After that, his work at the company became increasingly difficult.
His superiors deliberately made things hard for him, while his colleagues whispered behind his back. Any task that passed through his hands seemed destined to run into trouble. Gradually, no one wanted to work alongside him anymore and he became a marginal figure within the company.
He suffered terribly and his mental state deteriorated with each passing day.
When he brought the matter up with Sheng Xun, Sheng Xun’s attitude was firm.
“Chuchu, when my friends talk about you, I can go and scold them on your behalf but my parents… They’re the people who gave birth to me and raised me. What am I supposed to say to them?”
It was only then that Jiang Chu came to understand something about Sheng Xun.
Since childhood, Sheng Xun had treated earning his parents’ approval as his goal. He worked hard at his studies and put effort into his career because he wanted to make his parents happy.
He said, “The fact that I’m dating you has already made them extremely unhappy and angry. Chuchu, you have to understand me.”
The result of understanding him was that Jiang Chu gradually began to fall apart.
He was almost on the verge of depression.
Every member of the Sheng family who came to the company would make sarcastic remarks about him, mocking him with cold, cutting words. The entire company knew that he wanted to marry into a wealthy family yet the entire family looked down on him and he still shamelessly clung to his position there instead of leaving.
During his school years, Jiang Chu had never experienced being isolated by others.
But in the company, he finally came to understand that adulthood did not automatically provide a strong protective shell.
It didn’t make people immune to cruelty.
And he was suffering terribly.
This period of his life was filled with contradictions and uncertainty.
The more miserable he became, the more he wanted to leave the company yet, precisely when he was at his most distressed, Sheng Xun’s care and affection made him sink even deeper into the relationship.
He wavered constantly between leaving and staying, consumed by internal conflict and anxiety.
The more he struggled, the more painful everything became.
Seeing how stubbornly Jiang Chu held on and how unwilling he was to leave Sheng Xun, the members of the Sheng family grew even more furious.
Sheng Xun’s mother deliberately summoned him to the café on the top floor of the company building.
Jiang Chu personally brought her a cup of coffee, a latte made exactly the way she liked it, with milk but no sugar.
He had once taken the time to carefully learn about her preferences, from her major interests to the smallest details of her eating habits.
He had genuinely thought about treating her the same way he treated his own mother, taking good care of her and showing her filial respect in the future. The same went for Sheng Xun’s father.
When he was very young, Jiang Chu had lost his father. Whenever he saw other children being picked up from school by their fathers, it wasn’t as though he had never felt envious or wished that he, too, could have a father of his own.
A warm and harmonious family.
But Sheng Xun’s mother knocked his coffee over in one swift motion. Then, the moment she opened her mouth, she began berating him, accusing him of ruining Sheng Xun and leading him down the wrong path.
“It wasn’t easy for your mother to raise you into a graduate of a prestigious university by selling things at a roadside stall, was it? Don’t you feel ashamed of lying beneath another man?”
“People from poor and backward places are often nothing but trouble. Shameless people are the most difficult to deal with. Just what am I supposed to do to make you leave him?”
“Do you have no self respect at all?”
Jiang Chu had self respect.
How could he not?
Although he had grown up without a father, his mother had raised him despite her disability and never given up on him. He had always been the top student in his school.
Whenever Sheng Xun gave him something expensive, Jiang Chu would grit his teeth and take on an additional part time job so that he could buy Sheng Xun a gift of equal value in return.
He kept doing this until he became so exhausted that even Sheng Xun couldn’t bear to watch him anymore. After that, Sheng Xun stopped giving him expensive gifts.
But after Jiang Chu fell in love with Sheng Xun, his self respect was trampled on again and again, crushed into the dust beneath their feet.
Each time it was ground into the dirt, he would pick it back up and place it somewhere high, deceiving himself into believing it still had value.
He carried all the rejection, denial and overwhelming pressure on his shoulders while remaining by Sheng Xun’s side, hoping only that Sheng Xun would understand him and stand by him.
But Sheng Xun didn’t.
One day, Jiang Chu’s mother, Jin Wanwan, suddenly came to visit him, bringing along a relative from their hometown.
She stood in front of the company building and proudly said to her relative, “Look, Chuchu works right here.”
