125: Chapter 125 My Identity Exposed: I'm an Abandoned Illegitimate Child?
The article was long, every word dripping with blood.
The first picture attached was a yellowed, old photograph, the image quality somewhat blurry but enough to sting everyone's eyes.
In front of the Jinghai Chen Family gates, during a torrential downpour, a frail-looking eighteen-year-old boy knelt straight in the mud. He was wearing a washed-out school uniform, soaked through, clutching a torn letter to his chest.
It was a full scholarship acceptance letter from Harvard University.
On the steps in front of the boy stood several well-dressed people. The middle-aged man leading them—none other than the current head of the Jinghai Chen Family, Chen Tianba—was pointing at the boy's nose with an expression of disgust, as if shooing away a stray dog.
Beside him, a woman dressed in gaudy finery (a younger Zhao Ya) was covering her nose, her eyes filled with disdain.
Behind them, eighteen-year-old Chen Yu held the other half of the torn envelope, laughing recklessly.
Below the photo was a line of bold black text: "At eighteen, I was accepted into Harvard. My father and uncle told me: An illegitimate son does not deserve a brighter future than the legitimate eldest grandson. And so, they tore up my dreams, and tore up the last shred of fantasy I held for this family."
"Boom!" The moment countless netizens saw this photo, their hearts felt as if they were being tightly gripped by an invisible hand. Suffocation. Rage.
How was this just a family feud? This was clearly trampling the dignity of a genius boy into the dirt!
Following this was a second image. It was a death certificate and a screenshot from a surveillance video.
"The day my mother died, it was a sunny day." "The doctor said it was cardiac arrest. But I knew her heart had always been healthy. Strangely, that afternoon, Zhao Ya entered my mother's room. Ten minutes later, my mother 'had an attack'."
"Even stranger, the Jinghai Chen Family refused an autopsy and, despite my pleas, cremated my mother overnight. They wouldn't even let me see her one last time."
Although the text was calm, the despair and chill emanating from it made everyone shudder.
If the previous photo made people feel heartache, this text was simply hair-raising. Murder? Willing to take a life just to climb the social ladder? Were they even human?
At the end of the article was a set of visually striking comparison photos. On the left was the destitute boy kneeling in the rain with nothing. On the right was the current king of Umbrella, standing at the top of the Titan Center, overlooking Manhattan, with bio-mecha standing behind him.
"They took everything from me, threw me across the ocean like trash, hoping I would rot in the mud." "But I survived." "I crawled out of hell and built my own kingdom." "Now, they say I harm my own kin? That I have forgotten my ancestors?" "Sorry." "I am just taking back what originally belonged to me."
...Silence. After a brief, deathly silence, the entire Chinese internet completely exploded. Every social media platform was flooded with the same topic at that moment. #Chen Yuan's Background# #Jinghai Chen Family Man-Eating Den# #Is This What a Wealthy Family Is?#
Those keyboard warriors who were just frantically insulting Chen Yuan now felt a stinging pain on their faces. They had been used as pawns by Chen Tianba!
"I cried... I really cried. That boy kneeling in the rain, his eyes were just too heartbreaking." "What kind of revenge-fantasy script is this? Don't bully the young for being poor! Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river."
"Chen Tianba, that old beast, and that Zhao Ya—those two are simply devils! Daring to kill just for the family fortune?" "No wonder Chen Yuan wanted to be a warlord in America. If it were me, I would too! Only with power can you protect yourself and come back for revenge."
"To the person above, what do you mean revenge? This is called settling the score! The Jinghai Chen Family owes him, and they must pay it back with interest!" "I'm a fan now! I'm going to follow the Umbrella Corporation on the foreign internet. Chen Yuan is awesome! Take down the Jinghai Chen Family!"
The direction of public opinion, like a sea swept by a hurricane, instantly underwent a heaven-shaking reversal. Nothing is more touching than a "tragic, handsome, and strong" protagonist. And nothing sparks public resonance more than "returning for revenge."
At this moment, Chen Yuan was no longer that brutal arms dealer, but a lone hero carrying a blood feud, having carved a bloody path in a foreign land. And the Jinghai Chen Family had become a street rat that everyone wanted to beat, a synonym for feudal, corrupt, and cruel.
Jinghai, Jinghai Chen Family compound. The air in the conference hall seemed to have solidified into concrete. Chen Tianba sat in a grand chair, holding a tablet, staring fixedly at the article that had already reached over a hundred million views.
His fingers were trembling. His face turned from iron-blue to pale, and then from pale to a sickly flush. "How is this possible..." he muttered to himself, his voice raspy as if he had a mouthful of sand. "How could he have these photos? The surveillance from back then was clearly destroyed..."
"And that death certificate... weren't the hospital files changed a long time ago?" Panic. An unprecedented panic coiled around his heart like a venomous snake.
He thought Chen Yuan just had some money and some force. But he didn't expect Chen Yuan's intelligence capabilities to be terrifying to this extent. This was practically running around naked!
Chen Yuan hadn't just stripped him of his underwear; he had dug out the Jinghai Chen Family's most shameful, festering sores from the past twenty years and displayed them, blood and all, to the whole world.
"Big brother, what do we do now?" Third Uncle Third Uncle held his phone, his voice shaking. "The company's stock price has hit the limit down! The official website has been hacked. The entrance is full of reporters and angry netizens. Someone is splashing paint on the main gate!"
"And... and the police station called to say the public pressure is too high, and they might have to... reopen the investigation into the death of the sister-in-law from back then."
"The police?" Chen Tianba gave a miserable laugh. He knew he had really kicked a steel plate this time. No, he had kicked a nuclear landmine.
This move by Chen Yuan wasn't just killing the person and punishing the heart; it was digging up the foundation of the Jinghai Chen Family. "Clatter." The two walnuts he had been playing with for decades slid from his stiff fingers, hitting the blue brick floor with a heavy thud. They rolled a few times and stopped in the shadows.
"It's over..." Chen Tianba slumped in his chair, his eyes hollow. "The public opinion... can't be suppressed."
The family prestige he was so proud of, the "philanthropist" image he had painstakingly cultivated for decades, was as fragile as paper in the face of this article of only a few thousand words.
Just then, far away at the Titan Center in New York, Chen Yuan sat in his boss chair, watching the traffic data jumping frantically on the screen, without revealing a victor's smile. His eyes remained cold.
"Boss." Alice's voice suddenly rang out, breaking the silence of the office. "What is it?"
"An abnormal data stream has been detected." A red light flashed in Alice's pupils, her tone becoming urgent. "An extremely powerful hacker force is attacking our core firewall."
"Their target is not the company's accounts, nor the formulas." "They are attempting to invade the Red Queen's underlying database to forcibly delete... all information regarding Zhao Ya."
Chen Yuan raised an eyebrow. He put down the red wine glass in his hand and cast his gaze toward the holographic screen. The originally green defensive network was rapidly turning red.
"Deleting the database?" A cruel arc curled at the corner of Chen Yuan's mouth. "It seems my dear stepmother has been pushed to the edge, and the master behind her... can finally no longer sit still."