“This matter is my fault, and I’ve already taken my punishment! In short, there is no way I’m marrying you.” Lin Shuyan felt indebted to Cheng Mengzhi, but marrying her was out of the question.
Cheng Mengzhi rolled her eyes.
Even if Lin Shuyan were willing to marry her, Cheng Mengzhi certainly wouldn’t want to marry him. Being married to a man who still harbored a torch for his pure white moonlight was like playing the female lead in a tragic melodrama—suffering in silence for a lifetime, only to realize the man’s true colors after half her life had already been wasted.
Disgusting! Absolutely disgusting!
To think someone with Lin Shuyan’s character could be the male lead—unbelievable!
“Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on in your head!” Cheng Mengzhi’s gaze turned sharp. “You know very well I never did any of those things. You just wanted to give me a warning, preferably hoping a formal accusation would get me kicked out of the military so I’d stop pestering you. Am I right, or am I right?”
Lin Shuyan didn’t dare answer, but the look on his face betrayed him.
Yet, that was precisely what he had been thinking.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know. That’s exactly what you were telling people in the cafeteria.” Just as Lin Shuyan tried to find an excuse to deny it, Cheng Mengzhi cut him off.
Xu Jingyun’s expression darkened considerably as he glared at Lin Shuyan.
Such vile character was truly infuriating.
“Lin Shuyan, is Comrade Cheng right or not?” Xu Jingyun demanded, his voice stern.
Cornered like this, Lin Shuyan’s eyes flickered with intense guilt.
Seeing this, Qin Junyao turned her gaze toward Lin Shuyan. So he knew Cheng Mengzhi was innocent all along and only did it for her? So he loved her this much.
Even though she had been married before, and even though she was still carrying another man’s child, Lin Shuyan was still willing to take responsibility for her regardless of the consequences. Her heart swelled with emotion.
“This whole thing is my fault; it all started because of me! If there’s going to be a punishment, punish me.” Qin Junyao stepped forward in front of everyone to shoulder the blame.
“This is a massive issue—it concerns my entire future. Can you possibly afford to take the blame for it?” Cheng Mengzhi suddenly shouted at Qin Junyao.
Anger blazed in her eyes as she walked right up to Qin Junyao, glared at her without saying another word, and shoved her aside.
Then, she locked eyes with Lin Shuyan’s guilty expression.
Without the slightest warning, Cheng Mengzhi raised her hand and slapped him right across the face.
A sharp crack echoed through the room.
Everyone present was stunned into silence.
Xu Jingyun stepped forward and pulled Cheng Mengzhi back.
“How can you just hit people?” Qin Junyao demanded angrily.
Commander Li and the Deputy Commander were both utterly startled by the scene.
Even the director of Cheng Mengzhi’s office was taken aback.
Since Lin Shuyan was in the wrong, his very first reflex upon being struck had been to hit her back. But remembering that he was the one who had wronged Cheng Mengzhi first, he chose to swallow his pride and endure it.
Xu Jingyun pulled Cheng Mengzhi away, subconsciously stepping forward to shield her.
“I hit him because he’s a damned scumbag!”
“Lin Shuyan, I hit you for my own sake! You knew full well I’d never do something like that, yet you framed me just to force me to give up. You gambled with my entire career because you knew that even if you got caught, your family’s status and connections meant nothing would really happen to you.”
Cheng Mengzhi was also striking a blow on behalf of the original owner of this body—if she hadn’t vented, she wouldn’t have been able to get over this hurdle.
“Lin Shuyan, when you hit rock bottom, I took care of you every step of the way without leaving your side. My love for you was clean, pure, and devoid of any ulterior motives.
Before we ever met, I really did loathe the idea of an arranged marriage; the only reason I wanted to call it off was because we’d never laid eyes on each other, and I didn’t want my happiness cut short by some prearranged match. But after we called it off, I actually grew to like you. I always thought my pursuit of you never crossed any lines. It was always Qin Junyao trying to provoke me, yet every single time, you took her side, making everyone think it was Cheng Mengzhi who was in the wrong.”
“You accepted everything I did for you—wasn’t that you sending me a signal, letting me know you were giving me a chance? As for why she kept refusing your confessions for so long, it was simply because your status wasn’t her first choice; you were just her backup plan. You accepted my kindness just to use me to make her jealous.”
“You kicked me aside the moment you were done using me, claiming you didn’t love me and wanted to marry her instead. I thought it was unfair to myself, and I wasn’t willing to just give up after guarding you for all those years, so I wanted to fight for it one last time. Was that really a crime? No matter what I did, I did it out in the open. If you wanted, you could have just talked to me properly, urged me to let go, and persuaded me to cut off my romantic delusions once and for all. There were so many ways to do it, yet you chose the most despicable, dirtiest method. It makes me utterly sick.”
Cheng Mengzhi felt that the original owner hadn’t been wrong for pursuing someone she loved; she had just severely cheapened herself.
Her taste in people was simply atrocious.
She lacked the discernment to see through anyone, ending up giving her heart to absolute trash.
