DLWAV CH72

Even the Xia family themselves were stunned by the string of revelations Ao Ruizhe kept throwing out one after another.

And online, the public had already started cursing outright.

[She was carrying some other man’s bastard in her belly and still had the nerve to ask for an 8,000 yuan bride price—that was 8,000 yuan twenty-five years ago. That’s like 200,000 yuan today.]

[When my uncle married into our family back then, my family only gave 2,000 yuan as bride price.]

[Wait, who is Su Yiyue, and who is Xia Yuanzheng?]

[You still don’t know? Xia Yuanzheng is the head of the Xia family. You know the Xia family, right? The one behind Xiafeng Group?]

[As for Su Yiyue, she’s the biological mother of Xia Ruizhe and Xia Lewen. Seven years ago, she married Xia Yuanzheng and brought Xia Ruizhe and Xia Lewen with her.]

[Xiafeng Group? You mean the Xiafeng Group I’m thinking of? No wonder when we tried digging into Xia Lewen and Xia Ruizhe’s family background before, we couldn’t find anything.]

[PS. I know all this because I’m also in the circle. I’m telling you the truth because my family has a bit of a grudge against the Xia family. I’m staying anonymous because I’m afraid of retaliation from the Xia family, so don’t try to dig up my identity.
—And do you know what the most important part is? Back then, the reason Xia Yuanzheng suddenly married an ordinary divorced woman like Su Yiyue—who had two sons—and brought her into the Xia family was that he claimed Su Yiyue had once saved his life. On top of that, Su Yiyue was crude and vulgar, Xia Ruizhe was always pulling ridiculous stunts and embarrassing the Xia family, yet Xia Yuanzheng remained as devoted as ever to Su Yiyue and treated Xia Lewen and Xia Ruizhe like his own sons. Because of all this, his reputation in the Qianshi business circle has always been very good.
A few years ago, when the vice president of a foreign company called Leip came to China to inspect potential business partners, he heard about this matter. It just so happened that the company he had originally planned to inspect had some problems, so that vice president directly changed the partner to Xiafeng Group—after all, who wouldn’t want to do business with someone who knows how to repay kindness? Because of this, Xiafeng Group’s stock surged by twenty points that year, and even now, Xiafeng Group still receives nearly 500 million yuan in orders from Leip every year.]

[Xia Yuanzheng, someone who repays kindness? Hilarious.]

[Wait, actually, put that way, it does make sense.]

[Because before Xia Yuanzheng married Su Yiyue, he had just found out he was infertile. Then Su Yiyue turned around and handed him a biological son. So wasn’t marrying Su Yiyue exactly his way of repaying kindness?]

[I was wondering the same thing. They’re both stepsons in a billionaire family, so how come Xia Lewen can casually throw out five million to buy himself a leading role in a movie, while Xia Ruizhe had to live in the dorms just to attend university?]

[But if Xia Yuanzheng knew full well that Xia Lewen was his biological son, why didn’t he just openly acknowledge him?]

[Isn’t that obvious? Because Xia Yuanzheng wasn’t the founder of the Xia family—he was only its heir.
And there are quite a few people in the Xia family’s collateral branches eyeing the position of family head.
If he really confirmed Xia Lewen’s identity, it’s hard to say whether Xia Lewen would even have survived to adulthood.
What’s more, as long as he had no biological son under his name, wouldn’t the collateral branches have to rack their brains trying to please him in hopes of inheriting his estate? That way, he could continue sitting steady and secure.]

[???? No wonder Xia Ruizhe said that Xia Lewen used to constantly stir up trouble between him and the collateral branches of the Xia family. So he was obviously using Xia Ruizhe as a human shield—]

[Damn, so the whole Xia family is just full of villains!]

[No wonder when Xia Ruizhe was participating in Rural Revitalization Project, he threw away the food Xia Lewen gave him. If that were me, just throwing the food away wouldn’t be enough—I’d’ve smashed it straight into Xia Lewen’s face.]

[@XiaLewen, Xia Ruizhe has already slapped the paternity test right in front of everyone. Stop playing dead. At least give us netizens who spoke up for you before—and your fans too—an explanation, will you?]

Seeing this, even Xia Lewen’s fans couldn’t help asking:

[@XiaLewen, so is everything Xia Ruizhe said true?]

[So back when Xia Ruizhe was participating in Rural Revitalization Project, were all those incidents he went through really something you and the production team cooked up together?]

…

But a portion of fans still clung to hope:

[Fake. This all has to be fake. Our Lele is such a kind person—how could he possibly do something like that?]

[@XiaRuizhe, do you know defamation can land you in jail? Just wait for the Xia family’s court summons.]

But the vast majority of the public remained clear-headed.

[Everyone knows defamation can land you in jail now. If that paternity test weren’t real, how would Xia Ruizhe dare expose all this online so directly?]

So a few minutes later, the matter shot straight to the number one trending topic.

Half an hour later, Xiafeng Group’s stock hit the daily down limit.

Inside the Xia family villa, Xia Lewen’s face had already twisted.

“Impossible. How could Xia Ruizhe possibly know about these things?”

Most importantly, Xia Ruizhe had somehow obtained the original cut of Shang Tree—and that had happened half a year ago. In other words, it meant Xia Ruizhe might have been planning to deal with them as early as six months ago.

And he hadn’t noticed a thing.

No, rather, none of that was what mattered now.

