Breaking the Taboo (1v2, Blood Uncle and Nephew) - Chapter 20

After that, she was let out.

Only to be dragged again—this time to the Han family ancestral hall, forced to kneel.

She looked like a puppet emptied of its soul. Silent. Obedient. Kneeling where she was told.

Time lost all meaning. She didn’t know how long she stayed like that. In the end, someone brought her out, burning with fever, and took her to the hospital to apologize—to Zhao Fei and Han Ziying.

Verbal humiliation rained down on her. Only after enduring it all was the matter considered “settled.”

Han Yezhen, of course, knew none of this. At the time, he wasn’t even at the Han residence. He was neck-deep in work, trying to steer the family business through a painful transformation. Stretched thin. Swamped.

Li Mohan stayed silent for a little too long. Han Yezhen waited for an answer that didn’t come, exhaled a slow circle of smoke, and studied her through the curling haze.

“You ever talk to my big sister about it? I remember her treating you pretty well.”

Han Ya had opposed Li Mohan entering the Han household from the very beginning.

After all, Li Mohan was born from the woman who had destroyed her family. Taking her in meant legitimizing the existence of a mistress.

But Master Han had aged, softened from the cold, ruthless man of his youth. He insisted on bringing the child back.

Their father had always been blunt. What could Han Ya say, as a daughter? She relented and accepted Li Mohan’s place in the family.

Less than a year after Li Mohan came home, Han Ya’s attitude began to change. She became gentle. Maternal, even. As if she were truly her own.

Whatever Han Ziying had, Li Mohan would have as well—sometimes even better. More expensive. Higher quality.

Whenever Han Ziying and Li Mohan fought, Han Ya would be the first to scold her daughter. In front of the whole family, she would raise her voice, reprimanding her harshly, telling her to behave, to back off, to stop making trouble for Li Mohan and be more considerate toward her.

It had happened so many times—during Mid-Autumn Festival, the Dragon Boat Festival, the Winter Solstice… all those warm, festive family occasions. Han Ya would always find some excuse to delay Li Mohan’s return.

And when Li Mohan came home, always exactly at the time Han Ya specified, the table would already be set, the family gathered, just waiting for her to sit down and start.

Even when Master Han grumbled about how Li Mohan had no sense of propriety, no concept of time, Han Ya would stay calm, gently coaxing him: “She’s still young. Kids get distracted.”

But the moment Li Mohan stepped through the door, what met her was always something else entirely.

Over time, Master Han began to see her as hopeless. Ungrateful. Another failure just like her father.

So she made herself small.

She stopped arguing. Stopped talking. Stopped existing.

Bit by bit, she faded—quiet, invisible, barely there.

The past clung to her, a bitter smoke curling in her chest. All that pain, all that humiliation, sealed tight in the vault of memory. Too ugly to look at. Too heavy to let go.

Her eyes burned, the rims swollen with held-back tears. Her tear glands throbbed with pressure. But her pride—pathetic, fragile, stubborn—refused to let her cry in front of Han Yezhen.

After a long pause, her voice came, soft and careful, slightly nasal from the strain.

“…Xiao Jiujiu, could you… not tell Grandpa about this?”

That softness from Han Ya—the way she “treated her like her own”—was a blade in silk. Li Mohan feared it.

And Master Han’s thunderous wrath… she feared that, too.

Han Yezhen drew in a breath of smoke, held it, then exhaled slow and steady before grinding the cigarette into the car’s ashtray.

He looked at her. Fully. Deeply.

Then he leaned in again.

That sharp, handsome face drew closer, inch by inch.

Her heart, which had just begun to steady, kicked up again—thudding wildly in her chest, threatening to burst through her ribs.

The scent of smoke still lingered on his breath. His voice, roughened from the cigarettes, came low and gravelly:

“I won’t tell him—on one condition. From now on, I’ll be the one handling it for you.”