May 9, 1964 — An Auspicious Day for Marriage and Engagement
The grand ballroom of the largest hotel in Haishi was filled with the clinking of glasses and lively conversation. A massive crystal chandelier hung from the lofty ceiling, its dazzling light casting an air of extravagant splendor over the entire hall.
Amid the colorful evening gowns, Wen Xi stood out like a brilliant red lotus in full bloom.
She wore a red strapless evening gown, while her long black hair fell loosely around her shoulders in soft, voluminous waves. With a single glance, she was unmistakably the center of attention.
“This engagement is off. Tell him to get out.”
Wen Xi, dressed in that striking red gown, stared coldly at Lin An, who stood only a step away from her.
Her voice was neither loud nor sharp, but in the suddenly silent ballroom, it rang out like thunder on a clear day.
The moment her words fell, Lin An’s parents’ expressions changed dramatically.
Lin An himself stood frozen, speechless.
The guests around them seemed to hold their breath.
The brilliant light reflected from the crystal chandelier fell upon Wen Xi’s head, almost as though it had crowned her with a glowing halo.
Her cold gaze settled on the left side of Lin An’s neck.
Three fresh red marks were blatantly visible there.
Three unmistakable hickeys.
They were the most direct and humiliating mockery of the grand engagement banquet being held for her today, effortlessly tearing apart what should have been a peaceful and joyful occasion.
Lin An’s father frowned deeply. Even through his glasses, his displeasure toward his son was obvious.
His mother gripped her wineglass so tightly that her fingertips had turned white. The gentle smile she had been wearing earlier had completely vanished.
This engagement banquet, held in the largest ballroom of the most prestigious hotel in all of Haishi, had now become nothing more than an elaborately packaged joke.
Lin An finally noticed his parents’ reactions. He pressed his lips together, but he still showed no intention of backing down.
Deep down, he stubbornly believed that Wen Xi would never leave him.
Still, the humiliation of the moment made it impossible for him to meet her eyes.
Lin An opened his mouth. His voice was hoarse, almost unnaturally so.
“Xiaoxi…”
The marks on his body had only been the result of an unavoidable accident. He could explain.
He had indeed wronged Wen Xi, but as far as he was concerned, it was the kind of wrong that could be forgiven with an apology.
He refused to believe that Wen Xi would actually condemn him beyond redemption.
But before Lin An could say another word, Wen Xi interrupted him without hesitation.
“Shut up. Get out.”
Her words were cold and absolute.
The engagement banquet had begun half an hour ago before her fiancé finally appeared, carrying the unmistakable marks of having spent the previous night in another woman’s arms.
The guests’ pitying or amused gazes, along with their hushed whispers, had been grating on Wen Xi’s nerves from the moment he walked in.
He could have told her beforehand.
Even if he had warned her just one day earlier, Wen Xi would never have been made the center of this humiliating spectacle.
But Lin An had deliberately ignored everything.
He had arrived late, swaggering into the banquet with those marks openly displayed on his body.
Disgusting.
Wen Xi stood there with her back straight and her chin slightly raised, as proud and untouchable as a noble swan.
She had no desire to hear another word of Lin An’s so-called explanation.
She cut him off and looked at him coldly once more.
“Lin An, I’m not getting engaged to you. Get out. Now.”
Lin An stared fixedly at the cold, expressionless woman standing before him, completely refusing to accept her words.
“Wen Xi, I didn’t do it on purpose. Someone set me up, too.”
“Please, for the sake of everything we’ve been through, just listen to my explanation…”
Wen Xi didn’t interrupt him again.
That would have been beneath her dignity.
Instead, she simply waved to a waiter and had a chair brought over.
She sat down, lazily leaning against the backrest, and calmly watched Lin An explain himself.
When she heard that he had been drugged with an aphrodisiac, the corner of Wen Xi’s lips twitched upward in unmistakable disdain.
After that, she stopped paying attention to his explanation altogether.
Her gaze drifted around the ballroom, casually surveying the young and accomplished men among the guests.
First, anyone whose family wealth was far below hers was eliminated.
She didn’t mind helping someone financially, but when there was too great a disparity in wealth between husband and wife, the man was prone to developing an inferiority complex and other psychological problems.
Second, men with military backgrounds were out.
Wen Xi had been pampered since the moment she was born. She couldn’t stand restrictions, nor was she willing to endure the hardships that came with being a military wife.
She continued making her mental list.
Eventually, Lin An finally finished his “explanation.”
Wen Xi didn’t even bother giving him another glance.
She spoke without the slightest emotion.
“Finished? Then you can leave.”
“Oh, and before you go, take off the brooch I gave you. I’ll have someone deal with it.”
Lin An’s head snapped up.
He stared at Wen Xi’s face.
Her words had been completely devoid of emotion, yet somehow they struck harder than hysterical screaming ever could.
Lin An’s face turned pale almost instantly.
The determination in his eyes began to crumble.
The guests watching from the sidelines also sucked in a collective breath when they heard Wen Xi.
But Wen Xi felt nothing about their reactions.
As far as she was concerned, considering the “crucial companionship” Lin An had given her during childhood, she had already shown him more than enough mercy and preserved his dignity.
