Xu Nansheng looked at Gu Beiyan’s friend request, hesitating for a moment without daring to accept it.
Having acted as arrogant and lawless as she pleased in Jiangcheng for twenty-two years, Xu Nansheng was afraid of no one, with the sole exception of Gu Beiyan.
And now look at this: out of all the people she could have possibly slept with, she had to go and run headfirst into this towering Buddha!
Looking at that friend request right now, she felt like she wanted to die.
If it hadn’t been for that utter scumbag Gu Hongyu cheating on her and standing her up at her own engagement banquet, how could she have ever gotten blind drunk, and how could she have ever provoked her uncle?
Thinking of this, Xu Nansheng felt an itch of bitter hatred and muttered under her breath, “Gu Hongyu, you absolute scumbag!”
Qi Yue took in all her anger, suddenly turning serious as she bumped her shoulder against hers.
“Hey, seriously, have you really thought it through? You’re really not getting back together with Gu Hongyu?”
Xu Nansheng rolled her eyes at her. “I am Xu Nansheng, after all. Across the entire city of Jiangcheng, the men lining up to pursue me stretch all the way to France. He’s just a useless second-generation heir who only knows how to live off his family, and on top of that, he cheated and betrayed me. I’m not brain-dead; why would I keep a man like that instead of dumping him?”
Hearing this, Qi Yue patted her chest and let out a massive sigh of relief.
“That’s good, that’s good. I was genuinely afraid you’d bring up some nonsense about his childhood saving-grace heroics and forgive him again. Seriously, if you forgave him this time, I’d really have to cut ties with you. Having a friend with brain rot is too contagious.”
Xu Nansheng rolled her eyes at her again, lifting her coffee cup to take a sip.
She and Gu Hongyu had known each other since the days when they both had snot running down their noses and couldn’t even speak clearly. They had grown up together, and at first, she treated him just like a buddy. When had their relationship started to sour? It all went back to the year she almost died.
When she was six years old, she fell into a river out of childish mischief and nearly drowned.
After being hauled onto the riverbank, she groggily caught sight of a face, feeling somewhat familiar, but her consciousness wasn’t entirely clear back then, and she quickly passed out again.
When she woke up later, she saw a soaked-to-the-bone Gu Hongyu, and that was how she assumed the person who saved her was Gu Hongyu. He hadn’t denied it, either.
Ever since then, even though Xu Nansheng remained willful and spoiled, she stopped bullying Gu Hongyu and even helped him beat up other boys who tried to pick on him.
Their relationship advanced in leaps and bounds, turning them into childhood sweethearts who hid under blankets to sneak snacks and held hands to climb over school walls to skip class during middle school.
Because of this, the Xu family also owed the Gu family an immense debt of gratitude.
To be precise, they owed a massive favor to the Gu family’s Second Master.
It was also precisely because she had walked through the gates of hell that year that her family invited a renowned mystic to examine her fate. The mystic declared that her destiny clashed with misfortune and that she needed to perform many good deeds to accumulate merit for herself; otherwise, any unexpected accident before her eighteenth year could take her life away.
Following that, the Xu family searched the entire country for twelve girls born on the exact same year, month, day, and hour as her, sponsoring them all until they graduated from university.
Liang Xueqing was one of the children in that sponsored batch.
She was diligent and hard-working, managing to test into a university in Jiangcheng all the way from the remote mountains, and she even ended up becoming university classmates with Xu Nansheng.
Xu Nansheng felt this was an incredible stroke of fate, treating Liang Xueqing exceptionally well, even bringing her into her own social circle and introducing her to her childhood sweetheart, Gu Hongyu.
The first time she noticed something off between the two of them was during a group gathering when someone told a joke. Liang Xueqing had actually, out of sheer reflex, slumped against Gu Hongyu’s shoulder, smiling brightly with a far-too-ambiguous physical posture.
Xu Nansheng still remembered how the atmosphere had instantly plunged to freezing point back then, while the corners of Gu Hongyu’s mouth had subconsciously curved upward into a telling arc.
After that, Gu Hongyu started acting strange. His gaze grew evasive, he frequently broke promises, and sometimes he couldn’t even be reached by phone.
With Xu Nansheng’s temper, she naturally wasn’t going to let it slide. She quarreled and made a fuss with him, but Gu Hongyu accused her of being unreasonable, lacking any semblance of a girlfriend, and failing to understand or consider others.
When he stormed off in a huff, Xu Nansheng let her stubborn pride take over and ignored him in return. Yet two days later, Gu Hongyu was pressured by his parents into apologizing and admitting his fault to her. Out of consideration for their many years of shared history and the fact that he had supposedly saved her life back then, she forgave him.
However, once feelings change, they change for good. They could never return to the way things were.
