As Guo Liangming stared at the anonymous email sitting in his backup phone’s inbox, a stampede of expletives thundered through his mind.
“Fine. I don’t know who the hell you are, hacker, but if you’re so desperate for me to open this email, I’ll humor you. Let’s see what ‘proof’ you have that I’ve been raising another man’s son my whole life.”
Realizing he was no match for whoever had hijacked his phone, Guo Liangming gave up resisting. Without another thought, he tapped open the email.
What greeted him was a flood of intimate photos—his wife and his younger brother, entangled in ways that made his stomach lurch.
His eyes widened in disbelief. “This… this can’t be real. My wife and my brother? No way. These have to be AI-generated. That damn hacker’s just trying to mess with my marriage. Yeah, that’s it.”
Clutching at denial, Guo Liangming—who still, deep down, trusted his wife—scrolled further, searching for any flaw that would prove the email’s contents were fabricated.
But the more he read, the more his hope withered. There were no obvious inconsistencies, no telltale signs of forgery. Just cold, meticulous details that left no room for doubt.
“No… this isn’t possible.”
His hands trembled as the realization crept in. Then, suddenly, he remembered: his wife had gone to his brother’s house today.
Clutching at that last shred of hope, he exited the email and dialed her number.
When she answered, her voice was breathless.
“H-Hey, honey. What’s up?”
The ragged edge to her breathing sent a jolt through him. Fighting to keep his voice steady, he asked, “You sound out of breath. Everything okay?”
“Oh, I’m just… working out with your sister-in-law. Jogging around her place. You know how it is.”
The excuse was one he’d heard before—every single time she’d visited his brother.
The pieces clicked. The photos. The timing. The lies.
The last flicker of hope in Guo Liangming’s heart snuffed out.
“Honey? You still there? Ah—!” A sharp gasp cut through the line, snapping him back to the present.
He wiped at the tears he hadn’t realized were falling. “Y-Yeah. Just… got distracted. Sorry.”
“Oh. Well, I should get back to my workout. See you tonight.”
“Yeah. Tonight.”
She hung up before he could say another word.
The dial tone mocked him as his arm fell limply to his side. Slumping into his chair, he stared blankly at the ceiling.
“How could she… with my own brother? Does she have no shame?”
The betrayal carved into him like a knife. But worse was the email’s insidious footnote—the suggestion that the two sons he’d raised for over a decade might not even be his.
“No. Xiao Long and Xiao Feng… they can’t not be mine. That’s impossible.”
He tried to silence the doubt, but once planted, it festered. There was only one way to kill it.
“A paternity test.”
The words left his lips before he could stop them.
“It’s the only way to know for sure. Please… let that hacker be lying about this, at least.”
With a shaky breath, Guo Liangming pushed himself up, left his office, and hurriedly requested leave from his boss. Then he rushed home, his mind a storm of dread and resolve.
Nightfall
Time slipped by faster than anyone expected.
After dinner with her parents, Yan Qi returned to her room and booted up her computer. Uploading the 20,000-word chapter she’d prepared, she checked her novel’s dashboard—and grinned at the soaring metrics.
Pleased, she closed the tab, humming as she flopped onto her bed.
But instead of her usual cultivation routine, she grabbed her phone and opened a specialized messaging app.
Tonight, she wanted to chat—as Ji Zige—with the older sister she’d connected with last Wednesday. She was eager to share how life had changed since gaining her transformation cards and supernatural abilities.
Scrolling through her contacts, she spotted her sister’s glowing online indicator. Without hesitation, she tapped the icon and typed:
[Xiao Yu-jie, got time to talk?]
She proofread the message, hit send, and waited.