Seeing Madam Yan so worried for her sake, An Ning felt even more at a loss as to how she should tell her the fact that An Yu would never return.

"Mother, don’t worry yourself over nothing, Wuyou won’t mind." If he did mind, she wouldn’t keep staring him down; when the time came, they’d just split cleanly, wouldn’t that be better!

At this moment An Ning still didn’t know that some words are easy to think, easy to say, but when it comes to actually doing them, it’s nowhere near as easy.

"All right, all right, I won’t worry. As long as you can live well, your mother will be at ease." What An Ning said didn’t sound pleasant, but if you thought about it carefully, without confidence, she wouldn’t speak that way.

And that confidence, without a doubt, had been given to her by Sikong Wuyou.

"Right, didn’t you go to pick up your brother? Where is he?" Madam Yan looked at An Ning and asked.

In the end, what should come still came back around.

An Ning also knew she couldn’t dodge it; it was just that she still hadn’t figured out how she ought to open her mouth.

Looking at Madam Yan’s anxious, questioning face, An Ning met her eyes and said, "He’s not coming back..."

In that instant, Madam Yan only felt as if the sky had collapsed and the earth had caved in.

"It was your father who came to fetch him, wasn’t it?" Once she thought of this, she understood why in the past few days An Ning always dodged and hesitated, unwilling to mention An Yu, even to the point of lying when forced by her questions. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

"You guessed?" An Ning was startled.

Madam Yan gave a self-mocking smile. "Your mother is merely short-sighted, she’s not a fool."

If An Yu had left on his own, he could have come clean with her instead of sneaking off in secret.

His behavior these days could only be explained in one way: An Yu had been controlled by someone, he no longer had his freedom, so he could not come back, and An Ning could not bring him back.

And the one controlling An Yu could only be An Bingfeng.

As she spoke, tears slipped down.

Heaven was truly unfair. How long had their mother and children been reunited? And now so mercilessly her son was torn away from her side once more.

In truth, Madam Yan had long known that An Yu would not be able to stay here for very long. He was an outstanding child, suited for a larger world, not this little village.

If he stayed here, he would only be held back, turned from a man of talent into someone who achieved nothing at all.

Of course, this was something Madam Yan absolutely did not wish to see.

Even so, she still simply wanted to spend a little more time by his side, nothing more.

An Ning stepped forward two paces to stand before Madam Yan, raised her hand and wiped her tears clean. "Don’t cry. You still have me. As for An Yu... just pretend he never came here."

Madam Yan reached out and pulled An Ning into her arms. "Ningning, your mother only has you now..."

Just then, Xiaoniu shuffled in through the main gate with unsteady steps. An Ning smiled. "Mother, you still have Xiaoniu, and you have me. We’re all here." So they were not lacking one An Yu.

It wasn’t that An Ning didn’t think of An Yu at all; it was just that he, as the Prime Minister’s son, would surely have limitless prospects in the future.

Yet if he stayed here, he would never reach such heights.

A person’s birth and the environment in which they grow up decide their life. An Ning had always believed he did not belong here; he should go back and continue being his noble young master.

Now it was just as she had foreseen when An Yu first arrived: meeting was worse than never meeting, it would only add needless ties and burdens for herself.

"Ningning, your mother owes you an apology. Perhaps your insistence back then really was right..." And yet for that, she had even slapped her once.

Thinking back on it now, it really was something she shouldn’t have done.