The Zhou family was in complete chaos. Who had any attention left to spare for that insignificant woman who’d run away? The evidence online made it clear enough—this had all been done by Zhou Yikai’s wife, Cheng Feili.

The family head roared for someone to drag her in, only to learn that Cheng Feili had already left with Zhou Yikai the night before.

In the original story, Cheng Feili had released the evidence before boarding the airship. This time, she sent it out in the morning—after she had already reached another country and settled into the place she’d arranged in advance. No matter how far the Atavists’ influence stretched back home, it wasn’t so easy for them to run wild on territory that wasn’t theirs.

Besides, the Zhou family had no time to deal with Cheng Feili right now.

The whole family was in an uproar, the head of the household barking out one order after another.

Then—bang.

Someone had kicked the door open.

The Zhou family head turned. He’d expected this, but the moment he saw Qiu Fa—the living god of death himself—leading a whole squad of enforcement officers inside, grim and bristling with menace, the flesh in his cheeks still twitched.

In all the Zhou family’s long history, they had never taken a fall this hard.

…

The mastermind behind all of it was watching the show with great delight, lips curving higher and higher. She was even humming, looking for all the world like someone who lived to stir up trouble.

Long Yiming, on the other hand, had his brows locked tight, his face grave. “Won’t the Zhou family start holding a grudge against us? If you hadn’t meddled, that bug wouldn’t have pulled this stunt, and those people wouldn’t have pushed things behind the scenes to make a mess of the Zhou family.”

At the end of the day, the Zhou family had brought this on themselves.

But people like them would never reflect on their own sins. They only knew how to blame others.

“A grudge?” Jing Pei drained the last of her milk, got to her feet, and said, “Wow. I’m terrified.”

“…Then maybe wipe that smile off your face first.”

Still humming, looking very pleased with herself, Jing Pei headed off to school, leaving Long Yiming and the rest of the Long family behind with matching looks of worry.

They were starting to realize something.

Their young heir might be a little crazy. How could she act like she feared nothing at all?

And yet she also looked so sharp, so self-possessed, that little by little… , she was making them feel safe. If she did things this way, then surely she had a plan. Surely she wasn’t just acting on impulse.

The Twelve Zodiac Academy was lively as ever. Everyone was talking about the Zhou family’s collapse, guessing what would happen to them this time. With a scandal this big, wouldn’t the Tribunal Division have to take the whole family down?

And apart from the Zhou family, of course everyone was curious about Chu Xusheng—the Insect race Atavist who had thrown the atavist circles into turmoil over the past two days.

“Does he have to start from first year?”

“He has to, obviously. Unless he can do what Long Jin did and grind his scores straight up.”

“Whoa. Can he?”

He could not.

One second, Chu Xusheng had still been sneering over the Zhou family’s downfall and the rot now laid bare for everyone to see, the fire of revenge in his chest still blazing and far from satisfied.

The next, he was sitting among a group of children barely bigger than grade-schoolers in the first-year classroom, his face burning red with shame.

Wh-what was he supposed to do? He was a high schooler. Why was the Twelve Zodiac Academy set up like this? This was humiliating. Everyone was about to find out he was an idiot at school. Why? Couldn’t they at least give him time to cram first?!

If he ended up becoming her retainer one day, would he make her lose face too?

If he’d known this day was coming, he never would have spent all that time skipping class, fighting, and playing king of the campus.

Now he was too embarrassed to go over to the seventh-year building to look for Jing Pei—especially after hearing about what she’d done on her first day at school.

During breaks, members of all the major Atavist families came to him one after another, inviting him to this event or that. Chu Xusheng turned them all down.

That is, until the Wu family invited him to the young heir’s birthday banquet.

“Long Jin will be there too?”

“Of course,” the Wu family member said at once. “Young Miss Long Jin and our young heir are close friends. They’ve been through life and death together.”

And that part was true enough. Whether it was a tortoise shell or a reverse scale, those were the most important things on their bodies. Back then, when the Wu family learned that Wu Ying had actually lent Jing Pei her shell, plenty of them had reacted like the sky was falling.

Now they all brought it up like a point of pride.

Wu Ying’s eyes practically rolled into the heavens every time.

So Chu Xusheng nodded and accepted the Wu family’s invitation.

…

That day, all of Hualan was losing its mind over the Zhou family’s crimes.

Everyone except Xiao Cheng.

Xiao Cheng was the one on the verge of losing his mind.

At three in the morning, he had finally managed to fall asleep after getting furious with Mei Yanlan. Then the phone rang and woke him up. He was told that Fang Bihe had swallowed sleeping pills and tried to kill herself.

By the time he rushed over, the housekeeper told him she had already forced Fang Bihe to vomit and gotten the pills back up.

Fang Bihe sat by the bed, hair damp, face pale, looking miserable and pitiful. When she saw him, her reddened eyes lifted to meet his.

She gave him a weak smile. “Sorry, A-Cheng. I told her not to call you, but I’m useless now. Who takes me seriously?”

“Why would you do something like this? Bihe, you weren’t like this before. Why can’t you think things through?” Xiao Cheng was pained and angry, but beneath that was a restlessness and disappointment he couldn’t put into words.

