Chapter 233: Gu Tinghao Wants Divorce
Gu Tingting took one look at the situation between the siblings and saw that Lin Yuxia was crying, so she immediately separated them and made them stand in different corners for their time-out.
Even as he was being marched away, Lin Longyi was still muttering under his breath, “It’s a younger brother.”
Sheng Wanyan was completely amazed. She had never expected that a child as young as Lin Longyi could possess such a formidable talent for nagging.
His endless muttering was actually making her a bit dizzy. To avoid being thoroughly brainwashed by his theories, she quickly slipped upstairs to her room to rest.
Downstairs, Grandpa and Grandma Gu let out a collective sigh. Clearly unable to endure the psychological torture for another second, they threw on their coats and headed out to visit an old friend. Neither of them could stay in the house a moment longer.
“It’s a brother!” Longyi’s distant voice echoed one last time.
Lin Yuxia slumped against the wall. She couldn’t even find the words to argue back anymore, so she just kept weeping.
By the time the rest of the family returned from their holiday visits, the two children were sitting on opposite ends of the living room sofa—one at the head and one at the foot. They both had their tiny faces turned completely away from each other, refusing to speak.
Anyone with eyes could tell the siblings were locked in a massive feud. When Lin Junhu walked through the front door and saw his children in such a state, he cast a questioning glance at his wife, who was sitting nearby.
The moment Lin Yuxia spotted her father, her lower lip pouted out, and she sprinted over to lodge a formal complaint. Lin Junhu scooped his daughter into his arms, gently wiping the tears from her eyes.
“Is your brother nagging you again?”
“Mm-hmm!” Lin Yuxia nodded heavily.
Lin Junhu was entirely accustomed to this routine. His daughter rarely cried under normal circumstances, but whenever she did burst into tears, it was invariably because her brother had nagged her to her breaking point. He honestly had no idea why his son was so incredibly talkative. Neither he nor his wife were the type of people who liked to waste words. If the boy didn’t possess a face that looked identical to his own, he would have suspected they had taken the wrong child home from the hospital.
Mother Gu had also returned from her visit, and she immediately pulled her little granddaughter into her arms, coaxing her for a long time. As for why she made no effort to comfort Lin Longyi—well, she simply wanted a bit of peace and quiet. It was better to leave such a grueling task to the boy’s biological father.
With the intervention of the elders, the siblings eventually executed a tentative truce.
The moment Gu Tingxiao returned, he went straight upstairs to check on his wife. He found Wanyan fast asleep, clutching a corner of the quilt with her mouth slightly open. He reached out and gently wiped a trace of sleep from the corner of her lips, his eyes filled with pure, doting affection.
“Sleeping just like a little piggy,” he murmured softly.
Gu Tingxiao sat down at the writing desk to read for a while. Checking the watch on his wrist, he noted it was nearing the dinner hour and gently called her to wake up. Wanyan blinked open her eyes in a daze, and Gu Tingxiao pulled her up, letting her lean her weight against him while her mind cleared.
He retrieved her heavy coat from the chair and wrapped it carefully around her shoulders. “You can go right back to sleep after we have some dinner.”
“Mm.” Wanyan rested her face against his broad shoulder, turning her head obediently as he helped her into her sleeves.
When the family assembled for dinner, Gu Tinghao and little Gu Jingjing had yet to return. The elders assumed the Wang family had kept them behind for the evening meal.
But halfway through the feast, the front door rattled open, and Gu Tinghao walked into the dining room. He looked thoroughly grim, holding a fiercely weeping Gu Jingjing in his arms.
“What on earth happened?”
Mother Gu immediately rose from her seat, taking the hysterical girl into her arms to comfort her. Gu Tinghao stood rigidly by the table, his face masked in a dark, ominous shadow as he remained entirely silent.
“Alright, alright, sweetheart, stop crying,” Mother Gu soothed, wiping the tears from her granddaughter’s face as the child wept so hard she could barely catch her breath.
“Mommy… Mommy says she doesn’t want Jingjing anymore! Waaah!” Gu Jingjing sobbed, repeating the devastating phrase over and over.
“Our Jingjing is such a good, well-behaved girl. No one is going to abandon you,” Mother Gu countered fiercely, her heart breaking. “Even if your mother doesn’t want you, your grandma does! Alright, hush now… your beautiful little face is completely flushed from weeping.”
Under Mother Gu’s patient care, the little girl’s heavy sobs gradually began to subside.
“Let her eat some food first. Don’t let the child go hungry,” Grandma Gu intervened, casting a sharp look at Gu Tinghao. “Whatever needs to be discussed can wait until the little one is taken care of.” Some matters were entirely inappropriate to air in front of a child.
