Rebirth Counterattack with Space
Chapter 235 - 227 Portrait

Chapter 235: Chapter 227 Portrait

"Did Old Zhang mention earlier how long the appraisal results would take?" Watching Old Zhang leave, Zhang Min asked Pei Qingyuan with a mix of nervousness and anticipation. The others also looked towards him, waiting to hear what he would say.

"Old Zhang said that to ensure the results are more accurate, it would require two groups of people to perform the test more than twice. If all goes well, we could know the results by tonight. Don’t worry, Old Zhang is a cautious man, with him personally overseeing it, there won’t be any problems."

Pei Qingyuan had already asked Old Zhang for details earlier, and Old Zhang is indeed a very trustworthy person.

"Tonight?" Zhang Min’s eyes widened. "Can it really be so quick?" It wasn’t just Zhang Min who was surprised; the astonishment of the others was no less than hers. Pei Qingyuan nodded.

"Let’s go have dinner first. I also want to see Shitou draw," Zhang Min said, pulling Shitou along as everyone followed naturally towards the dining room.

The moment Jin Auntie, who was setting up the dishes in the dining room, lifted her head and saw Shitou, she was so surprised she almost knocked over the dish on her tray. Fortunately, Shitou, with his quick reflexes and spiritual power, discreetly helped by supporting the tray just in time.

Jin Auntie, having recovered from her surprise, felt relieved she had not indeed dropped the dish. With a newfound steadiness, she greeted them with a smile and continued to shuttle back and forth from the kitchen, serving the dishes.

She couldn’t help but mutter to herself along the way—this person must not be a guest, otherwise why would he look so much like the old master? Could he be a close relative? But what’s strange is, this ’close relative,’ she had never seen in her more than ten years of service at the Pei Family.

Jin Auntie’s guesses were not unfounded.

The Pei Family’s custom is to have four dishes and one soup for regular meals, with an additional dish added whenever there is a birthday or something worth celebrating among themselves.

If there are guests, the meal would be six dishes with one soup or eight dishes with one soup.

And this morning, when Zhang Min had asked her to add an extra dish with such caution, she was puzzled, as it didn’t seem to be anyone’s birthday at home. This could only mean that there was some event worth celebrating.

And for the old lady herself to come and give instructions instead of just having Ding Luoluo come to notify them as usual meant that the occasion must be quite significant.

The Pei Family’s dining table is round, and there isn’t a specific seating order. Zhang Min pulled Shitou to sit beside her, worried that he might be too shy to help himself to the food, so she kept serving him, neglecting her own meal in the process.

She was entirely focused on Shitou’s bowl.

Every time the level of food in Shitou’s bowl went down a bit, she would promptly top it up, urging him nonstop, "Eat more, this is your own home."

Looking at his bowl piled high with food that he could never finish, Shitou felt helpless yet moved.

"Stop adding food. How can the child eat properly if you do that? Don’t stuff him too much." Pei Qingyuan watched the entire scene, feeling helpless but understanding Zhang Min’s feelings. He then quietly advised her, "You should eat too, let the child choose his favorite dishes himself."

"Oh, right, right."

Zhang Min, as if waking from a dream, noticed the food in Shitou’s bowl and slapped her forehead regretfully. She quickly began transferring food from Shitou’s bowl to her own, "Shitou, Grandma doesn’t know what you like to eat yet, huh? Whatever you like, just take it yourself. Grandma will eat these."

"Grandma, I like all these very much," Shitou quickly moved his bowl aside after Zhang Min served him more food and began to eat heartily with his head buried low.

"I’m glad you like it, very glad," Zhang Min placed the serving of food she had retrieved into her own mouth and then continued to watch Shitou eat with a face full of motherly affection, unable to restrain a smile at the sight of him eating so "sweetly."

She made several attempts to serve him more, but each time she seemed to remember something and forcibly held back.

The others, observing this behavior, couldn’t help but twitch their mouth corners, glancing at Shitou with a mixture of sympathy. They thought if it were them... they all involuntarily shuddered, not daring to watch any further. Too much attention was not necessarily a good thing, so they hurriedly focused on their own bowls, eating neither too fast nor too slow to avoid being similarly scrutinized.

Shitou, however, didn’t feel too ’uncomfortable,’ as what he sensed was the profound and motherly warmth emanating from Zhang Min. He had lost his mother at a young age and had never felt the warmth from a mother before the age of fourteen.

That year, he had only felt such deep, warm affection from Xia Yuan, and so he clung to it, thickening his skin to stick with the Lu Family and never wanting to let go...

After dinner, everyone entered the study. Shitou took up a fountain pen; after a silent moment of recollection, he energetically began drawing, and in less than ten minutes, he had miraculously sketched a portrait of his father.

Looking over the drawing himself, it was his first time drawing a portrait, but perhaps because his father’s image was so deeply and positively etched in his memory, the likeness he produced not only captured the appearance with 99% accuracy but also the very essence seemed to leap off the paper.

...

"Shaojie, it must be our Shaojie,"

Zhang Min’s hand shook so much while holding the portrait that she almost couldn’t keep the paper steady, her eyes brimming with tears as she looked from Shitou to Pei Qingyuan and said with a tone of certainty.

Pei Qingyuan carefully took the portrait from her hands and scrutinized it closely; the lifelike likeness on the paper caused his eyes to instantly redden.

He shared the same initial feeling as Zhang Min; with the portrait Shitou had personally drawn, there was no need for any so-called paternity test for him to be one hundred percent certain that the person in front of him was indeed his biological grandson.

If the portrait was real, then he wouldn’t doubt a positive result from a paternity test, but if the result came out negative, he might have to thoroughly investigate if someone had tampered with it.

Pei Shaohua stood right beside his father and had also seen the portrait in his father’s hand at first glance, and beyond shock, his eyes quickly moistened, "Big brother resembles Mom and Dad from their younger years too much."

It was probable that anyone who saw the photos of these three people would immediately confirm them as parent and child, mother and son. Even he had never resembled his parents so closely.

Pei Kun and Ding Luoluo felt they could not hold back upon hearing this and, while they didn’t dare snatch the portrait from Pei Qingyuan’s hands, they craned their necks without care to get a look. Naturally, they all gasped in unison at the sight.

Their gaze toward Shitou was filled with disbelief. To create such a drawing on his first attempt, how extraordinarily gifted was the person before them?

Zhang Min pulled Shitou to sit down and began to inquire about his past years. Although they had heard about it from the Lu Family yesterday, they still weren’t at ease without hearing the confirmation directly from Shitou’s own mouth.