Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Shen Jianwei arrived quickly.

He must have run all the way from the small gate on the west side. The loose strands of hair over his forehead were windblown and messy, his breathing was ragged, and his lips were terrifyingly pale. The moment Xu Lingyi saw him like that, her brows drew together.

“Who told you to come here?”

Shen Jianwei didn’t look at her. He only looked at me.

“Mianmian.”

I stood among the bodyguards and said nothing.

He walked toward me step by step. The old butler tried to stop him, only to be met with a cold glance. That was a Shen Jianwei I had rarely seen. Usually, he was gentle, restrained, and polite, as if he would never let his emotions spill onto the floor. But now, there was an almost cutting exhaustion about him.

He stopped in front of me and said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

I smiled. “That’s it?”

“No.”

He looked at Xu Lingyi. “Tomorrow’s wedding is canceled.”

The corridor between the ancestral hall and the West Building suddenly fell silent.

Xu Lingyi seemed not to have heard him clearly. “What did you say?”

“I said, the wedding is canceled.” Shen Jianwei’s voice was not loud, but he did not back down. “If you want to save Shen Mingche, use your own life to save him. Don’t touch her.”

Xu Lingyi raised her hand and slapped him across the face.

The sound was sharp and loud.

Shen Jianwei turned his face away and coughed several times. There was actually blood between his fingers.

My heart clenched hard. I nearly stepped forward, but I forced myself to hold back.

Xu Lingyi saw the blood too, and the anger in her eyes was replaced by panic. She reached out to support him. “Jianwei, your body can’t handle getting worked up.”

Shen Jianwei took a step back, avoiding her hand.

“So you are afraid I’ll die?”

Xu Lingyi froze.

Those words were like a needle, puncturing the illusion she had painstakingly stitched together over the past eighteen years. She had raised Shen Jianwei, cared about his illness, given him the best doctors, and arranged the most stable life for him. Perhaps at certain moments, she had truly regarded him as her son. But as long as Shen Mingche was still lying in the West Building, all of Xu Lingyi’s kindness toward Shen Jianwei came with an expiration date.

That date was tomorrow.

I looked at Shen Jianwei and asked, “When did you learn the truth?”

He closed his eyes briefly.

“Three months ago.”

“We got engaged a year ago.”

“Yes.”

“The first time Xu Lingyi asked for my birth characters was two years ago.”

“Yes.”

“So at least two years ago, you knew I was useful to the Shen Family.”

Shen Jianwei fell silent.

The smile faded from my face. “Say something.”

“At the time, I only knew that Mother wanted to find someone whose fate matched mine to ward off misfortune for me.” His voice was hoarse. “She said no one would be hurt, that she was only borrowing a little luck. I didn’t believe in any of it, but after she took out your birth characters, the doctors said my condition really had stabilized. I thought it was just a coincidence, and I thought the wedding could proceed like any normal wedding. It wasn’t until three months ago that I heard her and Mr. Liu talking about Yangyin, the Life Lamp, and Mingche.”

Mr. Liu was probably the elderly voice in the recording.

I asked, “For three months, why didn’t you tell me?”

He looked at me, his eyes bloodshot.

“I was afraid you would hate me.”

It was an absurd answer, but it was real.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t had the chance to save me. Three months-more than ninety days. He could have called the police, confessed, canceled the wedding. He hadn’t. He had stalled between love and fear, waiting in the faint hope that an ending that would never disappear on its own might somehow vanish.

Only when Xu Lingyi put the knife to my throat did he finally step forward.

All at once, I no longer wanted to curse him.

It wasn’t forgiveness. It was disappointment pushed to its absolute limit, where words had lost all meaning.

Xu Lingyi said coldly, “Enough. Jianwei, she has bewitched you. Once Mingche wakes up, the Shen Family will be whole again, and you will be free as well.”

“I don’t need to use her life to set myself free.”

“What do you know?” Xu Lingyi’s voice rose sharply. “You’ve been sick since you were a child. Which day did I not watch over you? Do you think I wanted to see you suffer? Once the old method succeeds and Mingche wakes up, you won’t have to live like this half-dead person anymore.”

Shen Jianwei gave a faint laugh.

“If I don’t live as a half-dead person, does that mean I can only be a dead one?”

Xu Lingyi’s face went deathly pale.

I watched them, but my mind was turning rapidly.

Forcing my way out tonight would be difficult. The old residence was full of Shen Family people, my leg was injured, and the cell signal was being jammed on and off. The fact that Xu Lingyi dared to act ahead of schedule meant she no longer cared about appearances. As long as the Marriage Contract was sealed, and as long as she let me appear at the wedding tomorrow, she could disguise everything as part of the normal process.

But she had one weakness.

She trusted the Ancient Marriage Contract too much.

And the Ancient Marriage Contract was my grandmother’s domain.

I asked Xu Lingyi, “I can sign.”

Shen Jianwei looked at me sharply. “Mianmian!”

I didn’t look at him.

Xu Lingyi narrowed her eyes. “Your condition.”

“I want to see the complete Marriage Contract,” I said. “Not the folded page you just gave me, but the original my grandmother restored eighteen years ago. Since you say the Lin Family owes the Shen Family, I should at least know what the debt looks like.”

Xu Lingyi studied me.

I added, “Otherwise, I’d rather die here. A dead person can’t leave a seal, and you won’t make it to tomorrow’s wedding bows.”

This wasn’t a threat. It was a fact.

She wanted to save Shen Mingche too badly. She wouldn’t dare let anything happen to me before the ritual.

After a long silence, Xu Lingyi said to the old butler, “Go get it.”

The old butler turned and left.

Shen Jianwei stood beside me and said softly, “What are you planning to do?”

I finally glanced at him.

“Shen Jianwei, three months ago, you didn’t tell me the truth. So now, don’t ask me about my plan.”

His face grew even paler, but he said nothing more.