Chapter 28: Gripping The Vest Tightly
Yuan Musheng considered and wrote the prescription. Shang Wan told Shi Tou to go with him to get the medicine.
After the two left through the courtyard gate, Shang Wan beckoned to Xiao Hui and took it with her into the west wing room.
Lu Chengjing sat on the kang, his black hair disheveled, making his face look especially pale. He stared blankly at his right hand, which had no sensation, his expression showing no joy or anger.
“No matter how much you look, you won’t see a flower come out of it.” Shang Wan patted Xiao Hui. Xiao Hui walked toward Lu Chengjing, twitching its nose to sniff the scent on him.
Lu Chengjing glanced at the gray wolf by his feet and looked up at Shang Wan. “I originally didn’t know that you could tame wolves.”
“Wasn’t there no chance to show it?” Shang Wan squatted down and touched Xiao Hui’s head, letting it go play in the courtyard.
After Xiao Hui left, Shang Wan sat beside Lu Chengjing, reached out to take a lock of his black hair draped over his shoulder, and toyed with it between her fingertips.
Lu Chengjing caught sight of it from the corner of his eye and shifted slightly, a bit uncomfortably.
Shang Wan looked up at him. “Who beat you and left those injuries?”
Lu Chengjing: “Constables.”
“You’ve already been convicted, so the constables had no need to torture you further.” Shang Wan brushed the hair ends across her palm, her tone gentle and slow. “Let me guess—the person who bribed the constables to attack you is related to… the Lu Family?”
Lu Chengjing’s pupils contracted. His left hand on the edge of the kang unconsciously clenched tight, his fingertips gradually turning white.
“Looks like I guessed right.” Shang Wan released his hair and leaned back. “Lu Chengjing, you’re hiding this from me—do you actually want to go back to the Lu Family and continue being their Third Young Master?”
Lu Chengjing vaguely sensed that Shang Wan was angry. He turned his head to look at her.
Shang Wan hooked the corner of her lips slightly. “If you want to go back to the Lu Family and suffer, I won’t stop you. We’ll divorce, and Yuan Yuan comes with me.”
“I have no intention of going back.” Lu Chengjing said in a low voice. “The Lu Family is no good place.”
“Then why hide it from me?”
Lu Chengjing’s gaze flicked over Shang Wan, and he pursed his lips before saying: “The Lu Family raised me, so these injuries count as repayment. From now on, I have no ties to the Lu Family. I know you have skills, but many ants can kill an elephant—the Lu Family is not as simple as it appears.”
Shang Wan understood and a trace of a smile appeared in her brows and eyes. “You’re worried about me?”
Lu Chengjing turned his head away. After a long moment, he softly hummed in acknowledgment.
Shang Wan’s mood eased. She reached out and grabbed a lock of Lu Chengjing’s long hair. “I can choose not to settle accounts with the Lu Family, but you have to compensate me.”
Lu Chengjing: ?!
What kind of bandit logic is this?
“Turn around and look at me.” Shang Wan tugged Lu Chengjing’s hair. Only after he turned his head did she say, “I ran around everywhere to get you out, nearly wearing my legs to stumps. Don’t you have any gesture of gratitude?”
Lu Chengjing: “……Thank you.”
Shang Wan tsked lightly. “That thank you makes me feel like my efforts were cheap.”
“What do you want?”
“Here.” She pointed to her right cheek. “Give me a kiss.”
Busy for several days, she had to take some advantage.
Lu Chengjing: “……”
“We’ve already had a child, and you won’t even give a kiss?” Shang Wan eyed his reddened ear root. What pure youth act was this guy putting on?
Lu Chengjing looked at her with a complicated gaze and said somberly: “We’ve never consummated our marriage.”
Shang Wan: ?
Shang Wan: !!
Damn! Exposed!
Why wasn’t it in the original host’s memories?
Shang Wan frantically rummaged through the original host’s memories. There were many blanks, but since the memory fragments mostly connected, she hadn’t paid much attention before. She hadn’t expected such a huge bombshell hidden inside.
