The Guide to Rising to Power: The Ultimate Schemes of a Green Tea Beauty

Liang Zhenghe sat there.

The man was relaxed and composed. He showed neither the fear one would expect from someone facing death, nor the exhaustion of being attacked from multiple sides.

A serene calm lingered on that face.

Shen Yao sat down opposite him, looking at his appearance, she suppressed her inner turmoil but showed no sign of it on her face:

"Uncle, it's been a long time."

Upon hearing the word "Uncle," Liang Zhenghe's gaze flickered slightly, and then his eyes curved into a smile, which slowly spread across his lips.

"Yaoyao, you had so many men arrest me," he said softly, a hint of curiosity in his voice, "Aren't you tired?"

Shen Yao leaned back in her chair, meeting his gaze across the cold tabletop.

Faced with such a determined opponent, any emotional fluctuation would be a disadvantage.

"I'm not tired," she said calmly. "They're the ones who's busy. I just need to live my own life."

Upon hearing this, Liang Zhenghe nodded, a genuine hint of appreciation appearing in his eyes, like a teacher praising a student's progress.

"That's how it should be. Don't feel too sorry for those young people. Men won't love you any more just because you feel sorry for them."

A sense of awkwardness swept through Shen Yao's heart.

For those words wrapped in a shell of concern, for those eyes that seemed to truly care about her.

She suppressed her discomfort and directly stated her purpose:

"What did you want to see me about?"

Liang Zhenghe was silent for a moment. Then he spoke, his voice slightly softer than before, but still gentle:

"You're one of my few remaining family members. Does it have to be for a specific reason just to look at you?"

His gaze lingered on her face, silently.

Shen Yao remained unmoved and continued to push the conversation forward:

"Your son, Liang Xiheng, has something to ask you. He wants to know—why did you treat him this way?"

Liang Zhenghe did not answer immediately.

He lowered his eyes, and after a moment, he raised his head again, his gaze now containing something she couldn't decipher.

"My son is very good at influencing others."

Liang Zhenghe admired the subtle changes on Shen Yao's face:

"Are you sure... you really want to kill me, or are you influenced by his last words?"

Shen Yao's heart skipped a beat.

She looked into his eyes, those eyes that always radiated kindness and gentleness, but now they were like a deep well, with chill creeping up from the bottom.

Liang Zheng and he know everything.

Was she affected?

Maybe yes.

But Shen Yao knew that, in the end, it was she herself who had come to this point, standing in front of Liang Zhenghe and questioning him.

Those thoughts and decisions were indeed partly ignited by others, but once the flame was lit, it belonged to her alone.

Leung Cheng-ho leaned back in his chair, his posture still relaxed. He smiled slightly and spoke in a gentle voice:

"Liang Xiheng sent you to ask me why, so why didn't he come himself?"

"Because he died." Shen Yao replied quickly, her voice carrying a thin layer of sharpness.

"Haven't you been provoking him all along, trying to make him die faster? From Wei Zhenxing's tombstone, to abandoning him alone, to changing his medication, to all those invisible yet ever-present provocations in his life."

"Haven't you been doing this all along?"

After listening, Liang Zhenghe neither refuted nor got angry.

He simply sighed softly, a sigh that carried a hint of genuine helplessness, as if he had been misunderstood but was unwilling to explain further:

"He was going to die, but he could have died peacefully. He chose this path himself; I just didn't stop him."

Liang Zhenghe looked at Shen Yao with tender eyes:

"Liang Xiheng loves you very much and wants to possess all of you. He wants to hold your feelings, your hatred, your love, your thoughts, and your every word and action in his hands."

The man's voice lowered even further:

"You've just been influenced by him, Yao Yao. Can you distinguish which of his last words were true and which were false?"

"Actually, you and I are family. What kind of life-or-death hatred could there be?"

"It was him and Xue Huaiqing who dragged you into this."