If she hadn’t been framed and lost her job, the subsequent chain of events wouldn’t have happened—like getting scammed out of selling her job by people Qin Junyao hired specifically to prevent the original owner from continuing to pester Lin Shuyan after divorcing Xu Jingyun.
Everyone else kept quiet, too intimidated to speak.
After landing that slap, Cheng Mengzhi felt a whole lot better inside.
“Lin Shuyan, convert everything I ever gave you into cash and pay me back. I consider the things you’ve used dirty, so I only want cash and ration stamps. Also, when you were injured and hospitalized, I took two months of leave to take care of you—that’s one hundred and twenty yuan. For this malicious framing, I want a hundred yuan for mental damages. That makes a total of six hundred yuan, plus fifty catties of national grain tickets. You will return every single fen to me.”
Based on the original owner’s memories, the money spent on Lin Shuyan actually exceeded that amount. But to leave some breathing room and recognizing that the original owner had given willingly, demanding half back was something he couldn’t reasonably refuse.
Hearing that Cheng Mengzhi was demanding money from Lin Shuyan—and such a hefty sum at that—Qin Junyao’s expression immediately soured.
“You can’t give it to her,” Qin Junyao piped up, drawing everyone’s gaze toward her.
“What? Does this have anything to do with you? The only reason I’m not holding you accountable is for the sake of the child in your belly, because that child is Uncle Bai’s grandchild. If it weren’t for that baby, do you really think I’d let you off this easy after all your repeated provocations?”
After the original owner’s father passed away, it was Uncle Bai who had stepped up to help collect his remains.
Back when Political Commissar Bai was still around, he frequently advised the original owner not to waste her time on Lin Shuyan—advice the original owner had simply snapped back at.
You have to respect the monk, if not the temple.
Rebuked like this by Cheng Mengzhi, Qin Junyao clutched her belly with an intensely ugly expression.
“I’m easygoing, but that doesn’t mean I’m a pushover. Lin Shuyan, if you want to be someone’s second-hand husband, that’s your business. But the moment you act like nothing happened after using me up, I’ll play along: pay up, and from this day forward we are completely through. Let everyone here be a witness.” Cheng Mengzhi added, “The money I spent on you is way more than six hundred yuan. Hand it over within three days, or don’t blame me for being heartless.”
Since things had reached this point, what Cheng Mengzhi demanded was actually a relief to Lin Shuyan, yet being dragged down and belittled to nothing made him furious.
For now, Lin Shuyan didn’t dare utter another word.
As soon as her piece was said, Cheng Mengzhi turned and left.
Xu Jingyun glanced at Commander Li and followed right behind her.
And with that, the matter came to a temporary close.
Once outside the office, Cheng Mengzhi took a deep breath.
Sensing someone following close behind her, she turned around and was genuinely surprised to see Xu Jingyun.
“Why did you follow me out?” Cheng Mengzhi asked curiously.
“How are you feeling?” Xu Jingyun, who hadn’t seen her for two days, asked with concern in his voice.
Remembering what he was referring to, Cheng Mengzhi’s cheeks flushed a bright red as her heart fluttered wildly.
“I’m… I’m fine now.” After resting for two days, her body had pretty much recovered.
Xu Jingyun said, “The marriage application has been approved, and the family quarters are ready too. You can go take a look at the place and see what needs to be added, then bring your paperwork tomorrow so we can head into town and get our marriage certificate.”
Cheng Mengzhi looked up in surprise, locking eyes with his gaze.
“This fast?” Cheng Mengzhi had thought she’d have to wait quite a while.
Of course, Xu Jingyun wasn’t about to tell her that the moment he stared down the leadership to sign off on it, he marched straight to the military commander to get final approval, wrapping the whole process up in half a day.
He just wanted to wait until the dust settled on the false accusations so Cheng Mengzhi could go into town with him to get their certificate with a clear and untroubled mind.
“It’s not fast at all. I’ll wait for you downstairs at the dormitory building tomorrow,” Xu Jingyun said.
Cheng Mengzhi hadn’t fully wrapped her head around getting married yet. But she realized that if she didn’t marry Xu Jingyun, in the eyes of their superiors, they’d be tainted by a scandalous relationship—an unpardonable stain.
Plus, the mess was caused by the original owner in the first place, and Xu Jingyun had been dragged into it; she couldn’t possibly ruin his chances of promotion.
“Alright. Where is the house? I’ll go take a look.” Thinking that they’d be living together from now on, she figured she ought to check what supplies were missing.
Xu Jingyun answered, “It has a courtyard, No. 1, Lane Three. I’ve already cleaned it up and picked up daily necessities from the logistics department. Here are the keys, go have a look.”
With that, he pulled a key out of his pocket and placed it right in the center of Cheng Mengzhi’s palm.
“I’m heading back to work. You go take a look first, tell me whatever’s missing tomorrow, and we can buy it at the department store after we’re married,” Xu Jingyun said before turning around to head back to work.
Watching Xu Jingyun’s retreating figure, Cheng Mengzhi lowered her gaze to look at the key in her hand.
As she walked away, she muttered under her breath, “I’m really just going to marry a complete stranger just like that!”
She didn’t feel like getting married was a good thing at all; in fact, she felt like marriage was nothing but a huge hassle.