It turned out that when they asked, they found out it was a romantic mess their son had stirred up. Lin Guozhi didn’t say a word and gave Lin Yinghui a slap. From childhood till now, he’d never really disciplined his son. These past few years living together, his son had satisfied him in every way and had never once let him down. But what happened today caught them completely off guard; they never saw it coming.

After slapping Lin Yinghui, Lin Guozhi’s heart ached too. His son was already so grown, and hitting him like that was a bit much, but the slap had already landed, and maybe it’d serve as a lesson. Then Lin Guozhi took his son into the study and personally asked him what had happened, to see what was really going on.

When Lin Wan came home with Saozi, she caught sight of the woman in the living room at a glance. Neither of them had expected that woman would actually come to their home to make a scene. As soon as Saozi saw her, she got anxious, pointed at her, and said, "Who told you you could come here?"

The woman snorted at them, then smiled and touched her belly. "I’m pregnant with Ah Hui’s child. What can a woman like me do? I can only come over and ask Ah Hui if he wants this child or not. And have your parents judge it fairly while I’m here. Their son did something like this; he can’t just wash his hands of it. I’ve already suffered a loss as a woman, and if I get beaten by you on top of that, wouldn’t that be a huge injustice to me?"

"Xiao Wan, Qingqing, you’re back," Liang Hongmei came out from inside just then. Hearing what this woman said, she let out a sigh. Then she looked at Qingqing and said, "It’s all our fault as parents, we didn’t discipline Ah Hui properly, that’s why something like this happened."

"Mom, don’t say that, this isn’t your fault. I know about this whole thing, and you mustn’t let yourselves be fooled by this woman. She’s the one with bad intentions who deliberately climbed into Ah Hui’s bed. At the time Ah Hui was drunk like a puddle of mud, how could he possibly have touched her? Who knows which man’s child is in her belly. Now that she sees our Ah Hui is easy to talk to, she wants him to be the sucker."

"This..." Liang Hongmei was a bit stunned by what her daughter-in-law said and was momentarily confused.

She hadn’t known things like this even existed in this world.

"What was your name again? Wang Rui, right? Such a neither-male-nor-female sounding crappy name. Basically you’re just a piece of goods. Climbing into another woman’s man’s bed without his consent—I really have never seen someone as shameless as you. You sleep next to him for one night and you can get pregnant? Then what, from now on if people just hold hands they’ll pop out a whole pile of kids? You want to pin it on my man, at least come up with a decent excuse. Using this kind of lame pretext, who would believe you?"

"Plenty of people would. Just now your uncle and aunt believed me, didn’t they? As long as I yell about this outside, believe it or not, eight or nine out of ten people will stand on my side. Don’t forget, I’m a woman, the victim here. I came today just to tell you: the child is already here, your Ah Hui has to give me an explanation. Either you give me money, enough to make me satisfied, or you divorce her and marry me. It’s up to you to decide."

"Mom, you see that? See how arrogant this woman is? I’m telling you, you can’t go soft on women like her. She’s the one claiming the child is my brother’s, right? I heard that now you can do an amniocentesis to test DNA. Let’s see whether this child is actually my brother’s or not." Lin Wan said to her still-dazed mom.

Now Liang Hongmei finally understood—so this woman had come to extort her son. The things she’d just said clearly showed she wasn’t someone to be trifled with.

"Comrade Wang Rui, we still don’t have the full picture of what you’re talking about. As the elders in this family, we need to hold a family meeting and figure out exactly what happened. If this really is my son’s responsibility, we absolutely won’t shirk it; we’ll definitely think of a way to resolve it. But if it isn’t, then what you did today gives us every right to sue you. Our family isn’t someone just anyone can extort. Before you do anything, you’d better think it through. I won’t keep you today; you should go back for now. Once we have a result, we’ll contact you ourselves." As Liang Hongmei spoke, she made a "please" gesture, then said to Lin Wan, "Xiao Wan, see our guest out. And don’t go dropping her. Make sure she leaves the compound in one piece."

Lin Wan smiled faintly, then turned to the woman who’d been so overbearing just moments ago and said, "Comrade Wang Rui, do you need me to hold your arm?"

"No, no need." Wang Rui had assumed that in a situation like this, the parents would at least do what they did earlier—give their son a beating and then believe what she said. After all, she was a woman, and the woman is supposed to be the victim. But now the situation seemed to be shifting in a different direction.

Wang Rui’s mind spun, and she decided it wasn’t suitable to stay any longer today; she needed to go back and discuss countermeasures.

Lin Wan shot Saozi a look, then followed alongside Wang Rui to see her out.

On the way, Lin Wan kept observing this woman. Her looks were decent, she had some beauty, but compared to her sister-in-law, she was a bit short. Her brother had always liked tall girls; someone like this wasn’t his type at all.

Besides, her brother was always so attentive to her sister-in-law; they’d been married for so many years and were still glued together like newlyweds. How could he possibly have done something like this?

The only problem lay with this woman. Lin Wan analyzed it and figured she must have taken a fancy to her brother’s family background and had done her homework on them.

"Comrade Wang, which department are you in?" Lin Wan suddenly asked.

"The testing department, with only one office between me and your brother." Wang Rui answered truthfully.

"...Oh. I think there are quite a few female comrades in my brother’s department, right? I’ve seen them, they all look pretty good. But my brother is at least a minor section chief now; he has his own office, and his dealings with you should all be in an up–down relationship. As far as I know, my brother gets along very well with his colleagues and has never flirted with anyone. Going by what you’re saying, he probably hasn’t spoken much to you at all, has he... Ah, could it be that that night, you deliberately insisted on walking my brother back to his room? And then took advantage of him being out cold to strip off his clothes?"

"I... How would a woman like me take the initiative? It was your brother who forced me. I’m a woman, how could I possibly be stronger than him?"