"Jiang Fan, you little beast! How could you be so heartless as to push your younger brother off an overpass!"
The middle-aged man roared in uncontrollable fury, his eyes nearly splitting at the corners, looking as though he wanted to swallow the scrawny Jiang Fan alive and skin him raw.
Jiang Fan shook his head, his hazy consciousness clearing.
He looked around him, a trace of bewilderment in his expression.
Just then, the middle-aged man suddenly snatched an ashtray off the coffee table and hurled it at Jiang Fan.
With a bang, it struck Jiang Fan squarely in the forehead.
In an instant, his forehead split open, blood streaming out.
The impact sent Jiang Fan crashing to the floor.
The world spun around him, and it took him a long while to climb up from the floor.
He touched his forehead, coating his palm in thick, sticky blood.
Suddenly, he noticed something wrong with his hand. It had grown smaller!
Together with the familiar scenes unfolding before him, that made him realize he had been reborn.
Seeing Jiang Fan stand motionless, Jiang Qifeng's anger kept surging.
"Are you dead? Kowtow to your younger brother already!"
Jiang Fan slowly raised his head. Blood from his forehead trickled down over his eyes, yet he had not so much as furrowed his brow the entire time. There was not a trace of any other expression in his pitch-black eyes.
"Heh!" He scoffed. "My younger brother? There isn't a drop of Jiang family blood in his veins, while I'm the Jiang family's legitimate son, their own flesh and blood. Is he even worthy of being my younger brother?"
Those words left Jiang Qifeng momentarily stunned, and he looked at Jiang Fan in considerable surprise.
Normally, Jiang Fan never dared to say a word against him. Yet the Jiang Fan before him had not only defied him-even those eyes that had never dared to meet his gaze had become piercingly sharp.
After a moment, Jiang Qifeng suppressed that strange feeling and resumed shouting.
"Youtian may not have our Jiang family's blood in his veins, but I, Jiang Qifeng, raised him from childhood! He's been deeply influenced by our fine family traditions and received the very best education. But you grew up in the slums and picked up every filthy habit! A disgrace who can't be shown in respectable company, and you have the gall to say Youtian isn't worthy of being your younger brother? If you ask me, you're the one who isn't worthy of being his older brother!"
Before his rebirth, Jiang Fan, who had still yearned for familial affection, might have been deeply hurt and pained by those words.
But now, he felt nothing. He had already gone numb.
His heart was already dead.
To this Jiang family, Jiang Youtian, who shared no blood ties with them, was their real son. Meanwhile, he-their biological son, switched with another baby at the hospital where he was born and raised in the slums-was an outsider.
He was treated worse than even an outsider.
Just then, Jiang Fan's eldest sister, Jiang Hongyuan, pointed at him as though she wanted to jab her finger into his eyes.
"Dad is right! You're a bastard raised outside this family, without a shred of upbringing, a useless good-for-nothing with neither learning nor skill! You think you deserve to be Youtian's older brother? Let me tell you, not one of us four sisters considers you our real younger brother. Youtian is our real younger brother!"
As though responding to Jiang Hongyuan's words, his second sister, Jiang Chengyuan, third sister, Jiang Huangyuan, and fourth sister, Jiang Lüyuan, all stepped forward, clamoring over one another to berate Jiang Fan.
"Eldest Sister is right! In our eyes, Youtian is our real younger brother!"
"Jiang Fan! I'm warning you, apologize to Youtian right this instant, or we'll make you bite off more than you can chew today!"
"That's right! Apologize! Apologize right now! Kowtow and apologize!"
At that moment, noisy, furious curses kept ringing in Jiang Fan's ears, while one venomous, angry face after another filled his vision.
He rose from the floor, wiped away the blood obstructing his vision, and looked at them all, neither servile nor overbearing. His voice was flat and devoid of warmth.
"I told you, I didn't push Jiang Youtian."
"Hmph! Even now, you're still making excuses! If you didn't push him, who did? Don't tell me Youtian jumped off himself!"
"Yes." Jiang Fan nodded. "You're right. He jumped off himself."
Those words all but made Jiang Qifeng choke to death on his rage.
"You-you-"
"If you don't believe me, go ahead and get the surveillance footage. With your Jiang family's influence, I'm sure it wouldn't take more than a few minutes to get the footage from the overpass. As long as the footage really shows me pushing Jiang Youtian off, I'll kowtow and apologize to him right now. A hundred times, a thousand times-I won't utter a single complaint," Jiang Fan said expressionlessly.
"Fine, fine, fine! So you refuse to admit it no matter what? I'll leave you speechless today!"
With that, Jiang Qifeng immediately summoned the butler.
"Butler Zhou, go! Have someone get the surveillance footage!"
Seeing this, Jiang Youtian's heart lurched. He immediately spoke up. "Dad, forget it. Don't go to the trouble. I can understand why my brother doesn't want to apologize. After all, I'm the cuckoo who occupied the magpie's nest, taking his place as the Jiang family's young master for all these years. I owe him. Never mind pushing me off an overpass-even if he took my life, I wouldn't have a single complaint. Please don't blame my brother. I'm begging you all!"
"And Eldest Sister, Second Sister, Third Sister, Fourth Sister, I'm begging you too. Jiang Fan has had a hard life. Growing up somewhere like the slums, he must have suffered every hardship, while I lived in fine clothes and feasted on delicacies. It's perfectly normal for him to feel things are unfair."
As Jiang Youtian spoke through his tears, he knelt on the floor, pleading with Jiang Qifeng and his four sisters.
At this sight, a cold smile rose on Jiang Fan's face.
It was no wonder Jiang Youtian had harmed him so terribly in his previous life, so terribly that demonic beasts had devoured his corpse without leaving even a fragment of bone.
With methods like these and acting like this, had he not been the victim himself, even he might have believed it.
Watching Jiang Youtian kneel on the floor, sobbing so hard he could barely speak, the Jiang family's hearts ached terribly.
"Youtian, what are you doing? Get up right now."
"Dad, don't get the surveillance footage. Please forgive my brother, all right? If you won't forgive him, I'll stay on my knees forever!" Jiang Youtian said stubbornly.
Clap, clap! Jiang Fan's applause rang out.
"Jiang Youtian, it's a real shame you haven't become an actor with acting skills like those. You're stopping your dad from getting the surveillance footage because you're afraid the truth will come out, aren't you?"
Jiang Qifeng whipped his head toward Jiang Fan and roared in a towering rage, "Jiang Fan! I called you a little beast, and you really are a beast through and through! No! Calling you a beast is giving you too much credit. You're worse than a beast! Youtian is pleading for you like this, and it's bad enough that you aren't moved in the slightest, but you can still say something like that! You-you really deserve a beating!"
With that, Jiang Qifeng raised his hand and swung it at Jiang Fan's face.
The slap whistled through the air, making it easy to imagine just how much strength he had put into it, without the slightest consideration for Jiang Fan, who had been frail and sickly since childhood.