Chapter 19: It Is All a Misunderstanding! But...

"Mom, what I mean is, could the hospital have made a mistake?"

"What if little sister's blood type was recorded incorrectly? Wouldn't that mean everything else is wrong too?"

Shen Zhixing realized his words were ambiguous and hurriedly tried to clarify. However, deep down, he remained convinced that something was amiss. Shen Zhiyu looked remarkably like Li Tunan in her youth; everyone who had seen them together said the same.

"I checked, I checked three times, her blood type is B!"

"Mom, is it possible that there was a mix-up with yours and Dad's blood types?" Shen Zhiqiu whispered.

"That's right, Mom, have you and Dad double-checked your blood types?"

"You and little sister look so much alike! If anyone claimed you weren't mother and daughter, no one would believe them!"

"I checked, I checked three times too!" Li Tunan said in a trembling voice. Her gaze shifted to Shen Ao, and she paused slightly. "Old Shen, you said your blood type is A. Have you checked it yourself?"

Shen Ao froze for a moment. "I've always been type A. Do I really need to check that?"

"Do you think I could have misremembered my own blood type?" Shen Ao asked, sounding somewhat impatient.

"Dad, why don't you go get it checked? What if, I mean, what if you're actually type AB?" Shen Zhixing pressed, "Dad, you must have checked it a long time ago. Maybe there was some error back then. We have to clear this up!"

Hearing his eldest son say this, Shen Ao sighed. "Fine, fine, fine. I'll listen to you. I'll go to the hospital to check later!"

"Dad, I'll go with you!"

Shen Zhixing was desperate to know what was really going on. Because of this interruption, the family didn't finish their meal properly. After eating, Shen Zhixing rode his bicycle, carrying Shen Ao straight to the hospital.

Blood typing didn't take long. Within an hour, they had the report in hand.

Shen Ao, Blood Type: AB!

As those two clear letters on the report came into view, Shen Ao felt a rush of blood to his head; he could barely stand steady. He was type AB! All these years, he had been misunderstanding his own daughter!

"Dad!" Shen Zhixing stared at the results, then looked at Shen Ao.

Shen Ao leaned against the wall and slowly sank to the floor, tears streaming down his face. "Ah, ah..."

Shen Ao slapped the ground in remorse. He had trusted Li Tunan’s feelings, so he had always suspected that someone from her family had swapped his daughter. For years, he had monitored the Li family, yet he had found nothing. He never imagined the root cause lay with him. He had always believed he was type A, never suspecting he was actually type AB! Why did he remember being type A? He couldn't even remember anymore.

"Check it again! Test it again!"

After a long while, Shen Ao decided to test his blood type again at a different hospital. But the result was the same.

Shen Ao, Blood Type: AB!

"I, how am I supposed to explain this to your mother?" Shen Ao grabbed his hair in frustration. Because of his momentary carelessness, such a massive misunderstanding had occurred in the family. His biological daughter had been treated as someone else's child, ruined by the couple's upbringing, cast off to the countryside, and even married to a local man. Though she had returned to the city, they had simply dumped her into a place as exhausting and bitter as a textile mill.

"Dad, we need to think about how to fix this, quickly!"

"Little sister doesn't even recognize us anymore!"

"Oh, right, right, we have to find a way to make amends!"

Shen Ao had no heart to go to work, and neither did Shen Zhixing. This matter had to be resolved, and it had to be done properly.

When Li Tunan saw the two test reports and those clear letters, the way she looked at Shen Ao changed completely.

"Shen Ao, give me back my daughter!"

In that instant, Li Tunan remembered her daughter as a child—obedient, sensible, and truly a mother's pride. But they had destroyed everything! And all of this was because of one small misunderstanding. A misunderstanding that never needed to exist.

"Why didn't you check your blood type back then?"

"Why?"

"Shen Ao, were you that busy?"

"Or is it that, deep down, you didn't trust me either!"

Li Tunan felt as if her heart were being pierced by a knife. Because she suspected someone had swapped her daughter, that it was a case of a cuckoo in the nest, all the affection she had for the girl she thought was an imposter had turned into resentment. She didn't know what her real daughter had suffered, or if she had been living well. She would often wake up in the middle of the night, dreaming of her real daughter begging for mercy and being abused. She had become ruthless; whoever had swapped her daughter, she would not let them live a good life. They had destroyed her daughter, and she would take revenge.

And so, everything that followed came to pass. But now, a single piece of paper told her that everything she had done was wrong. Her so-called revenge was merely the abuse of her own biological daughter; she had personally destroyed her own child.

Li Tunan felt her world collapsing. She didn't know how to face Shen Zhiyu.

"Tunan, it's all my fault. It's my fault!"

"Don't worry, I will definitely seek our daughter's forgiveness and make her the obedient, sensible child she used to be!"

Shen Ao comforted Li Tunan for a moment before preparing to find Shen Zhiyu. He had to apologize to his daughter in person, confess everything, admit his mistakes, and beg for her forgiveness.

"I, I'm going with you!"

Although the initial mistake was Shen Ao's, Li Tunan had been complicit in everything that happened to her daughter afterward. She was filled with regret.

...

When Shen Zhiyu saw Shen Ao and Li Tunan, her first instinct was to drive them away, but she understood that wasn't realistic.

"Little Yu, I'm sorry!"

"It's all Dad's fault!"

"I was too stubborn back then, I was the one who made the mistake!"

"...?!"

Listening to Shen Ao’s confessional speech, Shen Zhiyu was completely baffled. What did this mean? It was all so abrupt and nonsensical.

Beside them, Shen Zhixing sighed, realizing he was the only one who could explain the situation clearly. At this moment, expecting his parents to articulate the cause of all this was impossible; they were doing nothing but weeping and apologizing.

Once Shen Zhixing finished explaining the sequence of events, Shen Zhiyu had only one thought: What kind of melodramatic plot was this? Her predecessor was the biological daughter! Because of a blood type mismatch, she had been deemed an imposter and raised to be ruined. This was a mother’s revenge for her poor, swapped daughter. But the truth was, Shen Ao was just scatterbrained; he had misremembered his own blood type, leading to this unprecedented misunderstanding.

"Little sister, it was all a misunderstanding!"

"Mom and Dad didn't mean it, you..."

"Stop!"

Shen Zhiyu cut off what Shen Zhixing was about to say. If she were just a spectator watching a play, and if this weren't a misunderstanding, she would surely applaud and think Li Tunan’s actions were imposing. But she wasn't a spectator. She was the one living through it!