Chapter 1095: A Vicious Vow

He feared that Yi Ling would race out with a chopper in hand if she heard the news.

Lu Yi stopped talking. He had to come up with a way to explain it to the kids, who had only just reunited with their mother after a year of being motherless. And what about Xunxun? She had only just begun to talk again. How will he go about telling them Yan Huan was gone, and that they were on their own once again?

When he stepped into the door, all three of them ran up to him.

Lu Yi hunkered down. Before these piteous faces, he didn’t know what to say. He took all of them into his arms.

“Papa. Is Mama not coming back?” asked Xiao Qi, looking up at him.

“Does Mama not want Xiao Guang anymore?” Xiao Guang broke into tears, wiping his face with his small hands. Did Mama not come back because she didn’t want them anymore? Was she not going to make tasty food for them again? Was it because he had been bad? But he had been good, hadn’t he? He ate properly, deposited rubbish in rubbish bins, and studied diligently.

Seeing her brother’s meltdown, Xunxun dipped her head and stared at her toes.

Mama didn’t want her anymore.

Was it because she was a crybaby? Because she didn’t eat her meat properly?

Lu Yi embraced them tightly. For a moment, all the light went out of his heart. He handled it the first time, but twice was simply too much.

The pain was too heavy to bear, for both him and his children.

That night, Xunxun came down with a dangerous fever that nearly reached 40 degrees. She babbled unintelligibly in her feverish state, crying for her mother incessantly. But where should they be looking to find her mother? Where should Lu Yi be looking to find his wife?

“When are you gonna avenge me, Grandpa?” asked Sun Yuhan. She was terribly skinny. With the state her leg was in, vengeance was the only thing that motivated her to live on.

“She went missing,” said Ye Jianguo, looking at her with an odd expression.

“Who? And why are you looking at me as though I’m responsible for it?” Sun Yuhan touched her face and stared at her useless leg. “Do I look like I could do anything with this leg?”

“Grandpa,” she suddenly covered her mouth and giggled. “You aren’t going to tell me it was Yan Huan that had gone missing, right?”

“You are right. Yan Huan had gone missing,” replied Ye Jianguo grimly.

Sun Yuhan paused, then laughed so hard that tears formed in her eyes.

“Don’t you think it’s karma, Grandpa?”

Ye Jianguo said nothing. His face was grave.

“Tell me, Yuhan. Who do you think did such a thing?”

Sun Yuhan caressed her useless legs.

“Who cares? All I know is I’m grateful for it,” she said unfeelingly. A distorted smile spread across her homely face. “Hasn’t she gone missing once already? It might be the same people again, here to finish up a badly-done job.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Ye Jianguo, rising. His back was slightly hunched. He had really grown old.

When he stepped out of the hospital room, he saw Ye Chuji waiting for him.

“Hmph. Are you here to see your niece, or are you here to interrogate her?”

He was icy toward his son these days. From his perspective, he had raised an ingrate that didn’t give two hoots about his sister’s daughter. How could he hope to call himself a brother, or an uncle?

“I have something to ask you,” said Ye Chuji solemnly. The sight of his father’s rapidly aging face worried him.

“Go on,” said Ye Chuji, shutting the door behind him so that the person inside couldn’t hear their conversation. The hospital door wasn’t that soundproof, however, and Sun Yuhan could hear them as clearly as they could hear her, if she was talking. She was crippled, not deaf.

“Dad. Yan Huan has gone missing,” said Ye Chuji as he studied Ye Jianguo’s expression. Ye Jianguo looked at him coolly.

“You got questions, don’t you? Go on, spit it out.”

“Was it you, Dad?” said Ye Chuji with difficulty. His worst fear was that Ye Jianguo had abducted Yan Huan under Sun Yuhan’s goading. That didn’t seem completely impossible after what Ye Jianguo had done to Xunxun.

“Ho…” Ye Jianguo turned colder. “What do you mean by that?”

Ye Chuji remained silent. That was all Ye Jianguo needed to know what he was implying.

He smiled coldly. “Not bad, Ye Chuji, not bad at all. You even have the gall to suspect your father now?”

Ye Chuji remained silent. Nowadays, there weren’t many people who dared mess with the Lu Family. He couldn’t help but suspected Ye Jianguo, who hated Yan Huan’s guts.

Ye Jianguo’s heartbeat and breathing sped up, but he suppressed his rage in the end.

“Don’t you worry,” Ye Jianguo narrowed his eyes contemptuously. “I’m not so much of an old fool to jeopardize the entire Ye Family for the sake of Yuhan.” If something like that got exposed, the Ye Family would fall to shambles. To Ye Jianguo, the Ye Family’s reputation mattered more than his own life. No matter how much he doted and protected his granddaughter, he wouldn’t give up the century-old family business for her.

“Was it really not your doing, Dad?”

Ye Chuji needed an assurance, a promise. A concrete declaration that he wasn’t the one who had done it.

“My doing? Who do you take me for?” Ye Jianguo wanted to give his son a good beating just like the old times. But the man that stood before him, his son, wasn’t young anymore. He was in his middle age, and some of his hair had greyed. He had evidently grown older.

Ye Chuji still found it hard to relax. He needed an answer; an unambiguous ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Ye Jianguo could tell what he was thinking at one glance.

“Relax. I didn’t do it. If I really did it, let my daughter Ye Rong suffer in both life and death, and let her ashes be taken and scattered in the wilds, so that her spirit wanders eternally and never rest in peace.”