Chapter 2

Chapter 2

In truth, whether someone loved you or not was painfully clear.

Her vicious cruelty was nothing more than a child’s mischief in his eyes?

In my previous life, I once went to Jingnian Nunnery to pray to the Buddha.

I wanted to ask the most venerable old nun there: Why had my life been so bitter?

When I arrived, the old nun was wiping the hands of the little novices she had taken in. They stood in a neat line, one after another, waiting for the old nun to rinse the cloth and wipe their hands and faces clean.

Those little novices could have washed themselves. But because she had wiped one child’s hands and face, the rest insisted she do the same for them.

The old nun did not find it troublesome in the slightest. Her eyes were filled with tenderness.

She told me that she did not ask for them to grow up and become nuns. She only wished for them to grow up healthy and safe.

She said, “I know why you have come, benefactor. If you cannot be a child again before him, then he does not love you. And if he cannot be a child again before you, then you do not love him either.”

I left the mountain in a daze.

All of a sudden, I felt that this marriage between Lu Yu and me was quite fair.

He did not love me, and I did not love him.

That was what I had used to comfort myself through twenty years as a daughter-in-law of the Lu family.

Until I saw him and Gu Feiyan wrapped up in each other.

The scale in my heart, the one I called fairness, tipped out of balance.

Because I realized that Lu Yu might not love me, but as a man, he could openly and honorably love someone else.

As for me, as a woman, aside from my own husband, I could never openly and honorably love anyone for the rest of my life.

This marriage was not fair at all.

I gave a cold, mocking laugh. “If Lord Lu does not believe me, you may wipe it with a handkerchief and see whether the ink mark on your face comes off.”

Lu Yu stared fixedly at me, but from beginning to end, he refused to so much as raise his sleeve.

I found it even more ironic.

He did not dare verify it.

He had already guessed that Gu Feiyan might very well be that sort of person.

It made my disgust for him deepen another layer, and the anger in my heart surged up with it.

He knew everything.

Yet he had tormented me for an entire lifetime.

He had watched coldly as I struggled to survive in the Lu family, humble and small, and never once said a single fair word on my behalf.

Because my sacrifice was the bargaining chip for his and Gu Feiyan’s happiness.

Even that son had likely been granted to me only because he pitied me.

How utterly ironic.

Madam Qian, Lu Yu’s mother, grew anxious. She hurriedly took out a handkerchief and began wiping.

Lu Yu did not dare push his mother’s hand away in public. She pressed him down and wiped his face, rubbing his skin red, but the ink mark did not disappear. Instead, it stood out all the more hideously.

Lu Yu’s mother panicked and immediately ordered someone to find Gu Feiyan.

She also wanted to persuade me, but my family stopped her.

Lu Yu’s younger sister, Lu Lian, hurriedly said, “Sister Xiangjun, do you truly have no affection for my brother at all? He has no private feelings for that woman. It is only that woman clinging to him one-sidedly.”

I said coldly, “Miss Lu, the man I, Li Xiangjun, am to marry must be a talented young gentleman, absolutely not an ugly husband like this. When your brother’s face has been cleaned, come find me again. Otherwise, just looking at his face alone will make me unable to swallow a bite of food.”

In my previous life, they enjoyed the comfortable life I provided, yet behind my back they still mocked me as an ugly, saltless woman, saying that even one glance at me would give them nightmares.

Of course, that was an exaggeration. I wore a veil over my face year-round, so they could not see the ink mark on my face.

They only wanted to stab at my heart. They wanted to make me suffer.

Because in this world, my husband had been the first not to love me, the first to bully me, so they followed his lead and insulted me, bullied me too.

It was like a window with a hole broken through it. Those willing to mend the window were saints, but most mediocre people would only poke hole after hole through the glass.

Once, I had been that broken window.

Now, I would deliver every evildoer to the afterlife equally.