He paused then continued. “Sis, from the moment I found you, I have had countless chances of digging up your past, but I’ve chosen not to do so each time, and that’s because I wanted to hear everything from you, so tell me what drove you to become an unwed mother back then, please…… Why did such a thing happen to you?”


  He suddenly put forth his suspicion. “Did he—”


  “No!” His sister cut off his words immediately. “It’s not what you’re thinking right now! Don’t imagine things and make assumptions.”


  “Give me an answer then!” A tinge of tension and uneasiness surfaced in his heart. “Sis, tell me what happened at that time, alright?”


  “The kids were born through surrogacy.”


  “.……”


  Her answer totally caught him off guard.

  Yun Shishi felt awkward saying it out loud, but in fact, she did not regret her decisions then. That experience of surrogating had, somehow, brought her the most precious gift in life!

  Youyou was this most precious gift—a blessing to her from the God above. Hence, no matter how humiliated she felt when she brought the matter up now, there was no remorse on her face for what she had done in the past.

  If given the chance to go back to that year when she was eighteen, she would most likely make the same choice.

  Nonetheless, despite having no regrets, it was a difficult topic to broach for a conservative woman like her.

  That was why when she mentioned ‘surrogacy’, Gong Jie was baffled for a moment. This might be because it had never occurred to the man that she would ever be a fill-in mother.

  Only after he had repeated the word twice in his head did he recover from his shock.

  “Surrogacy?” His voice was subdued when he asked that. “Are you saying that you became a surrogate mother for the Mus?”


  He paused a little before hissing, “Why? Why did you do that?!”


  A horrifying realization struck him right then, and his voice turned frosty. “Who forced you to that?!”


  “It’s nothing like that at all!” the woman hastily explained. “No one forced me! I volunteered to do it!”


  “You……”


  Her answer left him exasperated and bitter. “Why?!”


  Why did she have to cheapen herself?!

  At the blooming age of eighteen, she had actually gone through surrogacy for a stranger, given birth to two children, and become a young mother!

  That……

  Why did something so outrageous happen to her?

  Still unable to accept this fact, he skeptically watched his sister school her face into a serene and rational look before slowly and calmly recounting everything to him.

  She tried her best to keep it succinct, glossing over the unnecessary details as she explained her reason for doing it then.

  She told him of the abuse she had suffered after entering the welfare center at the age of nine—even about the swapping of identities, her adoptive father unconditionally loving and treating her like an actual, biological daughter, her impulsive decision to lessen the Yuns’ massive debts—incurred from the company losing money due to economic recession—through maternal substitution out of a sense of responsibility and desperation brought by life constraints, her premature delivery of the twins in the eighth month of her gestation, whereby one was born healthy and the other with congenital asphyxia, and how her younger son ended up with her instead of her employer, Mu Yazhe.

  She told his brother everything, not omitting any important details.

  As he listened to her story, though, he only found it unimaginable.