Chapter 2

The dark and thorny forest was overgrown.

An ZhiXia did not dare to slack off at all, and ran forward mechanically.

She was not unexhausted. In fact, she was so tired that her legs were numb. The efficacy of the drug in her body surged to her head from time to time, constantly impacting her nerves.

She did not know where this was, only that she was surrounded by trees and weeds.

The sounds chasing her from behind had disappeared. She was still desperately running.

The vines under her feet tripped her and An ZhiXia fell hard to the ground, but her head bumped into a warm chest.

The heat flowing from her nose brought her back to her senses momentarily. With tears brimming in her eyes, she opened them to find that she had fallen on top of a man, based on the muffled groan from underneath her.

With the last of her will thoroughly corroded, she really could not hold back any longer...

Pei Jing was also unlucky. Chasing a villain to the deep mountains, he was surrounded by a pack of wolves.

After barely escaping death, he had just collapsed here exhausted when a woman came crashing down on him, nearly suffocating him.

Pei Jing half-opened his eyes and glanced over. The woman on top of him was disheveled, her hair a mess like a bird's nest. Half her face was caked with blood and unrecognizable. She looked just like a female ghost.

In the dead of night, deep in the mountains, he must be so unlucky to have run into a ghost!

His chest had been scratched by the wolves and was still bleeding. Using all his willpower, he warily watched the female ghost.

This female ghost was also a pervert. Her claw-like hands groped his chest randomly. She kissed his neck with her bloodied face indiscriminately, no matter how dirty.

"Get lost!"

Pei Jing gritted his teeth to spit out these two words.

The next moment, his eyes widened in disbelief at the wanton actions of the woman on top of him. "Let go of me, let go..."

Pei Jing swore this was the most shameless woman he had ever seen. He could judge she was human based on her body temperature, which felt abnormally hot.

From this he deduced that the woman's consciousness was not clear at all right now.

If not for his severe blood loss and weakness, Pei Jing would not have been so powerless to resist when she grabbed his weakness.

An ZhiXia currently had no awareness at all, relying solely on her body's instincts to grope around.

After a while, she seemed to realize something. She looked up blankly at the man, her eyes uncontrollably showing a hint of contempt. "Are you even a man?"

And still no reaction despite all this.

Boom!

These words were like flipping a switch.

Pei Jing's entire being reacted, which in turn awakened An ZhiXia's instincts.

An ZhiXia also had no experience, which led to both of them suffering painful awkwardness...

The night was still dark when An ZhiXia dazedly opened her eyes, looking at the man still pinned unconscious beneath her. A flash of remorse appeared in her eyes.

She hated that bald old man, but she had also forced herself onto someone else, even if it was not her intention...she still felt quite sorry for him!

Voices shouting drifted over from afar. An ZhiXia scrambled up and ran, but her sore legs gave out and she tumbled down the slope, rolling over and over in the bushes before finally passing out.

When she opened her eyes again, the sky was already bright.

Covered in blood, she lay limply on the ground, her empty eyes staring up at the sky.

For a long, long time, she finally burst into laughter, rolling on the ground until the pain from her injuries made her convulse uncontrollably before she finally stopped.

She was alive, she really was alive...

...

It was deep night again.

An ZhiXia had walked and crawled the entire day before arriving here.

At Granny Zhou Po Zi's house in Zhou Village, the door was being knocked loudly.

"A ghost!" Zhou Jianye, Granny Po Zi's second son, went to open the door but was so frightened he wet himself, crawling back into the yard.

After a while, An ZhiXia had washed the blood and dirt off her face. She now sat on a bench in the main hall of the Zhou residence.

Facing her were all the Zhou family members, including her maternal grandmother Zhou Po Zi's family. The people interrogating her were her two uncles, aunts, and cousins.

"What evidence do you have to prove your words are true?" her eldest uncle Zhou Dong Lai looked at An ZhiXia with complicated emotions.

It would shake any family if a girl suddenly barged in claiming to be the real daughter of their sister, while the niece they had raised with their sister was not actually blood related but had been switched at birth. Anyone would have a hard time calming down, just like him.

The blood and grime on An ZhiXia's face had been washed clean, but after years of abuse, the 18-year-old girl was petite with sallow skin, looking emaciated.

However, her large eyes were bright and piercing as she looked straight at them without the slightest timidity.

"This face of mine should be the best proof."

In her previous life drifting beside An Mei Yun, she had seen her birth mother Zhou Nan many times over those years. Her face was not just carved from the same mold as Zhou Nan, there was at least a 70-80% resemblance.

Otherwise, the Gao family would not have been so afraid of her being recognized and kept her confined within the yard after she came of age, hastily marrying her off to the deep mountains and claiming so to others.

Blood relation was the best evidence. An Mei Yun's appearance also had a 30-40% resemblance to her birth mother, but the similarity was too distant for anyone to have noticed before.

Although the Zhou family all wished she was lying, An ZhiXia knew her words had shaken them.

They just found it hard to accept for the time being.

Granny Zhou Po Zi let her stay at the Zhou residence for now. Whether her words were true or false still needed to be verified by people from her parents' side. Only with their confirmation could it be settled.

The two Zhou brothers had split households but still lived in the same compound. Granny Zhou Po Zi lived with her eldest son's family.

An ZhiXia was arranged to sleep with her cousin Zhou Zhi Zhi, the daughter of Eldest Uncle. Zhou Zhi Zhi stared at An ZhiXia curiously, "Are you really my auntie's biological daughter? You're not deceiving us, right?"

An ZhiXia was utterly calm and simply asked her, "Do you think I look like your aunt?"

"Yes, so alike, too alike!" Zhou Zhi Zhi resembled her Aunt Zhou Nan, but this resemblance paled in comparison to An ZhiXia.

Moreover, if not for An ZhiXia's face that was too similar to her aunt's, Zhou Zhi Zhi completely believed that An ZhiXia would have been driven away by Granny and Father when she first ran over spouting nonsense.

In the main hall, Granny Zhou Po Zi's old face was filled with complexity.

Her younger son Zhou Xi Feng spoke up, "Mother, big brother, do we really have to believe that girl's words?"

Everyone knew that even if this was true, 18 years had passed, both children had grown up. Exposing this now would greatly impact both families.