The CEO is domineering, the devil Boss is addicted to pampering

Chapter 1431 Yunrui's Sincere Devotion: Your Dad, I Don't Have a Mom

All the grievances, forbearance, and toil of so many years erupted at this moment. His eyes reddened uncontrollably, and large tears slid down his cheeks, dripping onto the scattered papers and spreading out a small dark stain.

He had never lost his composure like this in front of others, but at this moment, he simply couldn't control his emotions.

Yan Wanqing looked at him quietly without saying a word. There was no sympathy or mockery in her eyes, only an almost indifferent calm.

Gu Yunqian stood to the side, took out a tissue from his pocket, and handed it to Qi Ruixiang. His expression remained calm, but he frowned slightly, seemingly not expecting Qi Ruixiang's reaction to be so intense.

Qi Ruixiang did not take the tissue Gu Yunqian offered, but instead wiped his face haphazardly with the back of his hand, trying to calm himself down.

He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, repeating this several times until his trembling body calmed down slightly. He looked down at the papers scattered on his lap, covered with dense handwriting, as if his mother were telling him something.

He reached out and gently brushed his fingertips across the words, his movements as delicate as if he were touching a rare treasure.

Yan Wanqing's off-white dress accentuated her slender figure, but her eyes held a melancholy that contrasted sharply with her gentle demeanor, like a bottomless, icy pool.

"Why do you think I specifically chose you?" Yan Wanqing's voice was soft, yet it carried a penetrating power, like the autumn fog that seeped into Qi Ruixiang's heart. She slowly bent down, her fingertips not touching the scattered documents, but hovering in mid-air, her gaze falling on Qi Ruixiang's reddened eyes, "Because we are the same kind of people. You don't have a mother, and I don't have a father."

This simple sentence, like a dull knife, gently sliced ​​at their most sensitive spots. There was no sharp pain, but a lingering, aching sorrow slowly crept up, making it hard to breathe. Qi Ruixiang's body jolted violently, his clenched fists turned white at the knuckles, and his nails dug deeply into his palms.

Yan Wanqing's gaze drifted to the window, landing on the bare sycamore tree in the courtyard. Her voice trembled slightly, almost imperceptibly: "Do you think I'm any luckier than you? At least your mother was with you for a while. What about me? I've even forgotten what my mother looks like..."

Qi Ruixiang kept his head down, making it impossible to see his expression. Before long, snickers could be heard from the crowd, clearly indicating that Yan Wanqing's emotional appeal had failed to move him.

“We share half the same blood.” Yan Wanqing’s voice carried an almost compassionate sense of fate. “This bloodline is God’s cruelest joke. It has bound the two most broken people together in the most secret way. Like rootless duckweed, we have been drifting for so many years.”

The living room was eerily quiet, with only the sound of wind rustling through the leaves outside the window and the two people's slightly heavy breathing.

Sunlight streamed through the window, casting dappled shadows on the floor, but it couldn't penetrate the shadows in their hearts.

Gu Yunqian stood aside without saying a word, simply watching everything quietly. His figure appeared somewhat blurred in the light and shadow, like a silent bystander guarding this secret belonging to two broken souls.

Qi Ruixiang lowered his head, looking at the documents on his lap. The dense handwriting seemed to come alive, turning into his mother Qi Zhifang's blurry smiling face, and into Yan Wanqing's figure hiding in the corner.

She walked up to Qi Ruixiang, knelt down, and looked him in the eye. They were so close they could see the brokenness in each other's eyes. "You are his son, the only person he can still hold onto in this world."

Yan Wanqing's voice carried a hint of seduction, and a touch of desperate pleading.

"I want you to interview him, not for any other reason than to see if he feels even a trace of regret when he faces his irresponsible son and thinks about the two families he destroyed with his own hands?"

