When Ning Yichu suddenly brought up divorce, He Shixia was silent for quite a while.
It wasn’t until Ning Yichu grew impatient and splashed the remaining water from his cup onto He Shixia’s face that he seemed to snap back to reality. He nonchalantly wiped his face, took the cup, nodded, and said, “Alright, after you accompany me to the show, we’ll get a divorce.”
Ning Yichu sneered.
He Shixia was a renowned actor, having been in the industry for ten years with numerous notable works and awards. His reputation had always been good until last month when news of his marriage broke out. The news was sudden, but for an actor of He Shixia’s stature, it wasn’t something that would affect his career.
However, rumors spread that He Shixia was marrying a one-night stand partner because of a pregnancy, which was damaging to his reputation.
In response, He Shixia chose to acknowledge the marriage news but denied that it was just a marriage with a one-night stand partner. He even took on a variety show, stating he would bring his marriage partner on the show.
In his past life, Ning Yichu was happy with this arrangement. He hated being hidden away as if he were something shameful.
Moreover, even though the marriage with He Shixia wasn’t what he wanted, since he chose this path to avoid harm and gain benefits, Ning Yichu wanted to use the opportunity to gain more advantages for himself.
The result, however, was a disaster. Everything went wrong, and all the words that describe failure could be used to describe his participation in the show… and his life that didn’t even last twenty-three years in his past life.
Now, as Ning Yichu slowly put on his pajamas, he looked at the silent He Shixia and sarcastically asked, “What, you didn’t get enough of watching me make a fool of myself in the last life, and you want to see it again this time?”
He Shixia pursed his lips slightly. “…I owed you in the past.”
Ning Yichu looked at him coldly.
In truth, Ning Yichu had grievances in his past life, but he didn’t feel that He Shixia owed him anything. Although, during his cynical moments, he did wish that He Shixia and all the other people he hated would just die, when he was calm, he never really hated He Shixia.
At that time, He Shixia, in his eyes, was also a victim of being drugged. Although he, like others, wrongfully accused Ning Yichu of being the instigator, given the circumstances, it wasn’t surprising that he would misunderstand.
Ning Yichu himself never figured out the truth behind that hotel incident until his death in his past life.
Before the misunderstanding, although he hadn’t met He Shixia many times, whenever they did meet, He Shixia never assumed he had bad character or mocked him like others did. He was quite gentle.
Even under the misunderstanding, He Shixia maintained a surface-level politeness and wanted to compensate him… Whether it was genuine or not, compared to others’ cold sarcasm, Ning Yichu genuinely felt that He Shixia, who was willing to play along with him, was a pretty good person.
Although in the matter of marriage, He Shixia didn’t treat him well and, like others, thought he was forcing him with threats of suicide, in his past life, when Ning Yichu was calm, he still found it reasonable.
After all, he did struggle to accept the pregnancy, leading to drinking, losing control, and cutting his wrist, then calling He Shixia for help…
Compared to the truth of “regretting cutting his wrist in a moment of confusion, wanting to call 120 for help, but due to drinking too much and losing blood, he dialed the wrong number and accidentally called He Shixia, who had set his number as an emergency contact ’12’ on his phone,” it indeed seemed more like “deliberately cutting his wrist and calling to threaten He Shixia.”
Ning Yichu couldn’t even prove he didn’t drug He Shixia, so naturally, his subjective thoughts about the suicide attempt were even harder to explain.
Under such circumstances, He Shixia didn’t like him and was forced to marry him out of responsibility. Why should He Shixia, who was also a victim, be expected to be polite, protective, or partial to him?
So, in his past life, when Ning Yichu’s dark emotions flared up, cursing the Ning and He families, including He Shixia, to die, he still felt a bit sorry, thinking it was his own incompetence that led to unreasonable anger.
But that rational, logical Ning Yichu had already died once.
The current Ning Yichu, filled with resentment, was even more cynical and extreme than in his past life. He no longer wanted to think so much.
Why should everyone see He Shixia as a pure victim in the same incident, while he, Ning Yichu, who clearly suffered more, was wrongfully accused as the perpetrator, and anyone could mock and criticize him?
Why should he be reasonable?
Why should he blame himself for being unlikable?
Of course, others were wrong, and so was the world.
If he was unhappy, someone should be responsible for it.
The Ning and He families, who didn’t want to take responsibility, should bear it, and He Shixia, who was willing to take responsibility, deserved it even more.
Especially since… He Shixia had the nerve to say he liked him?
How ironic.
