Chapter 26:
Seeing him like this, Xie Wanning’s originally inexplicably flustered emotions suddenly stabilized.
“Lu Ziyan,” she looked up at him and said, “Have you forgotten? We’re breaking the engagement. No matter what I do with him here, there’s no need to explain it to you.”
The girl tilted her small face toward him, the lipstick on her lips even more vibrant red in the sunlight, glistening as they opened and closed, but the words she spoke were infuriating.
Lu Ziyan laughed instead of getting angry, his tone slow, his voice low and hoarse: “For a man old enough to be your father, you’re breaking the engagement with me?”
“When did you two meet?”
He had personally seen them embracing intimately, gazing deeply into each other’s eyes, and was already convinced there was no purity between them.
This betrayed questioning expression made Xie Wanning find it somewhat amusing.
She could let him misunderstand, but she couldn’t tolerate his repeated disdain for Pei Yuqing.
After laughing for a moment, she suddenly gripped the hand of the man who had remained silently beside her, decisively admitting it outright: “That’s right, everything you said is correct!”
She smiled and asked, “Don’t they say older men know how to cherish people?”
“Shut up!”
Lu Ziyan’s eyes were bloodshot, falling on their clasped hands, murderous intent spilling over.
In recent years, he had been ordered to campaign far and wide, harvesting countless lives under his command. The killing intent in his eyes was almost tangible. Xie Wanning was frightened by his gaze, her fingertips trembling lightly. She instinctively wanted to pull away, but the man beside her held her tight.
“Don’t be afraid of him,” Pei Yuqing turned his head to look at her, saying warmly, “Say whatever you want to say. I’ve told you, I will protect you.”
His voice remained calm and steady in this situation, as if his emotions were unaffected in the slightest, carrying a power that soothed the heart. Xie Wanning felt a warmth in her chest upon hearing it.
The warmth from his palm made her eyebrows and eyes curve in a smile. She slowly tightened her grip in return, looked up at Lu Ziyan, and continued to confront him sharply: “What? Can’t stand to hear it? Wasn’t it you who asked?”
“So what if he’s a bit older than me? In any case, isn’t he much better than you?”
“He’s more handsome than you, his temperament is gentler than yours. He has no serving maids, no concubine, no constant ‘Rou Niang’ on his lips.”
Xie Wanning took a deep breath, her long lashes trembling lightly, word by word: “Lu Ziyan, he is cleaner than you.”
He is cleaner than you…
“He’s clean! So I’m dirty?” Lu Ziyan seemed to hear some enormous joke. His lips parted as if to say something, but he quickly stopped himself.
He absolutely refused to act like a woman of the inner chambers, using his own purity as a topic.
Finally, gritting his teeth, he glared at her hatefully: “These are your reasons for insisting on breaking the engagement and refusing to cling to the pipa?”
Xie Wanning didn’t understand his thoughts at all and nodded decisively, about to say something more, when her waist suddenly tightened.
The hand clasped with Pei Yuqing was forced apart, and her whole person was pulled into Lu Ziyan’s arms.
“Let go of me!” She was startled and pushed against his shoulder, trying to shove him away.
“Has Wanwan forgotten,” Lu Ziyan gripped the back of her head and leaned in close, his words ruthless: “We haven’t broken the engagement yet. He can hold you, so why can’t I?”
Xie Wanning didn’t understand why he said that. When had she ever embraced Pei Yuqing? What exactly had he seen just now?
She tried hard to turn her head away to avoid him and speak, but his lips still nearly brushed her side neck, his oppressive breath lingering around her ear.
Scorching, strange.
Perhaps influenced too deeply by the dream, she uncomfortably shrank her neck, her mind full of Tang Manrou’s provocation in the dream.
In the two years after marrying into the Lu Residence, every time she encountered Tang Manrou, that woman always pretended to casually flaunt the traces of their nightly bed matters in front of her.
She was probably the one, besides the two involved, who knew best how tenderly affectionate they were.
Actually, in the dream, after being provoked by Tang Manrou a few times, she had also felt utterly disgusted, and her blazing affection for Lu Ziyan had long been worn away bit by bit.
In the end, only annoyance and exhaustion remained, along with a nauseating disgust that surged whenever she approached Lu Ziyan.
At this moment, her stomach churned violently, and she realized that those emotions from the dream seemed to have affected her now as well.
She endured it again and again, and just as she felt she was about to vomit, the hand at her waist finally loosened, the encroaching breath gradually receded, and she squatted down to gasp for air in big mouthfuls.
Lu Ziyan was forced back by two secret guards. His expression turned fierce as he was about to fight, but when his gaze fell on the girl who retched with disgust the moment he left her, his face instantly paled.
The man who squatted down with her had a slight frown, his tone concerned: “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
Xie Wanning arduously calmed that wave of nausea and took a deep breath of fresh air.
Pei Yuqing helped her stand: “Where exactly do you feel uncomfortable?”
“I just smelled a disgusting taste and felt nauseous,” Xie Wanning gripped his arm to steady herself before looking up at the man standing rigidly over there.
She paused, then slowly said: “Did you see? You make me so disgusted that whenever you get close, I can’t help but want to vomit.”
Lu Ziyan’s lips turned white from being pressed together so tightly. He saw that pair of eyes, which always shimmered with waves whenever they looked at him, now indifferent without a trace of affection.
It was as if her previous blazing affection was just youthful playfulness, which could be retracted in an instant with growth, leaving not a single mark on him.
She said his closeness made her want to vomit.
Before this, he had always restrained himself and acted with propriety, never overstepping with her in the slightest.
The first time he held her, she said she wanted to vomit.
The fingers in his sleeve slowly clenched. These hands had just held her, the residual warmth still there, but a chill crept up from his palm, spreading through his limbs and torso. His blood seemed frozen, his teeth chattering from the cold.
Looking at the man and woman standing side by side, for some reason his eyes reddened. “I’m not disgusting.”
Xie Wanning’s brows furrowed tightly. She had seen him scold in blazing anger, seen him refuse coldly and heartlessly, seen him indulge in pleasure wantonly, but she had never seen him like this.
Since she was five years old, she had never seen this man cry.
But right now… why did he look like he was about to cry?
Just because of her one sentence about wanting to vomit?
But didn’t he dislike her?
If she wanted to vomit, so be it. His Rou Niang wouldn’t vomit, right?
Or was his self-esteem so strong that he couldn’t allow someone who once liked him to transfer her affections?
Xie Wanning didn’t understand and couldn’t respect it. Thinking of how he had wantonly bullied her in the dream, she felt not the slightest pity.
“Lu Ziyan, I know you’re proud and can’t accept for the moment that I no longer like you, but that’s the fact. No matter what, I don’t want to marry you anymore.”
Her tone held some disappointment. After a moment, she smiled easily: “After so many years of affection, let’s both be dignified about it. You continue producing offspring for your Lu Family, carrying on the ancestral line. Return the marriage certificate to me, and we’ll each go our own way peacefully, alright?”
PK1 last day~~~
