Mei Yanlan’s reaction nearly made Xiao Cheng pass out from sheer anger. He sat on the sofa for a long while before he could breathe normally again. Then he grabbed the cushion beside him and hurled it across the room.

“So you think I’m joking? You think I’m just saying things?” he snapped. “Fine. Just you wait!”

He wasn’t some woman who got pregnant and suddenly became too burdened to go through with a divorce. Let her regret it. And when the time came, unless she begged properly, he wouldn’t forgive her.

Imagining Mei Yanlan’s face when she saw the divorce papers and realized too late what she had done, Xiao Cheng immediately called his lawyer and told him to prepare the agreement. He would wait for her to come home that night and scare her out of her wits.

But Mei Yanlan didn’t come home that night.

He called several times before she finally picked up. “Go to bed early. I’ve got too much going on here. I’m not coming back tonight.”

She hung up before he could say a word.

He was so furious he dropped to his knees on the sofa and punched the cushion over and over.

The next night, Mei Yanlan still didn’t come back.

The Zhou family case was too big and implicated too many people. Arrests, interrogations, evidence checks—there was simply too much to do, and the Tribunal Division was stretched thin. It wasn’t like the old days. Anyone willing to work for the Tribunal Division now had to be the kind of person with nothing to lose, someone who wasn’t afraid of their family or friends getting dragged into it. Otherwise, who would dare stand with Qiu Fa and go head-on against the Atavist families? Atavists like that were rare.

And the Zhou family scandal was still spreading. People waited with bated breath, hoping for an outcome that would finally satisfy them.

“I’ve made up my mind. If I don’t speak up now, then when? If I let this chance pass, how many more people will Zhou Yongzi hurt?” After days of hesitation—after failing to hear what she had been waiting for in those recordings, and realizing the guilty party might still walk free—she finally made her decision.

“Then I’m in too,” came the hoarse voice on the other end of the line.

They opened their computers and typed powerful, sharp words into accounts that had been silent for years. Their fingers paused for only a moment before they hit post.

They had once all been top actresses, blazing stars in Hualan’s entertainment industry—the kind of stunning women who could get away with murder on looks alone.

Now they all had one thing in common:

They were disfigured.

Some had once had acid thrown in their faces. Some had been burned. Some had had flesh cut from their faces with knives, leaving damage that not even surgery could repair.

So they disappeared from the public eye and, in time, were forgotten.

“Zhou Yongzi.” Covering her cheek, she murmured the name under her breath, hatred burning in her eyes.

At last.

At last this day had come.

Back then, Zhou Yongzi had been an ugly little girl consumed by jealousy over their beauty, so she sent people to do that to them. At the time, everyone believed it had been the work of some psychotic anti-fan. She had believed it too.

Until one day, a little visitor came to her hospital room.

It was Zhou Yongzi—ten years old.

She had already been in unbearable pain, her body wrecked, her mind on the edge of collapse, yet she still had to force herself to receive this so-called “little fan” from a powerful family.

“You’ve got the wrong idea. I’m not your fan,” the girl had said, her eyes shining with the vicious delight of a child who enjoyed hurting people. “I just came to see how badly you were hurt. If it’s not enough, I can have someone dump another bottle on your face.”

There had been no proof. To say anything would only have gotten them killed. So for all these years, they had done nothing but live with the hatred and pain, urging one another to hold on.

And then last year, they saw Zhou Yongzi on television.

That ugly little monster had transformed into the Goddess’s Daughter, wrapped in a persona of beauty, kindness, and professionalism, as if she truly were some heavenly daughter sent to shower the world with happiness.

It hurt them more than ever.

With the Zhou family in trouble, this was their one chance. They had to tear off her mask.

Post successful.

A moment later, they froze.

Because their accounts were locked almost at once.

Even their side accounts went down with them.

And when they opened the trending list, they saw a tag so sharp it felt like a blade across the skin:

#PoorZhouYongzi

There was almost nothing in Cheng Feili’s evidence that could directly nail Zhou Yongzi. After taking those things from Chu Xurao, Zhou Yongzi had forbidden anyone in the family from speaking of it. Anyone who did got punished, as if silence alone could erase her ugly past and make it seem as though she had been born looking this way.

And Cheng Feili had gathered evidence by drawing people out as a psychologist. Asking too directly about Zhou Yongzi would have raised suspicion. She regretted it, but there was nothing she could do. All she had hoped was that once the Zhou family’s true face was exposed, Zhou Yongzi would be dragged down with them.

But without proof, there was room to twist the story.

Zhou Yongzi’s agency had already begun scrubbing her clean.

The comments looked like this:

[Does Zhou Yongzi have to know everything the Zhou family did? How many people are in that family? Aren’t there over a hundred living together in that house alone?]

[Adults don’t show children their worst side either. How many people only find out their dad cheated when their parents are already getting divorced?]

[There are good people in the Zhou family too. Didn’t the recordings mention Zhou Qian, the one who secretly saved people? He’s Zhou Yongzi’s real brother. Who’s to say she never did the same?]

[How many Atavist families in history have ever thought highly of ordinary people? Zhou Yongzi chose to enter the entertainment industry and entertain the public. She treats her fans well and works hard. That proves she’s different from other Atavists.]

[Is it really that hard to admit that some people stay clean even in the mud? What era is this? Are people seriously still trying to punish relatives by association?]

[Poor Zhou Yongzi, stuck with a family like that.]

Zhou Yongzi had exploded in popularity as soon as she debuted, and she had a huge fanbase. Her talent was mediocre, but she had spent years killing time online at home, so she knew the entertainment industry’s tricks inside and out. Maybe it was also because she had debuted only recently and her persona was still holding strong. Either way, her fans refused to believe she was one more creature crawling in the same muck.