The autumn wind slipped in through the half-open window, lifting Yan Wanqing's skirt and ruffling Qi Ruixiang's bangs. In Yan Wanqing's eyes, there was hatred, pain, and an almost obsessive expectation. She longed to see Yan Taifeng break down, longed to see that belated repentance—not for forgiveness, but simply to give herself a tragic end to her shattered life.

“I know this is unfair to you.” Yan Wanqing’s voice softened, with a barely perceptible sob. “It’s too cruel to make you face a father who never raised you and even killed your mother. But no one but you can do it. Only you can make him drop all his pretenses; only you can make him taste even a fraction of the pain we’ve suffered all these years.”

Qi Ruixiang's fingers unconsciously caressed the scattered papers, the texture of his fingertips rough and cold, just like his mood at that moment.

He looked at Yan Wanqing, the woman who shared half his blood, the woman with a similarly broken soul, and suddenly felt that fate was truly too mysterious.

They should have been the closest of friends, but because of the grudges of the previous generation, they became each other's only comfort and only hope.

The sky outside the window gradually darkened, the afterglow of the setting sun slowly fading, leaving only the twilight. The light in the living room also dimmed, casting long, intertwined shadows of the two people, like an inseparable destiny.

Yan Wanqing didn't speak again, but just quietly looked at Qi Ruixiang, her eyes filled with a mixture of expectation and despair, like a net that trapped Qi Ruixiang tightly.

Qi Ruixiang took a deep breath. The air was filled with the chill of late autumn, and a hint of bitterness that was hard to describe. He knew that Yan Wanqing's request was a gamble, a gamble on his obsession with his mother, a gamble on their broken destiny.

And he seemed to have no room to refuse. After all, Yan Wanqing held the answer he had been searching for for many years; after all, they were the same kind of people, both living in this world with broken souls, yearning for an explanation.

He slowly raised his head, meeting Yan Wanqing's gaze. Two equally lonely and broken people completed a silent dialogue in the twilight-shrouded living room...

The distinctive smell of disinfectant from the sanatorium completely filled the air. Unlike the warm and elegant atmosphere of the Gu family's old house, the air here was filled with the cold smell of medicine and the musty smell of decay. The white incandescent lights on both sides of the corridor were glaringly bright, reflecting a dazzling light onto the clean floor tiles, and even the sound of footsteps echoed in the empty space.

Yan Wanqing walked ahead, her off-white dress standing out in the monotonous corridor, but it also made her face look even paler.

Qi Ruixiang followed behind her, his hands in the pockets of his faded denim jacket, his fingertips unconsciously curling. His face showed little emotion, only his tightly pursed lips betraying a barely perceptible tension.

When they reached the ward door at the end of the corridor, the caregiver was already waiting by their side. Seeing the two of them approach, she silently pushed open the door.

The creaking sound of the door hinges turning was particularly jarring in the silent corridor, breaking the eerie tranquility of the ward. Qi Ruixiang's gaze immediately fell on the center of the hospital bed, his pupils suddenly contracting for a moment—Yan Taifeng was firmly bound to the bed, his wrists and ankles wrapped in thick restraints, the straps digging deep into the loose skin, leaving dark red marks.

He wore a loose blue and white striped hospital gown, the collar askew, revealing his withered neck. His once meticulously combed hair was now a mess, plastered to his scalp, interspersed with many glaring white hairs. His cheeks were sunken, and his eyes were dark-rimmed. He was a far cry from the dashing figure he once was, a man who had once dominated the business world...

This appearance, devoid of any regard for human rights, stands in stark contrast to the well-dressed, sharp-eyed Yan Taifeng that Qi Ruixiang had seen in the documents.

Qi Ruixiang paused, his hand unconsciously clenching in his pocket, his fingertips brushing against the recording pen he was carrying, a sense of inexplicable surprise welling up inside him.

He had never imagined that this once powerful figure, who could turn the world upside down with a flick of his wrist, would fall to such a state. But that surprise lingered in his eyes for only a moment before he quickly suppressed it, replacing it with an unfathomable calm, as if the tragic scene before him was nothing more than an ordinary sight...