So They Have Never Been A Family...

Fang JunRong hated her son, Li ShiZe, even more than she hated her husband. She had given up on Li WangJin long ago, but she could never get over how her son behaved. Before Jiang YaGe came to their house, Li ShiZe had always been impeccable regarding his family; he remembered everyone's birthday and cared a lot about his sister. He had always been her pride and joy.

But ever since he had run into Jiang YaGe, he seemed to have given up all of his other roles. He was Jiang YaGe's Li ShiZe and she was the only thing left in his life. He was no longer her son: no longer the brother of Li XinYun. Anyone who dared to stand in front of Jiang YaGe would be his enemy.

She couldn't help but see his cold look in her head, like a frigid winter in December, making her shudder in its coldness.

"I wouldn't let anyone hurt YaGe in front of me in any way, not even you. From this day forward, we are no longer mother and son."

Every time she recalled that day, she felt her heart break into pieces. But as painful as it was, she had gotten used to it.

Fang JunRong took a deep breath and suppressed all of her emotions. In front of her, Li WangJin was still blathering on about how nice Jiang YaGe was, trying to increase Fang JunRong's fondness for her.

"YaGe will be so delighted when she hears about this. Have you met before? She is a very kind and mature girl, I'm sure you'll love her when you meet her. I hope XinYun will take a page from YaGe's book after she joins us, XinYun is a little spoiled. I've heard that she has turned to you for an allowance again."

Fang JunRong pursed her lips and said, "We have plenty of money. Our little princess shouldn't have to suffer. If we are talking about spending money, one of those paintings you bought cost more than her entire allowance for the year, no?"

In her previous life, Li WangJin had always compared the two girls with each other, explicitly praising Jiang YaGe and talking down on XinYun. As much as XinYun wasn't a petty girl, after being belittled time and again, it was inevitable that she started feeling resentful toward Jiang YaGe.

Li WangJin was a man with double standards. While he felt that XinYun spent too much money, he also spent a lot on birthday parties for Jiang YaGe and bought her all sorts of gifts. Perhaps, in his mind, it was worth it to spend as much as he wanted to on Jiang YaGe, but it was simply wasteful when he spent it on his own daughter. Fang JunRong had no idea what kind of curse Jiang YaGe had cast on him.

Even though Fang JunRong had no more feelings for him, thinking of that still brought back anger in her. Her tone turned cold. "Raising a daughter costs money. If we can't afford one girl, maybe we shouldn't be talking about adopting a second one. We want to be able to treat her nicely when she comes over. Or you can reduce the number of times you go to auctions."

Li WangJin changed colors and said, as though appeasing her, "I'm just kidding. Don't take that so seriously. XinYun is our child. Of course, I want to spoil her too."

As though he was worried that she didn't believe him, he immediately transferred another ¥1 M allowance to XinYun.

Fang JunRong no longer wanted to waste time talking to him and quickly sent him away. Right now, the most important thing was figuring out the situation with their money, so she knew what she was getting into when they would get their divorce. Except for their house and land, the most valuable assets of The Fangs were the Ayron Corporation, Li WangJin's electrical company, and Meifang, a newly founded company for skin care products.

Later on, her BBQ pork son even gave away their skin care product company to Jiang YaGe. Words had it that Jiang YaGe had some formulas for skin care products, and she made a ton of money with them. From there, she was able to befriend quite a few bosses to back her.

The timing of her rebirth wasn't the worst. She still has her people in finance, human resources, and research & development. Among them, Xu WeiWei, the manager of finance, was a good friend of hers from her college days.

In her previous life, she had slowly handed over her business to her son. By the time she realized it, her BBQ son had already swapped out all her trusted ones. She had lost all of her capital to fight with them and lost everything she had.

She gave her good friend Xu WeiWei a call and set a time to meet up with her on Saturday afternoon, booking a private room at "White Crane". A club she frequented.

Before their meeting, she had looked over all of their properties – they had a total of 16 shops, all of them at fairly decent locations. Just these shops already added up to over a billion. Mansions and other houses under her name probably added up to another ¥4 billion. All the houses they had purchased were under Fang JunRong's name, that was part of the reason for Li WangJin's great reputation, and many took his side during their divorce.

She let out a long sigh. Luckily, she hadn't given away all these houses yet. In her past life, she had divided up their properties and given them to her son and daughter at her daughter's debutante. Later, Li WangJin convinced XinYun to also give him her share in the name of investment.

Thinking of that, Fang JunRong's hatred for Li WangJin deepened.

During this lifetime, she would not give away her houses and her shops no matter what.

She recollected her emotions and watched coldly as Li WangJin busied himself getting Jiang YaGe's room ready. He wanted to arrange Jiang YaGe's room on the second floor next to Li ShiZe's, but Fang JunRong interrupted and assigned her a different room on the first floor instead.

