C5 Chapter 5

“Nuochu, don’t let Mr. Tong’s age fool you. Plenty of women are after him. He’s successful, and he knows how to treat a woman right. If you marry him, he’ll spoil you. Remember how, when you were little, you always asked why your dad never doted on you? That was because your father was busy. But the match I found for you will make up for everything you missed growing up. That way, your father and I can finally say we did right by your mother.”

Bai Nuochu didn’t respond. Jiaang Wanmei kept talking, and the moment she mentioned Bai Nuochu’s mother, she put on that long-suffering, dutiful act—like a perfectly loving stepmother who’d endured it all and was finally being rewarded.

“My dad isn’t dead yet.” Bai Nuochu had been keeping her head down, but the second Jiaang Wanmei brought up her mother, she snapped back.

Bai Jinda wasn’t dead. They had no right to shove some man old enough to be her father at her, call it “compensation,” and pretend it was for her own good.

And saying this meant she and her father had done right by her mother? That was the cruelest insult of all.

They’d stolen the company her mother built from the ground up. They’d ripped the title of Mrs. Bai away from her without a second thought. And even her mother’s last breath had been stolen—because they were the ones who told her they’d already been husband and wife for a long time.

Bai Nuochu couldn’t stop the rage from surging through her.

“You ungrateful little brat—how dare you curse me!” Bai Jinda roared. The crack of a whip followed, lashing across Bai Nuochu’s body. “You’re marrying him whether you want to or not!”

Bai Nuochu drew in a sharp breath. One more day—just one more day. As long as Bai’s got acquired…

“Dad, Auntie Mei… I’ll think about it…” Bai Nuochu forced herself to turn, but her foot slipped and she staggered. Something was wrong with her body.

“Think about it?” Bai Ni’an’s mocking voice cut in. “Bai Nuochu, you might want to ask whether that Emotion Cultivating Powder you mixed yourself is going to give you time to think.”

Emotion Cultivating Powder? Bai Nuochu’s face went paper-white. When had she breathed it in?

“Bai Nuochu, do you really think we don’t know about your little tricks?” Bai Ni’an said, dragging the hem of her expensive dress as she stepped forward.

Emotion Cultivating Powder was a colorless, odorless herbal blend Nuochu had developed herself. It could trigger arousal fast—hard and fast. She sold it online under an alias. With no ads and no promotion, it still caught on like wildfire.

“You little brat. You had a formula like this and you never handed it over to the Bai family? They raised you all these years, and this is what you turned into—a backstabbing, ungrateful snake?” Jinda’s father spat.

If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed Ni’an when she said she’d dug it out of Nuochu’s room—something this potent.

Watching his daughter suffer as the effects spread, there was only greed in his eyes. If he could secure the investment and then roll out Nuochu’s formula, the Bai family would be back on top in no time.

“She really is a nasty little traitor.” Ni’an let out a giggle.

“Dad, this bitch is way too sharp—and she knows her way around those herbs. The past couple days, every time we tried to drug her, she dodged it without making a scene. Good thing I found the Emotion Cultivating Powder she made herself and soaked it into the whip. Worked like a charm. Once the lash hit her, that trash didn’t even realize anything was off.”

They were using the very routine of abuse they’d beaten into her over the years.

“Dad, this formula hasn’t been tested. It can’t be approved for sale,” Nuochu forced out.

The truth was, she’d already developed a gentler, more stabilizing version—something that wasn’t a one-shot hit.

She’d also known Jinda and the others would come after her work, so what she kept at home were unfinished batches—single-use versions that weren’t suitable for mass production. But those were also the most immediately effective, and the most damaging.

Cold sweat broke out across Nuochu’s pale face. Based on her own notes, she wouldn’t be able to control herself much longer.

“I don’t care whether it can be sold,” Bai Jinda said, patting her face as she collapsed. “I care that whether it hits the market or not, Bai’s is counting on it to come back from the dead. Now go. Take good care of Mr. Tong!”

“Qin Nuo isn’t just trying to take down Bai’s—he’s insisting on buying our villa, too. He’s trying to wipe us out! As a daughter of the Bai family, you should do something!”

A strange man who’d been waiting nearby stepped in and hauled Bai Nuochu away.

“Dad!” Bai Nuochu cried out, her voice sharp with desperation. She twisted back to look at Bai Jinda. “You always said I’m the most like Mom. If she were facing this, what would she do? You know.”

Once, Bai Jinda got a so-called tip that Mrs. Bai was having an affair. He stormed in, ready to explode—only to see Lin Molian being manhandled by a man, struggling in humiliation. In a sudden, brutal motion, Lin Molian drove a pair of scissors into her own chest.

Whether that “tip” had been Jiaang Wanmei’s deliberate setup or just a cruel misunderstanding, one thing was certain: when Lin Molian couldn’t bear the disgrace, she chose death over surrender.

Bai Nuochu would, too.