Mother Gu personally served Gu Jingjing her favorite dishes, watching over her until she finished her meal, before escorting her upstairs to tuck her into bed.
Once Gu Jingjing had finally drifted into a secure sleep, Mother Gu marched back downstairs to demand an absolute accounting of what had transpired at the Wang estate.
“Speak,” she commanded, settling onto the sofa. “What exactly happened over there?”
Gu Tinghao found the words incredibly difficult to form. He swallowed hard, casting a deeply guilty, apologetic look toward Gu Tingxiao.
“Wang Chunmei… she wants to arrange for Jingjing to be adopted…”
Hearing this, Mother Gu’s hands paused mid-air, her face draining of all expression. “Oh? Don’t tell me she wants to sign the girl over to the Wang line?”
Gu Tinghao’s expression grew infinitely worse. His wife only ever remembered her maiden family when a grand fortune or advantage was on the table; if a burden like raising a daughter was involved, she would never allow the Wangs to suffer the expense.
“No…”
Mother Gu let out a cold, mocking sneer. “Then she intends to pawn the child off on someone else?” She was well aware of Wang Chunmei’s calculating nature, but if the woman thought she could discard a descendant of their house to outsiders, the Gu family would be the first to crush the attempt. “Tell me exactly what your wife is plotting.”
Mother Gu refused to beat around the bush any longer. She wanted to measure exactly how her son had handled the confrontation. She needed to see where his true allegiance lay.
“She… she wants the third brother and sister-in-law to adopt her…”
The moment the words left Gu Tinghao’s mouth, he quickly averted his eyes, not daring to look at Gu Tingxiao’s face for fear that his brother might launch across the room to strike him.
Hearing the grand scheme, Mother Gu was caught between a wave of pure fury at Wang Chunmei’s underhanded calculations and a dark urge to laugh. At the very least, the woman hadn’t attempted to smuggle Gu Jingjing entirely out of the clan.
Gu Tingxiao’s expression remained perfectly unreadable upon hearing the plot, while Sheng Wanyan merely raised an eyebrow in sharp amusement.
Everything finally clicked into place. Wanyan now understood why Wang Chunmei had exhibited such uncharacteristic, sugary enthusiasm upon their arrival, constantly engineering scenarios to force Gu Jingjing into their company. A brilliant, calculated trap had been waiting for them all along.
Fortunately, little Jingjing wasn’t a stubborn or unperceptive child. While she fiercely craved maternal security, her ultimate desire was simply to have a family who stood behind her; she refused to operate as a pawn to be discarded. During her stay at the main villa, entirely insulated from her mother’s toxic manipulation, the little girl had finally measured her true worth within the clan. Every single soul in this household cherished her—her mother was the singular exception.
Initially, the girl had privately hoped to become the daughter of her gentle third aunt, but she had since realized that a formal title didn’t matter. Her third aunt would protect and love her implicitly simply because they were family.
Mother Gu’s face turned completely black with rage, while Father Gu and the two elderly patriarchs looked entirely thunderous. Wang Chunmei’s scheme was a blatant, calculated provocation designed to shatter the fraternal harmony between the Gu brothers. The exact second she initiated a public uproar demanding the third branch absorb her child, how were Gu Tingxiao and Gu Tinghao supposed to face each other as brothers? How dare this short-sighted woman attempt to fracture a generational family alliance for her own petty convenience!
Old Master Gu let out a fierce, guttural snort, slamming his teacup onto the solid wood table with a deafening crack. Gu Tinghao flinched violently at the sound, his head dropping as he entirely lacked the courage to meet the old general’s lethal gaze.
Sitting nearby, the second sister, Gu Tingting, was thoroughly stunned by the sheer, suicidal audacity of her fourth sister-in-law.
“What absolute garbage!” Mother Gu roared, her rage boiling over as she swept her own porcelain cup off the table, sending it shattering across the hardwood floor. “There isn’t a single honorable soul within that entire Wang household! They trained their daughter to plunder her own husband’s division capital, and now they’ve trained her to abandon her own flesh and blood!”
She turned a blistering look on her fourth son. “Look at the magnificent, prize wife you fought the world to marry!”
Mother Gu was profoundly disappointed in him. She truly couldn’t fathom what kind of underhanded magic Wang Chunmei had deployed to rot his common sense. How had he allowed himself to be utterly ensnared by such a treacherous creature?
Gu Tinghao’s complexion was deathly pale, a wave of profound weakness paralyzing his limbs. He had never anticipated that the woman he loved would harbor such a cold, mercenary blueprint for their daughter.
