Chapter 4
Chapter 4
They were just a pair of Dongzhu Pearl, that was all. I’ve got bigger ones, too.
He just shouldn’t have made me pick up what someone else didn’t want.
Before my birthday last year, Meng Ye hounded me for ages, asking what kinds of earrings were fashionable in the capital-styles, designs, craftsmanship.
I couldn’t take his pestering anymore and asked what he was up to.
He rubbed his nose and muttered in a small, wronged voice, “I just wanted to make a pair of earrings for my wife with my own hands. Why can’t you just pretend you don’t know?”
Under lamplight, I explained it to him carefully for an entire night.
He listened so earnestly, telling me to wait for his good news.
I was secretly delighted, waiting for his surprise.
But on my birthday, what he gave me was a matched pair of White Jade Bracelet.
When I asked about the earrings, his face stiffened and he lowered his head.
“My skills weren’t good enough. Better not to embarrass myself.”
He’d given his care and effort to someone else. What was left for me could only be a halfhearted brush-off.
That pair of bracelets was sent in front of me only after the young girl agreed to it.
I wore them every day, thinking they were brimming with affection-when in truth, they were another woman’s humiliation, pressed onto me.
Long before that, he went south to Jiangnan on official business-and he took her with him. They stayed for half a year.
In those six months, he took her night-boating on the Qinhuai River, carried her on his back all the way to the top of Mount Huang.
He even held her in his arms on the endless Yangtze and spent a whole night wrapped up in her.
Places I had once taken him through with such bright excitement-he went and retraced every one of them, with a fresh new beauty by his side.
The old nanny who used to make osmanthus cakes for us had failing eyesight. After asking after my health, she even congratulated him-saying he’d finally gotten his wish and gained a precious daughter, and that the girl even looked a bit like her mother.
The young girl craned her neck and snapped, “I’m not her daughter. That old woman who jinxes her own family-what kind of luck would she have?”
And what did Meng Ye say?
Oh-he smiled as he tapped her on the nose, laughing that she was a petty little rascal, jealous over something that didn’t matter.
“Why rub salt in someone else’s wounds? Just bear me a few more, that’s all.”
So I’m just “someone else,” someone who doesn’t matter.
His words landed like a dull, aching slap, and all the love of my girlhood shattered with a crash.
Wen Yunyang had been given love-clear, certain, overflowing-so she could proudly tell the servants:
“What can an old and faded woman use to compete with me?”
“Once I give birth to the Grand Tutor’s Mansion’s eldest son, she’ll have to swallow her disgust and obediently let me enter the household.”
“She’ll have to serve me properly-and raise my son well.”
The young girl hung my child’s prayer plaque around a dog’s neck. Pouting smugly, she asked Meng Ye, “What about the old woman in that courtyard?”
Meng Ye paused. His voice softened, softer and softer.
“Not important.”
In the long river of time, we’ve already drifted into a relationship not worth mentioning. Our ways no longer aligned, so we went our separate paths. I don’t regret that.
What I hate is that Meng Ye trampled on my feelings.
What I hate is that they humiliated my child.
The abbot had said it clearly: the prayer plaque must not leave the parents’ side. Only then could it plead for a child who died unjustly to have a rich and peaceful next life.
Yet he indulged others in hanging it on a dog’s neck for laughs.
A parent should plan far for their child-so far it reaches into life after life.
All I can say is: Meng Ye doesn’t deserve to be my child’s father.
That night, the rain was fierce. I sat listlessly under the corridor, gripping the past so hard I was soaked on one side.
Coldness and heartbreak nearly tore me to pieces.
And my so-called husband-in another courtyard-was keeping his young girl company as she listened to the rain and sipped tea, dreaming up their future.
Holding her, he spoke in soft, coaxing murmurs.
“Mother said that if we really get to the point of tearing our faces off, the Meng Family absolutely cannot be left without heirs. Then we’ll have no choice but to be ruthless-get rid of the mother and keep the child.”
“The one to go would be the legal wife. The one to stay would be our beloved son.”
After hearing Lian Cheng’s verbatim report, it felt as if someone had clenched my heart in a fist-so tight I could barely breathe.
I should’ve thought of it earlier. Fifteen years is long enough for anyone to change.
All these years, the Meng Family had been pressed down by the Su Family’s life-saving grace. Resentment had long since grown.
Only because public opinion is frightening did they refrain from using the matter of heirs to make things hard for me.
But now, with a blood heir right in front of them, how could they bear to let it go?
And the Meng Ye of today was no longer the bright young man who once rode a thousand li on horseback just for a plate of mung bean cakes.
What he couldn’t let go of was the fortune and property I brought with me.
What he couldn’t stand was people laughing behind his back, mocking him for having no son to send him off at the end.
What he lusted after was youth-and the sense of accomplishment that came from being worshipped and adored.
Wanting all of it at once… that’s simply too greedy.
Even if the inner quarters have worn down my edges, I was never the type to swallow bitterness and wrong myself just to force a so-called perfect ending.
I smashed that pair of White Jade Bracelet to pieces in the pouring rain.
Love, shattered into scraps. The one at fault isn’t me-and the one who should die isn’t me.
It’s the betrayer who deserves to swallow a thousand needles.