Chapter 447 - 442: Intersection of Fates
Gu’er listened as Feng Ling spoke of her pregnancy. ’She must not have carried the baby to term,’ Gu’er guessed, ’otherwise she wouldn’t be in so much pain.’
"I was pregnant, and I was overjoyed. I thought that with a child, he would surely treat me better—at least he wouldn’t hit me anymore. But I was wrong. At first, he was quite happy and even went out drinking less. I thought I could finally have some peaceful days. But slowly, he started going out again. One night, when I was four months pregnant, he came home drunk in the middle of the night. I waited for a long time, but he never came to our room. I thought he was too drunk and had collapsed somewhere, so I lit a lamp to go find him. And then... then I found him and his sister-in-law on the same bed."
As Feng Ling spoke, the veins on the back of her hands bulged, and a crazed light flickered in her eyes.
Gu’er was stunned. ’I can’t believe it happened like that.’ But she didn’t doubt Feng Ling’s words; things like that really did happen in the villages.
"I cried and asked them why, but he acted like it was nothing. He said his older brother was dead and his sister-in-law had been planning to remarry, but her child was too young and couldn’t be without a mother, so she stayed. He said he was taking care of her, and to repay him, she had willingly started sleeping with him."
"He said he’d seen me once when he visited our village and decided to marry me because he thought I was pretty. He said if I hadn’t been good-looking, he wouldn’t have needed to spend money on a wife at all, since he already had his sister-in-law to warm his bed."
"I thought they were shameless and I cursed them for it, but he just turned around and hit me. He told me to know my place and stay out of his business. He said I’d better be obedient, or my life would be miserable. I was so afraid he’d hit me and hurt the baby, so no matter how miserable or wronged I felt, I could only endure it. I watched them tumble into the same bed day after day. I listened to his sister-in-law curse at me. I felt like I was going insane, but for the sake of the child in my belly, I forced myself to hold on. I kept telling myself things would be okay once the baby was born. I’d have something to live for then."
"But..." As Feng Ling spoke, her eyes turned bloodshot and her expression twisted into a ferocious snarl. In a sharp voice, she said, "But they wouldn’t leave me alone. One night, as I was sleeping, someone came into my room. The man reeked of alcohol, so I thought it was my husband. But when he pressed down on me, I knew something was wrong. Before I could even scream, the door was kicked open. He and his sister-in-law burst into the room. Only then did I realize that the man who had come in first was that bastard who’d tried to force himself on me before."
"I didn’t know why that bastard was in my room. My husband grabbed my hair and started screaming questions at me. I didn’t know how to answer. His sister-in-law stood to the side, claiming that man was always coming to see me. She said she’d suspected it but had no proof until she finally caught me red-handed tonight. Then she claimed the child in my belly wasn’t part of the Old Zhang Family—that it wasn’t Zhang Ju’s, but that bastard’s. My husband went into a frenzy. He grabbed the other man’s collar and demanded to know if it was true. And that bastard actually admitted it. He said I had seduced him, that we had been together many times. He said the child in my belly really wasn’t from the Old Zhang Family. He even said I had asked him to come tonight, that I was a promiscuous woman."
"After hearing that, he beat the man, then turned on me without a second thought. I begged him, told him I didn’t do it, that his sister-in-law and that man were framing me, but he wouldn’t listen. When he saw me trying to protect my stomach, he kicked it. His sister-in-law joined in. I passed out. When I woke up, I was lying in a pool of blood. The baby was gone. He had been over seven months along... a boy. My body was broken. I felt like an empty shell. I didn’t see any reason to keep living. Before I could even process what had happened, that bastard came to take me away. He said Zhang Ju and his sister-in-law had sold me to him. He said I wasn’t a wife of the Zhang Family anymore; I was his woman now. I couldn’t let him defile me. I couldn’t accept it... So I slammed my head against the wall."
"The next time I woke up, I was almost fifteen years old again. I didn’t know if it had all been a dream or something else. Before I had time to figure it out, my grandfather was kicked out of the family home by my eldest uncle. I was terrified. I was so afraid that everything from that dream was real, so I left with my grandfather. I didn’t care how hard life was on the outside. As long as I didn’t have to live that kind of life again, I would do anything."
Having finished her story, Feng Ling seemed to have calmed down a little. She looked at Gu’er and said earnestly, "When Zhou Mei first approached me, I didn’t suspect a thing. I thought she was just another ill-fated woman, like me. Later, I realized she had ulterior motives, but by then, I was thinking about my own past. I hate Zhang Ju and his sister-in-law. She wanted to be with her husband’s younger brother, so she framed me and ruined me. So when I heard Zhou Mei say that you forced her to get an abortion and then made it so she could never conceive again, I projected the fate from my dream onto her. I sympathized with her, and that’s why I wanted you to meet her—to see for myself if you were really that kind of person."
Feng Ling no longer saw any reason to hide anything, so she laid her heart bare.
Gu’er nodded. She believed Feng Ling. She knew all too well how deeply a past life could affect someone. ’What was I like right after I was reborn? The memory of my granddaughter made me too scared to even think about having children. So many sleepless nights, so many nightmares...’ That was a kind of suffering no one could understand unless they had lived through it. Feng Ling had died before she was even nineteen in her past life, a fate even worse than her own. It was perfectly normal for her to see herself in Zhou Mei’s story. ’If I were in her shoes, I’d probably have done the same thing.’
But why did this story sound so familiar? She was certain no one had told it to her in this lifetime. So where could she have heard it? Gu’er wracked her brain, trying to remember.
"Your husband—no, the man from your dream, was he named Zhang Ju? And was his sister-in-law named Caihua?"
Gu’er asked, having suddenly remembered something.
Feng Ling flinched and stared at Gu’er as if she were seeing a ghost. She asked, her voice trembling, "How... how do you know?"
’So it’s true.’ Gu’er leaned back against her chair. In her past life, Zhang Da had found women to bear him a son. He’d found two, and one of them was named Caihua. That Caihua had even shown up at her door, telling her to get out of the house and that she would be moving in soon. It had made Gu’er so angry she’d cried in private several times.
But Caihua never did move in, because she failed to get pregnant with Zhang Da’s child. Later, after Zhang Da found someone else, Caihua showed up at their door again, screaming and demanding money from him. But Zhang Da refused. Any extra money he had, he’d rather spend on alcohol. He had cursed Caihua, calling her a shameless woman who slept with her own brother-in-law. He said she and her brother-in-law had murdered his wife together—that to be with him, she had claimed her sister-in-law’s baby belonged to another man and had them beat the poor woman to death. Eventually, they couldn’t stay in their village anymore and ran off. But not even two years after they got to the city, her brother-in-law abandoned her. After that, she’d been with one man after another. He’d yelled that she was unclean, infertile, and still wanted his money? Not a chance.
At the time, Gu’er had heard all this and thought Caihua was a real piece of work. But she never would have imagined that in this life, she would meet Caihua’s sister-in-law—Feng Ling. So, Feng Ling’s appearance in this life was because she and Caihua had crossed paths in the last. ’Fate really is a strange thing,’ she thought. ’You can never guess how it will arrange things.’
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