“You weren’t happy on the show in your past life…” He Shixia said softly, “This time, go again and vent all the anger you’ve been holding in, wouldn’t that be good?”
Ning Yichu sneered, “Who do I blame for my unhappiness? Isn’t it thanks to He Film Emperor and your former fiancé?”
He Shixia paused, only arguing the last point: “Even without the matter with you, I wouldn’t have been engaged to Ning Zeshu. The so-called family engagement was always just about the younger generation, never specifying anyone. It was my parents and his parents’ intention, but I had already clearly refused. Ah Ning, you can’t just believe your adoptive parents’ one-sided words and label me as a ‘former fiancé’…”
Ning Yichu said indifferently, “Is that so? Then I stole the wrong person. If I had known there was nothing, I wouldn’t have climbed into your bed.”
Hearing Ning Yichu mention this, He Shixia felt like his heart was rolling through a thorn bush.
“I’m sorry…” He Shixia walked to the bedside, slowly squatting down, looking up at Ning Yichu sitting on the bed.
He reached out, wanting to hold Ning Yichu’s hand resting by his side, but Ning Yichu pulled away.
He Shixia’s fingertips trembled, “I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have wronged you, shouldn’t have doubted you…”
Ning Yichu looked at him mockingly, “Oh, have you figured out the truth?”
He Shixia wanted to salvage the situation, “This time, it’s only been three months since the incident, I will find out the truth…”
“Oh, so you still don’t know the truth.” Ning Yichu nodded, “In your past life, you didn’t know the truth either, but you were willing to believe it was me who schemed to drug you. But after I died, you suddenly had a saintly realization and discovered you liked me, so you were willing to believe it wasn’t me.”
“Based on your current attitude towards me, even if it was me, as long as I deny it, you could find a ‘truth’ that has nothing to do with me, right? Whether you wronged me or favored me, it’s all based on your subjective preference, isn’t it? What’s the difference?”
It’s a pity he didn’t have a cup in hand, or Ning Yichu would have wanted to throw it at He Shixia again.
He Shixia lowered his eyes, not daring to meet Ning Yichu’s pure black, transparent eyes.
“…I had the pills in your medicine box tested and analyzed by a testing agency. The pills stored in there were indeed just vitamins and glucose… but there were traces of other drug powders left in the box,” He Shixia said softly.
Ning Yichu was slightly stunned.
He Shixia continued, “Thinking about it, it’s strange for the medicine box to have such a high residue of aphrodisiac powder. Even if you did it, even if you really stored aphrodisiacs with other medicines, it wouldn’t be so careless as to leave such obvious powder in the box.”
“Moreover, after that night, while you were still sick and unconscious, I had the hospital draw our blood for testing. Based on the residual drug components, we both should have taken tablet-type drugs—the kind of components found in tablet-type, water-soluble drugs. Due to the nature of the drugs, they aren’t suitable for powder form.”
“If it’s tablet-type drugs, it’s even harder for so much powder to fall into the medicine box. The drugs are so potent, they wouldn’t be low-quality drugs that crumble into powder with a pinch. In other words, the drug powder in your medicine box seems more like it was ground in by someone.”
Ning Yichu sneered, “Maybe I was afraid the tablets would dissolve too slowly in water, so I ground them into powder in advance for easy drugging. Powdery substances, when taken out for drugging, might have been left in the medicine box due to nervousness, isn’t that normal? You probably guessed the same in your past life, so even if you felt something was off, you still didn’t speak up, right?”
“No.” He Shixia apologized, “I didn’t think that deeply at the time.”
Ning Yichu looked at him indifferently, waiting to see what else he could come up with.
He Shixia said softly, “After I got the report from the testing agency, I didn’t think much more about it. It was only after you were gone, when I recalled everything between us, that I suddenly realized.”
Ning Yichu pointed out sharply, “You didn’t think deeply because you had already pinned the crime on me based on surface evidence.”
He Shixia lowered his eyes, “Yes… I didn’t know you well enough at the time, didn’t thoroughly investigate, and after learning there was indeed an issue with the medicine box, I easily believed the Ning family’s assessment of your character, wronged you, didn’t listen to your denials, didn’t discuss the doubts with you, and even thought not delving deeper was saving you face…”
“So you hate me, and that’s understandable. But could you not consider me the person you hate the most?”
Ning Yichu laughed, tilting his head, “Because at least you checked a bit before wronging me, while others didn’t even check and just assumed it was me?”
He Shixia: “I’m sorry…”
Ning Yichu lowered his eyes.
