Chapter 66: Life-saving Straw

At that moment, he vaguely and trance-likely knew his destined future.

The blame for the falling out with the Jin family and the losses caused by Jin Jingting's departure will all be attributed to him.

If there are any twists and turns in the future, or if his mother has a new child and no longer devotes all her energy to him, Jin Jingting will become the previous father.

By then, they would have their own child, and he would most likely be abandoned in the cold and darkness, on the verge of death, just like when he was six years old, with no one caring.

Even his mother no longer cared.

That morning, Jin Jingting quietly arose and left at daybreak. After all, the marriage hadn't been formally arranged yet, and it wouldn't have been a good idea for a grown man like him to stay at a widow's house. So, whenever he appeared there, he used the lesser-known courtesy name Jingting. Even the gossipiest women around didn't know he was Jin Baojing, the seventh son of the Jin family in Chang'an.

At that time, Meng Lanxi was waiting at the door, respectfully serving him tea and saying that she wanted to thank him.

"You're so polite at such a young age." Jin Jingting took the cup he handed over with a smile, "Don't worry, I will treat you as my own child and will never treat you unfairly."

"I will definitely treat Uncle Jin as my real father and respect him." He smiled sweetly, revealing those adorable dimples that were the same as his mother's.

Jin Jingting drank the whole cup in one gulp and realized something was wrong: "This is not tea, it's wine."

"Ah, I got it from the kitchen. Is there something wrong?" His childish face was confused and flustered. He quickly opened the lid of the pot in his hand to take a look, but unexpectedly the whole pot of wine poured onto his clothes, making him smell of alcohol.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Meng Lanxi hurriedly raised her sleeve to wipe the wine stains off his body.

Mrs. Meng came out of the house and saw the situation helplessly. She took out a handkerchief and wiped Jin Jingting's face. She smiled and said, "This child is also very filial. Don't blame him."

"It's okay. Even for your sake, I won't take it to heart."

The two of them were talking intimately, so close that the jade pendants on each other gently bumped against each other.

Meng Lanxi has been displeased with that jade pendant for a long time.

His mother's name, the most ethereal fairy mountain in Shu, why should he wear it on his body?

So he pretended to wipe it, and in the chaos, he grabbed the thread of the Ruyi knot and pulled it hard.

The silk knot he hurriedly put on early in the morning was not secure, and the jade pendant slipped smoothly into his cuff. From then on, he and his mother could no longer be a couple.

After Jin Jingting left, Meng Lanxi returned to her room and took a nap.

In fact, he didn't sleep well. Sometimes he dreamed of being frozen to death in the cold, sometimes he saw a mudslide that flooded the tea plantation, and sometimes he saw the look his "father" had given him when he was six years old. But upon closer inspection, it was the look Jin Jingting had given him...

Until he was awakened by his mother's sudden crying, he savored the despair and sadness in her voice and knew that she must have received the news of Jin Jingting's death.

Then the uneasy nightmare that had been haunting him completely dissipated. He covered his head with the quilt and laughed secretly in bed.

It is said that a person who is about to drown will hold on to a blade of grass on the shore and refuse to let go, even if the grass will be pulled out by the roots and swept into the dirty whirlpool with him.

And in the end, he grabbed the grass and kept the life he wanted.

It seemed as if heaven had finally begun to show mercy to him and grant him his wish. Those who witnessed Jin Jingting's fall from his horse, smelling the reek of alcohol, said he had accidentally fallen from his horse while hungover. The clinic refused to allow him in for diagnosis because he was already dead. The Jin family, feeling that his stirring up trouble for marrying a widow was a family scandal, took their anger out on him and hastily chose a grave for his burial.

No one knew that the glass of wine he offered to Jin Jingting contained aconite, which his mother, who was well versed in pharmacology, had warned him never to touch.

After that, he lived with his mother in the small courtyard left by Jin Jingting, leading a smooth and quiet life. As he grew older, he went to study at the Meng family school. With his intelligence and precocious wisdom, he surpassed everyone else, was highly appreciated by the teacher, and eventually entered the Imperial College.

Then he learned that Meng Yongshun had been selected as the candidate for the county lord's husband.

Although Princess Lingling was a "disfigured tigress" avoided by people in Beijing at that time, and was also judged to have the appearance of bringing misfortune to her husband, Meng Lanxi, who had been at odds with her uncle's family since childhood, could not allow them to have such a chance to rise to the top overnight - even though her face was disfigured and her reputation was inauspicious, she was Princess Lingling of the Changhua Palace after all, and could bring too many benefits to their family.

He also hoped that he would have a chance in the future to vent his anger for himself and his mother.

So he used a little trick to make Meng Yongshun break his leg, which also frightened him to death. He thought that the county lady who had no relatives was too terrible, and cried and shouted that he wanted to withdraw from the selection.

In desperation, the elders of the Meng family came up with a way to protect their own children without offending the court. They recommended him to choose a son-in-law on their behalf. After communicating with the Ministry of Rites, they handed Meng Yongshun's Phoenix Sign to him.

He entered the Changhua Palace as a candidate, believing that with his own methods, he could easily control his fate. So during the selection process, he quietly drugged Jin Tang to make him look bad. He had always disliked Jin Tang in the academy because of their similar appearance, which always reminded him of Jin Jingting. And at this moment, he took advantage of it.

But he didn't expect that the county lady saw through his little trick at a glance. At that time, he looked at her hazy outline outlined by the sunlight behind the screen, his heart beating slightly, and thought, if the county lady had not been disfigured, she must be a beauty.

She was not disfigured; the scars only made her appearance more vivid.

In Zhuangzi, her mother passed away, and he believed that he was the one who could understand her feelings the most. After all, they were all alone, and after all, he had risked everything to keep his only relative.

After returning to Chang'an after the war, he reunited with his mother after the chaos. He told his mother that he wanted to work hard to fight for the position of county lady's husband.

It's not just because of her peerless beauty, not just because she represents a bright future, but the way she carved out a way out of despair is exactly the same as how he did back then - the only difference is that she chose a bright and open path, while he chose a dark, narrow and invisible passage.

On those nights when he lit the fragrance of incense for her, he gazed at her countless times, who was just a window away but ultimately unapproachable. He wondered over and over in his heart, when and how he should do it so that he could become the unique person in her backyard?

Finally, that night, she revealed her deepest feelings to him in the misty fragrance, letting him know that there already existed someone who could be called Deng Deng.

That person was the only lifeline he could grasp after his mother's death. Even though she knew he had committed a murder, she would still save his life out of guilt for her mother.

Meng Lanxi knew clearly that he was the only person in the world who was related to her by blood, but she still felt suffocated because of the tangled emotions in her heart.

He looked up at Qian Deng, but saw that Qian Deng's eyes were fixed on Ling Tianshui.

Even though he was the murderer, even though she had just exposed all his crimes, in the end, she focused on his accomplices first, not him.

They were born from the same mother, so why was it that he could easily get everything he dreamed of without any effort, while he struggled and tried his best but still could not get her attention.

Why did fate treat him so well, and why did it treat him so badly?

But...it doesn't matter.

He has prepared a gift, it will definitely be a surprise.

When Ling Tianshui discovered his crime and forced him to go to the northwest to hide his identity and disappear from the world forever, he secretly swore in his heart that he would never get what he couldn't get.

Because they share half the same blood; because he made a promise to his mother before her death; because he said he would help him realize his dream... So, if he were the one who eventually became the county lord's husband, it would make him more painful and angry than anyone else.

——Even though, in order to protect him, he helped him deal with all the loopholes, and even became his accomplice and involved himself in it, Meng Lanxi stared at Qian Deng, still feeling despair and resentment in his heart.

Even though they were already accomplices, even though they were standing in the same dark place, her focus was still on Ling Tianshui, not him.

Yes, Qiandeng didn't pay attention to him.

As she listened to Meng Lanxi's stories of hardship and helplessness along the way, a vision suddenly appeared before her eyes, as if it were an illusion, of the young Ling Tianshui, chasing his mother alone in the desert, beneath the raging sand.

There are thousands of pairs of mothers and children in the world, but everyone's choices are different.

Some children repeatedly committed cruel and paranoid crimes to keep their mothers. But that child caught up with his mother and finally, in order to protect her, resolutely denied knowing her, swallowed all his tears, and turned away.

He let go of his mother's hand, let go of the person who gave him life, flesh and blood, and dimples on his cheeks.

He buried all his hatred deep in his heart, ran persistently in the endless sea of ​​sand for eighteen years, and finally killed all his enemies with his own hands.

But he would never be able to get his mother back in this lifetime, and it was even more impossible for him to use all means to keep her by his side when he was young, like Meng Lanxi did.

The child who was lost in the desert is now standing in front of her, having grown into a man who is taller and more majestic than anyone else.

His deep eyes looked deeply into her, his body half covering Meng Lanxi, and he said slowly and firmly, "No matter what, I must take him away. I can no longer fulfill my promise to Madam Meng. At the very least, I must save his life."