After 99 failed attempts to win my family’s hearts.

The System said it had targeted the wrong person.

And compensated me one hundred million yuan.

With money in hand, and no longer needing to grovel for my life to please my family — I packed my things that very night to leave.

But I ran into Mom, Dad, my brother, and the fake daughter coming home.

My brother glanced at the suitcase beside me and frowned.

“Just because we forgot you at a highway rest stop over New Year’s, you’re throwing a tantrum and running away?”

I ignored him.

I simply handed the family-severance papers to Mom and Dad.

“Sign.”

1

“Over something this small, you want to sever family ties?”

Jian Che’s voice was practically a roar.

Mom was stunned too.

But she kept her patience, taking my hand.

“Suisui, we didn’t forget you at the rest stop on purpose.”

“Then what was it? Unintentional?” I pulled my hand back. “There are five people in this family. Four seats in the car. Every single time, I’m the one left behind. Every. Single. Time.”

Jian Che opened his mouth and closed it again.

Mom’s eyes reddened. “Suisui, you know your brother and sister—”

“She’s not my sister.” I looked at Jian Ning, standing behind Mom. The fake daughter. The one they’d raised for eighteen years while I grew up in an orphanage. “She’s yours. Not mine.”

Jian Ning bit her lip. “Sis, I know you’re upset, but—”

“I’m not your sister. Don’t call me that.”

Dad, who had been silent, finally spoke.

“Jian Sui. Is this your attitude toward your family?”

“My attitude?” I looked at him. “You brought home the wrong daughter from the hospital. I grew up in an orphanage for eighteen years. When I finally came back, you made me compete with her — a ‘conquest system’ to earn your love, as if your affection was some kind of reward I had to win. And now you’re asking about my attitude?”

All four of them looked at me with expressions ranging from shock to unease.

“Or maybe,” I said, “you should ask — what was your attitude toward me?”

Silence.

I pointed at the papers.

“Sign.”

2

They didn’t sign that night.

But I left anyway.

The one hundred million yuan was already in my account. The System had been efficient about that, at least.

I found a hotel for the night. The next morning, I contacted a lawyer and began the formal process of family severance.

“You’re serious about this?” the lawyer asked, looking through my documents.

“Completely.”

“You understand that under current law, severing family ties doesn’t automatically remove inheritance rights or—”

“I don’t want their inheritance. I don’t want anything from them.”

The lawyer studied me for a long moment.

“I’ll draw up the papers.”

3

Word spread.

Jian Che sent me messages. First angry. Then pleading. Then threatening.

“You’re making the family look terrible. People are talking. Do you know what they’re saying about Mom and Dad?”

I blocked him.

Jian Ning sent me a long, tearful voice message about how she’d always seen me as her real sister and how could I do this to our parents.

Blocked.

Mom called seventeen times in one day. I answered the last one.

“Suisui. Come home. Let’s talk.”

“Are you willing to sign the severance papers?”

“Suisui—”

“Then there’s nothing to talk about.”

“Your father hasn’t slept in three days. Your brother—”

“When I was nine years old and had a fever of forty degrees in the orphanage, do you know who stayed up with me? No one. The caretaker gave me medicine and went back to bed. I lay in the dark, burning up, and told myself: one day, your real family will come for you. One day, someone will love you.”

She was crying on the other end.

“That day never came. You did come. But love — love was something I had to earn. And I failed. Ninety-nine times, I failed.”

“Suisui, we didn’t know—”

“Now you know.”

I hung up.

4

The severance was finalized three months later.

By then, I had used part of the money to enroll in law school — something I’d always wanted but never had the resources for. The rest I invested.

The Jian family contested the severance at first. But my lawyer was good, and I had documented evidence: the conquest system’s logs, screenshots of their treatment, records of every time I was forgotten, ignored, or made to feel like a guest in my own supposed home.

When it was done, I sat in my new apartment and felt… nothing.

No sadness. No anger. No relief.

Just empty.

I thought I’d feel something more. But years of chasing love that was always conditional — years of performing for a family that never quite accepted me — had hollowed me out.

The emptiness, I decided, was freedom.

5

Law school was hard. I was older than most of my classmates, and the gaps in my education from the orphanage years showed.

But I had something they didn’t: I knew what it felt like to fight for something no one wanted to give you.

I graduated near the top of my class.

My first case as a prosecutor was a child trafficking ring. They had taken children from rural areas and sold them to illegal adoption networks. Seventeen children. The youngest was six months old.

I threw myself into the case. Worked eighteen-hour days. Interviewed every witness. Built the evidence chain piece by piece.

When we won — when the traffickers were sentenced — I stood in the courtroom and watched the families of the recovered children weep with relief.

I thought about my own childhood. The orphanage. The years of waiting.

I thought about the parents I’d never known.

And for the first time in a very long while, I cried.

6

The case made the news.

A young prosecutor, barely out of law school, taking down a trafficking network. The media loved the story.

Somewhere in the coverage, my background surfaced. The severed family ties. The orphanage childhood. The “true daughter” who had been swapped at birth.

The Jian family saw it.

Jian Che showed up at my office.

He looked different — older, tired. The arrogance was gone.

“Suisui.”

“What do you want?”

“I saw the news. About your case.”

“And?”

“I… I didn’t know you’d become a prosecutor.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

He flinched.

“That’s fair,” he said quietly. “That’s fair.”

We stood in awkward silence.

“Mom saw it too,” he said. “She cried. She said… she said you’re doing good work.”

I said nothing.

“Suisui, I know I was a terrible brother. I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness. But I wanted to say… I’m proud of you. We all are.”

I looked at him for a long moment.

“Thank you,” I said. “But pride from people who never believed in me doesn’t mean much.”

I turned and walked back into my office.

7

The truth about my birth came out a year later, during another trafficking case.

I wasn’t just a true daughter who had been swapped. I had been deliberately taken. Someone at the hospital had been part of a network, swapping babies and selling the “extra” children. Jian Ning’s birth mother had paid to have her baby placed in the wealthy Jian family. I was the inconvenient one — the actual Jian child — who had to disappear.

The orphanage had been my destination because someone was paid to look the other way.

When I discovered this, everything shifted.

The Jian family hadn’t just been indifferent — they’d been victims too, in a different way. Jian Ning was the daughter of a criminal. The swap had been orchestrated for profit.

But knowing that didn’t change what happened after. It didn’t change the 99 failed conquests. It didn’t change the years of being treated as lesser.

Understanding why a wound exists doesn’t heal it.

8

I kept working. Case after case. Trafficking. Abuse. Crimes against children.

My conviction rate became one of the highest in the province. They called me “Liang Jian” — Prosecutor Liang — with a reputation for being relentless.

I hired investigators. Built a task force. Went after the networks that had torn apart families like mine.

One day, after a sentencing hearing, I walked out of the courthouse to find journalists waiting.

“Prosecutor Liang! A few words!”

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

A dozen cameras pointed at me. Microphones pushed forward.

In the crowd, I saw them. The Jian family. Mom, Dad, Jian Che, even Jian Ning. Standing off to the side, watching.

They’d come to watch one of my cases.

I looked at them. Then at the cameras.

In the end, a thousand words condensed into a single sentence.

“May there be no more trafficking in this world.”