“Staff Officer Xu, it’s not your place to stick your nose into my personal affairs,” Lin Shuyan snapped back, instantly retaliating out of anger.
“I am still your superior officer. You made a grave mistake, yet you show no remorse and talk back to your leadership like this?” Xu Jingyun didn’t coddle him in the slightest, cutting him right back down with a calm, level tone that left zero room for Lin Shuyan to question his authority.
Hearing this, Cheng Mengzhi frowned slightly. Lin Shuyan came from a prominent family with significant backing, so he had never learned fear, always maintaining an arrogant, high-and-mighty attitude toward everyone else. As for the rumor that Xu Jingyun was actually the adopted son of some high-ranking political heavyweight, only a handful of top brasses in the military district knew about it—the rest of the rank-and-file were completely in the dark.
“Filing a false report constitutes malicious framing. As a battalion commander in the military, are you seriously telling me you didn’t know that? You did this knowing full well it was against the rules,” Xu Jingyun interrogated him with an icy tone. “You should have known that the moment the investigation cleared her, you were staking your entire military career on a gamble.”
Qin Junyao’s expression shifted drastically. Stepping forward, she intervened, “Staff Officer Xu, this whole mess was my fault. I overheard someone casually mentioning something back then and happened to bring it up to Shuyan. I never imagined Shuyan would go out of his way to file a report just to stand up for me.”
Why is the female protagonist always such a frail, hypocritical piece of work? Is it because my perspective changed after transmigrating that I’m finally seeing her true colors?
Cheng Mengzhi let out a cold laugh, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s hilarious! If you two scumbags don’t lock yourselves away together in this lifetime, I’ll die unsatisfied. You’re an absolute match made in hell—a couple of scumbags!”
Unable to hold back her boiling rage, she started chewing them out directly.
“Comrade Cheng, how can you use such vulgar language?!” Qin Junyao’s eyes welled up with tears of grievance, looking utterly pitiful.
Seeing this, Lin Shuyan grew furious as well. Glaring at Cheng Mengzhi, he snarled, “Cheng Mengzhi, stop degrading yourself so cheaply! I’ve told you before, I have zero romantic interest in you. Why do you keep clinging on and refusing to let go?!”
That pushed Cheng Mengzhi’s buttons.
“Degrading myself?! If my feelings for you were so cheap, you should have rejected my kindness! Did you ever turn it down once?” Cheng Mengzhi shot back without hesitation, her voice rising in righteous fury. “Lin Shuyan, when your watch broke, I scraped together the money to buy you a new one, and you happily took it! When you mentioned craving imported foreign chocolates, I bought them for you, only for you to turn around and gift them to Qin Junyao—did I ever make a peep about it?”
“You have the nerve to call me cheap? Are you any less cheap? You took things I bought for you and handed them over to another woman! And another thing! The report you filed was completely fabricated, which proves one thing: back when you were lying in that hospital bed unconscious and incapacitated, Qin Junyao chose to marry someone else and abandoned you. It was me who stayed by your side day and night without sleep, caring for you tirelessly. Even when the doctors said you might never walk again, I was entirely willing to look after you for the rest of my life.”
“What did she do? While you were unconscious, she married another man, daydreaming about a bright and happy future. Then, when her husband died and she saw you back on your feet, she came crawling back to you, cooking up a random excuse that I supposedly framed her. You knew the report was bogus, yet just to win favor with the person you love and to force me to give up, you went ahead and filed it anyway! You didn’t care about right and wrong or the truth of the report at all. You’re far cheaper and more disgusting than I’ll ever be—so sickening it makes me want to vomit up my meals from last night.”
Cheng Mengzhi poured out every last ounce of grievance the original host had bottled up over all these years.
“You never loved me, yet for a whole year, you never once chased me away. You accepted every single gesture of affection I offered you, treating me like your personal doormat just to feed your own ego and superiority complex. Because you knew damn well that if you rejected me, you’d never find another idiot who loved you this much and would obey your every whim unconditionally.”
The more she spoke, the more aggrieved she felt, itching to march right up and slap him a few times across the face.
Xu Jingyun watched Cheng Mengzhi quietly. She genuinely poured her heart out when she cared for someone; whoever ended up as her true partner in life would be a very lucky man.
Lin Shuyan’s face turned livid under the barrage of insults, especially with so many onlookers watching the spectacle.
Qin Junyao sneered, “That was all your own willingness to sacrifice without asking for anything in return! Why bring all this up now? Are you just trying to show off how hopelessly obsessed you were with Shuyan?”
“From beginning to end, the only person Shuyan has ever loved in his heart is me. My previous marriage had its reasons—I was forced into it!”
Throwing her gaze toward Qin Junyao, Cheng Mengzhi looked her up and down, her eyes lingering on her slightly protruding belly.
“Obsessed?! Sure, I wasn’t obsessed, but at least I know the meaning of basic human decency and shame! You claim you were forced—forced by whom? By your family? What does that have to do with me?”
“For the sake of a long-term meal ticket, just look at what you pulled! The moment your husband died, you were in such a desperate rush to secure your next meal ticket for a cushy life. Any normal person knows a widow is supposed to observe three years of mourning, but what about you? You used your deceased husband’s name and reputation to falsely accuse others, squeezing the absolute last drop of utility out of a dead man! What a brilliant, calculating scheme!”
“You refuse to abort this child not out of affection, but because you can’t bear to lose the monthly living allowance provided by the Bai family elders. But you realized the allowance still wouldn’t be enough, and knowing that with a child in tow you could never snag a man better than your late husband, you set your sights right back on Lin Shuyan, who had always been infatuated with you.”
“You two are utterly disgusting and shameless.”
Cheng Mengzhi figured these two were a match made in heaven and should never be let out to torment anyone else.
For the first time in her life, Qin Junyao was being humiliated this severely in public.
Noticing the strange, judgmental stares coming from the surrounding crowd, Qin Junyao instantly switched back into her frail, delicate persona, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “What nonsense are you spewing?! Shuyan is only stepping up to take care of me and the baby in my womb. Ah-Shi passed away saving others, and Shuyan simply couldn’t bear to watch me and the child suffer, so he willingly married me. I know this puts Shuyan in a difficult position, but the two of us are going to be happy together.”
Unable to hold back her disgust any longer, Cheng Mengzhi rolled her eyes into the back of her head.
“Stop right there!”