The race to the Shen Villa ended not in a grand battle, but in the hollow silence of a house already dead. By the time the olive-green convoy arrived, the underground vault was a charred husk. Amidst the smoke, Shen Ruo was found huddled in a corner, clutching a half-melted hard drive. Her mind, already fragile, had snapped under the weight of the Si family's collapse. As the military police dragged her away, she didn't scream; she only hummed a distorted nursery rhyme, her eyes fixed on the empty space where her glory used to be.
With the immediate threat neutralized, the chaos of the capital vanished behind the heavy, soundproof doors of the Xiao Estate. Before the world was to meet the new heiress, a different kind of reckoning was taking place—a quiet dinner between a man who had everything and a daughter who had been raised by his enemies.
The dining room was vast, but Xiao Jinglin had ordered the staff to clear out, leaving only a single candle-lit table near the window. Shen Xi sat across from him, her posture perfect. She had swapped her lab coat for a simple but elegant black dress that highlighted her calm, lethal poise.
"I asked the chef to prepare something from the Southern District," Xiao Jinglin said, his voice unusually soft as he gestured to the spread. "Your mother... Yun Zi... she always said the spices there reminded her of home."
Shen Xi looked at the food, then at the man whose face was a mirror of her own. "You didn't eat much in the lab. Your cortisol levels were peaked for twelve hours. You should start with the broth."
Xiao Jinglin let out a dry, pained chuckle. "Even at dinner, you're the doctor. You really are her daughter. She was always the one telling me to stop working and start breathing."
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small, velvet box. He didn't hand it to her; he placed it on the table between them. Inside was a ring—a rare, deep-amber diamond set in platinum, glowing like trapped starlight.
"I commissioned this the day I found out she was pregnant," he whispered. "I was going to give it to her on the day of our wedding—the wedding the Si family ensured never happened. It's been sitting in a vault for twenty years. It was meant for the woman I loved, but it belongs to the daughter I failed to protect."
Shen Xi looked at the ring, but she didn't pick it up yet. "You didn't fail me, Mr. Xiao. You were lied to by people who were experts at deception. If you want to make it up to me, don't give me diamonds. Give me the truth about why she left without telling you she was alive."
Xiao Jinglin's expression darkened. "The Si family used a neural-blocker—a primitive version of the Ghost Pulse—on me. They made me forget the final week we spent together. I woke up being told she had died in a fire. I spent twenty years thinking I was grieving a tragedy, when I was actually living a lie."
He looked at her, his eyes shining with a rare vulnerability. "But seeing you... seeing you survive, and thrive, and become the woman who saved Mu Feichi... it's the only miracle I've ever seen."
Shen Xi finally reached out, her fingers brushing the amber stone. "I didn't just save Mu Feichi, Father. I saved myself. And tomorrow, at the banquet, we aren't just announcing an heiress. We are announcing the end of an era."
The door to the dining room opened slightly, and Mu Feichi stepped in. He had changed into a fresh olive-green dress uniform, his medals polished to a mirror finish. He looked at the two of them—the Financial Magnet and the Doctor—and a rare, genuine smile touched his lips.
"The guests are starting to arrive," Mu Feichi said, walking to Shen Xi's side and resting a hand on her shoulder. "The North and South are waiting. Are you ready to show them what a Xiao looks like?"
Shen Xi stood up, the amber ring now firmly on her finger. She looked from her father to the man she loved. "Let them wait a little longer. I want them to be desperate for the reveal."