Liang Zhenghe smiled slightly, calm and composed:

"If he loves you, he will never let you go."

"I'm trying to help you too."

"His death is the only way for you to get rid of him."

Shen Yao was stunned. The gentleness and murderous intent contained in Liang Zhenghe's words struck her at the same time.

She thought of her father, and of those helpless nights from her youth.

Shen Yao's pent-up anger finally erupted, like magma surging from a crack in the ground:

"I don't understand. How can you be so cruel to your own children? Is it because of an inherent male inferiority complex? Do you become even more cold and heartless because the child wasn't conceived in your bodies?"

"He was your son, he's dead, why aren't you in any pain or saddened at all?"

Liang Zheng listened quietly to her words, his gaze falling on her slightly reddened eyes, and after a moment he gently shook his head.

"You treat him like a younger brother?" he asked coldly.

"Yes."

Shen Yao met his gaze without hesitation.

She could tell that Liang Zhenghe had a strange indulgence towards her. He seemed to really just want to see her, which was why he went to such lengths to call her over.

A hint of pity appeared on Liang Zhenghe's perpetually gentle and kind face:

"You treat Xiheng like a younger brother, that's why you're like this. Is it possible that he's neither your brother nor my son?"

"It's not worth getting angry at him for it."

Shen Yao looked at him helplessly:

"What do you mean? What are you talking about?"

"Yao Yao".

Liang Zhenghe's voice remained gentle, but beneath that gentleness floated a thin, cold layer of disgust.

"Liang Xiheng is nothing more than a bastard I adopted from an orphanage."

"Without me, his birth mother would have been nothing more than a prostitute of dubious origin, and his birth father would have been nothing more than a lazy patron of prostitutes."

"Without me, how long could he have lived after being abandoned in an orphanage with congenital heart disease?"

"You and I have both experienced poverty, and we know it better than anyone else."

"I saved him, gave him a comfortable life, a starting point at the top of the pyramid, and unparalleled fatherly love."

"What else could he be dissatisfied with?"

Shen Yao froze on the spot, like a statue suddenly doused with cold water.

"……so what?"

Liang Zhenghe looked at her, his tone softening slightly:

"So it's really not worth it for you to be angry with him for me. The blessings he has enjoyed in his life far exceed everything he should have had."

"The same goes for Xue Huaiqing."

"I gave him a second chance, I gave him the will to take revenge on the Liang family, and isn't he doing just fine now?"

"Without me, he would still be that fool who got himself all bloodied and bruised trying to win a lawsuit."

"You know perfectly well how much Xiheng wanted to kill him without me. Now that Xiheng is dead, I'm trapped here."

"Don't you think this is the best ending?"

Shen Yao finally lost her composure.

Neuropathy.

Is this person insane?

Shen Yao felt a real wave of nausea rising in her stomach.

She took a deep breath and suppressed the surging emotion.

"Liang Zhenghe, are you kidding me? Don't try to evade the topic with me, and don't try to influence me!"

She reasonably suspected that he was instilling a distorted set of values ​​in her, attempting to shake her mind and complete one last act of mind control.

"If I'm not mistaken, haven't you been hiding the truth all along, making everyone believe that Liang Xiheng is your biological son?"

"Isn't the fatherly love you give him just exploiting his lack of affection?"

Shen Yao's voice grew faster and faster.

"Wasn't Xue Huaiqing's suffering caused by you?"

"Didn't you instigate Liang Xiheng to push his father off the stairs? Didn't you allow others to burn his mother to death?"

Her gaze fixed intently on Liang Zhenghe's face, then she abruptly changed the subject, pointing directly to the most chilling truth:

"Isn't it you who used your meager and hypocritical fatherly love to create competition between the two of them, making Liang Xiheng feel that Xue Huaiqing stole his father?"

"You sit back and watch those two fight to the death. Don't try to fool me with the excuse that you're just trying to escape."

"Besides this, what exactly are you—"

Why such deep malice towards them?