Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I was stunned.

It was as if a bolt of lightning were ricocheting through my skull, making me forget where I was, and when my heart had been left behind.

It was not until Cen Wenqing was truly placed inside the coffin-

not until his younger brother, Cen Zhengyan, knelt before me and slapped himself again and again-that I seemed to come back to life.

A hoarse wail forced its way out of my throat, like a voiceless trapped beast struggling at the edge of death.

I had pitied him all his life for being unloved by his parents, for living like an old ox yoked to endless labor.

But in the end, the most pitiful one was me.

In this life, I was the one truly alone, with no one in the world to care for me.

Tears streamed down my face.

My resentment, my fury, my hatred-none of it could be spoken to a dead man.

And beneath it all was an indescribable shame.

It felt as if I had been humiliated by the person closest to me.

I fell ill and could not get up.

I stopped going to the estate.

I stopped going to the shops.

I would not even step outside my door.

Cen Zhengyan knelt outside my room to beg forgiveness.

He said he had wronged me, and wronged his brother.

He told me that if I had anger to vent, I should hit him or curse him, but I must not ruin my own health over it.

He seemed truly, sincerely repentant.

It was the very thing Cen Wenqing and I had once begged for and never received-yet after his death, it suddenly came so easily.

I found it laughably ironic.

I opened the door and looked at him, his eyes brimming with tears, and said coldly, “Get out!”

He froze on the spot, despair bleeding through his bloodshot eyes.

Then he left, looking as though his soul had been stripped from him.

Later, my younger sister came to see me.

She demanded to know what exactly I wanted.

“Will you only be happy once you’ve torn this family apart?”

“Big Brother is dead. Are you going to force Erlang (Second Master) to die too?”

I slapped her hard across the face.

This younger sister of mine was someone I had never been allowed to hit.

Back in my maiden home, if I hit her, Father and Mother would beat me.

In my husband’s family, I was even less allowed to touch her. She had my parents-in-law and her husband protecting her, and as both her elder sister and her sister-in-law, I had no right to raise a hand against her.

But that day, I did.

I struck her with all the hatred pent up inside me.

My gaze was ice-cold as I enunciated each word.

“Yes. Let him die. You die too! You two home-wrecking scourges can all go to hell!”

My younger sister clutched her face, fear dawning in her eyes.

Perhaps for the first time, she felt the depth of my hatred for her.

She said I had gone mad.

The truth was, I should have gone mad long ago.

After that, the Cen family’s business went into a steep decline.

Wealth truly was not distributed according to looks.

In the beginning, the handsome Erlang (Second Master) and my younger sister had indeed been likable. But later, they only made people sick of them. They were not even as pleasing to customers as the timid little shop assistants who spent their days being scolded.

To like someone was a mysterious thing indeed.

Later still, the maid Sui Nian burst in looking for me.

She was so anxious she was nearly in tears.

“Madam, the Master and Old Madam say they want Erlang (Second Master) to inherit both branches of the family.”