[Whoa! Is this what they mean by either erupting in silence or perishing in silence?]
Wenren Luoshui read in the file that Xu Lingzhi had loved Zhu Jiangqu desperately. Even when she later discovered that her own husband had sent her into another man's bed for his own benefit, she had still loved him.
Once she returned, Zhu Jiangqu had only needed to coax her a little, and she had forgiven him.
Now it seemed she was not entirely beyond saving!
[Yunjian: If she doesn't throw out a rotten scumbag like this, is she keeping him for the New Year?]
[That's not even all! Zhu Jiangqu has a younger female cousin whom he wants to marry, so he joined forces with his mother to find her a drug that would make her pulse resemble that of someone with a heart condition. Then the Zhu mother and son had Xu Lingzhi treat the cousin. In this era, there's no way to cure a heart condition completely. If that isn't deliberately making things difficult for her, what is?]
Everyone: ...
This was hard to judge. Truly.
Even the consorts and princesses in the palace could not be completely cured of a fatal illness like a heart condition.
They remembered a Noble Consort Jiao in the Late Emperor's harem. She had suffered from a heart condition since childhood, so she could neither run hard nor laugh heartily, and she had bouts of chest pain from time to time.
Fortunately, she had a beautiful face, and the Late Emperor had granted her the rank of Imperial Concubine as soon as she entered the palace.
She had then enjoyed his lavish favor for ten years, but sadly, she had finally died of her heart condition at twenty-five.
The Zhu Family actually expected an ordinary physician outside the palace to cure an illness even the imperial physicians could do nothing about?
Why not ask your son to conjure up a gold mine overnight, too?
At first, the people around them had merely despised this man for handing his own wife over to someone else to climb higher.
Now, they held Zhu Jiangqu in utter contempt.
If he no longer liked his wife, couldn't he simply divorce her? Why did he have to trample all over her like this?
Wasn't he afraid someone would treat his younger sister the same way?
Unfortunately, Zhu Jiangqu could not hear those inner voices. All he knew was that the woman before him had suddenly changed her attitude completely.
When he first caught hold of her, there had been nothing but heartbreak in her eyes.
Now, alongside that heartbreak, there was anger and defiance.
She was angry?
What did she have to be angry about?
She had usurped his cousin's place for ten years, and throughout those ten years, he had given her all the respect due to his lawful wife.
And what about his cousin?
His cousin and her family had suffered in that bitterly cold land!
All of this should have belonged to his cousin!
The position of the Zhu Family's lawful wife!
His love, too!
What right did this woman, this cuckoo occupying another bird's nest, have to be angry?
Having convinced himself, Zhu Jiangqu's gaze turned scornful again, and he spoke to Xu Lingzhi as though bestowing charity.
"I didn't even blame you for staying out all night, and now you're hitting your own husband in public. Xu Lingzhi, when did you become so coarse?!"
His words reeked of patronizing paternal authority. What did he mean by coarse? What did he mean by staying out all night?
If he hadn't schemed against her, why would she have left her bed in the middle of the night when she had been sleeping perfectly well?
To play ghost and scare people for fun?
[Huh? He didn't sleep all night? He slept just fine! Only after he finished shamelessly fooling around with his cousin did he go to Prince Chen's Mansion to beg forgiveness. Your wife went missing, but that didn't delay your little romp with your cousin!]
[Yunjian: Tsk, tsk, tsk! A man's mouth is a lying devil!]
[Don't worry, his cousin is no innocent, either. Her family used to be officials, but her father embezzled disaster relief funds. Her father, grandfather, and uncles were beheaded, and all the remaining family members were exiled. Once they reached their place of exile, the family couldn't endure the hardship, so they each handed their daughters over to the guards. Those girls weren't even concubines.]
[Yunjian: Hahahahaha! Does this man have some special fetish? He doesn't want a woman unless someone else has already played with her?]
Everyone: That sounded very strange, yet somehow it made a certain amount of sense!
The atmosphere around them grew increasingly strange. Zhu Jiangqu sensed that these people's attitude toward him was changing little by little.
He was about to drag Xu Lingzhi away by force. His instincts told him that if he remained outside any longer, something bad would happen.
But Xu Lingzhi had already come to her senses. Lianxin, who had been like a sister to her, had died because of this man. How could she let all that kindness go to waste?
This man she had loved for ten years-she had never truly seen him for who he was!
[Zhu Jiangqu's cousin suffered bodily damage and can no longer get pregnant. His mother knows this, so after Xu Lingzhi gave birth to a son and a daughter, she took the children to raise herself. Every day, she whispered in their ears that their mother was Zhu Jiangqu's cousin, and that the current mistress of the Zhu Family was a wicked woman who had stolen their mother's place. She twisted both children completely.]
[After the cousin returned to the capital, Zhu Jiangqu's mother arranged for her to visit the two children every day and put on a show of loving motherhood. Later, the cousin took that drug to fake a heart condition. When Xu Lingzhi said she couldn't cure her, the two brainwashed children believed that someone with medical skills as impressive as hers couldn't possibly be unable to cure it, so they gave her dirty looks every day.]
[Yunjian: Children like that are worth less than a slab of roast pork. She's better off without them! I hope she wakes up and flourishes on her own.]
[Actually, Xu Lingzhi's medical skills really are quite good. Even if she gets a divorce, she can make a decent life for herself with those skills. All these years since she married into the Zhu Family, they've lived on the money she earned treating patients. With the business sense that mother and son have, they probably would've squandered the entire family fortune long ago.]
[Yunjian: Isn't that just living off a woman while acting like her lord and master? And they still want to drive their wife to her death so the mistress can take her place?]
Xu Lingzhi felt that these two voices were guidance from the gods, helping her quickly see through the hypocritical man before her.
She had married Zhu Jiangqu back then merely because he had seemed reasonably honest, and his household consisted only of him and his mother. Most importantly, Zhu Jiangqu had not objected to her working openly outside the home.
[Obviously. He only came to ask for your hand after finding out that your medical skills could earn plenty of silver. If you didn't go out and earn it, what would he and his mother spend?]
The system relayed Xu Lingzhi's thought to us, and we could not help silently scoffing.
This bastard's intentions were truly disgusting.
[Also, his mother didn't agree to look after the children out of concern for her. On one hand, she wanted the children to reject their birth mother. On the other, she was afraid Xu Lingzhi would stop seeing patients for the children's sake. If she stopped going out to earn money, wouldn't the Zhu Family have to sit around eating through their dwindling fortune?]
Xu Lingzhi: ?!!!
She had thought her heart could no longer be hurt, but she had never imagined that there was no limit to how disgusting the Zhu Family could be!
The onlookers now bitterly regretted not grabbing some rotten eggs and wilted vegetable leaves on their way out.
They had only gone out for an early morning stroll, yet they had still managed to run into such a disgusting family!
Zhu Jiangqu frowned impatiently, then softened his voice. "All right. Since you don't want to talk, I won't ask. In any case, you're still my wife. What else can I do?"
He sounded utterly humble, but whenever the crowd remembered that he had handed his wife over for another man's sexual amusement to advance himself, they felt sick.
Disgust churned through them, so his words, which seemed like a concession but actually belittled Xu Lingzhi, had no effect on anyone around them.