Chapter 93#

The Disabled Big Shot’s Stepson#

Lin Xiaodong didn’t go very far.

With an “inside man” in place, it would have been foolish to trudge to a nearby guesthouse and pay for a room.

Instead, he simply wandered around a nearby cauliflower field with his luggage, and when the wail of sirens grew louder, he strolled back.

From afar, he could hear his dear aunt’s heart-wrenching cries.

“Oh Heavens, I don’t want to live anymore—”

The voice rose and fell, full of dramatic pauses. Lin Xiaodong thought it was a pity she didn’t become an opera singer with such a fine voice.

Not far from her, the other protagonist of this farce, his uncle, was also putting on an act of “a man’s tears are precious, but he has reached his breaking point.” With red eyes, he was explaining the situation to the police who had just arrived.

He even took the police on a tour of the living room, pointing at the window he had smashed himself and shouting, “Look! Just look! Our family was living perfectly fine, and now look what that jinx has done to it!”

The officer had to first calm the overly excited caller. “Please, try to stay calm. If your nephew really committed the crime, we will definitely bring him in and recover every penny for you.”

“Officer, please, I’m counting on you!” The aunt pushed aside the comforting crowd and grabbed the officer’s hand. The officer was startled, frozen in her grip for a moment before remembering to pull away.

The case was being handled as a burglary for now, so three officers were on the scene. While they felt for their colleague’s predicament, the case at hand was more important.

After checking the scene for tracks, one officer exchanged a look with his colleague. Under the uncle’s anxious gaze, he cleared his throat and addressed the crowd in the yard. “Everyone, please don’t be in a hurry. For now, it appears the brick was indeed thrown into the living room from outside the yard. However, there are still two points of doubt. Please remain patient.”

“What points of doubt?” The man couldn’t wait and asked urgently.

“What are you doing!” His wife quickly glared at him. Only then did the man realize his reaction was too obvious, and he quickly tried to cover it up with a dry laugh. “I, I’m just too anxious to know the result. Sorry, officer.”

The most experienced of the three officers gave them a thoughtful look, making the couple break into a cold sweat on the spot. But no matter how experienced the police were, with a simple burglary case like this where there was no evidence but a single eyewitness statement, they had no better way to prove anything. They could only bring in the primary suspect, Lin Xiaodong, first.

“No need to look, I’m right here.”

Lin Xiaodong had been standing at the gate enjoying the couple’s performance for a while. When the police said they were going to look for him, he stepped out from behind the courtyard wall.

“You!” The aunt’s eyes snapped open, and her heart skipped a beat.

But she still pointed at Lin Xiaodong and shrieked, “Scoundrel! You actually dare to come back!”

“Who exactly is the scoundrel?” Lin Xiaodong sneered. “I just went out for a bit, and I come back to find I’ve become some master thief. Aunt, you say I stole the money. Do you have any evidence?”

“I saw you with my own eyes smashing the glass and escaping through the window! How dare you quibble!” the uncle immediately shouted.

“How interesting,” the youth said, arms crossed, a mocking curve on his lips. “Am I out of my mind? There’s a door right here. Why would I jump through a window?”

“Who knows? Maybe a cornered dog jumping over a wall!” the man said maliciously.

“Oh…” Lin Xiaodong intentionally drew out the sound. His gaze swept around, and sure enough, he saw the three officers’ brows furrowing deeper and deeper, and Dr. Lin standing at the gate with a speechless “how am I related to people with this IQ” expression.

He smiled and said, “Since you say I smashed the glass and escaped through the window, Uncle, please demonstrate for me: how could I make a brick fly in from the outside to smash the glass, and then jump out through the same window from the living room?”

“I…” The uncle was instantly speechless. He shot a quick glance at the officers who were staring at him, and his speech became a stutter. “At, at the time, I didn’t actually see clearly. An, anyway, it must have been you…”

The aunt was almost dead from rage at this “pig teammate”—couldn’t you have said he smashed the window out of spite, you idiot!

But clearly, if the man had the brains to come up with that reason, he wouldn’t be spending his days in idle pleasure after conspiring with his wife to steal an orphan’s entire inheritance. Seeing the caller shaking like a sieve, with cold sweat pouring down like a waterfall and soaking through his clothes in minutes, even the relatives who had supported them began to have doubts, let alone the sharp-eyed police.

“You lot, come with me to the station,” the senior officer spoke up.

The aunt saw this wouldn’t do. If the man was already panicking this much at home, what would happen if they really went to the station? She immediately stood straight, wiped her tears, and told the police, “Officer, to tell you the truth, we still have a paralyzed son at home who can’t be left alone for a moment… How about this: my husband isn’t feeling well today. I’ll go to the station with you, alright?”

The three officers looked at each other.

Clearly, the breakthrough was this man. But the problem was that the couple were the ones who had called the police. It wasn’t realistic to force them both to the station and leave their paralyzed son alone.

So, for now, they could only…

“Officer,” just as the aunt breathed a sigh of relief, thinking she had succeeded, Dr. Lin stepped out from the crowd. “I’m a doctor. I can stay here and look after Lin Qi.”

Noticing the woman’s incredulous look, he even gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, ma’am. My skills are strictly professional.”

The aunt nearly choked on her own bile.

