Chapter 402 - 932: Story!
From the cinema to the arcade, and then to fooling around at the theme restaurant—after several hours, Qin Fan thoroughly relived that feeling of being in love, something he hadn’t experienced for centuries. Although there was no substantial progress, not even holding hands, the happiness he felt was genuinely overflowing.
After leaving Wanda Square, night had already fallen. The city lights shimmered, painting a vibrant scene of bustling nightlife.
"It’s a 7.3-kilometer walk. Would we be crazy to do it?" Facing the night breeze, Qin Fan turned to Jiang Yino.
"You’re the one who just said it’s 7.3 kilometers. You tell me if that’s crazy," Jiang Yino shot him an unamused look. "How long would that even take us?"
"When you can’t walk anymore, I’ll carry you. We can go as fast as you want!" Qin Fan instinctively reached for her delicate hand, but he stopped halfway, pulling it back with a bitter smile.
Seeing Qin Fan’s strange gesture, Jiang Yino blushed awkwardly. What would have happened if he had actually taken her hand just now? She had no idea!
"Well, then... let’s walk! We can just think of it as exercise!" Jiang Yino said with a laugh, masking her awkwardness with a playful tone as she started walking.
Under the night sky, watching their shadows stretch out beneath the streetlights, Jiang Yino suddenly asked, "Great God, can you tell me your story?"
"Story?" Qin Fan paused, an expression that seemed completely out of place for his age flickering across his face. He let out a long breath, stuck both hands in his pockets, and sighed with a wry smile. "Sure, I can. But I’m afraid you’ll cry if you hear it."
"I’ll cry?" Jiang Yino’s brows knitted together slightly. Seeing how Qin Fan’s demeanor had suddenly changed, she looked at him with determination. "I still want to hear it."
"Alright, then. I’ll tell you," Qin Fan said with a self-deprecating laugh and began.
"I was born into a prestigious and powerful family, but that so-called prestige and power had nothing to do with me. It was all because my late grandmother wasn’t my grandfather’s original wife. Back then, my grandfather was obsessed with power and chose a woman who could help him advance, which meant he had to abandon my grandmother.
"But to make matters worse, after leaving her, he had the bright idea to start a secret affair. You know how women are—emotional creatures who tend to live in the past. When he pursued her again, my grandmother chose to forgive him. The tragedy was that she had no idea he was already married.
"It wasn’t until after my father was born that my grandmother learned the man she was devoted to had remarried right after abandoning her. The psychological shock was so great that she chose to cut all ties with him, and he, it seemed, was happy with that outcome.
"Later, the truth came out. Even though my grandmother had severed ties with him, his official wife refused to let her go. Through all sorts of covert torment, she drove my grandmother to her death. At that point, the only ones who knew the real reason she died were those two. Not even my father knew the truth.
"My father was an illegitimate child, after all, and something like that couldn’t be hidden from the world forever. To protect their family’s reputation and prestige, they brought my father back to the family home after my grandmother passed away to become one of them.
"But my father was still a student back then and rarely returned to that house. It wasn’t until after he graduated from university, married my mom, and I was born that they moved their lives back to Jiangzhou. None of us expected this would become a nightmare for our family of three. My parents were both civil servants with stable government jobs, but my so-called aunts and uncles used their power and connections behind the scenes to get them fired.
"During those years, everyone bullied us. They hit my mom, they hit me, they stabbed my mom with needles and slashed her with glass. I became the punching bag for all the children in the family. My cousins, on both sides, all took pleasure in bullying me.
"My mom endured it, and so did I. Back then, I didn’t understand why my parents wouldn’t just leave that house, why we had to suffer that kind of torment. Later, I understood. Staying meant we could endure and bide our time. If we left, we would undoubtedly face even more suffering. They would never let our family go so easily—not unless we were kicked out.
"After that, the bullying wasn’t just at home; it followed me to school. Because those little scumbags from the Qin family instigated everyone, the entire school started bullying me. The number of people who cursed me and beat me was countless. I can’t even remember most of their faces because there were just too many. Even with a good memory, I could never remember them all.
"One day, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I fought back, beating up a guy who was smashing my head against a wall. Because I retaliated, the incident escalated, and his parents stormed into the school demanding an explanation.
"Heh... isn’t that ironic? The most ironic part came next. Back home, the Qin family declared that our very existence was a disgrace to them. My dad tried to defend me, but that old bastard beat him with a stick. And just like that, our family of three was thrown out of the house.
"I remember it was a rainy night. Our family had nothing. We were just soaked in the rain. After sleeping on the streets for a few nights, we learned that my grandmother had left behind a house in an urban village. So, we moved into the old building. We lived on one floor and rented out the others just to make ends meet.
"But even then, the humiliation of my life continued. From that point on, everyone felt even more emboldened to bully the abandoned child of the Qin family. ’Loser,’ ’coward,’ ’good-for-nothing’—all these labels were stuck to me. I didn’t dare resist. When they hit or insulted me, I just took it. I knew that if I dared to fight back, it wouldn’t just be me who suffered—my parents would get dragged into it, too.
"I endured and endured. Later, I met an old man. He taught me martial arts, combat techniques, and even killing moves. I kept a low profile, lying in wait while I painstakingly practiced everything he taught me.
"That lasted until the second semester of my senior year of high school. I couldn’t take it anymore. From then on, anyone who dared to bully me would pay a bloody price. They called me a lunatic, a psycho. They started to fear me, to give me a wide berth. No one dared to be arrogant in front of me again because they were all afraid of death, afraid of being taken down with a madman. For the first time, my life became peaceful.
"Not only that, but I stopped hiding my academic abilities. During a mock exam, I deliberately inverted all my multiple-choice answers to get zero on that section, but I aced every other question. I never thought the teachers grading the papers would actually notice.
"After that incident, they begged me not to mess around during the college entrance exam and to bring honor to the school. On a whim, I got a perfect score. And after that, I came to Jinling for university. That’s my story—the story that has defined my life so far."