The archive envelope was brought back to the old madam’s hospital room.
Once the door closed, everyone in the Shen family who mattered was present.
Shen Chongshan.
Lin Man.
Shen Yanzhou.
Shen Yue.
And the old madam, who had only regained consciousness not long ago.
The atmosphere in the room was as heavy as the air before a storm.
Without giving anyone time to process what was happening, Shen Nian spread the documents across the table one by one.
“The original duty roster. Zhou Guifen’s name is on it.”
“The delivery room entry log. Lin Man signed in.”
“The temporary adoption application. The applicant’s surname is Gu.”
“And this is the note Su Lan left behind, warning me to be careful of Gu Chengshan.”
With every sentence Shen Nian spoke, the color drained a little more from Lin Man’s face.
Standing to one side, Shen Yue’s expression also changed the moment he heard the name Gu Chengshan.
He had heard that name a few times when he was young.
Whenever the elders mentioned it, they would stop after only a few words, treating it like an old wound no one was allowed to touch.
The old madam leaned against the headboard in silence for a long while.
Finally, she looked at Lin Man.
“What else do you have to say?”
Lin Man sat limply in her chair, as though every bone had been pulled from her body.
Her lips trembled for a long time before she managed to speak.
“I never imagined things would become like this back then… I only…”
“You were jealous.”
Shen Nian finished the sentence for her.
Lin Man jerked her head up, her eyes bloodshot.
“Yes! I was jealous!”
At last, she completely fell apart.
“I was jealous of Su Lan! Jealous that everything always came so easily to her! Your father could never forget her. Mother always favored her. Even the child she gave birth to was worth more than everyone else’s from the moment she was born!”
“What was I?”
“I lived in the Shen family for all those years, yet I was always treated like someone who came later!”
“So you silently allowed someone to swap my granddaughter away?”
The old madam’s voice was hoarse, but every word landed harder than the last.
“Lin Man, this isn’t jealousy.”
“It’s poison.”
Lin Man cried so hard she couldn’t speak.
Shen Chongshan stood nearby with a terrifyingly dark expression.
Shen Nian had no interest in listening to her sob any longer.
She turned directly to the old madam.
“Who is Gu Chengshan?”
The instant the name was spoken, the room became even quieter.
Shen Chongshan was the first to react.
The old madam looked at Shen Nian for several seconds before speaking slowly.
“You still don’t know enough.”
“Then tell me now.”
The old madam closed her eyes, as though suppressing an old pain.
“Gu Chengshan used to be your father’s business partner,” she said slowly.
“The Shen family eventually cut ties with him because he wasn’t conducting legitimate business.”
“Back then, Su Lan was exceptionally capable. She helped your father oversee the accounts and accidentally discovered that Gu Chengshan was laundering money through overseas projects.”
“She intended to hand over the evidence.”
“But not long after giving birth to you… she disappeared.”
“So all of you knew she didn’t leave of her own free will.”
No one answered.
Their silence was an admission.
The fire burning inside Shen Nian’s chest flared even hotter.
She had once believed the Shen family was merely biased.
Merely blind.
Now she understood.
Not a single one of them was truly innocent.
Some were evil.
Some were cowardly.
Some knew the truth was wrong and simply chose to close their eyes.
“Did any of you spend these years looking for her?”
She stared at Shen Chongshan.
“We did.”
His jaw tightened.
“What did you find?”
“No confirmed whereabouts.”
“Or were you simply too afraid to keep digging?”
One question left Shen Chongshan speechless.
He couldn’t refute it.
The old madam closed her eyes again, as though unwilling to witness this reckoning that had arrived more than twenty years late.
Yet the hand gripping the blanket trembled ever so slightly.
Shen Nian let out a cold laugh and was about to continue when Shen Yanzhou’s phone suddenly rang.
He glanced at the caller ID.
His expression shifted immediately as he answered.
“Talk.”
Whoever was on the other end spoke rapidly.
After only a few sentences, his face darkened completely.
“When?”
“Seal off the server room immediately. I’m on my way.”
He ended the call and turned to everyone else.
“The group’s core system is under attack.”
Shen Chongshan’s expression changed.
“How bad?”
“It looks like they planted a backdoor ahead of time. The financial database and project database are both being copied.”
Shen Yanzhou grabbed his jacket and headed for the door.
Then he stopped.
The old madam was still lying in bed.
The family itself was already in chaos.
Just then, Shen Nian spoke.
