Chapter 71: We're Not Even Close
The police led Sun Xianzhou, Teng Hao, and the mother-son pair into the interrogation room.
The lobby fell eerily quiet. The rowdy drunkards who had been causing trouble earlier had vanished without a trace.
Ruan Yu stood awkwardly beside Teng Yi, then took a few steps away to stand alone by the window.
Teng Yi quickly followed her.
She glanced up at him discreetly, only to find him already looking at her.
"Does your arm hurt?" Teng Yi asked.
"No," she lied, though it throbbed painfully—likely even scraped.
"Let me see."
Without hesitation, Teng Yi reached out, gripping her wrist and pulling her arm toward him.
Ruan Yu hissed in pain and tried to pull back, but his hold tightened.
Carefully, Teng Yi rolled up her sleeve, revealing a raw red scrape on her elbow, surrounded by bruises.
"You call this 'not hurting'?"
"What's it to you?" Ruan Yu snapped, yanking her arm free. "We're not even close."
She remembered all too clearly—they had been like strangers for nearly half a month.
To her, those two weeks had felt like half a year.
Teng Yi frowned, about to say something, when Sun Xianzhou and Teng Hao emerged from the interrogation room.
Since Teng Hao suspected the neighbors of abducting and imprisoning a girl—while the mother and son vehemently denied it—the police decided to escort both parties to the scene for verification.
Unwilling to let Teng Hao go alone, Ruan Yu joined them.
The group arrived at Huafu Residential Complex. The mother and son resisted the entire way, and when the police ordered them to open the door, the woman exploded.
"Do you know who my husband is? He's Ren Tianhai, CEO of Haike Group! He’s good friends with your police chief—they even played golf together last month. If the chief finds out you barged into our home without permission, he’ll make sure you regret it!"
"Mrs. Ren, we’re just doing our job. Please cooperate," the female officer urged patiently.
"Cooperate? I’ve told you a thousand times—that girl upstairs is my daughter! Call my husband if you don’t believe me. Are you saying we wouldn’t recognize our own child?"
The officer hesitated, glancing at Teng Hao.
"If she’s really your daughter, what’s the harm in confirming it?" Teng Hao challenged.
"It’s not about harm—it’s about principle! Letting you into our home is an insult, a violation of our rights! I—"
BANG!
A loud crash from the second floor cut her off.
"See? She’s protesting!" Teng Hao stared at the shattered window upstairs, his voice firm yet remorseful. "She’s begging for help. All this time, her 'tantrums' were cries for rescue—and none of us noticed."
"You little brat, shut your mouth!" The boy Teng Hao had fought earlier stepped forward. "This isn’t over between us!"
"Bring it on!" Teng Hao lifted his chin. "I’ll knock you down again!"
The two nearly lunged at each other before Teng Yi swiftly pulled Teng Hao back.
BANG!
Another muffled thud came from upstairs.
Now even the officers sensed something was wrong.
"Mrs. Ren, if you refuse to open the door, we’ll have to force our way in. Any property damage will be on you."The woman glanced at her son.
"Hurry up!" The officer waved his baton, pointing at the door.
The woman no longer had the resolve to resist and reluctantly opened the door.
-?-
The Ren family's grand hall was resplendent, its style even more refined than the Teng residence next door.
Indeed, only the poor had their imaginations constrained—in wealthy neighborhoods, one house outshone the next in extravagance.
On the second floor, the leftmost room was locked.
Under the officers' forceful demands, the woman unlocked the door.
The room was unlit, pitch-black. The night wind whistled in through the shattered window, making the space feel even colder and more eerie.
The female officer fumbled for the light switch on the wall.
As the light flickered on, the sight before them left everyone stunned.
The room was in complete disarray—shattered glass, broken ceramics, withered and scattered flowers, plates swept onto the floor... and the girl in the white dress.
The girl sat slumped against the piano, her hair disheveled, her bare feet covered in bloody marks.
At the sight of the newcomers, a glimmer of life finally returned to her exhausted face.
"Mmm... mmm..."
"Officer, my daughter has mental issues. I was afraid she might hurt someone outside, so I had to keep her locked up..."
"Stop lying and taking advantage of the fact that she can't speak," Teng Hao cut her off, then turned to Ruan Yu. "Do you have paper and a pen in your bag?"
Ruan Yu actually did—she was used to jotting down vocabulary while studying, so a notebook and pen were essentials.
Teng Hao tore a sheet from Ruan Yu's notebook and approached the girl in white, pen in hand.
"You said you can write. So now, write down what you want to say. The officers will help you." The young man knelt on one knee, offering her the pen and gesturing for her to write on the paper.
