CHAPTER 154: 154- FAMILY TOKEN [3]

The heavy doors thudded shut behind the last elder, leaving only the three of them in the vast, echoing hall: Fang Yuan, the eighteen-year-old Fang Mei radiating nervous curiosity, and her adopted father, Fang Chen, rooted to the spot.

Lin Zhaoyue had slipped away with surprising swiftness, Du Juan and Fang Jingyi in tow, likely already heading to Pill King Tushan’s disciple.

Fang Yuan blinked at Fang Chen.

"Uncle? What are you still doing here? Don’t you have..." He trailed off, genuinely perplexed. Did the man forget where the door was?

"Ah! Wait!" Fang Chen blurted, shifting his weight. His eyes darted between Fang Yuan and Mei. "I thought... I thought you wanted me to tell her. About... her origin."

Fang Yuan’s brow furrowed. "Huh? What?"

Genuine confusion painted his features.

Fang Mei’s head snapped towards her father, her earlier nervousness replaced by intense, wide-eyed focus.

"You told me," Fang Chen insisted, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "to wait until she was nineteen. She’s nineteen today."

Nineteen. The number landed like a forgotten pebble in Fang Yuan’s mind.

A memory surfaced: Fang Chen, years ago, fretting and wringing his hands, asking when, oh when was the right time to share the heavy truth with his adopted daughter.

Fang Yuan, buried under clan ledgers and a particularly vexing trade dispute, had waved a dismissive hand. "Nineteen," he’d muttered, plucking the number from thin air simply to end the conversation. Why nineteen? Why not twenty? Or twenty-five? Or never?

he silently berated his past, distracted self.

Externally, Fang Yuan’s expression smoothed into one of practiced, sage-like recollection. A slight, knowing nod.

"Ah. That." He infused his voice with the warmth of remembered wisdom, hoping it masked the sheer, internal panic of the arbitrary deadline he’d invented.

"Indeed. Of course."

A thick, awkward silence descended.

Fang Chen fidgeted, looking like he wished the marble floor would swallow him.

Fang Mei stared at her father, then at Fang Yuan, her knuckles white where she gripped her robes.

Fang Yuan felt the absurdity of the moment, three people frozen, waiting for someone else to break the tension over this revelation he’d accidentally scheduled.

With a sigh that was part exasperation, part amusement at his own past folly, Fang Yuan finally broke the stalemate.

"Well, go ahead, Uncle Chen." He gestured magnanimously. "Sister Mei is certainly old enough to handle the truth now. As we... discussed." He barely suppressed a wince at the word.

Fang Chen swallowed hard, his throat working.

He turned to Fang Mei, his expression a mask of paternal anguish.

"My... my daughter..." The words emerged thick, laden with unspoken dread.

Fang Yuan rolled his eyes internally.

Gods, man, you’re telling her she was found under a cabbage, not sentencing her to execution! Outwardly, he moved with decisive calm.

He stepped forward, grabbed Fang Chen’s trembling hand and Fang Mei’s cold one, and gently but firmly guided them both down to sit cross-legged on the cool stone floor.

With a casual flick of his wrist, he layered a shimmering, simple silencing formation over the hall’s existing wards.

The air hummed faintly, sealing them in a bubble of privacy.

"Right," Fang Yuan said, settling opposite them, his tone now briskly encouraging, masking his lingering internal chuckle at the melodrama.

"Deep breaths, Uncle Chen. Out with it. Let her know the truth." He gave Fang Mei what he hoped was a reassuring look.

Fang Mei, however, had been watching her father’s visible distress.

Her voice, when she spoke, was small but surprisingly steady, the opposite of Fang Yuan’s push.

"Dad... if it’s too hard... you really don’t have to. I... I’m very satisfied, truly, that you raised me as your daughter. That’s all that matters."

Fang Yuan met her earnest gaze.

He saw the fear beneath the brave words, the desperate need to protect her father from pain even as she yearned for answers.

He said nothing, just held her gaze, a silent acknowledgment of her courage.

The silence stretched, thin and brittle. Fang Chen squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them, fixing his gaze on his daughter.

His voice, when it finally came, scraped like stone on stone.

"My daughter..." He swallowed hard, the sound loud in the stillness. "You have to know."

He forced the words out, each one a battle against an invisible tide of fear.

Fang Mei leaned forward imperceptibly, her wide eyes locked on her father, unblinking.

Fang Yuan remained utterly still beside them, his own breath held.

The air itself seemed to thicken, charged with the unsaid.

Fang Chen drew a shuddering breath.

"Your mother..."

He paused, the word hanging heavy and fragile. "...she is out there. Somewhere. Alive."

The impact was physical.

Fang Yuan jerked as if struck. His head snapped towards Fang Chen, eyes wide with pure, unguarded stun. Alive? All this time?

The carefully maintained facade of the Clan Head vanished, replaced by sheer, personal disbelief.

The arbitrary ’nineteen’ deadline felt monstrously insignificant now.

Fang Mei, on the other hand didn’t move, didn’t breathe.

The color drained from her face, leaving her pale as moonlight on snow.

Her wide eyes stared past her father, unseeing, as if the world had suddenly tilted on its axis.

The quiet gasp that finally escaped her was barely a whisper, more felt in her stillness than heard.

Fang Chen flinched at their reactions, his courage crumbling.

He turned desperate eyes towards Fang Yuan, his voice cracking. "Nephew Yuan, I..." He stammered, the words tumbling out in a rush of shame and terror. "I’m sorry. I was afraid. So afraid..."

Fang Yuan felt it then, radiating through their linked hands like twin currents of lightning.

Fang Chen’s hand trembled violently in his grasp, knuckles white, slick with sudden sweat, the tremor of a man confessing a decades-long lie that had become his truth.

Fang Mei’s hand, clutched in his other palm, was ice-cold, her fine bones vibrating with a shallow, frantic tremor, the shockwave of a foundational belief obliterated in an instant.

Nineteen years. Nineteen years believing one story, only to have its core rewritten.

The physical connection was a lifeline and a burden.

Fang Yuan instinctively tightened his grip, anchoring them both.

He felt the frantic pulse in Fang Mei’s wrist, the desperate weakness in Fang Chen’s arm.

The polished floor beneath them felt colder, the silence of the hall suddenly immense and suffocating.