Drama Queen Reborn as a Top Student!-Chapter 799 - 352 Destiny

A bowl of noodles grew cold and stiff.

Rong Xianning sat on the sofa, staring blankly for an entire afternoon as dusk quietly descended.

The room remained unlit, the boundless darkness devouring everything within it.

Only a faint, desolate moonbeam cloaked the solitary figure on the sofa.

The phone on the floor illuminated and darkened, over and over in an endless cycle.

Eventually, the phone ran out of battery and succumbed to silence in the night.

He curled up on the sofa, hugging himself, sinking into an endless abyss of darkness.

It seemed like he dreamt—a vivid, bizarre dream—of a happy childhood spent with his grandmother. But it all abruptly ended in that devastating fire.

He finally saw his parents, but there wasn’t a single word of concern for his injuries, not a single tear shed for his grandmother who died a tragic death. Instead, they were fixated on extracting an exorbitant compensation from the government, their greedy faces exposed without an ounce of shame.

The compensation they received fell short of their expectations, and they unleashed a torrent of abuse by his hospital bed. As he looked at this pair of parents, he felt a profound unfamiliarity, an indescribable desolation and sorrow creeping into his heart.

His parents took him away from Qingzhou and returned to his father’s hometown, Yunzhou.

But that was merely the beginning of the nightmare.

His father was a gambling addict. The small compensation money from his grandmother’s death was squandered entirely, leaving behind a mountain of debt. Still in primary school, he was often cornered outside the house by debt collectors, threatening him to reveal his father’s whereabouts.

His mother was no better. While his father hid to escape his debts, she stayed home drinking and bringing various men into the house.

"Your son is just in the next room. Are you sure there’s no problem?"

"What problem could there be? He’s an idiot—might as well not have eyes at all..."

Vulgar and dirty words seeped through the thin, poorly-soundproofed walls into his ears.

His young self broke down time and time again, only to piece himself back together each time. He skipped school, tried running away from home, even spent a week living under a bridge. Yet none of it made a difference.

Whether he stayed or left made no difference to that pair of parents.

A patrolling police officer eventually found him, brought him back home, and chastised his mother to take better care of her child.

The officer had just left when his mother shut the door, grabbed a feather duster from the corner, and lashed out at him.

"Well, well, you’ve got some guts now, huh? Running away from home, acting all high and mighty, even having the police personally escort you back! What, trying to get the police to educate me? Who gave you the audacity..."

The feather duster struck hard against his body, causing sharp pain. Yet he stood there motionless, not shedding a single tear.

Seeing his stubbornness only fueled the woman’s rage. The feather duster in her hand fell mercilessly, again and again.

When she was too tired to continue, she tossed the feather duster aside and lit a cigarette.

The room filled with swirling smoke, choking him until tears welled in his eyes.

The woman sneered coldly at him. "So, turns out you can cry after all."

"Am I really your biological son?"

His abrupt question caught the woman off guard, her cigarette trembling slightly in her fingers.

His gaze bore into her face. Startled, the woman’s expression twisted, flashing between anger and panic. "What nonsense are you spouting? Been watching too many senseless dramas, dreaming you’re some illegitimate heir of a wealthy family? Wake up, boy. You’re Zhou Rong’s flesh and blood, and in this lifetime, you’ll never escape my grasp."

The twisted face of the woman haunted his nightmares from that day forward.

He lowered his head in silence, as if accepting the cruel whims of fate.

"I’m hungry. Go make me something to eat."

He barely stood taller than the stove, so he had to drag over a chair to climb on as he cooked. When the food was done, he placed it in front of Zhou Rong.

She had barely taken a couple of bites when pounding on the door rang out—a series of sharp, frantic knocks that instinctually set one’s nerves on edge.

Zhou Rong pretended not to hear, exuding the shameless resolve of someone with nothing to lose.

She had developed a hardened survival instinct after years of dodging debt collectors. When dealing with particularly cunning creditors, she would drag him out, crying and wailing, putting on a pitiful act, lambasting Rong Yuhe for being heartless—abandoning their family saddled with debt while running off with his mistress. She’d scream they were left with no option but to either jump off a building or drink rat poison to end their suffering.

The desperate lunacy scared some debt collectors off, making them retreat with caution. But there were always a few who didn’t buy the act, and those encounters often ended with both of them beaten senseless.

This was his childhood—soaked in blood, violence, oppression, chaos, and ceaseless instability.

At first, he frequently cursed the unfairness of fate. Why was he born to Zhou Rong and Rong Yuhe? All he wanted was a peaceful environment to grow up—why was that too much to ask?

But as he endured these experiences again and again, he stopped blaming the heavens. It was useless, after all. Instead, he focused on surviving each day. He studied hard and consistently ranked at the top of his class. In his heart, he made a vow: he would attend university, leave Yunzhou, and escape this wretched family and these detestable parents.

Fate took a turn when he met Ding Meng.

Ding Meng was willing to take him away from Yunzhou. He knew the price of leaving with her, but by then, both life and his family had suffocated him beyond endurance. He desperately needed a lifeline.

Yet, when he saw his parents eagerly and without hesitation sell off his freedom for five million yuan, his heart still twisted in indescribable pain.

It was at that moment that his last shred of hope for his parents crumbled entirely into ashes.

On the day he left with Ding Meng, he turned to the pair of jubilant parents and said calmly, "The five million has bought my life. From now on, I am no longer your son."

Zhou Rong snapped, "What kind of talk is that? Planning to sever ties with us now? Between us and President Ding, don’t you know who’s closer to you? Blood is thicker than water—cut the bone and the tendon’s still attached! Stick with President Ding. When you become a big celebrity, your dad and I are counting on you to take care of us in our old age."

In that moment, he understood: no matter how far he ran, he could never truly escape these two bloodsuckers.

They were parasites on his very bones, destined to haunt him for life, morphing into his eternal nightmare.

The night stretched on interminably. The boy curled up on the sofa, clutching himself tightly.

Tears fell silently as he struggled within his nightmare, like a relentless, inescapable fate.