Chapter 498

Ma Xiangmei was dumbfounded. She knew her mother had changed, but she never imagined her temperament would flip so completely. It was as if she were heading in the opposite direction. The son she once doted on was now someone she seemed desperate to drive to his doom, while the son she had once treated with such disdain was now the apple of her eye. Ma Xiangmei felt like laughing. She was genuinely happy for her eldest brother and sister-in-law, but she felt absolutely no sympathy for the third brother. Back when he was the favorite, he had relied on their mother’s bias to bully the rest of his siblings relentlessly. Because she was close to him in age, Ma Xiangmei had been his target from childhood; even when it came to schooling, she had been forced to trail behind him like a servant, carrying his schoolbag, doing his homework, and handling his cleaning duties. She had dropped out after primary school simply because the third brother called her a "money-losing commodity" and claimed her education was a waste of funds—a sentiment their mother had readily echoed to pull her out of school.