Chapter 43: Let’s Get a Divorce
“Shut up. I wasn’t talking to you. I’m asking Jian An. What right do you have to be here calling me a scumbag?”
Ji Songting’s icy eyes narrowed slightly as he scanned the man, then turned back to Jian An. A hidden fire seemed to be smoldering in his voice.
“What is there that can’t be said? Is it something shameful? Why all the secrecy? Do you really want to die that badly?”
Not a shred of worry could be heard in the latter half of his sentence. Instead, he sounded as if he felt it was a pity Jian An hadn’t successfully died.
Jian An habitually wanted to curl his legs and hug them to his chest, but he couldn’t muster any strength. He could only let his head hang, remaining silent.
Seeing Ji Songting berating the person he cherished as a treasure right to his face, a surge of fury rose in Shen Yunheng’s heart. He stepped forward aggressively and grabbed the man’s collar.
“Ji Songting, don’t go too far! Xiao An just woke up after escaping danger. Are you really so impatient to agitate him?! Do you have any idea that back then…”
“Yunheng! That’s enough, don’t say any more!”
Jian An timely interrupted the words that were nearly out of his mouth. His eyes were slightly red, and his heart throbbed with wave after wave of pain. Even saying a single sentence felt like it required all his strength. “Please go outside for a moment. I have something I want to talk to him about…”
What happened back then? What should he know? Why wouldn’t Jian An let Shen Yunheng finish?
Was it another one of those things that were too difficult to speak of?
Ji Songting’s eye twitched as his anger flared. He stared fixedly at Jian An, who was avoiding him as if he were a plague. He wished he could pierce through the man with his gaze and see exactly what was inside his heart and soul.
Shen Yunheng, however, looked anxious. “Xiao An, I’m not comfortable leaving you in the same room as him right now.”
“What did you say? Not comfortable?”
Ji Songting lifted his eyelids slightly and shot him a cold, mocking glance. His disgust was undisguised as he spoke with a lazy drawl:
“I’ll have to ask President Shen to get one thing straight: who exactly is the outsider here? Since he’s already told you to get out, what are you still doing lingering here? Do you want me to call someone to escort you out?”
He had long since grown tired of seeing this Shen Yunheng. The man constantly poked his nose in front of Jian An. And in the face of someone as hypocritical as Jian An, wasn’t he just pressing his warm face against a cold backside in the end?
Jian An sniffled and forced himself to speak calmly. “Yunheng, it’s alright. He won’t do anything to me. Just go wait at the door; I don’t want to make things difficult for you.”
Shen Yunheng wavered. But then he saw Jian An gently push his arm, his shattered gaze filled with a silent plea for mercy.
A flash of agony crossed Shen Yunheng’s eyes. A trace of helplessness spilled from his obsidian-clear pupils as he softened and compromised once again.
“Alright. Fine. I’ll go out. If he dares to hurt you, Xiao An, just call for me at any time.”
As he walked past Ji Songting, he intentionally leaned in and bumped the man’s shoulder. The air was thick with the scent of gunpowder.
The two men locked eyes coldly for a few seconds. As their faces passed each other in the air, a high-spirited fighting intent suddenly flashed in their gazes, erupting into an irrepressible blaze.
Ji Songting turned his cold gaze back. His face remained rigid, like a mask, but his eyes were clear and piercing—like a cold pool in an abyss that made one afraid to look directly.
The ward door was slammed shut. Ji Songting impatiently tugged at his tie, his face full of irritation. He asked in a deep voice:
“Don’t you think it’s time for an explanation? What exactly caused that first brain hemorrhage?”
The man standing by the bed radiated a sense of deterrence and pressure. A faint, crisp scent of pine after a snowfall wafted into Jian An’s nose, filling him with dread.
Jian An shrank back fearfully. His timid gaze flickered as he stole a glance at the man, then looked nervously around the room, never daring to meet the other’s eyes.
He took several deep breaths to steady his mind, doing his best to put on a look of shock and confusion. “Brain hemorrhage? How… How could I not know I had such a medical history?”
“What are you pretending for? Still acting?”
Ji Songting threw the medical records in front of him. The corners of his mouth curled into a cold, mocking smirk filled with disdain and contempt. His gaze stabbed into Jian An like a knife. “Are you going to tell me the diagnosis on there isn’t yours?”
The records tossed before him were somewhat crumpled. Jian An’s fingers trembled as he picked them up, flipping through page after page until the end. Looking at the words “rupture of central nervous system vessels,” his eyes suddenly turned red, yet he refused to let a single tear fall.
He couldn’t cry now. Crying would be an admission.
Ji Songting was only asking him this because of the shackles of this marriage; he didn’t want to fulfill any duties as a partner, or perhaps he didn’t want Jian An to get off easy by dying too soon.
“Young Master Ji.”
Ji Songting suddenly heard the youth on the bed call out this name in a voice as light as a feather. He was momentarily stunned. His usually calm pupils widened slightly, revealing a trace of surprise, and his expressionless face grew somewhat dark.
For a moment, this form of address coming from Jian An’s mouth felt inexplicably distant and estranged.
For some reason, it felt very uncomfortable to hear.