Even though he knew the original plot, he still didn’t know the truth of the night he and He Shixia had the accident.
Because it wasn’t mentioned in the original plot.
He only knew that the world he was in was based on a cliché wealthy family BL novel with a “real and fake young master” trope. The real young master, Ning Zeshu, was the protagonist, and he, the fake young master Ning Yichu, was the villain in the first small arc of the story.
The real young master Ning Zeshu was stolen by villains when he was young. The Ning family searched for years and found the fake young master Ning Yichu, who was the same age, in a remote orphanage. Due to Ning Yichu’s “misleading,” the Ning family mistakenly took him as their biological son and brought him back to the Ning family.
However, it wasn’t long before the Ning family found the real young master, and the fake young master’s situation became awkward.
He was accused of impersonating the Ning family’s young master, clinging to a wealthy family, delaying the Ning family’s search for the real young master, causing the real young master to suffer more hardships outside. Fortunately, the Ning family didn’t hold grudges and kept him as an adopted son, and the real young master was kind and accepted him as a younger brother.
However, the fake young master shamelessly, upon learning that the Ning family planned to stop supporting him after graduation, found an opportunity to climb into the bed of the He family’s young master, who was widely recognized as going to be engaged to the real young master.
With the fake young master climbing into bed, the engagement between the real young master and the He family’s young master naturally became impossible. The fake young master continued to cause trouble, and as a man, he got pregnant, and instead of hiding it, he sought death, spreading the news and forcing the He family’s young master to marry him.
Fortunately, “evil has its retribution,” and the fake young master, who rose to power with a child, eventually met his end, dying in childbirth.
And “good has its reward,” as the protagonist, the real young master, received countless sympathies and compensations from those around him, and met several supporting characters who had feelings for him.
After the fake young master’s death, the originally “good guy” He family’s young master, He Shixia, turned into the next stage’s villain until he was murdered by one of the real young master’s suitors, leaving the fake young master and He Shixia’s child still alive.
In a twist of fate, the child ended up being raised by the real young master, and during the process, the real young master met the main protagonist of the entire novel, who was also the fake young master’s biological uncle, and thus learned that the fake young master’s biological parents were also from a wealthy family.
And the fake young master, who “snatched” the real young master’s resources during his lifetime, was not held against him by the real young master, who raised his child, making the fake young master’s biological parents feel indebted to him.
Thus, the real young master gained the affection and financial power of both his biological parents and the fake young master’s biological parents, and the love of the fake young master’s biological uncle, allowing the long-dead fake young master to finally “retire with success”…
However, the original plot spanned over ten million words, with the real young master experiencing countless melodramatic events. The opening “real and fake young master” plot occupied only a small part of the entire book, and many events in this part continued to develop after the fake young master’s death.
So, rather than saying Ning Yichu was a villain, it would be more accurate to say he was an insignificant cannon fodder tool.
Even though the original plot was a long, rambling narrative of over ten million words, this cannon fodder villain didn’t get much description, with all the focus revolving around the real young master. The fake young master only appeared as a contrast when the real young master needed to be pitied, praised, or adored by everyone.
At other times, he seemed nonexistent, and his actions didn’t need logic. A simple “wanting to oppose the real young master” was enough to summarize everything.
As for how a child abandoned at the orphanage gate at birth and found by the Ning family at six managed to mislead the Ning family and cling to a wealthy family, no one cared about the logic.
Where he got the aphrodisiac, how he executed the perfect crime at a bustling banquet, precisely targeting He Shixia, and how they were caught in bed the next morning, no one pursued the details.
The original plot didn’t write about it either. As long as the plot for the real young master was delivered, the rest didn’t matter if it was reasonable or not.
After running through over ten million words of plot, perhaps because they couldn’t come up with new villains, the original plot started having more of the real young master’s friends and family turn dark, and many unreasonable plots began to tie into knots and contradict each other, leading to an abrupt and unsatisfying ending.
In this world constructed by the original plot’s abrupt ending and plot jumps, everyone already had their own free will and twenty-four hours a day, with many details not covered by the original plot.
Just like now, Ning Yichu learned for the first time that He Shixia had rigorously sent the medicine box for testing after the hotel incident.
He suddenly felt very tired, “Then go investigate. Before that, help me find a reliable doctor. Before going on the show with you to vent, I want to get rid of the child.”
He Shixia didn’t hesitate and nodded, “Alright… Rest for another day, and the day after tomorrow, I’ll accompany you to the hospital for a check-up and arrange the surgery, okay?”
Author’s Note:
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow~