An eight-year-old kid emptied his scumbag father's warehouse and followed his grandparents into

Chu Xuan was covered in blood, curled up in a corner like a puddle of mud, barely breathing. Hearing the distinct yet unfamiliar footsteps approaching from afar, he shuddered and subconsciously raised his head.

His eyes had been in the darkness for too long and had to work hard to adapt to the dim light coming from the corridor.

When he finally saw clearly that the woman standing outside the prison door, dressed in luxurious clothes and radiant, was actually his ex-daughter, he was stunned at first, then an almost crazy light broke out in his eyes. He used all his strength, using his hands and feet to quickly climb to the fence, and reached out eagerly.

Judging from his twisted posture and his legs dragging on the ground, they had obviously been broken long ago and it was extremely difficult for him to move.

"Sister Xi! It's you! You're finally here!" He shouted hoarsely, his voice filled with the eagerness of grabbing the last straw in desperation. His dirty hands stretched forward, trying to reach the hem of Jing Chunxi's skirt.

"How dare you!" Nanny Zhou immediately stepped forward, blocking Jing Chunxi's way and sternly scolding him, "Princess Anping—the future Crown Princess—is here. How can you, a heinous prisoner, defile her at will? Kneel down and pay your respects!"

This rebuke immediately gave Jing Chunxi the royal dignity.

Chu Xuan was shocked when he heard this. The gray and desperate face in the darkness suddenly lifted up a little, and his turbid eyes burst into a strange light because of the sudden announcement of his identity, as if he saw a glimmer of illusory hope in the endless abyss.

"Xi Jie'er! My dear daughter! Daddy knows it! I know that you still care about the father-daughter relationship in your heart. You won't ignore Daddy. You will definitely come to rescue Daddy, right?"

He seemed to have grabbed a life-saving charm, holding on to the cold wooden fence with both hands. His body, which was originally crawling on the ground, actually struggled to kneel up with this sudden excitement, and even forced a flattering, twisted smile on his face.

"father?"

Jing Chunxi seemed to have heard the funniest joke in the world. She sneered, gracefully took two steps back, and distanced herself from the filthy man behind the fence, her tone icy.

"Are you worthy of calling me dad? It seems you have forgotten that we have long severed our relationship and cut off our clan, as written in black and white and registered with the government. My surname is Jing now, and I am a daughter of the Jing family. What does that have to do with you, Chu Xuan?" After she said that, she slightly tilted her head, motioning for Nanny Zhou to step aside and wait.

"Daddy was wrong! Daddy was blinded by greed. Daddy was wrong!" Chu Xuan's face changed drastically, his eyes darting around in panic as he hurriedly tried to excuse himself, pushing all the blame onto others. "It's all Xiao Liu's fault! It's that bitch! She's the one who's been stirring up trouble all day long! Daddy, I was biased and believed one side of the story... That's right! It's all her fault! She's the culprit! She deserves to die now, she deserves it!"

Seeing Jing Chunxi's expressionless face, he hurriedly added, his tone becoming more urgent, even not hesitating to blame the dead person: "...and...and your grandmother! She was also mean and ungrateful to you and your daughters. It was all her idea..." In order to survive, he had no bottom line at this moment and could even easily betray his own biological mother.

"Oh?" Jing Chunxi raised the corner of her mouth with an extremely sarcastic arc, and her voice was as cold as ice, "What about framing the General's Mansion, causing my grandfather's family to suffer an unjust injustice and almost being wiped out? Was it also because Xiao Liu and grandmother put a knife to your neck and forced you to do it?" Her sharp eyes were like ice spikes, piercing Chu Xuan's heart.

"That...that matter..." Chu Xuan's eyes flickered, he hesitated, and then, as if he had found a scapegoat, he hurriedly explained, "That wasn't my decision! It was your grandfather! Your grandfather got senile and lost his mind! He wanted to curry favor with the Fourth Prince and gain his share of the credit, so...that's why..."

"So in order to show your loyalty to him and the Fourth Prince, you didn't hesitate to frame the loyal and good General's Mansion as a token of your allegiance!" Jing Chunxi didn't want to listen to his excuses anymore, so he interrupted him directly and revealed the truth in one sentence, every word was heartbreaking.

"And what happened later? You changed your allegiance and assisted the crown prince, but you killed innocent people in Jiujiang and Jian'an counties, embezzled disaster relief funds, and caused widespread famine. Don't say you are not responsible for these crimes! Your good aide Yanshu confessed all the good things you did!" Jing Chunxi pressed on step by step, laying out his life's sins in front of him.

"Daddy... Daddy, I was... I was confused for a moment, I was crazy! That's why I followed the wrong person and took the wrong path! Otherwise... otherwise, Daddy wouldn't have ended up like this..." Chu Xuan seemed to have been drained of his strength in an instant. He sat down heavily, his eyes were unfocused, and he began to make incoherent excuses for himself.

“Haha,” Jing Chunxi suddenly sneered contemptuously, “If you could remain consistent, even if you could maintain a little bit of love for that illegitimate son Fu Ge’er who you took away with you, I would respect you as a good father to others. What a pity…”

She suddenly raised her head and let out a series of sad, angry and mocking laughs, which echoed in the dungeon. Tears of laughter overflowed from the corners of her eyes, but there was no warmth in those tears, only endless desolation and hatred.

"Do you know? What happened to Fu Ge'er and Bao Ge'er, your beloved ones?" Jing Chunxi stopped laughing and looked down at Chu Xuan, who was slumped on the ground and stiffened in an instant. Looking at his face that had turned white almost overnight and looked very old, the last bit of faint light quickly dimmed because of this sudden question.

But she didn't intend to let him go. She wanted to crush his last bit of hope.

"Not long after Concubine Liu was killed by the woman you later married, Bao Ge'er 'accidentally' fell into the water and drowned." Her tone was flat, as if she was narrating an unrelated matter, but she deliberately emphasized the word "accidentally".

Seeing a flash of pain in Chu Xuan's eyes, but then replaced by numbness, Jing Chunxi's hatred grew stronger. She took a step forward, lowering her voice but carrying a deeper chill: "Do you know who I met in the south?"

She remembered that in her previous life, she was eventually handed over to the old and lecherous official by her heartless and ungrateful biological father, and her personal maid Hongfen also died tragically to protect her. The hatred in her heart surged like magma, and she wished to eat the person in front of her alive.

"Your good son, Fu Ge'er, has long been reduced to a beggar and a thief who is hated by everyone in order to survive and have a bite to eat!" She carefully observed Chu Xuan's expression and found that he did not seem to be very surprised by Fu Ge'er's miserable situation, but his eyes became a little darker.

It seems that from the moment he decided to give up Fu Ge'er and become the bandit's husband in order to survive, he may have foreseen in his heart the tragic end that his child might face.

As expected, a ruthless person, faced with power and his own life, could easily abandon any kinship. Whether it was Jing Chunxi and his younger brother Pu Ge'er, or Fu Ge'er and Bao Ge'er, whom he once loved so much, they all eventually became stepping stones and sacrifices for him to cling to power or to preserve his own life.