After returning home with the child, her ex-husband knelt down and gently coaxed her.

My fingertips went limp, and two yellowed pages of the diary fluttered onto the table.

An Ning stared blankly at the table, her face calm and expressionless, as if she had lost her soul. Her breathing was shallow and short, and tears kept flowing down her face.

She felt as if all her blood had been drained, and her whole body was ice-cold.

With tears in her eyes, she kept staring at the line of words on the paper: "Abandoned by her birth mother, her fate uncertain."

His birth mother abandoned him.

Her birth mother abandoned her.

She was not the biological daughter of the Jiang couple.

She is not his biological daughter.

The tears that had been building up fell again, landing on the ink and blurring the black characters.

An Ning's face turned as pale as a sheet of paper in an instant, her breathing became rapid, and her body trembled uncontrollably.

Who is she?

She is not An Ning, nor is she Jiang Zhi!

Who is she?!

Who is she?!

She suddenly remembered what her aunt had said during dinner that day—that her mother had taken her home—not from the hospital, but because she had been picked up!

My aunt said her birthday is March 24th, and this diary entry is dated April 6th, fourteen days ago!

That matches!

So she was born on March 24th and was taken in by the Jiang family less than fourteen days later?

Tears streamed down her face uncontrollably, An Ning felt a tightness in her chest, and even breathing made her heart ache.

She quickly picked up her phone and made a call.

The phone rang for a long time before being answered. The voice was cheerful, "Xiao Zhi? Why are you calling your aunt so late? Do you miss your aunt?"

Hearing the word "aunt," Anning felt a sharp pain in her heart.

Her eyes were bloodshot, and her face was deathly pale. "Auntie..."

When she opened her mouth, her voice trembled and quivered, so choked up that it was almost inaudible.

"What's wrong, Xiaozhi?" Jiang Xiaoshan's voice suddenly turned serious and full of worry. "Why are you crying? What happened?"

An Ning gripped her phone tightly, gently closed her eyes, and two streams of hot tears fell.

"Aunt..." Her lips trembled as she spoke with difficulty, "You're not my biological aunt, are you?"

After she finished speaking, there was silence on the other end of the phone, as if they hadn't quite grasped what she had said.

Two seconds later, Jiang Xiaoshan said, "Xiaozhi, what are you saying? If I'm not your biological aunt, then who is?"

An Ning cried, her whole body trembling. She slowly slid down from the desk and sat on the floor. "I'm not a child of the Jiang family! I'm not myself—"

Before she could even utter the words "Mom and Dad," her heart ached sharply.

"I'm not their biological child. I was abandoned by someone else and taken in by the Jiang family, wasn't I?"

"Who told you?" Jiang Xiaoshan asked nervously, "Did west Yan tell you?"

An Ning's heart skipped a beat, and her eyes widened in disbelief. "west Yan knows about this too?"

Upon hearing this question, Jiang Xiaoshan knew she was in deep trouble.

This isn't something Lu Xiyan said about relationships.

She then realized that Lu Xiyan had never wanted Xiaozhi to know about this in the first place, so how could he suddenly bring it up?

She slapped her forehead. "Oh, I was just guessing, Xiao Zhi—"

"Aunt," Anning interrupted her, "I learned this secret from the inheritance files. My father left me two pages of a diary."

She asked, "So, not only do you know about this, but west Yan also knows, right?"

Now that things have come to this, no matter how many lies Jiang Xiaoshan tells, she can't cover it up anymore.

She sighed, her voice filled with helplessness.

"Yes, I've always known about your background. Xi Yan found a clue when he was helping me look for you, and that's when I told him."

"I was also thinking about whether to tell you this, but Xi Yan was thinking of you and wanted us to keep this secret," Jiang Xiaoshan said. "He said that as long as you don't know, he can keep this secret and let you be happy as Jiang Zhi for the rest of your life."

"But I never expected that my older brother would reveal this secret to you." She sighed deeply. "It just couldn't be kept a secret forever."

She added, "But Xiaozhi, you will always be Xiaozhi of the Jiang family, there's no doubt about that. Your parents truly treat you like their own child."

An Ning nodded silently, covering her mouth and sobbing incessantly.

She knew how good the Jiang couple had been to her, which was why she was so heartbroken.

A daughter who is found can be treated as her own, while a biological mother abandons her.

She was initially immersed in the joy of finding her biological parents, but the reality before her now told her that this joy was a bubble created for her by the Jiang couple, her aunt, and Xi Yan.

It broke with just a gentle poke.

She was never someone who was loved by her biological parents.

She was a pitiful person who was abandoned by her parents!

She cried for a long time, and Jiang Xiaoshan's heart broke from her tears.

"Xiao Zhi, don't think about so much. Just remember, you will always be the treasure of our Jiang family, our one and only Xiao Zhi."

An Ning shook her head. All told, she had only stayed in the Jiang family for four or five years, and she had even lost the memories of those four or five years.

She was not by the side of the Jiang couple, who missed her day and night and were even in poor health, and did not take care of them for a single day.

If she were their biological daughter, she would have at least a slight reason to accept how well the Jiang family treated her.

But now, how can she have the face or the status to accept everything that the Jiang couple left her?

They had five years of family ties, but the couple spent their entire lives searching for and loving her.

An Ning feels unworthy of this, so unworthy!

She bit her fingers so hard that her knuckles felt like they were going to break.

After a long silence, she choked back tears and asked, "Auntie, do you know who my birth mother is?"

"Are you looking for her?"

Anning said softly, "I want to know who she is, why she abandoned me, and whether she has looked for me all these years. I want to know where I came from and what I'm from."

Having lived for twenty-eight years, she was like a rootless duckweed, drifting with the current.

It drifted from a small ditch to the sea, and then from the sea to a river.

Drifting and drifting, I got tired of drifting.

I'm out of energy.

I just want to know which ditch I drifted out of.

"Okay." Jiang Xiaoshan agreed. "Twenty-eight years ago, when your mother brought you home, she asked your birth mother for a phone number, but she has never bothered her in all these years. This is the only way she left to contact you, but I don't know if it will still work."

Not long after, Jiang Xiaoshan sent a number.

Judging from the first three characters, it's definitely a number from a very, very long time ago.

Anning sat against the desk for a long time until the tear stains on her face dried and her skin on her face became sore from the tension.

She then picked up her phone, and just as she was about to make the call, she hesitated for a moment and then turned it off.

She got up, went to the bathroom to wash her face, put on some clothes, and went out.

After going downstairs, I found a 24-hour convenience store on the street, borrowed a public phone, and dialed this number.

She thought that if the phone number was no longer in service, she wouldn't bother looking for it.

I'm never looking for it again.

"beep--"

The loud ringing of the phone suddenly pounded on her heart.

She suddenly opened her eyes wide.

The phone is still working!