Chapter 76: Resentment Ignited Like Flames
Her nerves were taut to the limit, thinking she could remain calm.
But his sharp and vicious words stirred up her emotions, which had been burning like wildfire all afternoon, surging and exploding.
The world spun, her body felt like it was engulfed in flames.
“Whose peace, whose twenty-second year, is as messed up as mine? What kind of peace is like being submerged in a bitter abyss, unable to see the light, with not a single sweet moment?”
Liancheng struggled to pull her arm away, pointing at her reflection in the window, “It’s her, it’s Liancheng, look at her, isn’t she like a rat in a ditch, hiding and cowering, with everyone wanting to beat her?”
She cried and laughed, “I think so. That’s why I’m not crazy or stupid now, carrying a heart full of despair, and I can still be here shouting myself hoarse with you, I feel strong.”
In the final moments of chaos, Liancheng raised her hand and covered her face tightly, her defeated aura mixed with tears, shattering between her fingers.
Dim, warm light enveloped the bed and the nightstand, and further away, light and shadow blurred over the sofa at the foot of the bed and the dresser in the corner.
Rounded edges, soft, delicate, warm, and also shattered.
Hopeless.
Liang Chaosu’s eyes churned with a tempest of emotions. His arms around her relaxed involuntarily, then tightened with alarm in the next second.
“Those four years.”
His breathing was erratic, his throat constricted, struggling to suppress a choked sob, his tone as stiff as a knife, “Is that what you thought?”
Liancheng looked at him, “Then what do you think? What am I in your eyes? An obstacle to your sister’s happiness, a tool for your pleasure in bed, a bitch who never yields to you despite being taught a lesson time and time again? Every act of resistance, every moment I lived like a human being, you wanted to crush me, teach me a lesson, wishing you could dismember me, grind me to powder, and reshape me.”
“How much do you hate me that you treat me like this, that you insist I lose everything, insist you destroy everything, insist I crawl and lick your and Liang Wenfei’s shoes, like a heinous sinner carrying shackles, presenting my own confession, only to have you tear me apart, bone by bone, and train me into a bitch to be sold.”
“My four years—” Liancheng completely broke down, “What kind of life did I live in these four years—”
The desolate and strange night outside the window shone through, and two shadows reflected on the windowpane. Their bodies pressed tightly together, their arms forming a contour across their chests, like a knife piercing two hearts.
“Liancheng—”
Liancheng’s gaze penetrated the misty water vapor. The man’s deeply etched facial features, along with the dim light and shadow of the room, faded into nothingness, leaving only his eyes, sharp and full of aggression.
As if he felt the same pain as her, perhaps even more.
Before she could see clearly, he blurred in the mist like a fleeting illusion, vanishing in an instant.
Outside the door, Aunt Wang suddenly knocked, trying her best to suppress her urgency, but it was too rapid.
Liancheng reacted first, pushing him away with all her might.
Liang Chaosu’s arms remained unmoving, watching her struggle.
The small mole on her nose was blurred by the damp water stains. Her pale cheeks were numb and ashen, like a fragile piece of paper, smudged with anxiety, panic, and utter terror, outlining shapes of resistance and defiance.
She tried her best to stay away from him, to reject him, never looking at him, nor wanting to get close to him or understand him.
She didn’t remember his good deeds; they were bad.
His bad deeds were even worse, vile, wicked, malicious, and vicious. He was a bad seed, a nightmare, the source of all turmoil.
After a thousand nights of embracing, in the comments section, her conclusion was disintegration, gut-wrenching pain, and gore.
Liang Chaosu suddenly pressed the back of her head, and a viscous, wet kiss.
His cheek rubbed against the damp traces under her eyes.
The water stains were ice-cold, unyieldingly blocking and cooling the last bit of warmth between their skin.
The chaotic knocking stopped.
A moment later, it was replaced by Aunt Wang’s trembling voice, filled with urgency, “Young Lady is coming downstairs…”
Liancheng fiercely bit his tongue, the taste of blood melting and spreading between her teeth.
More piercing than the taste of blood were her eyes, resentment igniting like flames, then in the blink of an eye, the moisture in her eyes poured into the fire, into the hatred, like oil.
Liang Chaosu let her go, a moment of deathly silence.
The blue veins on his arm writhed and twisted, bulging as if about to burst.
Liancheng thought he was going to attack, felt his chest about to explode, crushing her, hard and heavy, pushing her to her limit with each impact.
Yet, he let her lie down, his rough thumb brushed across the red of her lips, and pulled the quilt up.
Staring at her, he retreated step by step, opened the door, and left.
The sound of his footsteps receded, disappearing in an instant at the doorway.
It was Liang Wenfei’s ear-splitting scream.
“Brother, why are you in Liancheng’s room?”
Liancheng suddenly sat up.
As someone who knew Liang Wenfei’s destructive power, Liancheng’s experience told her that Liang Wenfei should not be here.
If this scream wasn’t meant to alert Father Liang and Mother Liang on the second floor, Liancheng would change her surname and her name to Imbecile.
………………
“You saw?”
Liang Chaosu stood at the junction of the corridor and the stairs, his handsome features half-hidden in the shadows, looking somber.
Liang Wenfei, who had just reached the corner of the stairs, heard him and leaned out, supporting herself on the armrest, looking behind him, “Brother, your direction leads to Liancheng’s room.”
Liang Chaosu stared at her silently, aloof and cold, like a sharp blade shrouded in dense fog.
In the dim depths of the lighting, he appeared particularly imposing.
Liang Wenfei feared him and meekly lowered her eyes.
Father Liang and Mother Liang also walked to the top of the stairs on the second floor.
Mother Liang, wearing a robe, looked at him with surprise, “Chaosu, what are you doing?”
Liang Chaosu perfunctorily replied, “Something came up, I have to go.”
Mother Liang frowned and immediately called out to him coldly, “What is it?”
Liang Chaosu looked up, his expressionless face turning to Father Liang, “Father, will this family ever have peace?”
His gaze was desolate. The light from the cascading crystal chandelier on the stairs shone brightly, reflecting the turbulent waves in his eyes: anger, hatred, restlessness, gloom, bitterness, heavy sorrow, dimness, negativity…
Too much, far beyond the limit of what one person’s emotions could bear.
Densely packed, real, alive, and utterly destroyed to ashes, all returning to an extremely dark silence.
Mother Liang’s heart skipped a beat, an inexplicable sense of unease she couldn’t suppress. It came from a mother’s sixth sense, but she couldn’t find any concrete basis, leaving her in a state of limbo, floating like a castle in the air in her innermost being.
She wanted it to come down to reality, yet feared it landing.
She conceded, a hint of hesitation in her voice, “How could that be, you are—what’s wrong?”
Liang Chaosu only looked at Father Liang, “Is it?”
Father Liang helped the slightly trembling Mother Liang, and from the height of one floor, his gaze met Liang Chaosu’s through the thin air, “If you want peace, you will have peace.”
Liang Chaosu turned and left.
Mother Liang watched his broad back disappear through the doorway. The cold wind of the deep, pitch-black night blew through his thin shirt, flapping like the wind, from blurry to completely indistinguishable, unseen, and gone.
Liang Wenfei cautiously went upstairs and stood beside Mother Liang, “Mom, is Brother angry with me?”
The smile on Mother Liang’s lips was forced and stiff, “Feifei, did you really see your brother in Liancheng’s room?”
Downstairs.
Liancheng gripped the doorknob, her palm feeling a sticky, icy cold.
