After Lili finished asking, Uncle Gazi spoke in a heavy tone, “This is about Xuanxuan. You need to prepare yourself mentally.”
The moment those words came out, Lili’s expression changed instantly.
She snapped back to her senses and quickly picked Xuanxuan up from the sofa, holding her tightly in her arms.
She looked at Uncle Gazi with guarded eyes.
“What about Xuanxuan? She just has a cold. She’ll get better soon.”
Uncle Gazi frowned. “This child was never ours to begin with. Sooner or later, when her real family comes looking, we’ll have to return her.”
Lili’s expression shifted slightly, as if she was trying hard to control her emotions.
“Her parents are already dead.”
“They’re not.” Uncle Gazi looked at her.
“They’ve already sent someone to us. In two days, they’ll come to see her. Whether she’s their child or not—we’ll know then.”
Before he even finished speaking, Lili’s lips began to tremble.
“Who are they? And who agreed to let them come see her in two days?”
“Her parents. I agreed,” Uncle Gazi replied.
When it came to matters of principle, he always stood firm—no compromise, no wavering.
A trace of anger appeared in Lili’s eyes.
“Her parents are dead! And who gave you the right to agree on my behalf? Is Xuanxuan your child or mine?”
“Lili…” Jundi spoke up, trying to remind her not to talk to Uncle Gazi like that.
As if suddenly remembering something, Lili turned to look at all of us.
Her expression was extremely unpleasant.
“So you all knew about this too? And you all just naturally agreed to give Xuanxuan away to someone else?”
None of us could answer.
We stayed silent.
After a moment of thought, Uncle Gazi said, “Getting emotional won’t change anything. If she truly is their child, then when they come, you have to return her!”
He rarely spoke this harshly, and even more rarely with such a stern expression.
Watching the anger in Lili and the stubborn resolve in Uncle Gazi, the rest of us exchanged glances, unable to find the right moment—or the right words—to step in.
……
Our decision, made without her consent, did not earn Lili’s forgiveness.
From that afternoon on, she locked herself and Xuanxuan in the room.
She wouldn’t eat, and she wouldn’t respond when we knocked.
By nighttime, Xuanxuan was probably hungry.
Her cries grew louder and louder.
We prepared milk outside the door and repeatedly promised to just pass in the bottle so she could feed the baby—but Lili still didn’t respond.
Normally, Lili couldn’t bear to let Xuanxuan go hungry.
Even a short cry would make her anxious.
But now, Xuanxuan had been crying for at least half an hour.
Even we were worried she might hurt herself from crying so hard, yet Lili still refused to open the door.
In the end, with no other choice, Shen Feng found a key ring that had keys to all the rooms and unlocked the door.
Inside, Xuanxuan was lying on the floor, crying so hard her entire face had turned red.
Lili was lying on the bed under a blanket—whether she was asleep or pretending, no one could tell.
Han Xue stepped forward and picked up Xuanxuan.
Jundi handed her the milk bottle.
After signaling them to take the child outside first, Uncle Gazi let out a heavy sigh, walked over to the sofa, and sat down.
Facing Lili’s back, he asked, “Girl, tell me—what do you want to do?”
All of us stood quietly to the side.
After a long while, seeing that Lili still didn’t respond, Xu Shu spoke up, “We know you’re not asleep. If you have something to say, sit up and say it. We can figure something out together. Locking yourself in here, not eating or drinking, and dragging Xuanxuan into this—what’s the point?”
Something in Xu Shu’s words must have struck a nerve.
Lili suddenly sat up, her eyes red, glaring at us as she spoke bitterly:
“What is there to say? Didn’t all of you already decide everything behind my back? And now you’re pretending to come discuss it with me?”
“That’s not it, Lili,” Shen Feng tried to explain.
“That person came to us first. They must have confirmed everything before sending someone. A lot of people around here know how Xuanxuan came to our home. Since they said so, we had no choice but to agree for now…”
But the more he explained, the worse it got.
“Stop talking!” Lili snapped.
“I understand what you mean! I picked up someone else’s child for no reason and caused you all trouble. She gets sick today, cries tomorrow—you’re all annoyed, right? She’s used up your milk powder, wasted your supplies—I get it!”
“What are you even saying?” Uncle Gazi frowned, clearly upset.
He had taken care of Xuanxuan the most. “Point out who thinks like that! If anyone did, would we have raised her this long? Every time she got sick, weren’t we all worried sick, running around to take care of her? How can you say something so heartless?”
Lili seemed to realize she had gone too far.
Her expression changed, and after a long pause, she said, “No matter what, I will not give Xuanxuan back.”
Uncle Gazi slammed his hand against the arm of the sofa and stood up with a snort.
“No matter what—you will return this child to her real parents!”