Somehow, the people in the company found out about it.
As it happened, Sheng Xun’s parents were also there that day.
They pointed toward the disabled woman carrying a bag of dried tofu and asked Sheng Xun whether this was the mother in law he had chosen.
Sheng Xun was both embarrassed and furious. He ordered the security guards to drive them away.
It was the first time the two of them had gotten into such a fierce argument. Both of them ended up red eyed with anger.
Sheng Xun said, “I already told you what happened the last time she came to the university. Why did you let her come to the company too? Do you have any idea how humiliating this is for me?”
All the grievances Jiang Chu had endured erupted the moment his mother was driven away.
“If you think she’s so embarrassing, then why did you get together with me? If you think it’s so shameful, why did you pursue me in the first place?”
Sheng Xun snapped, “You’re different from her! Don’t use this to make your point!”
“We’re the same! I’m exactly this kind of person! My mother raised me. I grew up eating stinky tofu. I- ”
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
Before Jiang Chu could finish speaking, Sheng Xun tightly covered his mouth. His face twisted with anger as he shouted at him, his voice filled with fury and hostility.
“Don’t talk like that! He doesn’t eat stinky tofu! You can’t eat it!”
Jiang Chu instantly fell silent.
His eyes widened as he stared at Sheng Xun.
Only later did Jiang Chu learn the truth.
The reason Sheng Xun had made him wear white shirts was because the person he loved but could never have often wore white shirts.
When Sheng Xun took him to get his hair cut, he would carefully explain every detail to the hairstylist, specifying exactly how each part should look. That was because the other person had the same hairstyle and the image of it had been deeply engraved in Sheng Xun’s mind.
The toiletries, bathing products and perfume Sheng Xun had given him were all products that the other person liked to use.
Sheng Xun couldn’t stand the scent of any other products clinging to him. Whenever he caught that familiar fragrance on Jiang Chu in bed, he would become especially excited and passionate.
Sheng Xun had asked him to learn the piano because, when he had first seen that person during middle school, the other person had been playing the piano in the lobby of the school’s teaching building.
Sheng Xun had asked him to learn dancing because that person had majored in dance. Once, while abroad, that person had performed a classical dance in a public square and earned applause from the entire crowd.
The love and tenderness Sheng Xun had shown Jiang Chu had all been an illusion.
Sometimes, Sheng Xun seemed to treat him like a god, as though he were someone worthy of endless admiration.
But that was only because Jiang Chu looked like his own idol.
Jiang Chu had bent his spine, carrying his shattered self respect in his hands. He had stood beside Sheng Xun with his feet planted on a bed of thorns.
He wasn’t afraid of the pain.
As long as Sheng Xun loved him firmly and wholeheartedly, he could endure anything.
Only then did he realize that standing on thorns would bring nothing but blood. It could never awaken the first buds of spring.
Jiang Chu didn’t close his eyes for the entire night.
He felt like a joke.
A joke that would smile and smile, only for tears to begin streaming down its face.
The next day, Sheng Xun apologized to him.
He was extremely sincere and told Jiang Chu that he was willing to continue living together with him just as they were.
He even invited Jiang Chu’s mother to a meal to apologize and personally drove Jin Wanwan to the railway station afterward.
That day, Jiang Chu was in a daze.
Afraid that his mother might notice something was wrong, he used his busy work schedule as an excuse, ate a simple meal with her and then went to the company.
While Jiang Chu was trying to learn more about the person Sheng Xun regarded as his idol, Sheng Xun’s mother summoned him to their home.
That was where he met him.
The person named Gu Mengchen.
It happened to be Sheng Xun’s mother’s birthday. Everyone had dressed up for the occasion and Gu Mengchen was no exception.
He wore an exquisitely tailored white suit, looking every bit like a prince.
The two of them really did look alike.
The moment Jiang Chu saw him, he finally accepted the reality he had been trying to avoid.
Sheng Xun’s mother walked over to Gu Mengchen and spoke to him affectionately. Standing together, the two of them looked as close as a mother and son.
Jiang Chu had barely looked at them for a few seconds before Sheng Xun roughly dragged him into a room.
