The real young master thought he was hated by everyone

Chapter 1

The scenery outside the window flew by, reflecting a pale and delicate face with a slightly youthful outline and deep, dark eyes.

The boy sat upright, anxiously biting his lower lip.

But it was too late to regret.

He didn’t know what excuse he could use to get the burly, muscular driver, with a buzz cut, sunglasses, and dressed in a black suit, to stop the car—or better yet, take him back. The driver felt like someone straight out of those late 20th-century gangster movies.

Li Heng grew up in an orphanage.

He remembered being abandoned at a very young age. The wind was strong that day, cutting across his face like knives, cold to the bone. He waited for a long, long time, but the woman who had promised to return with candied hawthorns never came back.

Over the years, he had never deeply thought about his background, nor did he ever consider that the person who abandoned him might not have been his biological mother.

He should have been named Xie, the youngest son of the Xie family, who was lost and kidnapped when he was five years old.

But the boy’s current unease and nervousness weren’t primarily from the anticipation of meeting his biological family—it came from the bizarre, prophetic dream he had the night before.

In that dream, he was indeed the young master of the Xie family, who had been lost for thirteen years and was found by chance. He was brought back to the Xie family, like a pheasant accidentally falling into a phoenix’s nest.

But based on the current situation, he felt more like a barnyard chicken.

After all, even though he couldn’t compare to a phoenix, a pheasant’s feathers were still quite beautiful.

He didn’t fit in with the Xie family at all. Even if they stood together, no one would believe they were related by blood, that they were family.

Compared to him, Xie Duzhi, the adopted son of the Xie family, seemed much more like the true young master.

He could play the piano, fluently spoke several languages, and had a smile that was sweet and charming.

Li Heng had to admit that he was a little jealous of him, but mostly he admired and looked up to him, because he really seemed very likable.

He tried to learn from him, and Xie Duzhi was very kind to him, extremely gentle.

But after too many coincidences occurred, he realized that Xie Duzhi actually disliked him.

Xie Duzhi had falsely accused him of intentionally breaking the antique vase that Madam Xie loved. He had also misled him into thinking that Madam Xie liked avocado, leading him to make avocado cookies—only for him to later find out that she was allergic to avocado. Yet he always acted with an air of “I know you didn’t mean it,” making everyone think that Li Heng was bullying him.

Even later, when he intentionally brought important company documents into one of Li Heng’s live streams, exposing confidential information to the camera, leading to the failure of a large development project and significant company losses, no one believed it was his fault.

Instead, Li Heng became the one seen as harboring resentment and even plotting against the family.

He was kicked out of the Xie family, his accounts were banned across the internet, and no company would pass him in an interview.

In the end of the dream, he fell seriously ill, collapsing on a rusty bed at a construction site, waking up to find his pillow soaked with sweat.

The car he was in now was exactly the same as the one in his dream, even down to the license plate number.

Before leaving his house and hanging up the notice for his leave of absence, the boy had specifically looked up the license plate.

It was a custom Rolls-Royce Phantom, priced close to ten million yuan.

That bizarre, luxurious, and fleeting dream, filled with shadows of wealth and status, seemed as fragile and fleeting as a soap bubble—but it was real, and about to happen.

If he didn’t find a way to get out of the car now, he would soon arrive at the Xie family’s grand villa, where he would meet Xie Duzhi, fresh from finishing a piano piece.

He instinctively feared him.

But why did he agree to the Xie family’s invitation?

Because, in the dream, Madam Xie really did seem like a mother to him.

A small voice in his heart said this.

Even though she was indifferent to him, she had never been as harsh as the others.

Even when she gradually lost patience and no longer held out hope for him, she only sighed softly when he was eventually driven out.

Before he left with his small suitcase, she had quietly waved him over and slipped him a card with a birthday as the PIN, telling him to live with dignity and not make more mistakes in the future.

He owed her an apology.

Because he had lost that card and had never visited her as promised, nor kept her updated about his life.

The sky outside was always gray, rarely bright, and when it rained, the cold seeped into his bones. Curled up in a cramped bed in his cheap rental at the construction site, it had taken all his strength just to keep on living.

Looking back now, he felt as if he had really died once before.

“Little…sir.” At the red light, Su Qin, who had been driving for the Xie family for nearly ten years, suddenly remembered the instructions he had been given before leaving.

He had a bad habit when driving—although he was always steady, he tended to forget anything unrelated to the task at hand.

Su Qin swallowed the words “young master” with difficulty and awkwardly corrected himself to say “sir” a bit more politely. His voice was gruff as he spoke, “There are some freshly baked cookies in the back. You can have some to fill your stomach.”

“Oh—oh, okay…!” Li Heng, startled by the sudden voice, instinctively responded.

His eyes widened unconsciously, and after a moment, he nervously whispered a thank you.

He had forgotten if this had happened before.

In his dream, when he was first picked up, he had been overwhelmed by the prospect of being reunited with “parents and family,” caught between excitement and suspicion. His steps had felt like he was walking on clouds, light and airy, and his mind had been filled with scattered thoughts.

For example, he had anxiously wondered how to address them naturally, and whether his voice would be loud enough when introducing himself.

The orphanage director had been kind and gentle, treating him like her own child.

But there were so many children like him in the orphanage. By the time he started elementary school, he had stopped following the director around asking her endless questions or requesting bedtime stories like he used to.

There was always someone who needed love and care more urgently than he did—a younger brother with a heart condition, a sister blind in one eye, or an older brother born with a disability.

Even though he had never said it out loud, deep down, he had always wanted a family of his own.

As he grew older, he buried that longing, pushed it down into the deepest corners of his heart, refusing to look at it or think about it.

Like a dormant volcano.

Just when he was about to forget, the volcano erupted, its lava scorching his insides, spreading through his veins, leaving him overwhelmed and helpless.

But before he could fully express that longing, the sudden downpour of reality extinguished it completely.

At the scene of the family reunion.

He accidentally pushed Xie Duzhi down.