As Dr. Lin spoke, he walked over to the senior officer, saying he wanted to show him his credentials. In reality, under the cover of reaching into his pocket, he secretly pressed a USB drive into the officer’s hand.

“This is the yard’s surveillance,” he told the officer in a voice so low it was barely audible.

The officer exchanged a look with him and silently pocketed the USB drive.

In the Lin family, everything was handled with meticulous logic and evidence. This was why Lin Pei’s position in the family was unshakeable and why he maintained high prestige despite his disability.

He could have used his position as Head of the Family to simply force Lin Xiaodong’s uncle and aunt to hand over the assets and punish them with prison or exile to the most remote countries. However, such a move would not have been enough to win over everyone. Lin Xiaodong’s inheritance being stolen after he became an orphan was indeed worthy of sympathy. However, within a vast, flourishing family, it was impossible not to have some dirty laundry. Even more despicable things had happened, but everyone tacitly accepted the principle of “winner takes all” and simply turned a blind eye for the time being.

Now that Lin Xiaodong was an adult, there was no problem with him wanting to take back what was rightfully his.

But back then, his uncle and aunt had used the excuse of “safekeeping” to embezzle the assets, and they had put on a full act of raising him for all these years. If he suddenly lashed out, people would inevitably whisper and point behind his back. These rumors, if not handled well, could follow him for the rest of his life.

Therefore, Lin Pei’s entire plan was very careful and cautious, completely different from his usual style. He had even instructed Ye Shiyuan not to act unless the couple proactively started trouble.

Fortunately, this family was even greedier than he had imagined. Lin Xiaodong had only been back for a few days before they were already impatient to pull up the roots.

Since that was the case, Lin Pei naturally wouldn’t let them off.

And Ye Shiyuan had been unable to hold back for a long time. In his own words: “My student has never suffered such an injustice!”

When she saw the surveillance at the police station, the aunt collapsed on the floor. Her husband was a hundred times more pathetic.

Because he often tried to curry favor with the Lin family’s upper echelons, the man finally realized why things had taken such a sudden turn for the worse and who was pushing from behind when he saw Ye Shiyuan appear in this remote, tiny suburban police station.

Filing a false police report was no longer the issue. The fact that the Head of the Family’s right-hand man had personally come to support Lin Xiaodong could only mean one thing—

Next, their family’s actions over all these years would be thoroughly liquidated.

At the thought of their family’s potential fate, the man felt a wave of dizziness and, with a “thud,” fainted with his eyes rolling back. Crucially, because he ate too much rich food and had a history of stroke, it caused quite a commotion in the police station.

Meanwhile, Lin Xiaodong had already put on his backpack and gotten into Ye Shiyuan’s car once again.

Except this time, he was sitting in the front passenger seat.

“Satisfied?” Ye Shiyuan looked at the youth through the rearview mirror with a smile. Lin Xiaodong’s face didn’t show the smile of someone who had achieved great revenge, but he was clearly in a good mood.

“It’s alright,” Lin Xiaodong curled his lip. “As a plot to accompany a meal, it’s a passing grade. Just too noisy.”

“That’s for sure. Never mind you, my hearing has dropped a notch just from staring at the surveillance these past few days.” Ye Shiyuan gripped the steering wheel, speaking with deep resonance. “That woman’s decibel level is simply terrifying.”

The two were silent for a second and then burst into laughter together.

“It’s still more comfortable back in the country,” Ye Shiyuan sighed. “There are compatriots everywhere, the food from home and the friends I know are all here. There are fewer people abroad, but it’s cold and lonely. I couldn’t get used to it after just a few days.”

“Now that you’re back, will you go out again, Mr. Ye?” Lin Xiaodong turned to ask him.

“I’m not going back,” Ye Shiyuan said immediately. “Not even if you kill me!”

Lin Xiaodong wanted to laugh. From the look of him, he really had been stifled abroad.

“But, Xiaodong, I still have a question I want to ask you,” Ye Shiyuan said suddenly as he drove. His expression looked a bit anxious and confused. “What… what do you really think about the Head of the Family?”

During that week he was sent to Sweden to plant potatoes, Ye Shiyuan finally understood. It turned out the Head of the Family, from the very beginning—well, maybe not that early, but definitely much earlier than he had thought—had no intention of adopting Lin Xiaodong as his stepson.

Therefore, the interaction between them made Ye Shiyuan a bit uneasy. Since he didn’t know Lin Xiaodong was actually several cycles older than himself, in Ye Shiyuan’s eyes, this was an adult using his experience and history to crush a minor. No matter how loyal he was to Lin Pei, he couldn’t sincerely admit that the current man was a qualified partner.

Lin Xiaodong was still so young. As his teacher, Ye Shiyuan felt he had an obligation to tell him the risks.

“I think you might not quite understand what true love is yet,” he said, choosing his words carefully, trying to find a way to advise him without offending the youth’s self-esteem. “The Head of the Family is indeed a man with great charisma and leadership, but as a lover… I think he might not be suitable for you.”

Lin Xiaodong gazed at the road stretching ahead and was silent for a moment.

“Thank you, Mr. Ye,” he said softly, his gaze calm and indifferent. “I’ve always known that.”

He had once thought the same thing as Ye Shiyuan.

However, time would prove everything.

After wandering through several worlds, the person by his side was still the same.