Xiao Wangnian had actually kicked the door panel apart with a single kick?
That was ridiculously efficient.
Was that a foot or a sledgehammer? Was this man made of iron?
Just a second ago, Qin Mingzhi had been wondering whether Xiao Wangnian would take Xiao Xingjie’s side. After all, they were blood relatives—a nephew and his biological uncle.
She never expected Xiao Wangnian to answer her so decisively through his actions.
So… was he actually willing to disregard even his own relatives for her?
A strange, indescribable feeling welled up in Qin Mingzhi’s heart.
Before she could think about it any further, Jiang Yuying, who had also heard the commotion and witnessed the scene, let out a heartbroken cry.
“My door! It’s made of huanghuali wood! It’s already an antique! How could you just kick it down like that?!”
Before Jiang Yuying could finish mourning her precious door, Hu Meixiu and a large group of relatives had already stepped on the broken huanghuali panels and eagerly crowded inside.
Jiang Yuying bent down to gather the shattered pieces from the floor, thinking that perhaps they could still be repaired.
But after picking up only a few pieces, she looked up and saw a whole courtyard full of people surging into the room.
She tried to stop them, but in the chaos, someone stepped on her hand. Whoever it was didn’t move their foot at all.
The pain was so intense that tears nearly sprang from her eyes.
“My hand! My hand! Whoever stepped on me, get off!”
No one paid any attention to Jiang Yuying’s yelling. Everyone’s attention was focused on what was happening inside the room.
Hu Meixiu was at the very front. The moment she entered, she caught a strange smell and hurriedly covered her nose and mouth.
Jiang Yulan also covered her nose and grimaced.
“Ugh~ What is that smell? It’s sour and foul, and it reeks of alcohol, too.”
The moment she lowered her head after saying that, she saw vomit scattered all over the floor.
The entire room was a mess.
She immediately stepped back in disgust.
Qin Mingzhi and Xiao Wangnian watched from the side and exchanged a glance.
Xiao Wangnian frowned slightly. He immediately realized what had happened and spoke in a voice only Qin Mingzhi could hear.
“They probably didn’t sleep together.”
Xiao Xingjie had never been able to hold his liquor well. Once drunk, his mind became muddled, and his whole body turned limp as a pile of mud.
Forget doing anything else—he probably couldn’t even walk properly.
He had already drunk himself to the point of vomiting. At that stage, there was basically no possibility that he could have done anything intimate.
Qin Mingzhi could more or less figure that out, too.
Although in her previous life she and Xiao Xingjie had never truly become husband and wife and had barely spent a few days together, during the three years she had been neglected at home, she had heard Jiang Yuying mention him countless times.
To Jiang Yuying, Xiao Xingjie was her greatest source of pride. Whenever she chatted with the neighbors, she could hardly go two sentences without mentioning her son.
None of this was a secret anymore.
Qin Mingzhi’s eyes darkened.
If the two of them hadn’t actually done anything, things would be harder for her to deal with.
Hu Meixiu led everyone farther inside. They soon saw a dirty quilt spread across the floor, and it looked as though someone was underneath it.
When they lifted it, they discovered that it was actually Xiao Xingjie.
Then they looked up.
On the bed was another person completely wrapped in a bedsheet, looking at first glance like some kind of giant bundle.
But when they got closer, they realized there was actually a person inside.
What kind of bizarre poses were these two in?
“Xingjie, wake up!”
The relatives pushed and called out to him.
Xiao Xingjie remained unconscious.
Meanwhile, Qin Mengxue, who was lying on the hard, freezing bed frame, woke up first.
She had been terribly cold the night before. The quilt had also been soiled by Xiao Xingjie’s vomit, and she couldn’t bear sitting on the stool anymore. She had searched around the room but could find only a single bedsheet.
So she had wrapped herself in it and lain down on the bed without a quilt, making do as best she could.
She had spent the entire night curled up, and her whole body ached.
Qin Mengxue had just grimaced and shifted her sore body when she heard the commotion around her.
She immediately realized that something was wrong.
Quietly, she lifted a corner of the bedsheet wrapped around her and tried to see what was going on.
Unexpectedly, the first person she saw was Qin Mingzhi.
Qin Mengxue stared in disbelief, then carefully looked Qin Mingzhi up and down.
How could she be here perfectly fine, and looking so calm?
Shouldn’t she be lying on Xu Yanlin’s bed right now—or covered in bruises after being beaten by him, cowering in the corner of the bed?
She had originally planned to get up early, make a huge scene, and bring Xiao Xingjie and Jiang Yuying along to catch Qin Mingzhi in the act and make a tearful accusation…
So what was going on now?
Everything had gone completely off the rails!
All the lines she had prepared were useless!
Qin Mengxue was already close to breaking down. But when she lifted the bedsheet a little farther and looked behind Qin Mingzhi—
Why were there so many people here?!
No wonder she had felt as though she were in a marketplace just moments ago…
With this huge crowd packed into the room, what difference was there between this and a market?
Could Qin Mingzhi have outsmarted her and complained first?
How had Qin Mingzhi escaped from those hooligans?
She had arranged everything so thoroughly. How could it have gone wrong?
Qin Mengxue’s mind was in complete chaos. She couldn’t make sense of the situation at all.
But she couldn’t think about it anymore!
She bit her lip hard.
No matter what happened, she had to keep her position as Xiao Xingjie’s wife. There was absolutely no way she would give it back to Qin Mingzhi.
And if she wanted to keep that position, the first thing she needed was to become Xiao Xingjie’s legitimate wife in fact…
The next second, Qin Mengxue suddenly let out a scream.
“Ah! How could this happen? How could this happen?!”
Her entire body trembled as she threw open the bedsheet.
She covered the torn, off-the-shoulder neckline of her dress with both hands and looked down at herself.
As though she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, she immediately burst into tears.
When everyone saw that it was her crawling out from beneath the bedsheet, they were all stunned.
“Mengxue? Why are you here?!”
Qin Mengxue looked at Jiang Yulan and cried even harder, putting on an utterly aggrieved expression.
“Second Aunt… I… my innocence is gone. My innocence was taken by someone…”
As she spoke, she put on an expression of unbearable pain, clutching the fabric at her neckline tightly, her face filled with grief and indignation.
“But he’s my brother-in-law! The two of us actually… I don’t want to live anymore! I might as well bang my head against the wall and die!”
Qin Mengxue ignored every other wall in the room.
Instead, she deliberately chose the wall opposite her—the one farthest away—and charged toward it.
“Don’t stop me! Just let me—”
“Ah!”
Before Qin Mengxue could finish her dramatic speech, she stepped squarely on something that was both hard and soft.
Xiao Xingjie, sprawled on the floor like a dead fish, suddenly jerked beneath her foot and let out a painful cry.
He woke up considerably and hurriedly reached out, trying to pull away the quilt wrapped around him to see what had happened.
Unfortunately, Qin Mengxue’s other foot was planted firmly on the edge of the quilt.
Xiao Xingjie tugged at it several times but couldn’t get it loose.
Frowning, he suddenly yanked hard on the corner—
Qin Mengxue slipped.
Still shaken from the fright and unable to keep her balance, she fell forward, face-first.
And, as luck would have it, she fell directly toward the spot where Xiao Xingjie’s head was.