With nervousness and anger evident in his voice, he scolded him, “What are you doing here? Leave! Hurry up and get out of here!”
“No.” Looking out of the window, Sheng Xun spoke to himself more than to Jiang Chu. “You can’t leave right now. They’ll notice. Just stay here and don’t come out.”
That day, Jiang Chu felt like something shameful that had to be hidden from everyone.
He remained in that small room for four hours.
During the fourth hour, he received a phone call from a neighbor back home.
“Chuwa, you need to come back quickly. Your mother, she… she’s not going to make it much longer.”
It was only then that Jiang Chu learned what had happened.
His mother had suddenly fainted and been taken to the hospital. After undergoing examinations, she had been diagnosed with heart failure.
The doctor told her that she needed a heart transplant.
When she heard that the transplant, along with the long term use of anti rejection medication afterward, would cost approximately one million yuan, she became extremely hesitant.
She felt that the remaining years of her life weren’t worth that much money. They wouldn’t be able to gather such a large sum in the first place and she didn’t want to place such an enormous burden on her son.
At that time, she had desperately wanted to come and see her son.
It was during that visit in his fourth year of university, when Jiang Chu saw how haggard she looked and assumed that she was merely suffering from motion sickness.
The reason she had suggested selling stinky tofu near the university that time was because she had already begun leaning toward giving up treatment. She simply wanted to spend as much of the remaining time she had left in her life with her son as possible.
After her son returned to the university, she spent an entire day walking around the area, asking about rental prices and making inquiries.
Later, when Jiang Chu told her that it wouldn’t be suitable, she didn’t argue or say much. She simply accepted his words, prepared a few meals for her son and then returned home.
The second time she came to visit her son, she had actually been hesitating over whether she should tell him about her illness. She hadn’t expected something like that to happen.
On the way to the railway station, Sheng Xun drove at an extremely high speed. Both the front and rear windows were wide open and the bitterly cold wind blew fiercely against her face.
She couldn’t bear it any longer and asked him awkwardly, “Could you close the windows a little?”
Sheng Xun replied, “Auntie, it’s better to leave them open. This car cost more than three million yuan. What if the smell gets into the car and we can’t wash it out? It would be a waste to throw it away but keeping it would make me uncomfortable.”
She awkwardly closed her mouth.
With both hands wrapped around her arms, she curled up in the corner of the seat.
Sheng Xun told her everything.
He told her that he and Jiang Chu had started dating in their second year of university and that they intended to remain together for the rest of their lives.
“But he has a disabled mother who sells stinky tofu and our entire family finds it impossible to accept him.”
“Actually, it’s not just our family. He’s such a good looking, clean person and he used to be quite popular at school but the moment his classmates hear that his mother sells stinky tofu, they start feeling differently about him.”
“It’s the same at the company. He’s very capable at his work but because of his background, people look down on him everywhere he goes. Yesterday, when you were standing outside the company building, they were all upstairs pointing at you and laughing.”
“Could you come less often? Just let him live a little more comfortably.”
“I’ve always wondered how good Chuchu could have become if he didn’t have a mother like you.”
That day, Jin Wanwan made the entire journey home with tears streaming down her face.
Ever since her husband had died, her son had been the hope that kept her going through the difficult years.
No matter how hard she worked outside, whenever she returned home and saw the dinner her son had prepared for her after finishing his homework, she felt that life was still wonderfully sweet.
Her son was simply too good.
He was obedient, sensible, filial, well behaved, excellent at his studies, kind hearted, handsome and exceptionally intelligent.
She often wondered how she could possibly have given birth to such a wonderful son.
He was so good that sometimes, he didn’t even seem like a son who could belong to someone like her.
And yet, she had become a burden to such a wonderful child.
A worthless life like hers wasn’t worth that much money.
After returning home, she was admitted to the hospital.
But the very next day, she forced herself to climb out of the hospital bed and refused to stay any longer.
She wanted to leave more money behind for her son.
Her son would probably need to buy a house in the big city someday, wouldn’t he?
If he kept living under someone else’s roof, people would look down on him.
Although the small amount of money she could save would be insignificant compared to the cost of a house, she still wanted to save whatever she could.