When people privately warned her to be careful around Liang Xueqing, Xu Nansheng had initially brushed it off, genuinely believing that Gu Hongyu had turned over a new leaf.
Besides, she didn’t believe for a second that Gu Hongyu would actually take a fancy to someone as plain and ordinary as Liang Xueqing.
On that particular day, she was busy setting up an art exhibition when Gu Hongyu came down with a fever and demanded she drop everything to come take care of him.
Xu Nansheng couldn’t get away, but she bought cold medicine and planned to send a courier delivery over. At that moment, Liang Xueqing chimed in, claiming she just happened to be heading out that way for an errand and eagerly volunteered to deliver the medicine herself.
That evening, when Xu Nansheng finally finished her work and went to find Gu Hongyu, the only person in the apartment was Gu Hongyu, sleeping with his clothes off.
Xu Nansheng felt that perhaps she had simply listened to too much gossip lately and had grown far too sensitive.
She intended to leave quietly, but her eyes caught sight of a pair of pink diamond earrings resting on the bathroom vanity.
By pure coincidence, that exact pair of earrings was a birthday gift she had given Liang Xueqing when Liang turned eighteen.
Later, when she confronted Liang Xueqing with the earrings in hand, Gu Hongyu actually sided with Liang Xueqing publicly, chewing her out right in front of everyone for being unreasonable, arrogant, and fond of bullying others by pulling rank.
Right, Liang Xueqing looked so pitiful and helpless, shedding tears one after another like they were worthless, while she had come storming in with aggressive accusations, of course she looked like the tyrannical bully abusing her power!
Mindful of their long-standing relationship and lacking absolute concrete proof, Xu Nansheng forgave him once more while mentally logging a strike against the pair, determined to unearth irrefutable evidence of Gu Hongyu’s infidelity so he would have no way out left.
During a subsequent gathering, she intentionally feigned a slip of the hand, using a dart to issue a silent warning to Liang Xueqing.
Unsurprisingly, Gu Hongyu once again shielded Liang Xueqing in front of everyone else. The two of them had a massive blowout, and Xu Nansheng forced him to choose between them once and for all.
Gu Hongyu knew how to read the room, immediately promising to cut ties with Liang Xueqing completely and never see her again.
Yet later, on a rainy night after being stood up by Gu Hongyu yet again, she received intimate photographs sent directly by Liang Xueqing showing her and Gu Hongyu together.
The two of them had been carrying on their clandestine affair all along, treating her like a fool for their own amusement.
The photos were sent and quickly recalled, but Xu Nansheng ignored the prompt, getting straight into her car and driving directly to Liang Xueqing’s place.
By the time she arrived, she had already mapped out her plan: take photos, record videos, and make sure this scum of a man and this homewrecking vixen were permanently nailed to the pillar of shame.
Yet when she arrived, she saw Liang Xueqing walking downstairs to get into her car. Flashing her high beams directly at her, Xu Nansheng let a wave of hot-headed impulse take over and slammed her foot down on the gas pedal, driving right toward her.
Both of them suffered some degree of injury, though neither was severely hurt.
Suppressing the wave of dizziness spinning in her head, she climbed out of the car, hauled Liang Xueqing out by her hair, and interrogated her with a fierce glare.
“Liang Xueqing, why? Tell me, haven’t I treated you well? Out of all the men in this world, why did you have to go and hook up with Gu Hongyu?”
Terrified out of her wits, Liang Xueqing turned deathly pale without a shred of color left in her face, collapsing limply onto the ground. Yet she lifted her chin and flashed a smile right up at her.
“Xu Nansheng, you come from a good background, a wealthy family, you’re gorgeous, and you have countless admirers trailing after you. Losing one Gu Hongyu isn’t going to cause you any loss whatsoever. But I’m different, he’s the only thing I can possibly grasp onto.”
“You already have so much, what harm would it do to let Gu Hongyu go to me!”
The mockery in her tone and the undisguised disdain in her eyes made Xu Nansheng feel as though she had never truly known her at all.
“You probably didn’t know this, did you? When Gu Hongyu was with me, he complained countless times about how he couldn’t stand you. You probably have no idea how truly awful your personality is.”
“He doesn’t love you at all! You only forced him to stay by your side by leveraging your family’s influence, you’re the actual third wheel here, Xu Nansheng, you’re the third party!”
Right on cue, as anticipated, Gu Hongyu rushed onto the scene. Liang Xueqing instantly wiped away her sharp edges, her tear-filled eyes turning soft, fragile, and pitiful, while she, in his eyes, became the haughty, domineering rich heiress given to bullying others that he was already so accustomed to seeing.
Naturally, he swept Liang Xueqing up into his arms, his eyes burning with undisguised disgust toward her.
“Xu Nansheng, don’t go too far! Xueqing thinks of you in everything she does and always speaks up on your behalf, yet you target her at every turn. You’re too vicious!”