The Stepmother’s Counterattack: Raising a Child in a Bygone Era
Chapter 704 - 703: Suspicion of Zhou Shuhuan

Chapter 704: Chapter 703: Suspicion of Zhou Shuhuan

Liu Cuihua’s tears caused Shen Dashan and his son to lose their appetite as well.

Tian Wenfang sneered a cold glance at Liu Cuihua, lifted her bowl, and led her son Shen Wenwu upstairs.

Once they reached the second floor, Tian Wenfang headed straight into Shen Baolan’s bedroom.

The room faced south from the north and was the largest in the entire villa, with not only a separate bathroom and dressing room but also a balcony.

After closing the door, Tian Wenfang let her son sit at the tea table by the window to eat his noodles, while she started to wander around the bedroom.

She first lay down on the memory foam mattress, then she crawled into the dressing room, picking out good-looking clothes and dresses to try on in front of the mirror. Eventually, she slipped into the bathroom, lying in the pristine white bathtub, imagining herself taking a bath.

It’s better if the person doesn’t return. This massive villa and a shop, isn’t that worth much more than a hundred thousand yuan?

Too excited for a moment, she aggravated the wound on her forehead, causing her pain that made her grit her teeth and grimace.

That old witch, she really knew how to hit hard!

Downstairs.

Liu Cuihua sat alone at the dining table, quietly shedding tears over the disappearance of her daughter.

Shen Dashan and Shen Hao squatted outside the villa gate, one puffing away at his pipe, the other slurping noodles from his bowl.

Man is iron, food is steel, skip a meal and you’ll know the real deal, not to mention they had missed two meals already.

"Niudan’s dad."

Hearing Shen Dashan’s call, Shen Hao lifted his face from the bowl of noodles, "What is it, Dad?"

Shen Dashan bit his pipe, his somewhat cloudy eyes gazing vacantly ahead, "We need to make early preparations."

Shen Hao swallowed the noodles in his mouth, wiped his lips, and asked, "What preparations?"

Shen Dashan took a heavy drag on his pipe, saying, "If your sister can return safely, of course, that’s the best. But if something really happens to her, this house, and that shop..."

Shen Dashan didn’t finish his sentence, but Shen Hao understood all too well.

His eyes slowly reddened, he choked up, "I’d rather not have any of that, I just wish Baolan could be alive and well."

Shen Dashan took a sip of smoke as if he hadn’t heard him, "Zhou Fu isn’t closely related to us, but if he wishes to stay with our family, then you should raise him well for your sister, as a way to continue her lineage. If he doesn’t want to stay with us, let him go back to the Zhou family."

Shen Hao nodded emphatically.

To say that the father and son were uneducated, if Shen Baolan was indeed dead, her estate would belong to Zhou Fu, and they wouldn’t see a penny of it.

...

After a preliminary check by the police, it was revealed that the names and information belonging to Gao Hualiang and Huang Chunyu were both fake, and not even half a photo of the two was found.

The police could only ask a sketch artist to create portraits based on the information provided by the Shen Family and the elderly couple from the Zhou family.

The process was not going smoothly.

The descriptions of Gao Hualiang and Huang Chunyu by the Shen family and the Zhou family differed starkly, to put it lightly.

Gao Hualiang, as described by the Shen family, had a chiseled face, a straight nose, and eyes like shining stars beneath sword-like eyebrows.

In contrast, Ma Sufen’s description of Gao Hualiang depicted him with single eyelids, a flat nose, a round face, and thick lips.

The significant discrepancy, of course, came from Ma Sufen’s lack of desire for the police to find Shen Baolan.

If Baolan didn’t return, Zhou Fu would be able to go back to the Zhou family.

However, the police were not ones to eat their rations for nothing; after multiple inquiries and gathering information, it was eventually confirmed that the Shen family’s descriptions matched more closely to Gao Hualiang’s real appearance.

Due to Ma Sufen’s deliberate interference, a task that may have taken a day was dragged out for three full days.

This delay not only slowed down the police’s investigation but also increased the chance for Gao Hualiang and Huang Chunyu to escape.

According to the law, disrupting the work of the public security organs is subject to severe punishment.

