedly realize his feelings for her and begin his long road to win her back.
The system spoke at just the right moment.
【Host, after you left, your five sons each became entangled in the plot of a different novel, taking on different roles. All of them are fated for tragic lives.】
【I specially unlocked this ability for you. Whenever you encounter one of them, the relevant plot will trigger automatically. Consider it a small compensation from me.】
【Goodbye, Host. This time, I really am leaving.】
Xu Shichu quickly absorbed the plot and said goodbye to the system.
Then she pushed Song Ruoruo, who was blocking her way, aside and hurried over to check on her son.
“Tuantuan, Tuantuan, can you hear Mom?”
Xu Jingheng was burning up and miserable, but the pain in his arm was just enough to help him hold on to his senses.
“Mom?” His vision was growing blurry, but deep down he knew that only his mother called him by such a childish nickname.
A tear welled in the corner of his eye. His voice was hoarse and strained, yet he clutched her clothes tightly, as if afraid she might disappear.
“Mom, is that you? Are you back?”
“Yes, Mom’s back.”
Xu Shichu’s voice was gentle, soothing in its warmth. “Don’t be afraid. Mom’s here.”
At her words, Xu Jingheng did become calmer, though broken murmurs still escaped him.
Xu Shichu worked in pharmaceutical research and had some knowledge of medicine as well.
She gave her son a quick examination. The problem wasn’t too serious, and only then did she begin to relax.
She helped him up in one motion, draped his arm over her shoulder, and prepared to take him to the hospital.
Just then, Song Ruoruo, who had been cowering in the corner, sprang up. She spread her arms in a show of bravado and blocked Xu Shichu’s way.
“You… you…” Like a startled rabbit, she could barely get the words out, but she still summoned the courage to say, “You can’t take him away.”
Xu Shichu was so angry she almost laughed.
She had seen the story from the heroine’s point of view. The heroine had been switched as a child, and when she finally returned home, her father didn’t care for her, her mother didn’t love her, and the man she liked didn’t love her either.
Xu Shichu admitted that Song Ruoruo had suffered terribly.
But she was the male lead’s mother, so of course she was on her son’s side.
No matter how miserable the heroine’s life was, what mattered right now was clear: the male lead—her son—had been mistreated.
As his mother, she couldn’t let Song Ruoruo hurt her son just because the girl had suffered.
Her expression turned cold. “Miss, get one thing straight. You’re the one who tried to molest my son. I haven’t even held you accountable yet, and now you’re trying to stop me?”
“You… you’re Aunt Xu?”
Hearing the woman call herself Xu Jingheng’s mother, Song Ruoruo could hardly believe it.
Ever since returning to the Song family, she had asked around about Xu Jingheng.
She knew that his mother had suddenly disappeared when he was five. How could this young, beautiful woman be his mother?
Once she understood what Xu Shichu had accused her of, tears of humiliation ran down Song Ruoruo’s cheeks. She shook her head again and again. “No, that’s not what happened.”
“I don’t care what explanation you have. The fact that you hurt my son is beyond dispute. Now move aside, or don’t blame me for getting physical.”
Xu Shichu stood there with her arm around her son, unyielding in her stance.
Although Song Ruoruo was afraid, she still refused to move.
She was already unwelcome in the Song family. If this got out, they would never let her off.
If they had actually slept together, that might have been one thing. But they hadn’t, and she had been caught in the act. To answer to the Xu and Jiang families, the Song family would never let the matter slide.
At the thought, Song Ruoruo shuddered, but continued to block the door.
Just as Xu Shichu was about to act, a jumble of footsteps suddenly sounded outside.