“They’re not after money.”
“They’re after the data.”
Shen Yanzhou stopped in his tracks.
“How do you know?”
“If this were just extortion, they wouldn’t choose this moment.”
She gathered the archive envelope into her hands.
“Grandmother was poisoned.”
“The archive room caught fire.”
“Now the system is under attack.”
“These aren’t isolated incidents.”
“They’re happening one after another.”
“Someone’s afraid you’ll connect the dots.”
“So they’re throwing everything into chaos first.”
Shen Yanzhou frowned.
“How much do you actually know?”
“More than you do right now.”
She walked over, picked up the laptop Shen Yue had brought to organize the files, and powered it on.
Her movements were swift and practiced.
When the screen lit up, Shen Yanzhou visibly froze.
“You know how to do this?”
“Less talking.”
“Give me remote access to the company’s system.”
“No.”
Shen Chongshan’s face hardened first.
“The group’s network isn’t a toy.”
“Then stand there and watch them empty it.”
Without even looking up, Shen Nian’s fingers flew across the keyboard.
“In three minutes they’ll switch from the financial mirror server to the board of directors’ database.”
“If you keep wasting time, tomorrow’s headlines will write themselves.”
Shen Yanzhou’s eyes darkened.
He was someone who knew how to make decisions.
Without another word, he sent her temporary administrator privileges.
The instant Shen Nian connected to the system, lines of code flooded down the screen.
Her expression remained unnervingly calm.
Her fingers barely paused.
Firewall vulnerabilities.
Abnormal processes.
Hidden ports.
She identified them one after another.
Before anyone beside her could even understand what she was doing, she had already deployed a reverse trace.
Red security alerts spread across the monitor.
Numbers surged wildly.
Yet the more critical the situation became…
…the steadier her hands were.
To everyone else, the screen was enough to make their scalps tingle.
To her, it seemed no more difficult than solving an old problem she had mastered years ago.
Standing behind her, Shen Yue stared in complete disbelief.
“That’s impossible…”
he murmured.
“Techniques like this… you’d need a world-class cybersecurity team…”
“Not a team.”
Shen Nian answered evenly.
“It’s an old backdoor that leaked three years ago.”
“Someone modified it.”
Shen Yanzhou reacted immediately.
“Can you trace where it came from?”
“Yes.”
“But stopping the damage comes first.”
She struck the Enter key one final time.
One by one, the red warnings disappeared.
Thirty seconds later…
The system was fully restored.
Silence filled the hospital room.
No one even seemed willing to breathe.
Even the old madam stared at Shen Nian with genuine surprise for the first time.
Looking at the restored system dashboard, Shen Yanzhou swallowed before finally asking,
“What exactly did you do before this?”
“I survived.”
Shen Nian closed the laptop.
Her answer was crisp and final.
The less she explained…
…the more unsettling she became.
At that moment, the screen flashed once more.
A black window with white text suddenly appeared.
Zero. We finally found you.
Everyone in the room froze.
Shen Yue’s face changed dramatically.
“Zero?”
“The Zero who became famous on the international cybersecurity forums a few years ago?”
Shen Yanzhou also turned sharply toward Shen Nian.
Within the industry…
Zero was practically a legend.
No one knew Zero’s gender.
Age.
Identity.
Only that Zero was ruthless, nearly impossible to trace, and had left an astonishing record in multiple international cybersecurity competitions over several years.
And now…
That name had appeared right in front of Shen Nian.
It was almost as if the attacker had deliberately revealed it to everyone.
She wasn’t the ignorant biological daughter they had assumed had only just returned home.
Shen Nian’s eyes darkened.
She immediately closed the pop-up and severed the remote connection.
But it was already too late.
Every pair of eyes in the room was fixed on her.
As though they were seeing her for the first time.
“So…”
Shen Yue’s voice had become tight.
“You’re Zero?”
Shen Nian shoved the laptop onto the table.
Her face remained expressionless.
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters!”
“Then why didn’t it matter yesterday…”
“…when all of you left me standing outside the front door?”
One sentence silenced everyone.
It wasn’t merely sarcasm.
She had returned every ounce of their contempt from the previous night.
Word for word.
The atmosphere became unbearably tense.
The old madam suddenly spoke.
“No matter who she is…”
“Today she saved my life.”
“And she saved the Shen family’s system.”
As she spoke, her gaze slowly shifted toward Shen Wan’er.
