“Mm… I’m so hot.” A soft, broken murmur escaped her throat unconsciously.
The unbearable heat engulfed her reason, and her body moved uncontrollably toward that cool presence. The tip of her nose gently brushed along the man’s jawline, while her warm breath fell over his neck.
Her small hand followed the edge of his clothes and climbed up to his neck. “I feel terrible. Give me some.”
Her warm, broken breaths brushed against the side of his neck, making Huo Tingyuan’s Adam’s apple bob heavily.
Seeing her dazed and utterly dependent on him, looking both pitiful and alluring, Huo Tingyuan suppressed the turmoil in his heart and lowered his voice with extreme restraint. “I know, but I can’t take advantage of you while you’re like this.”
After saying that, he picked up the enamel cup from the table, tilted his wrist, and poured the entire cup of cold water over Ruan Xining’s face.
The icy water instantly dispelled the heat that had overwhelmed Ruan Xining. Her wet strands of hair clung to her flushed, feverish cheeks.
She stood there in a daze. Under the cool moonlight, when Ruan Xining clearly saw the man’s sharply defined face before her, her eyes filled with disbelief.
“Huo, Huo Tingyuan, you died too?” Otherwise, how could she truly feel his presence?
The darkness in Huo Tingyuan’s eyes faded as he forced himself to regain his composure at the edge of losing control.
His brows unconsciously drew together, and his voice was hoarse, carrying a trace of nervousness that was difficult to detect. “What nonsense are you talking about?”
His gaze fell to the front of her soaked clothing, where the outline beneath was faintly visible. The tips of his ears turned crimson, and the cold, rigid aura surrounding him dissolved into nothing, leaving only awkwardness and helplessness. “I’m alive and well, and so are you.”
Ruan Xining had just wanted to reach out and touch the face she had longed for so desperately when she heard faint footsteps outside the door.
“Sister, are you all right?” The voice sounded concerned, though there was also a hint of barely concealed schadenfreude.
“Xining, are you all right?”
Only after hearing the voices of concern outside did Ruan Xining realize that she had been reborn.
She had returned to the very night when she and Huo Tingyuan had been ruined by a scandal. In her previous life, she had been completely unaware while alone with Huo Tingyuan in the room. By the time she regained consciousness, her clothes were already disheveled, and people were outside accusing them of having an improper relationship.
In her panic, she had believed that Huo Tingyuan was a shameless man who had taken advantage of her.
She had immediately reported him, and his future had been ruined because of the charge of hooliganism, while she became the woman everyone condemned.
Only later did she discover that her dear half-sister had long since set her sights on her fiancé, Su Zhixu.
One was an intellectual from a cultured cadre family, gentle and refined, while the other was a country boy. Although Huo Tingyuan had become a soldier, he had still come from the countryside. He was tall and powerfully built, and the scar across his face made him look particularly fierce.
Ruan Nianzhi naturally had no desire to marry Huo Tingyuan.
Why should Ruan Xining be able to marry into the city and enjoy a comfortable life while she had to go to the countryside? So, when Huo Tingyuan’s family came to discuss the marriage, she drugged Ruan Xining and deliberately hinted that Ruan Xining was Huo Tingyuan’s fiancée and had long harbored feelings for him.
Huo Tingyuan had also fallen for Ruan Xining at first sight. Believing that the two of them were about to get married anyway, he had gone to meet “her” without any reservations, never imagining that it was all a trap.
Afterward, Ruan Nianzhi brought the family to catch them together, and Ruan Xining became the shameless woman who had supposedly seduced her half-sister’s fiancé.
Hearing the voices outside, Huo Tingyuan’s usually impassive face showed a trace of panic.
Although the two of them had a marriage arrangement and their families were preparing to discuss the details of their marriage, it would still be inappropriate if her parents saw him alone with their daughter in the middle of the night.
Ruan Xining thought the same way. Huo Tingyuan was now her half-sister’s fiancé. Although heaven had given her another chance to cherish him, she could not allow their relationship to remain ambiguous.
She pointed toward the window leading to the backyard. “Hurry and go out there. Come back and see me later.”
“Okay!” Huo Tingyuan answered obediently. When he heard what she said afterward, his figure paused for a moment before he leaped through the window and disappeared into the night.
Ruan Xining watched until his figure vanished, then quickly changed out of her wet clothes.
Outside the door, Ruan Nianzhi grew impatient when she heard that there was no movement inside. She raised her foot and kicked the door with all her strength.
At that moment, Ruan Xining had just finished getting dressed and walked to the door. Pretending to yawn, she reached out and opened it. “Dad, Mom, what’s wrong?”
Ruan Nianzhi had no time to pull back the foot she had kicked out. She kicked at empty air and, unable to regain her balance, stumbled forward. With a sharp crack, she ended up sitting on the floor in an awkward split, her small face turning pale with pain as she bit her lip and let out a strained groan.
“Ah…”
“Sister, I thought I saw a man come into your room just now.” Seeing that there was only Ruan Xining inside, she ignored her own discomfort and could not help raising her voice.
“You must have seen something wrong. After I drank the tea you gave me, I felt sleepy and came back to my room to rest. Where would there be any man?”
As she spoke, Ruan Xining pushed Ruan Nianzhi outside.
From the corner of her eye, she noticed that her father was also stretching his neck and unwillingly peering into the room. The anger that had been suppressed in her heart began to burn fiercely.
So her father had already started making plans for Ruan Nianzhi and the woman outside the family this early on, even going so far as to destroy his own daughter.
In her previous life, after she had been branded a disgraced woman, the Su family had still been willing to accept her. She had believed it was because Su Zhixu loved her deeply. Overwhelmed with gratitude, she had given Su Zhixu’s mother all the money she had saved over the years, along with the dowry her mother and grandfather had prepared for her.
After their marriage, she had felt guilty toward Su Zhixu because she had lost her innocence, so even though the two of them had never truly become husband and wife, she had done everything she could to please every member of the Su family.
Zhixu had been willing to marry her under those circumstances, which meant that she must have been important to him. As long as she treated his family well, she believed that sooner or later, Zhixu would accept her.
But she never managed to wait for Su Zhixu to open his heart to her.
Instead, her dear father, his face lined with age, had held her mother’s ashes and told her that because her grandfather had been implicated, she too would be sent to a rural farm.
Poor Ruan Xining had believed him until she personally witnessed her dear half-sister and her “husband,” Su Zhixu, together in the same bed. When she confronted them afterward, Su Zhixu stood there coldly.
“Ruan Xining, let’s get a divorce. I lost all my feelings for you the moment you betrayed me.”
Ruan Nianzhi looked at her with undisguised triumph.
“Ruan Xining, did you really think you were my biological sister?
“Let me tell you the truth. We were never born to the same mother. My mother is Song Huizhi. Do you know why I was named Nianzhi? It was actually meant to be ‘Nianzhi,’ after my mother.
“Dad never loved Wen Yunru. If your mother’s family hadn’t had money, Dad would never have married her.
“You don’t know this yet, but Dad and I tampered with things at your grandfather’s house.
“And Dad was never implicated at all. He’s living a good life overseas with my mother right now.
“Ruan Xining, so what if you were born into a better family? The money belonging to the Wen family is mine now, and your husband is mine too. Zhixu and I are holding our wedding next month.
“You must come. Don’t you want to know where your real family is?”