Chapter 2

I gently pulled the zipper of the canvas bag closed. The tiny sound was thunder in my ears.

The little girl’s breathing was still weak, but the flame of hope was burning. The specialist in the city hospital was her only answer.

The moment I stepped past that narrow doorway leading outside, a figure rose like a ghost and blocked my entire path.

“Try taking one more step out this door today!” My mother spread her arms, her body trembling, her words absolute. “When I gave birth to you, I had one foot in the grave. Now your wings are hard and you want to abandon us and run?”

A moral shackle slammed onto my heart, heavy enough to make even breathing hard.

I was about to explain—when the corner of my eye caught a furtive shadow flashing by my bed.

Second brother.

Those greedy eyes were locked onto the brown envelope in his hand—the life-saving money I’d pieced together brick by brick for my girl.

“Give it back. Now.” My voice sounded ground through gravel, every word carrying blood.

The air froze. The cold sank straight into bone.

Before he could answer, my mother lunged like a beast whose throat had been touched. She threw herself in front of him, slapped her thigh with her dry hands, and screamed hoarsely:

“So this is it! You’re emptying the whole family—trying to drive us all to death! You unfilial bastard!”

That crying wasn’t sorrow. It was pure selfishness—naked extortion.

“Enough. Stop yelling. We can talk calmly.” My eldest brother strolled down the stairs, talking like a peacemaker—yet his body conveniently blocked every route I could take to snatch the envelope back.

In that moment, I understood.

This was staged for me.

That so-called blood bond was never a connection—only a chain.

The last warmth in my chest was crushed under their feet.

That night, I didn’t argue. I didn’t fight. I only held my child tight and left that icy house without looking back.

Night was black as ink. I boarded a long-distance bus, heading for Ling City—where an old comrade was.

They’d taken the surgical money. My daughter’s treatment had been cut off. I fled with her in panic from that suffocating abyss, rushing to a strange city to claw for a new chance—any path at all.

Before dawn, the clan group chat had already exploded. My phone lit up. My mother’s voice message poured over me like a bucket of filth:

“Third son is a white-eyed wolf! He ran off with the whole family’s money and doesn’t care if the elders live or die!”

Relatives piled on instantly—mocking stickers, vicious comments, like needles stabbing into what was already torn to shreds.

I became their after-dinner joke. A complete traitor.

Then the screen shook hard—my eldest brother calling.

After hesitating, I answered.

His tone was the first “gentle” I’d heard in a long time. “Third… don’t be stubborn. Sleeping rough out there isn’t living. Come back—let’s talk it out calmly.”

For one absurd second, a warm illusion flickered in my chest—a tiny, nearly invisible fantasy of family.

It shattered immediately.

There was a rough snatch on the other end, then my mother’s shrieked curse:

“Let him go! Let him starve on the street—don’t let him back through my door!”

Then my second brother’s sneer, dripping with sarcasm:

“Spent a few days as a soldier and now thinks he’s somebody? If Big Brother Jackson wasn’t protecting our family in town, we’d have been bullied to death. And he still dares to put on airs?”

Beep—

I cut the call without hesitation.

Outside, Ling City’s night was deep as an ocean. I sat in the off-road vehicle my comrade had lent me, finger bones pale from gripping too hard. My world felt reduced to one thing—my daughter’s steady breathing in my arms.

After who knew how long, the device vibrated again.

This time it was my father—quiet for years, almost never calling first.

“Third…” My father’s voice was hoarse, tired like I’d never heard before. “Come back.”

In the background, for the first time ever, I heard my mother’s suppressed sobbing.

“Mom was wrong… come back…”

That “weakness,” twenty years late, struck like lightning and split open my hardened defenses.

My hand holding the phone trembled. Confusion and hesitation swallowed me whole. Was it a trap? Or had they really come to their senses?

My daughter’s condition couldn’t wait. Her surgery documents were still at home. I had to grab every last straw that might save her—even if that straw was a snake in disguise.

I turned my head and looked at her pale, tiny face in the passenger seat. She slept so sweetly, innocent of the world’s malice. Her fragility, her trust—heavier than mountains. For her, I could endure anything.

I took a deep breath. The dark currents inside me settled.

Then I slammed the accelerator.

The engine let out a low roar. In the night of Ling City, the high-end off-road vehicle swung around and shot back toward that town—full of malice, yet also carrying the last thin thread of my daughter’s life.

I knew the road ahead might be thorns.

I went anyway.