Chapter 9 — Forced to Marry
The ancestral hall was cold and severe, lit by trembling candle flames.
Before the altar, Xue Zhenzhen knelt on a prayer mat.
The timid weakness she once forced herself to wear was gone. What remained was a gray, dead stillness.
She didn’t even look up at our arrival—
not until she heard my parents’ decision.
“I won’t marry! I won’t!”
Her eyes were webbed with red. Resentment and hatred crawled over her face.
“How can you do this to me? I’m your real daughter! That bitch shouldn’t even be here!”
“I should have everything! The Xue family—Shang Zhiyuan—should all be mine!”
“Mine!”
“You should all love me!!”
Her shrieks echoed through the ancestral hall—sharp, desperate, unbearable.
My mother turned away, tears streaming.
My father’s face went rigid. He snapped for her to stop.
“This is the best outcome,” he said coldly. “It preserves everyone’s face.”
“The best outcome?” Xue Zhenzhen threw her head back and laughed, wild and hateful—then her gaze speared straight into me.
“It was you, wasn’t it? Xue Huanning, you cursed bitch—this was your idea!”
She lunged, like she wanted to tear me apart.
A crisp slap cut through the air.
My mother’s hand trembled as she lowered it, pain written all over her face.
“It was A Ning who pleaded for you,” she sobbed. “That’s why we decided this. If she hadn’t cared about family at all, you’d have been drowned and buried with no dignity!”
The word “drowned” struck something in Xue Zhenzhen.
Fear flashed through her eyes.
Under the shadow of death, she finally crumpled.
Like a puppet whose strings had been cut, she collapsed to the floor and accepted the arrangements with hollow eyes.
I thought that was the end.
I was wrong.
Because at Xue Zhenzhen and Lin Xiangsheng’s wedding banquet… something else erupted.
Lin Xiangsheng was poor and lowly, with no parents.
The wedding had to be held at the Xue residence.
Time was tight; there were no guests. Only a simple table set in the hall.
My parents sat at the head with cold faces.
Lin Xiangsheng beamed, dragging the unwilling Xue Zhenzhen forward.
Just as they were about to bow, Xue Zhenzhen—who had been dazed the whole time—suddenly went mad.
She yanked off her red veil.
Her face was a storm of shock, rage, and disbelief.
“How am I here?! I shouldn’t be here! Why is the groom you?!”
“I’m supposed to marry Shang Zhiyuan! I’m supposed to enter the Shang household in glory!”
She screamed, pointing at Lin Xiangsheng, her features twisted.
The room fell dead silent.
Even she seemed to freeze for a second—then she turned on Lin Xiangsheng and spat venom.
“Trash. Useless bastard. Filth. It’s you who ruined me!”
And in that instant, I understood.
Xue Zhenzhen had also been reborn.
Shang Zhiyuan moved, placing me behind him.
Good, I thought, my gaze sinking into darkness.
If she had come back too…
then my revenge was even more justified.