When Saturday came, she drove to White Crane, a very famous club in City S. Her good friend Xu WeiWei arrived after ten minutes with her laptop, her hair cut short, looking like a very competent businesswoman.

As soon as she sat down, Xu WeiWei immediately turned on her computer and pulled out a USB drive. "Even if you hadn't contacted me, there's something that I wanted to talk to you about."

She was a very meticulous woman, and she stored the important information separately on a USB drive.

Fang JunRong missed Xu WeiWei as much as her daughter in her past life, she and Xu WeiWei had been friends for over 20 years. Because of her, Li WangJin even dragged Xu WeiWei into their matters, and she ended up in jail for a crime that she never committed. Fang JunRong had always felt guilty over that.

"What is it?"

She felt perplexed. She didn't remember this bit in her previous life.

Xu WeiWei opened up a file, hesitated a little, but finally went ahead, "Over the last few years, CEO Li had spent a lot of the company's money on buying antiques and paintings. The amount was pretty sizable."

Fang JunRong vaguely recalled that Xu WeiWei had mentioned this to her in her previous life, she didn't think it was important and got into a riff with Xu WeiWei. No wonder she had stopped bringing it up afterward.

Li WangJin had fallen for antiques and paintings ten years ago, so much so he even started a company that took care of matters related to those for him. He was especially fond of the works of Xu FangWeng, and he had spent a lot of money on his art. The odd thing was that as much as Li WangJin had collected, he had never had a show but kept all of the paintings inside his mansion.

Fang JunRong looked more solemn now. "How much has he spent so far?"

"I have done some preliminary calculations. He had spent close to ¥3.6B in this area over the last ten years," replied Xu WeiWei.

Even though Fang JunRong had prepared herself, she still changed colors. That was higher than she had expected.

The Li's might be rich, but ¥3.6B was rich. And he dared to criticize his daughter for overspending?

"I know it's not my place to say this, but I think I should tell you something else…" said Xu WeiWei in a low voice.

Xu WeiWei had just noticed this abnormality when she was combing through the finances this year. She hesitated for a little bit and decided that she should share this with her good friend.

Fang JunRong looked over the file until her sight locked onto one line: "Red-Crowned Crane" ¥150 million. Purchased three years ago.

The "Red-Crowned Crane" was arguably the famed artist Xu FangWeng's most well-known work. Fang JunRong had seen the item before, at her uncle Mr. Zhang's place. She was sure that under no circumstances would he resell this artwork. Li WangJin was with her at the time and had also seen it.

This would mean the painting he purchased was doubtless a counterfeit. Did he spend ¥150 million on a counterfeit? That'd make him a water-brain idiot. Is Li WangJin an idiot? It didn't look like it.

Then there was only one explanation left. Li WangJin had been using this as an excuse to shift all the money from the company into his personal account all these years. In her previous life, Li WangJin gave his art collection to their daughter Li XinYun during their divorce. Fang JunRong, at the time, thought that he still cared about his daughter. As it turned out, he was just giving her a stack of garbage.

Thinking of his betrayal, her stomach content started to roil, the feeling of disgust bubbling up.

Even though she was sure of her speculation, she still needed more evidence. Fang JunRong called up Uncle Zhang, the rightful owner of "Red-Crowned Crane" He was also a loyal fan of Xu FengWeng and knew quite a bit about the artist and the whereabouts of some of his other works.

She inquired about a few of Xu FengWeng's other works and found out for sure that a few of the paintings on the list were in the hands of some of Uncle Zhang's friends.

After she hung up the phone, Fang JunRong let out a sarcastic laugh. Nobody knew if she was laughing at Li WangJin or herself, perhaps both. She had always thought that their issues began after Jiang YaGe had joined them; she hadn't expected that he had started plotting against their assets ten years ago, in a quiet and seemingly harmless way.

So they have never truly been a family from the very beginning. He had started this ten years ago, what a patient man he was.

Xu WeiWei was a smart person. She had a good idea of what was going on from Fang JunRong's phone call. Anger was clear on her face, but she tried to control herself in front of her friend. "What do you want to do? You want to divorce him?"

She knew her friend well. Now that Fang JunRong had found out that the man sleeping next to her every night had been plotting, she would not let this go.

"He must have an accomplice who helped him with all these counterfeits to have acquired all these seamlessly over the years," said Fang JunRong. And, knowing how careful Li WangJin was, he wouldn't have a lot of accomplices either. After all, the more people knew about it, the higher the chance others would find out.

She paused for a second, her squinted eyes seemed cold. "Let's find that person first and have him paint a few more. So he likes counterfeits, right? We'll let him buy to his heart's content then."

When the two of them get divorced, these counterfeits would go to him. After all, she was a nice person. A nice person doesn't take away the things that someone else loves.