Chapter 693 - 464: I Am Not a Bot

"What’s wrong?" Jiangg Ning noticed Chen Yuan’s thoughtful expression. Puzzled, she tilted her head and asked him.

"N-nothing," he snapped out of it and smiled. "I was just thinking about something else."

Jiangg Ning didn’t press him, just assuming that he’d been taken aback by Jiangg Ruxue’s personality.

What could she do? With a mother like that, she felt helpless too.

Jiangg Ning was still holding the pen. A moment later, as if she’d just thought of something, her lips parted slightly.

"That time in the office, when I argued with her... it didn’t scare you, did it?"

"Argued?"

Chen Yuan thought back for a moment. The scene from that day in the chairman’s office immediately came to mind—when Ningning came to ask about her frozen bank card and ended up arguing with Jiangg Ruxue.

’A women’s argument is truly a terrifying thing.’

’A head-on clash.’

’Especially when neither side is willing to give an inch.’

"It was fine. I could understand how angry you were. You’d probably been holding it in for a long time and just let out everything you’d always wanted to say."

’From an outsider’s perspective, anyone would flip out with a mother like that. And she’d squandered every last bit of the inheritance their father left them.’

It wasn’t about the money.

He could feel just how shocked and disappointed Jiangg Ning had been at that moment.

"I was about to lose my mind back then. Making a mistake is one thing, but she refuses to see the error of her ways. She only sees herself and never considers things from anyone else’s perspective... Or maybe she was just pushed into a corner, like a gambler desperately clinging to their last chip, refusing to let go no matter what. But whether they win that hand or not, their life is already a complete failure, because any money they win will just be lost again in the end."

"Right. The way she runs her company is completely outdated. Bankruptcy is just a matter of time. But is she always that fierce? No wonder Jiangg Yao is afraid of her."

"Not always," Jiangg Ning said, shaking her head with a wry smile. "Sometimes she can be very gentle and show her loving, motherly side... You probably won’t believe this, but a while after I went abroad to study, she claimed she was just passing through on a business trip, but she actually made a special trip just to see me. She wanted to check if I was doing okay and not suffering. Before she left, she even rented a new apartment for me and paid several years’ rent in advance."

"Now *that* sounds like something a mom would do," Chen Yuan said, resting his chin on his hand as he listened intently.

"Exactly. If every side of her was just pure malice, I wouldn’t have taken on her debt. I’m a grown-up; Yaoyao and I could live on our own and never come back... But it’s precisely these occasional moments of warmth that make it impossible to ignore our connection by blood."

She thought for a few seconds before continuing, "For Yaoyao, the hatred comes from the corporal punishment and strictness when she was little, which put her under immense pressure. But our mother didn’t really meddle much in Yaoyao’s life, and she barely ever pressured her about getting married. She doted on Yaoyao more, probably because she’s the youngest in the family. Because of that, their relationship isn’t as tense as mine is with our mom."

"Why? You were born only a few minutes apart. Was her treatment of you that different?" Chen Yuan asked, confused.

"Let me put it this way. In her concept of right and wrong, there’s actually a complete, self-consistent logic. That’s because concepts are determined by cognition, and cognition is cultivated in the subconscious. When a person stays in a certain environment for a long time, they are naturally disciplined and reshaped by it. And her mind has a lot of... imprints..."

Jiangg Ning put down her pen and continued in a soft voice, "A warped worldview isn’t formed overnight. In other words, my maternal grandmother was an even worse person. Although I’ve never met her, I’ve been able to piece together an image of her from the little things my mom has let slip over the years... My mom has two sisters, with a significant age gap between them, and she’s the middle child. She and her older sister both hated how their parents doted only on the youngest sister. But when she had her own children, she ironically became the very person she detested... Without a doubt, my grandmother was much worse to her when she was a child. If she was impolite, a beating was considered a minor punishment."

"I get it," Chen Yuan said, nodding as if in sudden realization. "So she was conditioned, too."

"Mhm. Back in that era in Mingzhu City, there were even more rules. And there was a tradition, passed down through the generations, of being calculating. You had to be selfish, to prioritize benefits over feelings, or else you’d be seen as a fool and have a miserable life. That’s why my mom had a premarital pregnancy at nineteen, yet everyone envied her for marrying so well."

It did make some sense.

Those who are hateful often have a pitiful side.

A person’s behavior is determined by their subconscious and their cognition, and the subconscious is an accumulation of conditioned responses over time.

For example, at the dinner table, if a child isn’t taught by adults or doesn’t learn by observation, they won’t know to let the elders pick up their chopsticks first before they can start eating.

A child, driven by appetite and with poor self-control, will instinctively rush to fill their belly without a second thought.

But for the vast majority of Huaxia People, letting elders eat first is an unspoken rule. It’s the same no matter whose home you visit.

That is the result of etiquette being deeply ingrained in the culture.

So what if someone is influenced by negative cognition over a long period? Then the bad things will also become "correct" and take deep root in their heart, creating a self-consistent logic.

Perhaps in Jiangg Ruxue’s logic, making a mistake warrants corporal punishment, and controlling a man’s heart requires "obedience tests," or else you’ll lose him.

That must be why she tried every trick in the book to cause a scene back then, even preventing the sisters’ father from coming home.

And prioritizing her own interests is an even more deeply ingrained habit. After all, if you don’t fight and claw for what you want, is it just going to fall into your lap?