"How could anyone just abandon a child like this?" One of the sisters held Fang Zichen in her arms and wouldn't let go. "It's really baffling. If it were me, I couldn't bear to part with him—even if he were as ugly as a gourd, I'd still treasure him, because no matter what, he's my own." She looked at Mother Fang and teased with a laugh, "Sister, you already have two sons. Why not give Xiao Chen to me? I truly adore him."
"You wish," Mother Fang said. "If you don't mind, I'll make up a million to you, and you can take his second brother away instead."
The young sister quickly declined. They were close friends and spoke without filter: "Forget that! Your second boy is such a little menace—I'm afraid if I took him home, he'd tear my house down."
Last time the young sister visited the Fang family, Second Brother Fang had secretly taken her high heels after she took them off and snapped them in half. In the end, he stuck two wheels onto them and glued them back together. Mother Fang gave him a spanking, but Second Brother Fang looked wronged and genuinely thought he'd done nothing wrong. He dodged and shouted, "Auntie said her feet hurt! With wheels on, she'd be comfy walking. Mom, why are you hitting me?"
He'd meant well, so it didn't feel right to hit him either.
Even now, the young sister couldn't help but laugh at the memory: "Other than bringing Xiao Chen home, your second son is just unreliable in everything he does."
Unreliable...
Yu Ying listened to their chatter and paused for a moment. Fang Zichen had been taken aside to play. She watched him for a long while, then leaned in and said quietly to Mother Fang, "Back then, did we just assume too much?"
Mother Fang asked, "What do you mean?"
"I mean, your second son found Xiao Chen in a trash bin."
Any normal person would immediately think the child had been abandoned—because what is a trash bin for? It's where you throw things you don't want.
But now that Yu Ying thought about it, something didn’t add up. There are only two main reasons people abandon a child: either they don't want it, or there's something wrong with the child.
But back then, the baby's umbilical cord hadn't even been cut. His limbs were all there—he seemed to have all his arms and legs, a nose, and eyes. Unless one had X-ray vision, there would be no way to tell if something was wrong with him.
So that meant they just didn't want him?
But...
There could be another possibility too.
Mother Fang understood what Yu Ying was getting at. She thought for a moment and unconsciously looked over at Fang Zichen.
Fang Zichen came running over with a ball in his arms, tilting his head up. He was drenched in sweat, his little face rosy, small and soft, and he called out to her: "Mom, do you want to play too? Xiao Chen will give you the ball—let's play together!"
Mother Fang ruffled his hair, her heart melting into a puddle.
How could anyone not love a child like this?
After sending him off to play, Mother Fang fell silent for a while. In the end, just to set her mind at ease, she said, "Then go ahead and look into it for me."
If he had been abandoned, that was one thing. But if he had been stolen, and then for some reason the kidnapper dumped him in a trash bin—how frantic must his real parents be?
Putting herself in their shoes, Mother Fang felt that if it were her, she'd probably go mad.
And besides, by the same logic—though she put her career first and had mostly left her first two children to the nanny—that didn't mean she didn't love them. On the contrary, her children meant more to her than anything. The reason she worked so hard was, first, because she was ambitious and that was how she'd been raised, and second, because she wanted to give them the best possible life.
Mother Fang could also tell that although Fang Zichen was young, he had a strong sense of pride. The fact that he had been abandoned and then subjected to people's pointing and whispering had left a mark on him. Even though he kept saying it was no big deal, Mother Fang could see that he was hurting inside.
She wanted to get some "closure" for him, and also put her own mind at rest.
When she got home, she told Father Fang about it. He thought for a moment, then said, "It's not a bad idea to look into it. It won't take much effort, and at least we'll know the truth of the matter."
There hadn't been many cases at the bureau lately, and Yu Ying was free. She went back and pulled the old files from that year. The deeper she dug, the stranger it got.
The baby had appeared in the trash bin right after birth. Judging by how he looked and how damp he was, he couldn’t have been more than an hour old.
He was covered in amniotic fluid and quite a bit of blood, sticky and matted with mud and small gravel. There was nothing else with him.
The gravel and mud had been sampled and sealed back then.
At the time, they'd assumed it was a routine abandonment case. The bureau was busy, and on top of that, the Fang family had adopted the child, giving him a home, so they didn't investigate further. But now, when Yu Ying dug deeper, she found something off.
The mud was from cliffside soil, and the gravel, after analysis, turned out to be a special type of rock found only in certain areas—mostly in the rocky, craggy regions of northern China.
City A was in the south. So how could gravel from that far north be on the baby's body?
If it had come from up north, that didn't make sense either. The baby was only an hour old. North and south—from the north to their city, even an airplane couldn't get there that fast, unless he'd been strapped to a missile and fired over.
Could someone have planted that gravel on purpose—to throw them off?
In the end, she couldn't dig up anything more. Four years had passed, the surveillance footage from back then was gone, and when she checked the records, no one had filed a missing person report. So the case went cold again.
If a child had really been lost, the parents would have reported it.
That meant he really had been abandoned.
When Yu Ying came over to tell them this, Mother Fang let out a huge sigh of relief and felt at peace.
Fang Zichen had been playing with toy trains with Second Brother Fang nearby and caught a bit of the conversation. But he was young and still a little resistant to the whole topic, so he didn't take it to heart. Over time, he forgot about it.
But now, all of a sudden, it was coming back to him.
He was past that angsty teenage phase. If he hadn't personally experienced time-travel, anyone who told him it was real would have been promptly escorted to a mental hospital by him.
He'd always believed he was a modern person—that idea was deeply rooted. Even now, he wasn't about to jump to wild conclusions. Even with his mysterious background, after living over a decade in the modern world, if he suddenly time-traveled and saw someone who looked just like him, he wouldn't assume that person was his dad—that would be grounds for someone else to drag him to the asylum instead.
If he ran into Meng Ruqing now, he probably wouldn't think much of it. At most, he'd say, "What a coincidence in looks—whoever's uglier loses."
Feng momo's words back then had made him cringe with embarrassment, and he'd long since shoved them to the back of his mind. If she brought it up again now, he'd definitely notice something was wrong.
Him looking like Meng Ruqing could be a coincidence—after all, they were both devastatingly handsome guys. He'd seen videos before where a reconstructed image of Yang Yuhuan looked like a certain modern actress, so that wasn't strange.
[Yang Yuhuan (杨玉环, 719–756 CE) — aka Yang Guifei (杨贵妃), she was the beloved consort of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang dynasty and one of the legendary Four Great Beauties of ancient China.]
But his youngest son also looked like Qin Hengxuan—now that couldn't be a coincidence, could it?
Could coincidences stack up like that?
Absolutely not.
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