’Fine. If he won’t see the serpent, I’ll have to be the guard dog.’
She knew her strategy was sound: maximize the clinginess, monopolize the affection, and physically block the pursuer. The only way Xu ilin could kill Huaijin or marry Yuanfeng was if she could successfully separate the daughter from the father. And Huaijin, the reborn executive with the fiercely loyal heart, would ensure that never happened.
She would be his anchor, his shadow, his constant, loving, inconvenient presence, a perpetual, unbreakable barrier against the venomous sches of the mini-boss villainess.
The closing of the apartnt door, signaling the abrupt departure of Chi Yuantian and the sinister Xu ilin, left the small apartnt ringing with a silence that felt heavy and complex.
While Yuanfeng busied himself clearing the remains of the hurried breakfast, Huaijin, still vibrating with the nervous energy of the confrontation, moved through the necessary motions of preparing for the day’s schooling.
Her mind, however, was already back on Chi Yuantian, her eldest uncle and Yuanying’s father.
Huaijin zipped up her simple backpack, her small hands moving efficiently. The mory of Yuantian’s rigid posture, his critical gaze, and his palpable tension in the face of his brother’s simple, happy dosticity, sparked a familiar thread of sadness in her reborn heart.
The interaction she had witnessed this morning, Yuantian’s imdiate dismissal of the apartnt and his curt handling of Yuanying, was not just typical family condescension; it was the outward manifestation of a deep-seated, systemic pressure that ran through the entire Chi family.
Chi Yuantian was the eldest son, the designated successor, and yet, the man who was consistently found wanting.
Huaijin was aware of the true history of the Chi Corporation and the patriarchal scrutiny of Grandpa Chi.
The corporate empire demanded a leader who possessed not only business acun but also intellectual brilliance, a commanding presence, and the kind of strategic foresight that hinted at genius.
Chi Yuantian, while a capable manager and financially shrewd, lacked the true, undeniable spark of innovation and vision that Grandpa Chi valued most.
He was proficient, but not phenonal.
This inadequacy, this failure to secure his birthright purely on his own rits, created a constant, gnawing anxiety that manifested as cold, rigid control.
His failure was not just professional; it was a devastating personal sha.
As a result, Grandpa Chi’s disappointnt was not subtle.
The Chairman, a man who saw the corporation as his enduring legacy, had begun to look past his eldest son entirely, pinning his ultimate hope on the family’s notorious genius, the one who lived in poverty by his own choice: Chi Yuanfeng.
Yuanfeng, the brilliant but eccentric third son, was the prodigal intellectual whose esoteric brilliance shone brighter than any boardroom strategy.
He was the one who could solve complex problems, the one whose mind operated on a level inaccessible to Yuantian.
In Grandpa Chi’s eyes, Yuanfeng was the potential great leader, even if he was currently occupied with abstract physics.
This pressure cooker environnt forced Yuantian to seek validation through proxies, specifically, through the perfection of his children, Yuanying and her older brother, Chi Song, the eldest grandson.
Yuantian’s constant push, his stern deanor, and his relentless demands for model behavior and high achievent weren’t born of malice, but of a desperate, panicked need to cover up his own shortcomings.
If his children were undeniably perfect, the most accomplished, the most praised, the most ’model’ grandchildren, then surely, surely, that reflected positively on his lineage and could secure his place as the rightful heir.
Huaijin recalled the endless, crushing pressure that had been placed on Yuanying in her past life.
Chi Yuanying was eight years old, but her life was a marathon of advanced classes, rigid etiquette training, and performance evaluations, all designed to achieve a state of "perfection" that was impossible to maintain.
The irony was that despite all her efforts, Yuanying, too, often fell short of Grandpa Chi’s attention.
The Chairman, obsessed with Yuanfeng’s genius, viewed the children’s achievents as rely satisfactory, not transcendent.
This environnt bred profound, soul-deep unhappiness in the young girl.
Huaijin rembered the agonizing details of how Yuanying didn’t just dislike Huaijin; she hated her because she felt inferior to a little girl.
Huaijin, even without her past-life mories initially, had a natural grace, an effortless charm, and, most importantly, a father who showered her with easy, visible affection.
Yuanying saw Huaijin as a symbol of everything she lacked: unconditional love and intrinsic confidence.
The relentless work, the pursuit of top grades, the willingness to perform the most demanding roles in the variety show, it was all an exhausting, desperate plea for her father’s recognition.
She wasn’t competing for a prize; she was competing for Yuantian’s smile, because she thought that if she did sothing well, her father would be happy and praise her.
In the past life, when the real daughter returned, and the Chi family abandoned Yuanying after years of using her as a perfect showpiece, the accumulated pain, the lifeti of conditional love, and the sense of betrayal mutated into a poison.
Her eventual spiral into a crazed villainess, seeking revenge on the family and attempting to harm Liang Lingzhi, was the logical, tragic end product of a child starved of love and then cruelly discarded.
Huaijin had liked the tsundere child who slept beside her last night. She was clever, vulnerable, and clearly aching for a kind word.
The genuine delight Yuanying had shown at Yuanfeng’s simple, unpretentious warmth last night was proof that her heart was not yet rotten.
’I have to change this,’ Huaijin vowed silently, her small fists clenching the straps of her backpack. ’I am an extra character, yes, but I will not stand by and watch the tragedy repeat itself.’
But the core of Huaijin’s strategy, the key to unlocking the whole tragic cycle, was the profound, hidden truth about Chi Yuantian himself.
Huaijin, in her past life, had seen the mask crumble. It was a mory etched in the coldest, dampest part of her soul: the image of Chi Yuantian holding Yuanying’s lifeless body.
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