The day before the advancement exam, cloudy, 27°C
Residential Resettlement Complex No. 1
This was one of the earliest residential complexes built for ordinary citizens in Jupiter City, with nearly thirty years of history.
It was even older and more rundown than the No. 13 complex where Luo Di lived. Many buildings had been marked for demolition due to structural stability issues, and few people still lived here.
Building 3, Room 502
It had two bedrooms and a living room, simply furnished with outdated furniture. However, the place was kept exceptionally clean.
The birdcage that should have been hanging in the home stood empty, with no sign of the bird.
Midnight.
All the lights in the apartment had been turned off, leaving only the streetlights outside to provide illumination.
A woman around forty sat before the dressing table in the master bedroom. Several expensive cosmetics that did not fit this household sat on the table.
It was time to sleep, yet she was putting on makeup.
As she applied some kind of powder, she pulled at the skin on her face with her fingers.
As her makeup neared completion, waves of gentle, motherly words came from her mouth. Her lips did not even seem to move.
"Wenya~ You need to go to bed early. Tomorrow is the most important advancement exam.
Our family's entire hope rests on you. You have to exceed expectations, or your mother's efforts over the past decade will have been wasted... I gave birth to a useless piece of trash."
The woman's voice carried directly into the adjacent second bedroom, whose door had been left open, but there was no response.
The woman then began using tweezers to remove nose hair and foreign objects from her mouth.
"I'm sorry, my precious daughter.
Mommy was