The following day.
Mr. Zhao yawned and rubbed his eyes as he looked at the food before him, shaking his head continuously.
"This is the first ti in my life that I’ve been surrounded by so much delicious food and had no appetite. It seems staying up late is a bad idea. I wonder if Director Xu and their case is going as smoothly as ours."
Fang Mu had already finished eating. Seeing Zhou Ning and the others hurry over, he patted Mr. Zhao on the back, greeted him, and wore a smile that seed to belie any sign that he had stayed up the night before.
"There’s good news!"
Mr. Zhao yawned again, his eyes almost welling with tears. He perked up and said weakly,
"The best news right now would be telling that this case is over and we can all go ho."
Fang Mu, smiling, replied,
"Pretty much. The Discipline Inspection Commission has communicated with Mr. Hu, and the investigation over there is going very smoothly. Zhang Xiangguo and Zhang Xianghua have confessed thoroughly, even revealing the issue of over sixty million in deposits in their family mbers’ accounts. From arranging jobs to the details of handling this case, they’ve written out more than forty pages of records.
It seems that once the Discipline Inspection Commission took those two away, over a dozen individuals reported them last night, submitting various materials, all very well-prepared. With the facts and evidence laid out before us, the brothers didn’t have much to say anymore—they’ve admitted to everything."
Upon hearing this, Mr. Zhao’s sleepiness vanished instantly. He made space for Fang Mu to sit down and asked with keen interest,
"Go on, what happened next?"
Fang Mu didn’t leave them hanging, knowing what they were eager to find out, and quickly continued,
"As for Zhang Xiangfen and Zhang Xiangfang, they also had plenty of issues—illicit profiteering, setting up their own auto repair shop as a designated maintenance point, arranging for students to be admitted into the No. 5 Middle School, including two cases where they altered students’ college entrance exam scores, usurping the spots of impoverished students.
As for the DNA test report, it was the comrades from the Discipline Inspection Commission who showed it to Zhang Xiangfen. We basically kept our promise not to interfere with Liu Nian’s matters. She nearly went mad at the ti, urgently asking to et with Liu Kai, wanting to know where her biological child was."
At this point, Zhou Ning also looked at Fang Mu, not understanding this either—as Liu Kai was only in his early twenties when he married Zhang Xiangfen, and he didn’t have the ans to switch children, let alone have his lover raise Zhang Xiangfen’s child.
Fang Mu by then had pulled out his phone and flicked to a photo of soone, handing it over for Zhou Ning and the others to see.
"This person is called Sun Tian, a nurse at Xinghua City First Hospital with a history of epilepsy. She was originally Liu Kai’s girlfriend, but after Zhang Xiangfen took a fancy to Liu Kai, they officially broke up. However, they continued to see each other in secret, and both even beca pregnant at the sa ti.
"Because of the epileptic seizure, she and Zhang Xiangfen gave birth on the sa day; she delivered in the morning and Zhang Xiangfen in the evening. Both babies were jaundiced and underweight, placed in incubators.
Back then, there were no security caras. When Zhang Xiangfen’s son stopped breathing at night, it just so happened that Sun Tian was right outside the neonatal ICU. She switched the two babies—newborns, especially premature ones, all red, were only identifiable by the tags on their ankles.
She also turned off all kinds of monitoring equipnt, so when the baby was discovered the next day, it was already stiff. She didn’t notify the maternity ward, so the hospital waived her fees and even adjusted her work. In 1997, she married a foreigner and moved abroad. Before leaving, she told Liu Kai the truth.
Liu Kai never expected her to do such a thing, but by then he had been raising the child for two years. It was too late to reveal the truth to Zhang Xiangfen. After Sun Tian left, he secretly took the child and Zhang Xiangfen’s hair to Hushang City for a paternity test and found out that the child was indeed his but had no blood relation to Zhang Xiangfen, so he kept it a secret."
Mr. Zhao blinked in surprise, his mouth hanging open in shock.
"This is so lodramatic, like saying ’If I can’t have it, then you raise my child,’ just to see your own son tragically die? Even soap operas wouldn’t dare write this. Zhang Xiangfen is daring, isn’t she? Her son has epilepsy; didn’t she ever suspect anything? Also, did Liu Kai confess this himself?"
Fang Mu nodded.
"If Liu Kai hadn’t said anything, how would we have known? As for the epilepsy, the doctors said, it could be due to preterm birth; this can’t be explained, so nobody paid it much attention. After all, Liu Nian had many seizures when he was young, and as he grew older, the episodes beca less frequent, but he was still quite irritable and didn’t like to take his dication. He had an odd personality, and everyone in the family indulged him."
Zhou Ning glanced at Hu Guangjian leisurely eating breakfast not far away. Clearly, he was quite at ease now that the investigation was proceeding smoothly, and he was finally able to have a good al. Thinking about it, Zhou Ning narrowed his eyes.
"If Sun Tian knew her son had been raised disabled, would she regret her decision back then?"
Fang Mu shook his head, a motion that drew everyone’s attention. He quickly took a sip of milk, swallowed what was in his mouth, and continued,
"Sun Tian got in touch last night. After hearing about Liu Nian’s situation, she was rather indifferent. She originally had the child just to spite Liu Kai and wouldn’t have given birth if not for this. She had no attachnt to the child and told us not to contact her. If there’s any issue, they should find the biological father."
The group fell silent. After a while, Fang Mu finished his last bite, patted his belly contentedly, and looked around at everyone.
"Why don’t you ask where Liu Da went?"
On ntioning this, everyone realized that they hadn’t seen Liu Yufei all morning.
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