If it had been anyone else, she would have made the man strip off the evening suit she had painstakingly selected from hundreds of outfits before allowing him to walk out of the ballroom upright.
As for why she specifically wanted the brooch back—
Because it had been passed down from her grandmother to her mother, and from her mother to her.
It was a family heirloom.
Lin An stared at Wen Xi’s calm expression.
His lips moved slightly.
Only now did humiliation begin to flood over him.
He looked at her in disbelief.
“Xiaoxi, have you forgotten? When you were eight, I was the one who stayed with you in that pitch-black storage room.”
Lin An’s eyes remained fixed on Wen Xi.
His face was pale, while there was something faintly disturbing and almost fanatical lurking beneath his gaze.
Wen Xi gave him only the slightest glance.
Then she suddenly laughed softly.
In the silent ballroom, the sound was crisp and beautiful, like pearls falling onto a jade plate.
Today, Lin An had made her the laughingstock of her own engagement banquet, and she hadn’t even had time to settle the score with him.
Yet he had the nerve to start bringing up the past.
From the way he spoke, it almost sounded as though she were the one who had done something wrong instead of him.
Ridiculous.
It seemed she had been far too generous with Lin An.
At this moment, what she felt wasn’t so much betrayal as a deep sense that everything they had shared in the past had simply been worthless.
No one had ever dared treat Wen Xi this way.
And it didn’t matter if that person was her childhood sweetheart, the person who had been there for her during her most important childhood years, or even her fiancé.
It was still unacceptable.
Wen Xi had never owed Lin An anything.
The companionship he had given her as a child had already been repaid by her family long ago.
Not only had her family helped the impoverished Lin family rise rapidly until they possessed considerable wealth, they had even introduced Lin An to Wen Xi’s maternal uncle, who held an important position in the military.
She had once believed Lin An was a gentle, loyal dog.
She had never expected him to be a greedy, ungrateful wolf.
Her grandmother’s warning from the countryside had turned out to be true.
The dogs that bite are the ones that don’t bark.
Wen Xi stared at Lin An’s face.
It was a face she had once known so well.
Yet now, it looked completely unfamiliar.
His gaze remained stubbornly fixed on her, with even traces of anger and resentment hidden in his eyes.
And suddenly, Wen Xi understood.
If he had chosen to abandon all shame, then there was no reason for her to preserve his dignity anymore.
Wen Xi raised her eyes and met his gaze.
This time, there was no trace of indifference in them.
Only ice-cold contempt.
Then she spoke a single sentence.
It wasn’t loud or dramatic, but it struck the silent ballroom like hailstones falling in midsummer.
And it landed squarely across Lin An’s face.
“You piece of trash. I forgot you can’t understand human language.”
“Someone, get this non-human species out of here.”
Lin An’s eyes widened in shock.
His expression was one of utter disbelief.
Wen Xi slightly curled her index and middle fingers.
The bodyguards immediately understood the signal and moved.
They grabbed Lin An and dragged him away.
The guests in the ballroom collectively sucked in one breath after another.
Did she really just insult someone?
And did she really just insult Lin An?
Was Lin An actually being dragged out by security?
Only then did Wen Xi’s parents, who had been quietly watching everything unfold from the side, exchange a glance and reveal relieved, satisfied smiles.
Wen Xi lifted her chin slightly and swept a nearly contemptuous glance over the struggling Lin An.
What an eyesore.
Absolutely unbearable to look at.
It made her sick.
Wen Xi closed her eyes.
Silently, she began sorting through the memories of all the things from her past that had never been worth her effort.
But somehow, the process of clearing those memories away became a key.
A key that unlocked the sealed memories of her previous life.
Beneath her closed eyelids, her eyes shifted twice.
The emotional turmoil was impossible to completely conceal.
So that was it.
Although Wen Xi had lived in Haishi for eighteen years, her soul had actually lived for twenty-two years in the twenty-first century.
When her modern soul first merged with the unborn baby inside Wen Xi’s mother’s womb, all of her memories from the modern era had been sealed away.
Only now, after the shock of breaking off her engagement, had the seal in her mind finally shattered.
And she remembered everything her modern soul had experienced.
In her previous life, she had fought her way out of the impoverished mountain region where she was born and managed to gain admission to a top-tier 985 university, where she studied the highly competitive major of chemistry.
After successfully completing her thesis defense, she stayed up late one night reading a novel called The Poor Capitalist Young Lady Who Was Robbed of Her Entire Family Fortune!
The protagonist of that novel was none other than Wen Xi.
Not only was she stripped of her entire inheritance by Lin An, she was also forced to become a servant in his household, waiting hand and foot on Lin An, his family, and his mistress.
Unable to endure the abuse any longer, Wen Xi eventually set the house on fire and died.
When she had read the novel in her previous life, the story had infuriated her beyond words.
She had kept reading because she had always believed the capitalist young lady would eventually turn the tables.
But instead, the heroine ended up dying miserably and full of grievances.
So furious was she that she left a thousand-word review condemning the author.
And then—
Her soul left her body.
It flew straight into the book and merged with the unborn Wen Xi inside Wen Xi’s mother’s womb.