However, Ma Sufen insisted she was old and forgetful, and the police could do nothing but educate her and send her home.

The police quickly posted wanted notices for Gao Hualiang and Huang Chunyu, as well as a missing person alert for Shen Baolan.

However, in an age without the internet and surveillance, finding someone was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

The kidnapping of Shen Baolan and the swindling of five million yuan caused a huge uproar.

Five million—a fortune an ordinary person wouldn’t earn in ten lifetimes—was conned away in less than a month.

Because of this, Shen Baolan became a household name in the news.

I wonder how she must have felt when she found out she was famous in this way.

...

Apart from the Zhou family, surely Qin Jinlian also reveled in Shen Baolan’s disappearance.

She had competed with Liu Cuihua all her life, originally thinking she’d be outdone by Liu Cuihua as they grew old. Then, in an unexpected twist, Shen Baolan was tricked out of her wealth and dignity, and her whereabouts became unknown.

The sky had cleared, the rain had stopped, and she was on top once more!

Every day, in addition to running her shop, she would look for people to chat up in the streets and alleys, and, not content with that, even went to Shen Mingzhu’s door, hoping to find out more rumors to add to her conversational arsenal.

After being scolded by Shen Mingzhu, she didn’t dare to approach Shen Mingzhu anymore, but behind her back, she was still gleefully waiting to see Liu Cuihua’s family become a laughingstock.

Several days passed without any progress in the case, and Shen Baolan, Gao Hualiang, and Huang Chunyu disappeared without a trace, like a gust of wind.

...

"Mingzhu, do you think we’ll ever see Shen Baolan again?"

Although Shen Hongmei had admitted her mistakes to Shen Mingzhu and returned to her job at the food factory, there were still traces of the rift. Their relationship remained distant as if there was something in between.

However, after Shen Baolan’s incident, Shen Hongmei came to visit Shen Mingzhu more often to chat.

"I don’t know."

Hearing Shen Mingzhu’s response, Shen Hongmei sighed, "Life is so unpredictable. Not long ago, she was happily talking about getting married, inviting me to her wedding feast. It’s hard to believe she would encounter such a thing."

Shen Mingzhu said nothing but was always puzzled in her heart.

Why would Gao Hualiang set his sights on Shen Baolan.

According to the police investigation, Gao Hualiang had only arrived in Fengcheng three months ago and quickly got close to Shen Baolan.

But at that time, Shen Baolan was not yet divorced and had no money, hardly enough to attract a scammer like Gao Hualiang.

Unless Gao Hualiang knew beforehand that Shen Baolan was going to divorce and would receive a large settlement.

The question is, why did Gao Hualiang know in advance that Shen Baolan was going to divorce, and how was he so sure that Shen Baolan would get a substantial settlement.

There must be someone behind the scenes pulling the strings.

Shen Baolan wouldn’t harm herself, nor did she have the wit for it.

...

"No, if Gao Hualiang was indeed sent by Shuhuan to plan Shen Baolan’s divorce, then why would Shuhuan give Shen Baolan five million and a house? Would Shen Baolan refuse to divorce if he directly offered this condition?"

In the evening, when Pei Yang heard Shen Mingzhu’s speculation, his first reaction was it was impossible.

"What if Gao Hualiang turned against him midway?"

For modern-day people, such a scenario is not strange: "To divorce with the least cost possible, so he arranged a setup, hoping to catch Shen Baolan in an affair."

"But during this, Gao Hualiang realized that Shen Baolan was even more foolish and easy to deceive than he thought, so he plotted within a plot. He helped Shen Baolan get Zhou Shuhuan’s entire fortune first, then found a way to roll up this money. Isn’t that much more than what Zhou Shuhuan was offering?"

"The issue of Zhou Shuhuan giving Shen Baolan five million is something I can’t understand, but if it was Gao Hualiang who caught something on Zhou Shuhuan, forcing him to pay the money, doesn’t that make sense?"

Pei Yang spoke after a long time: "This is just your guess."

"Whether it’s guesswork or fact is up to the police to investigate. I also hope that I misunderstood Zhou Shuhuan. But if Gao Hualiang really was brought in by him, then he must know Gao Hualiang’s background."