It took several seconds for Ji Songting to react. His eyes grew dark and cold as he suppressed a ball of rage in his deep voice: “What did you just call me?”
As soon as those words were spoken, the surrounding temperature seemed to drop to the freezing point. A murderous intent began to brew.
Jian An couldn’t help but shiver. He looked up and saw the man’s sharp-angled, overbearing face was terrifyingly dark. Those deep eyes were like sharp swords, carrying majesty and warning, as if they wanted to pierce through to the bottom of his heart.
He tried his best to look calm, but his hands still trembled uncontrollably. Cold sweat seeped from his temples. He forced himself to look directly into the man’s eyes and said word by word:
“Young Master Ji, haven’t you always thought I was a hypocritical and affected person? Since that’s what I am, why couldn’t the medical records be faked?”
He almost choked on his breath as he finished these words. Once they were out, he was frightened by his own courage.
How had he dared to talk back to Ji Songting just now?
Perhaps it was the agony of surviving a disaster, or perhaps it was his love—which had become like dead wood and cold ash—that gave him the impulse to resist for the first time. Driven by this thought, after swallowing his pride for so many years, he finally defied the man once.
Jian An gripped the corner of the quilt tightly, his teeth clenched. His usually weak and useless gaze finally took on a layer of hardened resolve, but this bit of resistance appeared utterly pale and weak.
He knew that Ji Songting loathed deception and betrayal above all else. The feeling of being toyed with in the palm of someone’s hand would drive him mad; it was an insult to his peerless pride.
As expected, hearing this, Ji Songting erupted in fury. But in his raised voice, besides ruthlessness, there was a trace of questioning: “Faked? You and Shen Yunheng conspired with those doctors to lie to me?! Was your deep coma a fake too?”
He didn’t believe Jian An had the superb acting skills to pretend to be on the verge of death so realistically. But then he thought of this person’s character—he was capable of anything. It wasn’t impossible.
To think he had actually worried about whether Jian An lived or died!
Jian An was stunned, not expecting that last question. For a moment, he didn’t know how to answer. He let out a short, bitter breath, and his nose suddenly ached with a sharp sting.
He thought Ji Songting was merely doubting his history of brain hemorrhages and suspected he was conspiring with others to deceive him. He hadn’t expected that even after he had lain stiffly on the hospital bed through several cardiac arrests, nearly dying, the man still believed it was an illusion—a lie.
Since the man’s suspicion had reached this point, what was the use of explaining? It would all be in vain.
He suppressed the pain attacking his heart and slowly raised his head. His voice trembled as he spoke with difficulty:
“Yes. It was all a lie. Yunheng told me that when I had the major hemorrhage, you didn’t care if I lived or died for the sake of Shen Chuyan’s health and refused to give me the plasma. I had the doctor make it sound so serious just because I wanted you to feel guilty.”
Only now did Jian An truly feel an unspeakable desolation. It turned out that from beginning to end, his desperate sacrifices had been nothing but unrequited, wishful thinking.
The pain of the body and the pain of the heart attacked him simultaneously. His parched eyes turned as red as if they were stained with blood. This feeling was worse than death. He blinked despondently, every word he spoke feeling like it was rolling over the edge of a blade:
“Besides, haven’t you seen through me long ago? Why bother asking me…”
As soon as he finished speaking, Ji Songting suddenly leaned down and seized him by the throat without warning, pinning him down. Those dark, cold, and sinister eyes stared at him as if he wanted to swallow him whole!
“Jian An, what makes you think I would feel guilty? You think that highly of yourself? What kind of thing are you? You’re just a slut who only knows how to seduce men!”
Forced into the chokehold, Jian An’s face was filled with terror. His arms had no strength to push the man away. His face flushed red, and his breathing became difficult. It was as if he were about to suffocate, leaving only a raspy sound echoing in his throat:
“Cough… Of course you would be guilty… You’re afraid I’ll die too easily… and won’t be able to avenge Professor Lin…”
These words easily triggered Ji Songting’s suppressed rage. The strength with which he gripped him grew even heavier, as if he wanted to crush him. His fingers rubbed against Jian An’s carotid artery, his gaze as deep as the sea. “Jian An, you finally admit it! My mother was killed by a bitch like you!”
“Let… cough… let go of me…”
The youth before him was like a fragile kitten, shivering and trembling. His lips turned purple, and he seemed to be at his last breath. His watery eyes were half-closed, flickering weakly with a stubborn, unyielding light.
Looking into those tear-stained, ink-black peach-blossom eyes, Ji Songting’s heart gave a slight tremor. An indescribable tension surfaced, his jawline tightening. The hand gripping Jian An’s neck slowly let go.
He took a step back in confusion and looked down at his palm. His brows furrowed out of habit. Was the strength he just used… intended to strangle Jian An to death?
Jian An coughed dryly for a long time, a thick metallic taste of blood in his throat, before he gradually regained his senses. His paper-thin face leaned against the side of the bed. As if he had made up his mind, he spoke in a low voice:
“Ji Songting… let’s get a divorce.”
Hearing this, Ji Songting snapped his head up. His eyes were filled with immense shock and profound disbelief.
He clenched his fists, even suspecting he had misheard. His voice was bone-chillingly cold as he spoke word by word:
“What did you say?”
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