Chapter 11 — Sent Away
Xue Zhenzhen’s madness terrified everyone.
They thought she had lost her mind—some even whispered she might be possessed.
My parents believed it too.
So when Shang Zhiyuan ordered people to haul her down, no one objected.
Physicians were summoned. High monks and “masters” were invited.
No one could find any illness.
But Xue Zhenzhen kept babbling about “male lead” and “female lead,” and in the end everyone agreed on the simplest conclusion:
she had fallen into a delirium.
She was gone.
My father refused to see her again.
My mother couldn’t bear to abandon her completely.
In the end, I suggested sending her to a country estate to “recuperate,” guarded and cared for, far from gossip.
To outsiders, we would say she had followed her husband back to his hometown.
My parents agreed.
As for Lin Xiangsheng—he survived, but barely.
He became a cripple who could only lie in bed.
I made the final decision:
put him in the room next to Xue Zhenzhen.
Feed him well. Treat him well.
Keep him alive—just enough to make every day feel worse than death.
That night, Xue Zhenzhen and Lin Xiangsheng were sent away under heavy guard.
Shang Zhiyuan and I returned to the Shang household.
I slept like I had been dragged under.
When I woke, Shang Zhiyuan was holding me tightly, his arms trembling with relief.
“A Ning,” he whispered, voice hoarse. “You’re back.”
That embrace—stretching across two lives—finally felt complete.
And we were no longer paper-thin characters pushed around by a plot.