Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Xu Lingyi did not immediately order anyone to seize me.

She stood beside the hospital bed, her gaze resting on Shen Mingche’s face. Her tone could even be called calm.

“When I first met your mother, she was about your age.”

I said nothing.

She went on as if speaking to herself. “Lin Tang was beautiful, and very clever. Your grandmother was a contract scribe hired by the Shen Family, specializing in genealogy records and Marriage Contracts. She brought her daughter to stay at the old residence for a while. Back then, Mingche had just had his accident. The doctors said he wouldn’t live past a month.”

“So you wanted to use my mother to extend his life?”

“Not use.” Xu Lingyi frowned, as though she found the word vulgar. “It was a life-matching. Lin Tang had already agreed to marry Mingche. If she completed the Marriage Contract, the Shen Family would have given her wealth and status for the rest of her life, and she would have become the eldest daughter-in-law of the Shen Family.”

Her self-righteousness almost made me laugh.

“Marrying someone unconscious, then handing over her life-this is what you call wealth and status?”

Xu Lingyi finally looked at me, her eyes turning cold. “You women of the Lin Family are always like this, thinking your lives are so precious. Without the Shen Family, your grandmother wouldn’t even have been able to keep her restoration studio back then, and your mother was nothing but an orphan girl living under someone else’s roof.”

My mother was not an orphan.

She had my grandmother. She had me. And she should have had a smooth, ordinary life.

I stared at Xu Lingyi. “Was that fire set by you?”

Eighteen years ago, the West Building of the Shen Family estate caught fire. Officially, it was said to have been caused by aging electrical wiring, and Shen Mingche had perished in the flames. But since Shen Mingche wasn’t dead, then that fire had been more than an accident.

Xu Lingyi did not deny it.

“Your grandmother secretly switched the Marriage Contract, causing the fate configuration to backfire. Mingche went into heart failure that night. I only wanted to bring Lin Tang back and complete the ritual. She refused, and even tried to take the Ancient Marriage Contract away. During the struggle, the incense burner was knocked over, and the West Building went up in flames. I saved Mingche, but I couldn’t stop Lin Tang.”

“And you still think you’re the one who was wronged?”

She said in a low voice, “I lost a son for eighteen years.”

I said, “You didn’t lose him. You dragged another child down with him.”

Xu Lingyi’s expression shifted slightly.

I knew I had hit the place she refused to face.

Shen Jianwei was not her biological son. At least, not entirely.

In the old files donated by the Shen Family, I had once seen an adoption record. I vaguely remembered that Shen Jianwei had only officially entered the Shen Family at the age of five. At the time, I hadn’t thought much of it, assuming that wealthy families simply had complicated relationships. Now everything had an answer: Xu Lingyi had adopted Shen Jianwei not to make up for the pain of losing a son, but to raise a “Yangyin” for Shen Mingche.

“Does Jianwei know?” I asked.

Xu Lingyi was silent for a moment.

“He knows part of it.”

“Which part?”

“That his health is poor. That the Shen Family has an old method to save him. That you are the right person.”

She said it lightly, but I understood.

What Shen Jianwei had known at first was a version of the story that had been altered. Xu Lingyi told him that I was the person who could save him. Perhaps she also told him the Marriage Contract would only borrow a few years of my fortune and would not cost me my life.

Later, he discovered the truth, which was why he wanted me to escape.

But that did not absolve him.

He had still brought me into the Shen Family. He had still let me stand on the eve of the wedding without knowing anything.

If love can only exist through concealment, then at least half of it is a knife.

I slowly backed toward the door.

Xu Lingyi watched me and did not stop me.

“Zhaomian, you can’t leave.”

As soon as she finished speaking, two bodyguards appeared in the corridor, blocking my way. The old butler stood behind them, holding the cup of black wine that had been refilled.

Xu Lingyi said, “Tonight, the seal will be set. Tomorrow, you will bow in the wedding ceremony. I have waited eighteen years for the debt your mother left behind.”

I looked at that cup of wine, and suddenly grew calm.

When fear reaches its limit, a person becomes clear-headed instead.

I asked, “What if I don’t sign?”

Xu Lingyi walked up to me and raised a hand, smoothing my messy hair as if she were an indulgent elder.

“Then I’ll have Jianwei persuade you.”

She paused, her voice growing even softer.

“He loves you so much. Can you really bear to watch him die?”

I looked into her eyes, and finally understood why she had been able to control the Shen Family for so many years.

She was not a madwoman.

A madwoman would only drag people into the abyss. Xu Lingyi knew exactly where the softest spot in each person’s heart was, and then she pressed the knife right against it.

I smiled. “Then let him come.”

Xu Lingyi froze.

I said, “I want to hear how exactly he plans to persuade me, too.”