He cut Ye Lingling off and said, "A female member betrayed your family, ran away with someone, and even had a child, right?"
Ye Lingling's eyes widened as she asked Jiang He in disbelief, "How did you know?!"
Jiang He curled his lip. "I guessed. That's how the storytellers in the taverns always tell it. In situations like this, the woman usually doesn't end well, right?"
Ye Lingling fell silent for several seconds before nodding. "That was more or less what happened.
That person was my aunt. More than ten years ago, she fell in love with someone she shouldn't have.
Sweet-talked by him, my aunt secretly eloped without telling the family.
A few years later, she gave birth to a daughter for him.
But my aunt never expected that he did not love her at all.
What he wanted was our family's support—or rather, he wanted to bring our family directly under his control.
But our family had already learned a similar lesson once before.
After my aunt betrayed the family, the clan immediately struck her name from its rolls.
Over the next few years, my aunt tried to return for family visits, either as a member of the family or as that man's wife, but the elders always drove her away.
Afterward, when that man realized my aunt could not serve as the key to indirectly controlling our family, his attitude toward her changed drastically.
That change left my aunt heartbroken, and she died soon after giving birth to her daughter.
Although the daughter she bore took her father's surname, he publicly claimed that she was merely an adopted daughter and refused to acknowledge her identity."
At that point, Ye Lingling paused.
Jiang He waited for a while, but no continuation came. He simply asked, "Now that you've