“What was I like before?” Fang Bihe let tears fall and spoke in a wounded voice. “Running after my ex-husband? Throwing myself at him and refusing to give up no matter what? But my heart is made of flesh too. It can only take so much hurt. A-Cheng, if you don’t love me anymore, then tell me now. I might not be able to go on living, but I don’t want to drag you down.”

What had happened at the class reunion—Xiao Cheng walking off with Mei Yanlan and ignoring her—had hit her hard. It had filled her with a powerful sense of crisis, especially after learning that Mei Yanlan was not the lonely old maid they had imagined, but a woman with three ex-boyfriends—

No. Maybe even more than three.

Damn it. She had thought she’d found some meek, easy man she could control, only to realize she’d let a wolf into the house. Suddenly everything made sense. No wonder Xiao Cheng had grown harder and harder to handle. No wonder his expression changed every time divorce came up.

The thought made Fang Bihe grind her teeth with rage. She had tried to scheme against someone, only to get played herself. She wasn’t going to let this end there. Xiao Cheng had loved her for years. Could that really lose to the short time he’d spent married to Mei Yanlan?

Even if Xiao Cheng had fallen for Mei Yanlan, there was no way he could let go of Fang Bihe that easily. She didn’t even care whether he loved her or not. As long as he married her and let her spend his money, that was enough.

So she put on the helpless, vine-like act of a woman who couldn’t survive without him.

Just as expected, guilt crossed Xiao Cheng’s face.

So she pressed harder. “You must be disappointed in me. I’m not like Yanlan—so free and easy, able to love so many people, able to let go of a past relationship so easily, so strong.”

Xiao Cheng’s face darkened just as she knew it would.

Fang Bihe could already picture the thoughts running through his head.

I can’t bear to lose Yanlan, but Bihe needs me more.

So she gave him another push. “And she’s pregnant too, but it doesn’t seem like she cares all that much. She still went out drinking with her old classmates.”

She said it on purpose. She wanted Xiao Cheng to feel that Mei Yanlan didn’t love him. For a man with a strong sense of pride, that kind of thing hit hard.

And sure enough, his expression turned grim.

It was like his stomach was cramping from anger—

though for some reason, his hand seemed to have gone to his belly instead.

After dragging it out for a while, Fang Bihe saw that he really did look awful, anger written all over him, and decided the time was right to let him go. She no longer cared whether Mei Yanlan had the baby or not. What did she need a child for? If this dragged on any longer, she was about to lose her meal ticket.

At dawn, Xiao Cheng came home exhausted from head to toe.

Just then, Mei Yanlan came downstairs in a red dress. She was dressed far better than before—at least she no longer looked like the old-maid stereotype from a TV drama—and she was clearly on her way out, heels clicking on the floor.

He demanded at once, “You’re going out?”

“Yeah. I’ve got work.”

“Didn’t you promise you’d come with me to the Atavist hospital today?”

He was going there to end the pregnancy.

Or at least, that had been the plan. He truly wanted to do it. He still couldn’t accept the fact that he was the one carrying a child. But for some reason, he kept hesitating. He could never quite make himself go through with it. This time, he had wanted to see what exactly was in his stomach and how the child was doing.

“Next time. I have to go to work.” Mei Yanlan didn’t even slow down. The Tribunal Division was short on staff, and Qiu Fa had asked her to help.

Xiao Cheng’s temper exploded. “What kind of job is this important? More important than me?”

“Be good. Don’t make a scene. Check the news online if you want. Something big happened.”

“I don’t care what happened!” Xiao Cheng snapped. “Mei Yanlan, just try walking out that door today!”

What Fang Bihe had said had gotten under his skin. It brought back Mei Yanlan’s sudden change in attitude after he got pregnant, along with those three ex-boyfriends. The more he thought about it, the more she seemed like the kind of scumbag man who knocked someone up, figured that meant they were trapped, and started treating them however they liked.

And he was the one who had been knocked up.

Mei Yanlan looked at him in surprise. “Did something really happen to Bihe? That doesn’t make sense. She’s not the type to kill herself over a man.”

What the hell does Fang Bihe have to do with this? Worry about me!

Xiao Cheng saw stars from sheer anger. Mei Yanlan was still trying to leave for work, and he finally shouted, “If you walk out that door today, we’re getting divorced!”

Mei Yanlan looked even more surprised.

Then she was gone in a flash, like oil on the soles of her feet.

…

A phone started ringing in the dark.

Someone woke with a start. In the darkness, a pale hand felt across the bedside table for a while before finally finding the phone and picking it up.

“Look! What goes around comes around—the Zhou family’s in trouble!”

“What?” The person in bed lagged a beat behind, then shot upright. With shaking hands, she hurried onto social media and saw the exploding trending topic.

She opened it. Opened the audio file.

One ugly thing after another came spilling out from inside the Zhou family’s great manor, filthy as a sewer and dark as a demon’s palace.

The corners of her mouth began to lift.

She started pacing at the bedside, excitement building, waiting to hear the one thing she wanted to hear.

But as the progress bar crept forward, her expression slowly changed.

“It’s not there? Why isn’t it there?!”