“Starting today…”
“Wan’er will move out of the main residence.”
Shen Wan’er had been standing quietly in the corner all this time, her head lowered, as though she didn’t dare involve herself in the adults’ affairs.
The moment her name was called, all color drained from her face.
“Grandmother…”
“You’ve lived in that room for twenty-three years.”
“It doesn’t belong to you.”
The old madam’s voice wasn’t loud, but it allowed no argument.
“Your secondary bank card.”
“Your car keys.”
“And your right to use the properties registered under your name.”
“All of them are revoked.”
Lin Man shot to her feet.
“Mother!”
“You still have the nerve to speak for her?”
The old madam looked at her coldly.
“The Shen family allowing her to stay until now…”
“…was already the last shred of dignity I was willing to leave you.”
Tears burst from Shen Wan’er’s eyes.
Her knees gave way, and she collapsed onto the floor.
“Grandmother…”
“I didn’t know any of this…”
“I really didn’t…”
“Whether you knew or not doesn’t matter.”
The old madam closed her eyes.
“All I know…”
“…is that Shen Nian has come home.”
“And everything that belongs to her…”
“…should finally be returned.”
After those words, no one spoke for a long time.
Because only now did everyone have to admit the truth.
Shen Nian was no longer someone they could dismiss whenever they pleased.
Shen Yue stood frozen.
His throat bobbed as though he wanted to say something.
He opened his mouth…
Then closed it again.
For the first time, he realized that all the judgments he had made based on preserving “the family’s order” were as flimsy as paper in the face of the truth.
Outside the hospital room, the servants and assistants all lowered their heads, hardly daring to breathe.
After serving the Shen family for so many years…
They had never witnessed the balance of power shift so completely.
The biological daughter who had been left waiting outside the front door the night before…
Now dominated the entire room.
Not because she shouted the loudest.
But because she had earned it.
With her life.
With evidence.
With her ability.
Step by step.
Shen Nian paid no attention to their stares.
She resealed the archive envelope and prepared to leave.
Just then, Shen Yue spoke quietly.
“That backdoor…”
“You said it leaked three years ago?”
“That’s right.”
“When I was studying overseas, I saw code with a similar style.”
He frowned.
“It seemed to originate from an underground forum.”
“Later, someone paid an enormous amount of money to buy a batch of it.”
“Who bought it?”
“I couldn’t find out.”
Shen Yue shook his head.
“I only know that quite a few project-based companies were compromised by it.”
It didn’t sound like especially useful information.
But it made Shen Nian’s heart sink even further.
It meant the people targeting the Shen family hadn’t acted on impulse.
They had laid this trap years in advance.
Shen Wan’er continued sobbing uncontrollably, looking as though her soul had been torn from her body.
She had never imagined things would suddenly reach this point.
Shen Nian merely watched her coldly.
She felt no satisfaction whatsoever.
Because she knew this wasn’t the end.
It simply meant that the people behind everything had finally begun to panic.
Outside the hospital room, dusk slowly settled over the sky.
Shen Nian tucked the archive envelope away and was about to leave when her phone vibrated.
A new message.
An unknown number.
Don’t return to the old residence tonight. Someone will come for you first.
Shen Nian stared at the message.
Her eyes gradually turned cold.
If the sender dared to send a warning like this…
Then someone would definitely make the first move tonight.
Fine.
She would wait.
She wanted to see who would lose their nerve first.
Whoever acted first…
Would expose themselves first.
And she would remember the first person to step into the light.
Then she would personally force them back into the mud.
At the end of the long corridor, the lights flickered on and off, casting a pale glow across the floor.
Shen Nian walked steadily toward the exit.
Her pace wasn’t fast.
But it was unwavering.
She knew everyone inside the hospital room was still watching her back.
Some were shocked.
Some were filled with regret.
Others were already calculating how many more secrets she might uncover.
None of that mattered.
The only thing that mattered…
Was that, beginning tonight…
The game had changed.
From this point on, anyone who still pretended everything could go back to the way it used to be…
Would be the first to be destroyed by the very scheme they had helped create.
And Shen Nian was waiting.
Waiting to see who would crack first.
Because that person…
Could not be far away.
They might even be standing somewhere she could already see.
They simply hadn’t been exposed yet.
But they would be.
Very soon.
Without a doubt.
She was certain of it.
Clearer than anyone else.
Not by even the slightest margin.
She had never misjudged people like this.
Not once.
And this time…
Would be no exception.