Her disguise!
Shang Wan was stunned. “No consummation, so where did Yuan Yuan come from? Did you keep a concubine?”
Lu Chengjing: “……”
This woman really dared to imagine!
“No concubine.” His face was as black as the bottom of a pot. “I picked Yuan Yuan up from the refugee pile.”
“But I remember giving birth to a child.” Shang Wan stubbornly clung to her disguise. “Where’s the child?”
“She died of illness before two months. Worried about being punished by your mother-in-law, you begged me to bring back a child about the same age to raise.”
Shang Wan fell silent for a moment, then asked softly: “No consummation, so how could I have given birth?”
Lu Chengjing: “What do you think?”
Shang Wan looked at the top of his head, feeling like she saw a vast green pasture.
“Well then, you’re pretty magnanimous.”
Raising a child for her adulterer—what a carefree heart!
Lu Chengjing’s eye twitched wildly. He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Stop pretending. You’re not Shang Wan at all.”
Shang Wan: “……”
She just wanted to take a little advantage—how did her disguise fall off?
Boo hoo hoo, total loss.
“Actually, I lost my memory.” Shang Wan tried to patch it up. “Shi Tou told you, right? When I was chased out of the Lu Family, I hit my head. When I woke up, I forgot a lot of things. This martial arts is…”
Lu Chengjing quietly watched Shang Wan make things up.
Shang Wan couldn’t keep making it up. She flopped backward onto the kang and gave up.
A flash of amusement passed through Lu Chengjing’s eyes. He turned his head to look at the certain woman who had broken the jar. “Shang Wan didn’t marry me willingly. On our wedding night, she told me plainly that she had someone she loved and had already been intimate with him.”
Shang Wan raised her eyebrow. “And then?”
“And then…” Lu Chengjing’s mind flashed with that panicked, tear-streaked face. He spoke slowly, “We made a three-point agreement. As long as she played the good Third Young Madam, bribed her parents-in-law, and got along with her sisters-in-law, when her beloved came to pick her up, I would give her a divorce letter and let her go.”
Shang Wan tugged his arm, and Lu Chengjing followed her pull to lie back, his black hair spreading out. Shang Wan reached over to move it aside so it wouldn’t get pressed.
“So whose child was hers?”
“Naturally her beloved’s.” Lu Chengjing turned his head to look at Shang Wan. “Intimate relations leading to pregnancy isn’t surprising.”
Shang Wan tsked to herself, realizing why the original host was so fixated on Zhong Chenghong coming to rescue her from her misery.
Probably to avoid true marital relations with Lu Chengjing, the original host had personally handed him the leverage. On the surface, she won the bet—Lu Chengjing chose to help her—but his conditions weren’t that easy to fulfill.
The original host’s parents were both dead. Her so-called marriage was actually being sold into the Lu Family by her greedy brother for money. Her brother took the cash and fled with his family, never to be heard from again.
With no maternal family home to back her up, and the third branch unpopular in the mansion, how could the original host stand up to the first and second branches without getting bullied? Not to mention the mother-in-law who set rules for her every day.
Fortunately, she had partner Lu Chengjing willing to protect her somewhat, or the original host’s days would have been bitter as eating bitter melon under a bitter melon tree—misery upon misery.
Shang Wan suddenly thought of their first meeting in prison and felt something was off.
“Since you weren’t truly husband and wife, and you knew about that person, why did you get so angry seeing the letter? Why run to the inn to catch them in the act? Were you bored?”
Lu Chengjing’s gaze flickered, somewhat uneasy.
Shang Wan thought of a possibility and instantly darkened her face. “You tricked me!”
“I was just going along with what you said.” Lu Chengjing felt inexplicably guilty under Shang Wan’s glare.
Shang Wan reached out and pinched his cheeks, pulling them to the sides, her tone gritted through her teeth. “You never believed I was Shang Wan from start to finish. Did you enjoy watching me act in front of you?”