What mattered was—

Xia Lewen’s face instantly turned pale.

He stiffly raised his head.

At the head seat, the Xia patriarch’s face had gone completely dark.

He looked at him, furious beyond measure. “Useless.”

With that, he stood up directly and strode out.

Because the moment Ao Ruizhe posted those Weibo messages, he had already issued a strict order to Xiafeng Group’s public relations department to suppress the matter immediately.

But half an hour later, it had still made it onto the trending list. It didn’t take much thinking to know that the families and companies hostile to the Xia family had definitely intervened.

So now, he had to personally return to the company and take charge.

But that still wasn’t the most important thing. The most important thing was that the Xia family’s reputation was ruined, and the excellent position he had worked so hard to maintain would no longer exist.

And the matter was still continuing to ferment.

[As expected, wealthy families are always full of drama.]

[Who would’ve thought? Xia Ruizhe actually really was innocent.]

[Suddenly I feel bad for Xia Ruizhe… wait, why is it that I somehow can’t bring myself to pity him at all?]

[Same.]

[Because the moment I think of him, I can’t help remembering all the ridiculous stunts his brain-dead fans pulled…]

Seeing this, Ao Ruizhe: “…”

His manager, who had rushed over in a panic: “…”

Ao Ruizhe turned directly to look at his manager.

Who would have thought that her expression was even more complicated than his? “We’ve already investigated the matter thoroughly.”

“You probably won’t believe it, but those brain-dead fans really weren’t sent by someone on purpose to smear you…”

When she had first seen the investigation results herself, she hadn’t believed them either. So she had specifically sent a second group of people to investigate it again.

—Otherwise, why would this matter have taken her so long to look into?

But they really were all Xia Ruizhe’s fans.

Including the fan who said that even if Xia Ruizhe looked down on rural people, it was the rural people’s own fault.

Even though most of them were quite young, and a few of them weren’t even adults yet.

Ao Ruizhe: “…”

Now that was a bit troublesome.

The manager felt the same way.

So much so that she completely forgot why she had hurried over in the first place.

And almost at the same time, in the general manager’s office of Wanhai—

Having spent the whole day restless and unable to stop paying attention to the trending topics, Qin Xiuyan finally let out a sigh of relief when he saw that public opinion had completely turned around.

Then, the moment he exited Weibo, he saw the message Ao Ruizhe had sent asking to borrow money.

Qin Xiuyan hadn’t really taken the matter to heart in the first place. He directly called his secretary in and told him to transfer another two million yuan into Ao Ruizhe’s account.

The secretary fell silent for a moment, but in the end said nothing, merely nodded and withdrew.

As a result, that same evening, when Qin Xiuyan was already lying in bed and, right on schedule, took out his phone to browse Moments, he discovered that Ao Ruizhe had not only posted a video of himself shirtless in the gym working out, but had also uploaded a photo of himself tilting his head back to drink water, sweat sliding from his Adam’s apple all the way down to his abs.

Qin Xiuyan: “…”

Even so, somehow… it still felt like something was a little strange.

But what no one expected was that the Xia family’s response came the very next day.

The Xia patriarch directly held a press conference.

In front of dozens of reporters, he only said:

“The truth is, if Ruizhe had not posted that paternity test report, I would never have known that Lewen was actually my biological son.

It is true that my wife, Ms. Su Yiyue, once jumped into rushing river water to save me at the risk of her own life when I accidentally fell in. It was precisely because of that that I chose to pursue her again.

And I have never concealed from the outside world the fact that before we were married, my wife, Ms. Su Yiyue, and I once had a relationship. On this point, including Mayor Qianshi, Mr. Chen Geng, chairman of Baiwei Group, Ms. Liao Jia of Chaoyang Technology… all of them can testify for me.

It’s just that a small misunderstanding happened between us back then, so we broke up not long afterward.

But what neither of us expected was that at the time, my wife Su Yiyue was already pregnant.”

At his side, Su Yiyue also wore a face full of apology.

“After my ex-husband Mr. Xia Zhou learned that Yuanzheng and I had broken up, he pursued me passionately.

I admit that I married Mr. Xia Zhou while harboring resentment toward Yuanzheng, and that at the time I truly did not have much affection for Mr. Xia Zhou.

My family’s conditions were not very good back then, so when I realized I was pregnant, I did not go to a major hospital for an examination. I just casually found a doctor at a small clinic to take a look. So when Lewen was born two months early, all of us only thought he was premature.

Because Lewen was in poor health when he was born, and because my former in-laws had already passed away, it was always my ex-husband Mr. Xia Zhou who took care of me. Because of this, I truly made up my mind to live properly with him. Otherwise, later on I would never have become pregnant with Ruizhe as well.”

…

“As for why Ruizhe was made to live at school, it was not because we treated him harshly, but because he had made some mistakes at the time, and we wanted him to suffer a little and learn his lesson.”

At the side, Xia Lewen also said:

“Ruizhe misunderstood me. I never drove a wedge between him and the other cousins in the Xia family, because I never had any thoughts about the Xia family in the first place. Otherwise, why would I have gone into the entertainment industry later?”

“But I never expected that Ruizhe would still misunderstand us.”

The Xia patriarch continued, “For this, we feel very sorry.

To make up for it, I have decided to gift Ruizhe one of the office buildings under my name on Changning Street, and at the same time donate 500 million yuan to charity in the name of Mr. Xia Zhou…”

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