After that, he shot Lili one last look and stormed out, his face full of anger.
We stood there, unsure whether to follow him out or stay.
In the end, we could only awkwardly say a few words to comfort Lili before quietly leaving the room.
We pulled Shen Feng and Han Xue—who were better with words—over to Uncle Gazi to try and calm him down.
After a long round of persuasion, his expression finally softened a little.
Looking at Tingyun and Xiaohu beside him, a trace of weariness and helplessness flashed across his aged face.
He turned to us and said:
“You kids don’t know… back then, our Yuntou was taken by child traffickers once too.”
“Taken?” Han Xue asked.
“Yeah.” Uncle Gazi nodded, as if reliving the moment.
“Back then, her parents were working out of town. I was just an old man taking care of a child—it was already hard to keep up. Whenever there were weddings or funerals in the village, people would come ask me to help, and once I got busy, I couldn’t keep an eye on her. By the time I realized, she was gone. I searched everywhere and couldn’t find her… At that moment, my heart… it hurt worse than being cut by a knife. The whole village went crazy looking for her. I even thought—if Yuntou was gone, I’d just hang myself from a tree at the village entrance.”
“We searched for an entire day. In the end, we found her tied up in a wheat field in the village. I’ve never cried my whole life… but when I saw her that day, I just couldn’t hold it in.”
As he finished speaking, Uncle Gazi seemed to sink into the memory again.
His cloudy eyes grew moist.
I reached out and gently patted him.
He wiped his face and said to us:
“So if someone loses a child, and we don’t know, we help them look. Now that they’ve come to our door, how can we just keep the child and not return her? That girl Lili… she’s lost her head.”
……
That evening, when Bruno came over and heard about what happened, he frowned and thought for a long time.
Then he got up and went upstairs into Lili’s room.
They stayed together for quite a while.
Even when I took Xuanxuan upstairs to sleep, he still hadn’t come down.
The next day, Lili still didn’t come out and still refused to eat.
That night, Bruno came again.
After exchanging a few words with us, he went upstairs to her room once more.
Finally, the day Uncle Gazi had arranged arrived.
Lili came out of her room at last.
After not eating for two days, she looked noticeably weaker.
She didn’t say anything after coming downstairs—she just took Xuanxuan from my arms and quietly asked, “When are they coming?”
As soon as she finished speaking, Lu Jinchuan’s polite voice came from outside the door.
After inviting him in, Lili looked at him calmly.
Lu Jinchuan immediately focused his gaze on Xuanxuan.
After observing her for a moment, he turned to Uncle Gazi and asked:
“When can we arrange for the child to meet her parents?”
Before Uncle Gazi could respond, Lili answered, “Anytime.”
The couple had been stopped at the gate by security, so Uncle Gazi and Lu Jinchuan went to bring them in.
The moment the middle-aged man and woman stepped through the door, I almost instantly knew—Xuanxuan was definitely their child.
The woman, though no longer young—probably in her thirties or around forty—had facial features and expressions almost identical to Xuanxuan’s.
The instant she saw Xuanxuan, she burst into tears.
Standing beside the man, she stared at the child blankly, not daring to step forward and hold her.
The man was also visibly emotional, though more composed.
After listening to Lu Jinchuan explain the situation, he repeatedly bowed to us in thanks.
He didn’t mention at all that we had kept the child for so long—only thanked us for saving her life and taking such good care of her.
The moment Lili saw that woman, it was as if all the strength had been drained from her body.
Her eyes remained fixed on the woman’s face, unmoving, even as Xuanxuan climbed out of her arms onto the sofa.
……
After that, I didn’t really hear what anyone was saying—what the couple said, what the others discussed.
I just kept staring at Lili.
The almost vacant expression on her face made me uneasy.
I don’t know how much time passed, but eventually, when Xuanxuan’s mother picked her up and called out another unfamiliar name— that was when it finally hit me.
Xuanxuan was really about to be taken away.
Lili still didn’t react.
She just stared at Xuanxuan, who was in the woman’s arms, reaching out her little hands toward her again and again—her face expressionless, with no response at all.
It wasn’t until long after Lu Jinchuan had escorted the deeply grateful couple out the door that Lili seemed to suddenly come to her senses.
She abruptly stood up and rushed out after them.
Seeing this, I instinctively ran after her.
Luckily I reacted quickly—just a short distance out the door, I managed to grab hold of her.
Gone was her earlier calm and numbness.
Now she looked almost hysterical, her eyes red as she stared fixedly at the figures in the distance.
I had to use nearly all my strength just to hold her back.
— The end of the Chapter–
TL note : Join Patreon to support the translation and to read up to 50 chapters of the release :
https://www.patreon.com/DeCakraWnloverz