She firmly refused the heart transplant and forbade anyone from telling her son.
After all, in many situations, being someone without either a father or a mother might be more respectable than having a disabled mother who sold stinky tofu.
It was only when she was close to death that the neighbor could no longer bear to watch and finally called Jiang Chu.
After hearing the news, Jiang Chu wiped away his tears and pushed open the door.
Under Sheng Xun’s furious glare, he walked up to Sheng Xun’s mother, lowered his head and said, “Give me one million yuan now and I’ll leave Sheng Xun.”
The glamorous people filling the room looked at him with different expressions.
Among them were the members of the Sheng family who had once mocked him with cutting sarcasm, the senior executives at the company who had deliberately made things difficult for him and Sheng Xun’s white moonlight.
Jiang Chu kept his head lowered, gritting his teeth and refusing to let his tears fall.
But his shoulders trembled faintly and his back curved slightly under the weight of everything he had endured.
Sheng Xun’s mother said, “You’ve finally realized that you and our family belong to two different worlds, haven’t you? Wouldn’t it have been better if you’d taken the money and left from the beginning?”
“I’ve met plenty of people like you in my life. You held on for so long for nothing more than the hope of getting more money. In fact, the amount I initially intended to give you was never going to be less than this.”
Jiang Chu took the one million yuan.
Under the gazes and whispers of those people, he walked step by step out of the Sheng family’s front door.
The moment he stepped outside, he contacted the hospital in his hometown.
He transferred the money directly to the doctor and immediately began making his way home.
But it was already too late.
He had arrived one step too late and failed to see his mother for the last time.
After his mother’s funeral was over, Jiang Chu encountered two children from the old neighborhood on his way back.
The two children looked at him with faces full of admiration.
The little girl said, “Big Brother, I know you. You’re the most outstanding person from our hometown. You’re the pride of our school.”
The little boy nodded. “Yeah! Our teacher talks about you all the time. We all look up to you and we want to learn from you.”
Jiang Chu, who had always managed to maintain his composure, suddenly broke down at that moment.
He burst into tears and ran away.
He thought about the way he had looked beneath Sheng Xun’s body.
He thought about how, even after learning that Sheng Xun had only been treating him as a substitute, he had still gone to the Sheng family’s home when Sheng Xun’s mother summoned him, carrying a faint, foolish hope in his heart.
He thought about the way he had stood beneath the gazes of everyone in the Sheng family, holding up his phone and displaying the payment QR code as he accepted the money.
He thought about how, in truth, he hadn’t even needed Sheng Xun to say anything.
He himself hadn’t wanted his mother to sell stinky tofu at the university’s food street.
Because he really had felt ashamed.
Ashamed of her at that university.
Ashamed of her beside Sheng Xun.
Countless scenes overlapped in his mind.
Regret, guilt, hatred, grief and hopelessness flooded every part of him, consuming him from the inside out.
So much so that he failed to notice the truck turning around the corner.
The vehicle struck him, sending him flying several meters away.
When Su Qingyu saw this part of the story, he still felt that, as the second world, this mission didn’t seem any more difficult than the first.
Perhaps Xu Yunhan’s obsession and unwillingness to let go weren’t any less intense than Jiang Chu’s.
It wasn’t until he saw what came afterward, the turning point that felt like a cruel joke played by fate, that his thoughts changed.
Jiang Chu and Sheng Xun had actually been the children who had been switched at birth.
Jiang Chu was the biological son of Sheng Xun’s parents.
And Sheng Xun was Jin Wanwan’s biological son.
✦ ✧ ✦
Cressilia
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
✧ Your mission, should you choose to accept it: FEED THE TRANSLATOR. ✧
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
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ChaptersChapter 30 · Fengdu Underworld (1)Chapter 31 · Fengdu Underworld (2)Chapter 32 Part 1 · The Humble Young Master (1)Chapter 32 Part 2 · The Humble Young Master (1)Chapter 33 Part 1 · The Humble Young Master (2)Chapter 33 Part 2 · The Humble Young Master (2)Chapter 34 Part 1 · The Humble Young Master (3)Chapter 34 Part 2 · The Humble Young Master (3)Chapter 35 · The Humble Young Master (4)