Go to hell

Just as Wen Lingyi was indulging in this hunting game that she directed herself but was almost backfiring on her, a sharp and abrupt cell phone ringtone pierced the sticky and dangerous atmosphere.

Wen Lingyi shuddered, as if she was forcibly pulled out of a dream, and her heart contracted violently due to the sudden disturbance.

She frowned and glanced at the completely unfamiliar number on the screen with extreme displeasure.

Who is so ignorant?

The usual mask of elegance cracked, revealing the cold impatience underneath.

My fingertips swiped across the screen, and the call was connected. The voice was cold and distant: "Who is this?"

The receiver was completely silent, with only a faint crackling sound of electricity, like some malicious prying. A few seconds of silence was enough to exhaust Wen Lingyi's already dwindling patience.

She was about to cut off this boring harassment——

"It's me." A voice sounded.

It was not the noise of electricity, but a woman's voice.

A voice Wen Lingyi wouldn't have mistaken even if it had turned to ash. A voice that had once been etched deep within her soul like a brand, but now left only the stench of decay and a chilling chill.

The voice was deliberately soft, with a sickening, self-righteous nostalgia.

"Zhu Yang."

·

These two words, like a bullet hitting her forehead, instantly penetrated all of Wen Lingyi's defenses. Her fingers gripping the phone tightened, her knuckles making a slight crackling sound, and her face instantly lost its color, turning pale.

Cold, rusty, bloody anger erupted from the darkest depths of her heart like volcanic lava. She felt all the blood in her body rushing backward, rushing to her head, and then freezing into ice the next second.

"What's the matter?" Her voice should be more biting than the cold wind of the Siberian permafrost, and every syllable is like ice chips squeezed out from between her teeth.

"Lingyi..."

Zhu Yang's voice carried an unpleasant familiarity and false intimacy, as if the bloody betrayal had never happened between them.

"My son is born. I would like to ask you to be his godmother." She paused and continued in a relaxed tone, "Look, I have completed all the family tasks: getting married and having children. Now I am free."

It sounded like a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders, like I had accomplished some great mission.

"So now, can we... start over? Like before..."

Like before?

These five words stabbed fiercely and precisely into the softest and bloodiest old wound in Wen Lingyi's heart.

The "past" that crushed her wholehearted trust, unconditional love, and all her fantasies about love itself into pieces and trampled them into the mud?

The "past" that made her close her heart to love and enter a loveless marriage?!

How dare Zhu Yang?! How dare he imagine that everything could go back to the way it was?!

The destructive rage instantly overwhelmed Wen Lingyi's rationality, all her grace, and all her restraint. She could even clearly hear the strings of "education" and "manners" in her mind snap with a crisp "bang" and completely break.

No thinking, no hesitation, and no need for any hypocritical embellishment.

A sentence that tempered her deepest malice and condensed all her hatred directly stabbed the shameless woman on the other end of the phone:

"Zhu Yang, go to hell!"

Every word was stained with the smell of blood that seeped out from her scabbed heart.

Before she finished speaking, Wen Lingyi had already thrown her phone away.

The phone hit the expensive carpet with a dull thud.

The study fell into a dead silence. Absolute, suffocating silence.

Zhu Yang's disgusting voice disappeared, but the bloody past that was forcibly torn apart, the pain that penetrated deep into the bone marrow brought by betrayal, and the humiliation of having one's dignity trampled upon, spread like a thick, poisonous black fog in an instant.

It madly devoured and polluted all the beauty, undercurrents and warmth that Zhou Jianxing brought her, which made her indulge for a moment.

Wen Lingyi's body, which had just been warmed by the surveillance footage, was now chilled to the bone. The perverse pleasure she'd felt from controlling her prey was gone. In its place was a deep, almost crushing exhaustion, and a chill deeper and more despairing than the Arctic ice sheets.

It was as if the self who was emotionally unstable because of Zhou Jianxing just now was just an absurd illusion.

She stood up, walked to the desk, and quickly turned off all the surveillance screens that were still playing Zhou Jianxing's images as if she were driving away the plague.

The screen instantly fell into a dead darkness, just like her current state of mind.

She needed order. She needed cold.

She needed to isolate herself from anything that was out of control, anything that was dangerous, anything that reminded her of betrayal.

Wen Lingyi took a deep breath, and the hatred pierced her lungs so much that they hurt.

I forced myself to sit back in the large desk chair, straightened my back, and faced the lit computer screen again like a soldier about to go to the battlefield.

On the screen was still the curatorial proposal for a certain avant-garde art exhibition. The cold words and numbers became her only lifeline at this moment.

She began tapping away at the keyboard. Her fingertips were stiff and cold, like a puppet on a string. "Tick, tick, tick..."

