Ye Xiaoxiao’s eyes were bloodshot as she gripped a dagger gleaming with cold light, pressing it against Li Tianyou’s throat. Through clenched teeth she said hatefully,
“Li Tianyou, with your beloved wife and young son by your side, you must be very happy, right?! Have you ever thought about how Xiao Anguo, Er Ya, San Wa, and Si Ya died so miserably?”
Li Tianyou looked utterly confused. He was certain he didn’t know the woman in front of him, so he replied without the slightest guilt,
“Who are you talking about? I don’t know you, and I don’t know them. What does their death have to do with me? Why should I feel guilty?”
“What a ‘has nothing to do with you.’ What a ‘why should I feel guilty’!”
Ye Xiaoxiao heard the sound of her heart shattering. Her hand trembled uncontrollably. Sure enough—she should never have harbored any hope.
She lifted her head and stared at the dripping stone wall above, unwilling to let the tears fall, yet they still streamed down uncontrollably.
“You damned Li Tianyou—go to hell!”
A cold glint flashed through Ye Xiaoxiao’s eyes. Without the slightest hesitation, she thrust the knife forward and ended Li Tianyou’s life with a single strike.
Li Tianyou’s soul immediately floated into the air. He was still a little dazed, unable to understand why the strange woman before him had killed him.
Watching blood gush from his body and quickly gather into a small crimson stream, Li Tianyou mocked himself silently: perhaps he was the most humiliatingly dead general in all of world history—bar none. Perhaps even the only one.
As a soldier, he hadn’t died on the battlefield, nor sacrificed himself for his country. Instead, he had been killed by a madwoman. If word of this got out, even the cicadas on the big tree at the entrance of the military compound wouldn’t believe it.
As a professional soldier, he had long treated life and death lightly. But that didn’t mean he could accept dying without knowing why.
Ye Xiaoxiao’s ruthless action terrified Lin Jiaojiao. Her psychological defenses began to crumble as she shouted hysterically,
“Ye Xiaoxiao, you bitch! You actually dared—you really dared!
You bitch! Why didn’t you just obediently let Tang Daniu beat you to death? Trash like you, lower than dust, like an ant, should only live miserably and die quietly without anyone noticing!”
Li Tianyou froze for a moment. He suddenly felt as if he didn’t recognize the woman in front of him—his wife.
Why was the always elegant Lin Jiaojiao spewing such filthy insults?
Wait… beaten to death by Tang Daniu? What had Lin Jiaojiao done to provoke this woman? And if Lin Jiaojiao had a grudge with her, why kill him first? Had she killed the wrong person?
Ye Xiaoxiao raised an eyebrow and glanced at Lin Jiaojiao.
“So when Li Tianyou was declared missing, you couldn’t wait to marry me off to the domestic abuser Tang Daniu. You were the one behind it?”
This wasn’t a question—it was confirmation.
“Ha! Ha! Ha…”
Lin Jiaojiao laughed wildly. So what if you know now, little bitch? It’s too late. You were tortured by Tang Daniu for seven years, living a life worse than death for seven whole years. Even if you know the truth now, what meaning does it have?
Lin Jiaojiao hated Ye Xiaoxiao to the bone. Someone like her should have been the powerful female protagonist of a web novel—someone who controlled everything—not someone who had fallen to such a miserable state.
“Bitch, now you finally know. What a pity, what a pity—too late. Your sons and daughters dead, all alone in the world. That must feel wonderful, right? Ha! Ha! Ha…”
Even if I die, I won’t let you feel at peace.
Lin Jiaojiao laughed like a madwoman, yet Ye Xiaoxiao made no move to stop her.
“Back then, I only told Li Tianyou’s parents that as long as you and your little brats disappeared, I would arrange good jobs in the city for his three younger brothers and two younger sisters.
Without hesitation, they immediately sold all of you. They even personally delivered each of you into wolf dens and tiger pits. When I heard about it later, I laughed ten thousand times. I never expected them to hate you and your brats that much!”
Ye Xiaoxiao’s heart twisted painfully. Every word Lin Jiaojiao spoke was like a knife, slicing her body into pieces.
She could already guess what would come next. Lin Jiaojiao would surely recount the gruesome details of how her children died, tearing her heart apart piece by piece.
She didn’t want to hear it.
She already knew everything. Those memories were burned into her mind, impossible to erase.
She refused to let her enemy drag them out again like a blade stabbing into her heart.
“So everything was orchestrated by you?” Ye Xiaoxiao said coldly. “You forced me to marry Tang Daniu, sold all my children to abusive families—sold them to coal mines, sold them to pedophiles—making them suffer a living hell where they couldn’t live or die?”
Yes. The more Ye Xiaoxiao suffered, the happier Lin Jiaojiao felt.
But her life was more important. A little provocation was revenge—too much provocation that drove the other person insane would just be foolish.
So she quickly changed her strategy.
“I’m not as cruel as you think. At first, I only wanted you to leave. I didn’t know what the Li family did. As for why they were so ruthless, I have no idea.
Don’t think I was eager to marry that blockhead Li Tianyou.
Back then I was betrayed and abandoned, so I fled to the border of Yunnan Province to hide.
I’m a proud person. I wanted to return to the capital in glory. I needed someone with status. But men with status were all too old. Even if they had power, marrying someone that old would have embarrassed me.
But Li Tianyou was different. At a young age he had already become a regiment commander. He had once saved the top leader of the capital’s military command. His abilities were strong, and promotion was only a matter of time. That leader in the capital had always wanted to promote him—his future was limitless.
He was the best choice.”
Lin Jiaojiao pushed all the blame onto Li Tianyou’s parents, claiming she had never intended to harm anyone and had only learned about everything afterward.
Her supposed sympathy for Ye Xiaoxiao was fake. The only person she truly pitied was herself.
The man she loved had married someone else. She had been forced to leave home and wander far away. Was it wrong for her to want to return to the capital in glory?
No—she had made one mistake.
Back then, she should have killed Ye Xiaoxiao with a single stroke.
The ancients were right: if you don’t pull out the weeds by the root, they will grow again when the spring wind blows.