“Yongzi, don’t worry. What your brother did is actually helping the cleanup on your side,” her manager said over the phone, trying to soothe her. “And even if that boy comes out into the open, it won’t matter. You and his sister don’t look exactly alike. Are their eyes the only ones in the world allowed to mutate? There are plenty of lookalikes out there.”

“I’m not worried,” Zhou Yongzi said.

She looked down on Zhou Qian and his laughable attempt to shake a tree with one ant’s strength. She had never expected that one day she’d have to make use of him.

But use him she would.

She felt no shame about it at all.

And she wasn’t taking the Zhou family’s current crisis that seriously either. She believed her father could handle it. She believed he’d be out of the Tribunal Division before long.

“Long Jin and Chu Xusheng—I won’t let either of you off,” Zhou Yongzi said through gritted teeth. “Especially Long Jin. If she hadn’t stuck her nose where it didn’t belong, none of this would have happened.”

She had slept badly for days, too furious to rest, turning over one method after another in her head for how to get rid of the two of them, yet never finding one that would work.

Chu Xusheng was being fought over by too many families now, and Jing Pei’s atavist purity was too high. Anyone strong enough to beat her wouldn’t take Zhou Yongzi’s orders. And though she had been spoiled all her life, her low purity and poor-quality genes had long since disqualified her from ever becoming family head, so she had never been properly taught how the atavist world worked. What she knew was patchy and vague.

Then, all at once, someone came to mind.

Right—the information broker who had recently become something of a name among the Atavist families. Could that person be of some use? Wasn’t Long Jin’s reputation in the atavist circle built on that broker’s information? Without that intelligence, would she have been able to pull any of this off?

With that thought, Zhou Yongzi decided to try her luck. She got someone to track down the email address and sent a message:

[Hey. You know Chu Xusheng, right? I want him dead. Give me whatever information will make that happen.]

She would test it first. If the intelligence really could get Chu Xusheng killed, then she would pay for information on killing Long Jin next.

A little while later, the broker replied:

[No problem, dear customer ^^]

…

Chu Xusheng sat in the cafeteria, looking at the online campaign to whitewash Zhou Yongzi. His face darkened.

Someone sat down across from him.

Chu Xusheng looked up and saw a member of one of the Atavist families. Like the others, he had been circling around Chu Xusheng for days. He had been eager to flatter Chu Xusheng before, but that tone was gone now.

“It’s been days. Are you still not done making up your mind?” he asked.

“So what if I’m not?” Chu Xusheng frowned, impatience flashing over his handsome face.

The man gave a cold snort. “You’d better learn when to stop. You’ve seen the shift online, haven’t you? If you think you can string us along and use us like a gun, you’re dreaming. Our patience isn’t endless, and we’re not going to destroy an entire family over a possibility. If you choose sooner rather than later, then once your main family has your answer, they’ll at least be willing to help you vent a little more anger.”

The Atavist families weren’t fools. They had already shown their sincerity, yet Chu Xusheng still refused to give any definite answer. Of course they were starting to think twice.

And even if he did choose one of them, all they could really do was help him vent some anger. That was all. The other families would stop making trouble for the Zhou family, and some would even retaliate by helping them instead.

Once the others cooled off and no longer bothered to interfere in disputes between families, taking on the Zhou family one-on-one would become even harder.

Zhou Yongzi’s rehabilitation campaign was their warning shot to Chu Xusheng.

The man delivered the message and left. The people from the other families felt much the same. Some simply had better manners and knew how to make the point without making it sound quite so ugly.

But to Chu Xusheng, it all meant the same thing.

His fist slowly clenched.

Even so, he still gave no answer.

And on the day of Wu Ying’s birthday, the warning escalated.

…

By then, after days of nonstop work, the mood inside the Tribunal Division had begun to sink fast. A heavy gloom settled over everyone.

Qiu Fa stood there with a cigar between his teeth, thick brows locked tight, anger shadowing his hard face.

The assistant said, “Several witnesses suddenly changed their statements. They’re saying they were mistaken and that it had nothing to do with the Zhou family. Director, if this keeps up, in the end we’ll only be able to jail a few minor Zhou family members. The real culprits might walk out tonight… Damn it. We’ve worked this case for days, and it’s going to end like this…”

Mei Yanlan leaned by the window. Beneath the two horns on her head, the gold bell-shaped ornaments caught the light and flashed bright. “The other families must be helping them behind the scenes. They put on that show of sincerity because they wanted to trick a retainer into joining their household. When he still wouldn’t agree, they turned on him. Honestly, I’m not surprised.”

If bringing down one of the great Atavist families were that easy, the government would not have been helpless for all these years. Those families protected one another like roots underground, tangled together and gripping tight in every direction.

Public outrage online?

They could just cover people’s mouths, wait a while, and the talk would die down—just like every other time.

But each time this happened, it left another mark in people’s hearts, deepening the divide between ordinary humans and Atavists. One day, that conflict would explode for good.

What kind of disaster it would bring when it did—no one could know.

The Zhou family head, for his part, was not surprised in the least. Did the Tribunal Division really think this alone would be enough to bring the Zhou family down? Wishful thinking.

He instructed the family lawyer, “Tell A-Qian to keep a close eye on his sister. She’s to stay away from Long Jin and that Chu boy. She’s to stay inside and wait for me to come back.”

Then he paused and added, “And tell her to stay away from the other families too. Those bastards only care about their own interests. They won’t spare a thought for whether someone else’s family lives or dies.”