The monotonous and cold sound of keyboard tapping became the only sound in the study, again and again, stubbornly and futilely trying to dispel the surging dark tide with a smell of blood in Wen Lingyi's heart.

She forced her brain to process only this cold information and suppressed all emotional fluctuations.

He is still processing emails and modifying plans. Every step is precise and efficient, like an emotionless machine.

Behind "efficiency" is a huge emptiness and numb fatigue deep in the soul.

The sky outside the window gradually darkened amid the sound of mechanical knocking.

The night lights of Lanyue Bay lit up one after another, casting a cold, illusory light in, drawing mottled shadows on the expensive carpet. Wen Lingyi finally stopped.

It was not because the work was completed, but because of the irresistible fatigue that came from the depths of her soul, which swept over her like a tsunami and instantly drowned her.

·

She leaned back in her chair, feeling as if all her strength had been drained away. She raised her hand to rub her swollen and stinging temples, her fingertips feeling cold.

The day's work was over, or rather, the "playing" was over, and this play had exhausted her energy.

The feeling of emptiness was like a cold tide, flowing over my ankles and rising into my chest.

She leaned back in her chair, her eyes fixed empty on the blurred outline of her garden outside the floor-to-ceiling window, which was illuminated by the lights.

That was the place where she pursued the ultimate regularity and order, but now in the twilight it seemed a little desolate and messy, just like her heart that was out of control at the moment.

A faint thought, like a firefly struggling in the darkness, flashed without warning.

She squatted down and picked up the phone she had dropped on the ground.

Fortunately, only the screen was broken and it can still be used normally.

My fingertips swiped across the cold screen, unlocking it. The WeChat icon lay there quietly.

Her gaze, almost with a kind of self-exile confusion, fell on Zhou Jianxing's portrait.

See what she is doing?

Her fingertips hovered over the avatar, and after hesitating for just a moment, she finally clicked on it and entered Zhou Jianxing's circle of friends.

No permissions are set.

The content, like her, is simple, even... too plain. No carefully embellished selfies, no flaunting of gourmet food or luxury goods, no flashy social etiquette. Instead, what meets the eye is a lush expanse of greenery that threatens to overflow the screen.

On the windowsill, several pots of chubby succulents are crowded together. The plump leaves are stretching hard in the sun, and the tips of the leaves are showing healthy pink edges or red tips. They look like a group of cute little fat guys, full of the honesty of life.

The caption reads: "New little guy, grow up well! (smiley face)"

In the corner of the balcony, there is a pot of lush green ivy with vines hanging down. The layers of emerald green leaves are so shiny that they almost reflect light, like a green waterfall, full of the power of unbridled growth.

The caption reads: "The sun is shining brightly today, and my pothos has grown new leaves! So happy!"

A pot of jasmine in full bloom. Small, snow-white flowers clustered on the branches, spotless and unblemished. Even through the screen, you can smell the elegant, lingering fragrance.

The caption reads: "The jasmine is in bloom, and the whole house is filled with fragrance~ (intoxicated expression)"

There were even a few green onion and garlic sprouts that she had tried to grow hydroponically, placed in a transparent glass cup. The white roots were clearly visible, and the tender green sprouts were growing straight up, full of simple and direct vitality.

The caption reads: "Get hydroponic shallots! They're growing well! (Striving expression)"

The photos are shot with no technical skill, the lighting is casual, the composition is simple. No filters, just the most authentic colors. The text is also simple, straightforward, and silly.

Wen Lingyi's eyes couldn't help but linger on this vibrant green photo. Her fingertips unconsciously slid across the screen, over and over again.

Simple joys, the appreciation and satisfaction of small things, slowly soaked her dry, cold heart like a trickle of water. A long-lost, almost forgotten sense of tranquility, very faintly, grew deep in her exhausted soul.

Outside the window, dusk deepened, and the outline of the garden cast a vague yet massive shadow on the huge French windows.

The desolate and messy scene was a reflection of her inner world that was unable to be rectified at the moment.

In this interweaving of tranquility and blankness, an idea came to Wen Lingyi's mind.

She needs to do the garden.

The reason for this "sorting out" is natural and reasonable.

And she just needs a professional who knows how to revitalize life.

Someone who can bring this simple green vitality.

Wen Lingyi's fingertips finally stopped at a photo recently released by Zhou Jianxing, a close-up of a succulent plant with pink leaf tips struggling to grow.

She stared at the vibrant pink and green on the screen, as if she could see through it the clumsy, shy, yet full of vitality Zhou Jianxing.

But the little maintenance worker was too shy and she couldn't scare him.

Let's ask her to help me take care of the garden in a few days.