The girl looked at Teng Hao, her eyes reddening as tears instantly spilled over.
Seeing her like this, Teng Hao felt even more guilt gnaw at him. He shouldn’t have just focused on the fight earlier, watching helplessly as she was locked back inside.
"Alright, don’t cry," Teng Hao said awkwardly. "Write first. The officers are waiting."
The girl nodded, took the pen from him, and with trembling hands, wrote a line of crooked yet delicate characters:
"They’ve imprisoned me. I want to find my father. My father is Ren Tianhai." After a pause, she added a string of numbers after Ren Tianhai’s name—his phone number.
"See!" Teng Hao held up the paper for the female officer. "I told you she was being forced!"
The boy who had fought Teng Hao, sensing the shift in the situation, tried to flee but was swiftly tackled by an officer at the door and pinned to the ground.
"Chenchen!" the woman shrieked, rushing forward. "Let go of my son! He’s young, he didn’t mean it! He didn’t do anything! It’s all my fault! All my fault!"
"Cuff them all and take them to the station," the female officer ordered, handing the note to her colleague. "Contact Ren Tianhai."
The officers in the room sprang into action.
The matter was more or less resolved.
The girl remained seated on the floor. Teng Hao turned back and helped her up.
Her feet were covered in wounds of varying depths, and the floor was littered with glass shards—walking on her own was impossible.
Teng Hao hesitated, then looked at Teng Yi.
Teng Yi caught his brother’s gaze and tilted his head slightly, his expression seeming to say, Do I really need to teach you this? The young man flushed, stiffly reaching out to scoop the girl before him into a bridal carry...
-?-
The girl's name was Ren Yun Shen, the only daughter of Ren Tianhai, CEO of Haike Group.
The woman who had confined Yun Shen was named Ye Linzhen, Ren Tianhai's second wife—in other words, Yun Shen's stepmother. Ye Linzhen's son was called Ren Zhuo. Though he bore the Ren surname, he shared no blood relation with either Ren Tianhai or Yun Shen, being Ye Linzhen's child from a previous marriage.
This was a blended family—simply put, a father with his daughter had remarried a mother with her son.
After marrying Ren Tianhai, Ye Linzhen had changed her son's surname to Ren to curry favor with her new husband. Knowing how dearly Ren Tianhai cherished Yun Shen, she took great care of the girl, meticulously managing her daily life with maternal devotion so Yun Shen could focus on her piano studies undisturbed.
Ren Tianhai trusted Ye Linzhen implicitly, and Yun Shen had grown quite fond of her stepmother too.
For six months, the four lived together harmoniously without the slightest discord.
Recently, with Haike Group going public in Hong Kong, Ren Tianhai had taken up residence there to oversee business operations. Yun Shen remained alone in Liaocheng with her stepmother and stepbrother to continue her piano studies rather than accompany her father.
Even in Ren Tianhai's absence, Ye Linzhen continued doting on Yun Shen, attending to her every need. During their nightly WeChat calls, Yun Shen never failed to praise Ye Linzhen's care, further reassuring her father about leaving his daughter in the woman's hands.
Yun Shen had considered herself fortunate—after losing her birth mother, she'd found someone who genuinely treated her as a daughter.
But reality proved her naivety.
She couldn't pinpoint when it began—Ren Zhuo started shadowing her, occasionally brushing her hand or slipping an arm around her waist. Initially, she dismissed it as sibling affection.
Until one evening during her bath, she discovered Ren Zhuo peering through the frosted glass door.
Shocked and connecting the dots, fury overwhelmed her. Her first thought was Ye Linzhen—surely this reasonable woman would uphold justice. But when confronted, Ye Linzhen unhesitatingly sided with her son, insisting Yun Shen must have misinterpreted things.
Emboldened by maternal support, Ren Zhuo smirked triumphantly at Yun Shen, later attempting further molestation when alone. When Yun Shen threatened to call police, their physical altercation drew Ye Linzhen's attention.
Faced with irrefutable evidence, the mother again shielded her son. To prevent Yun Shen from reporting them, they confiscated her phone, confining her to her room. Each night, they impersonated her in WeChat conversations with Ren Tianhai, maintaining an illusion of normalcy.
Meanwhile, Yun Shen plotted her escape from behind locked doors.She couldn't speak and didn't have a phone. The only thing that could speak for her was her piano. But she couldn't openly call for help either. She could only try to attract attention from the outside world by playing the piano randomly when Ye Linzhen and her son weren't home. However, this method had little effect.
Once, she played randomly all night without rest, but in the end, it only resulted in a few complaints that came to nothing.
Fortunately, this time she met Teng Hao.
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