Clumsy Beast, Keep Your Paws Off-Chapter 309: The Past Is Exposed

Every time she looked at the girl’s eyebrows or the shape of her jaw, she saw her rival.

When she realized she couldn’t kill the child without drawing too much suspicion from the tribe, she decided to hide her beauty instead.

She began to overfeed the girl. At first, the young Su Qinglan would cry and refuse to eat the heavy, greasy portions, but Mu Lihua would settle the matter with two hard slaps to the face. Eventually, the child stopped resisting.

In no time, the girl’s weight increased excessively. Mu Lihua also made sure the child’s face and clothes were always caked in dirt.

Whenever she saw a glimpse of that beautiful, Wang Mulan-like face peeking through, she would beat the girl again.

"Stay dirty! Stay fat!" she would hiss during those secret beatings.

That was how the original owner of this body had developed the habit of overeating and neglecting her appearance.

She wasn’t born a tyrant; she was forced into it by a woman who used food and filth as a cage.

For almost her entire life, the original Su Qinglan had lived in a deep depression, lonely and abused from a very young age.

The trauma had slowly reshaped her character, turning a broken, lonely girl into the fat tyrant the tribe feared and mocked.

Su Qinglan stood at the gate, watching Mu Lihua silently.

As she looked at the woman in the mud, the suppressed memories of the original owner began to resurface in her mind like black ink in clear water.

She felt the sting of those slaps on her cheeks. She felt the heavy, suffocating feeling of being forced to eat until she was sick.

She felt the crushing loneliness of a child who realized her mother hated the very sight of her.

They had abused the original owner beyond any words. They had systematically broken a child’s spirit, almost driving her to madness, just to hide a crime committed decades ago.

Su Qinglan’s hands curled into tight fists at her sides. Her eyes, usually calm and calculating, now shimmered with a cold fury on behalf of the soul that was no longer there.

"You didn’t just steal a life, Mu Lihua," Su Qinglan mouthed toward the shivering Mu Lihua. "You tried to bury a soul. But I am still here."

Mu Lihua flinched, her eyes widening. For a moment, she didn’t see the spoiled daughter she had raised.

She saw a vengeful spirit coming to collect a debt from hell itself.

Mu Lihua let out a piercing scream that echoed across the village square, a sound so high pitched it made the nearby cubs cover their ears.

"AHHH! No! Don’t kill me! I didn’t do anything! It wasn’t me! You’re all lying!" she shrieked.

Her eyes rolled back, and she began to thrash in the mud, her fingers clawing at the dirt.

"Please! Have mercy! AHHH!"

She was so terrified of the death she knew she deserved that she had forgotten all her dignity.

She began to crawl toward Su Mingxuan’s feet, sobbing loudly. "Mingxuan! My mate! Look at me! I did it for us! I did it for our family! AHHH, please don’t look at me with those eyes!"

She didn’t want to die. She loved her life of comfort and power too much to let it go.

The crowd of fox beastmen watched her with growing disgust. "Look at her," a female fox whispered, pulling her own cubs closer.

"Is she going to turn into an evil ferocious beast right in front of us? Why is she screaming like that? We haven’t even touched her yet."

"She is truly shameless," another replied.

"I have never seen her act like this. She was always so proud and arrogant. If she is this afraid of a little bit of pain and the threat of death, then where did she get the courage to beat and starve a helpless child like Su Qinglan for twenty years?"

The tribe members were all aware of what kind of person Mu Lihua was. They had seen her mistreat Su Qinglan many times over the years.

However, in the beast world, the mother has absolute authority over her cubs. Even if a mother killed her own child, no one could legally question her.

Many females in the tribe had bad characters and were unruly, so they had simply looked the other way, thinking it was just a mother being harsh with a disappointing daughter.

They never dreamed that the daughter wasn’t even hers. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

In the back of the crowd, Xu Meiyan stood frozen. Her face was as white as a sheet. She had never known about any of this.

She was so stunned and shocked that she felt like the ground was falling out from under her feet. Her mother had never told her a single word about these dark schemes or the Black Temple.

Now, finally, Xu Meiyan understood why her mother had always hated Su Qinglan so much.

She used to think it was just because Su Qinglan was lazy, fat, and not as good as her.

She thought it was natural for a mother to prefer a beautiful, talented daughter over a tyrant.

But this was a completely different level of drama. This was a crime that could destroy her entire life.

I have to get out of here, Xu Meiyan thought, her heart racing. If I stay, I will be implicated in her crimes. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t know.

She took three slow steps back, trying to blend into the shadows and disappear before anyone noticed her.

She felt a cold chill in her heart. To kill a true mate and fake a bond with the Tribe Leader was a death sentence. She couldn’t be associated with this.

But as she took another step back, her eyes accidentally met the terrified, wild eyes of Mu Lihua.

"Meiyan! My daughter!" Mu Lihua screamed, her voice filled with a desperate, twisted hope.

She scrambled through the mud and lunged toward Xu Meiyan, grabbing her hand with a grip so tight it made Xu Meiyan cry out in pain.