Chapter 29 From this moment on, she...

Zhang Luyuan suddenly spoke, his voice low and hoarse: "You're just going to leave like this because of those completely unfounded speculations?"

A thin layer of anger surfaced in his eyes, both urgent and stubborn. "You didn't even ask me a single question before you made up a whole drama in your head?" His tone was as if he was trying his best to convince her, and himself, that it was all just a misunderstanding on her part.

Xia Zhiyao merely glanced at him briefly, her gaze as cold as a lake covered in frost on a winter night.

“Zhang Luyuan,” Xia Zhiyao’s voice was icy, “you know what kind of person I am.”

She paused, then slowly and firmly uttered each word: "Would I do something so futile without solid evidence?"

Her expression was as if she were watching a play that was already nearing its end, with the actors mechanically reciting their lines, completely unaware that the audience had long since left. She could even mentally predict what he would say next.

At that moment, Zhang Luyuan truly realized that she had stopped struggling, stopped blaming, and stopped losing control of her emotions. She had already withdrawn, even saving herself the anger.

Her calm had completely vanished, more deadly than anger. It was a genuine indifference, detached from emotions, from relationships, and even from his world.

Zhang Luyuan's face darkened inch by inch, and the mask of "rationality" he had maintained finally cracked. "What right do you think you have to decide to break up?" His voice was extremely low, with barely suppressed anger surging within him.

The next second, he stepped forward and grabbed her shoulders. "You disappeared without a word, and there's been no news for two months. Now you're standing in front of me like this, saying it's over?" He gritted his teeth. "I don't agree."

Xia Zhiyao didn't struggle, she just stood there quietly, her tone almost indifferent: "Zhang Luyuan, what have I ever asked you for? And what have you ever truly given me?"

His eyes widened suddenly, his fingers loosened, but he couldn't retreat or advance.

She suddenly laughed, a very faint laugh. "Those things in bed?" She spoke very slowly, as if she were subtly humiliating them, crushing past intimacy into powder, and continuing to crush it mercilessly: "They're worthless."

She added in a low voice, "Sorry, other people can give me that kind of thing too."

Zhang Luyuan's expression changed drastically in an instant, his eyes surging with humiliation, shock, anger, and a sense of utter disarray he had never faced before. "What did you say?" he asked through gritted teeth, the veins on his forehead bulging.

Xia Zhiyao slowly sat down, her movements elegant and aloof. She leaned back gently on the sofa, a cruel smile playing on her lips, but her eyes were empty, as if she didn't even care to be angry. "I slept with another man." She looked up at Zhang Luyuan, her eyes full of provocation. "Now, can you let me go? Can we break up?"

Zhang Luyuan's eyes were bloodshot, his face contorted with rage. "You're insane, Xia Zhiyao!" he roared, his voice hoarse and violent. "Do you know what you're saying?!"

Xia Zhiyao just looked at him, not intending to back down even when cornered at the edge of a cliff, "Of course I know."

She paused, as if deliberately making him wait for her next sentence, her eyes so sharp they could almost cut. "I'll tell you one more time," she said very slowly, "I slept with another man."

Her gaze was fixed firmly on his eyes, as if afraid he would miss a single word: "I've fallen in love with him."

Xia Zhiyao's voice suddenly became extremely low, yet clearer than ever before, each word distinct and deliberate: "I! Love! Him!"

“He made me realize—” she paused, as if trying to etch those words into her very being, “that I am worthy of being loved.”

"It's not the charity you speak of, not the leftovers I have to swallow my pride for, and certainly not the control and demands you're used to having."

She approached step by step, her voice chillingly cold, "It's because I am me that he loves me."

At that moment, it was as if Zhang Luyuan's last layer of disguise had been stripped away, and all his explanations became a joke.

She looked him straight in the eye, her expression calm and undisturbed. "You're not angry because you love me. You just can't accept that someone has escaped from your control."

"You always thought you could control everything—my decisions, my job, my life, my emotions, even my decision to stay or leave."

“You call suspicion protection, emotional abuse restraint, and possession love.” Her gaze was calm yet sharp, like a knife’s edge. “And then you thought I would be grateful.”

She took a step forward, looked directly at him, her gaze devoid of resentment, only filled with a clear-eyed understanding, and said, "I'm sorry, Zhang Luyuan."

“You overestimate yourself.” She paused, a slight smile playing on her lips, a smile as thin as a blade, but her eyes were colder than her smile: “And you underestimate me too.”

There was no crying, no arguing, no room for compromise. It was just a woman who, slice by slice, returned all her past—which had been denied, swallowed, and controlled—to the man who always stood in control, yet claimed to "love her."

Anger, resentment, humiliation, and belated panic surged in Zhang Luyuan's eyes like a tide, but he couldn't utter a single word, as if something was tightly choking his throat.

Xia Zhiyao didn't back down; instead, she slowly took a step forward. Her high heels made a light, cold sound on the floor. "Seven years," she said, each word dripping with a chilling clarity. "You kept promising a future, promising to consider my needs… and what was the result?"

She looked up at him, and in that instant, it was as if all her emotions were severed: "I've never done it even once."

“I’ve been disappointed too many times,” she said softly, but it was colder than any roar. “Now, I don’t even feel it’s worth wasting time feeling sorry for you.”

Zhang Luyuan's expression finally became completely chaotic. Almost instinctively, he moved closer to her, his voice low and urgent, almost pleading: "Tell me what you want, I can do it, I really can. Zhiyao, don't say that... I can change, I'm willing to change, okay?"

He was no longer the superior controller, but someone who had lost control for the first time, panicked and at a loss. Xia Zhiyao simply shook her head.

"I know you can't change."

Zhang Luyuan froze, his face turning pale instantly. But he was still unwilling to give up, and tried to grab her hand again, as if trying to catch a piece of driftwood that was sinking.

"Zhiyao, no matter what you say, I'm willing to change. Please don't do this, I beg you..."

Before she could finish speaking, she had already shaken off his hand without hesitation. In that instant, her movement was as clean as a kite with a broken string, carrying away all the compromises and forbearance she had endured in the past.

She looked up at him, her eyes cold and frosty. "I have doubted myself countless times. Did I do something wrong? Why don't I deserve to be cherished and treated well? Why do I always have to beg for things that others can get so easily, in exchange for a love that I don't even know is genuine or fake?"

Her voice was soft, yet every word was so powerful it was suffocating.

"I waited for you time and time again. I told you that what I hate most is waiting for people, but I still waited for you for seven years. I waited for you to keep your promises and do what you promised me, but you didn't. You just disappointed me time and time again."

She paused, her lips twitching slightly, as if she were smiling, or perhaps mocking herself: "But now I know, the only mistake I made was not leaving you sooner."

Zhang Luyuan's usually gentle and calm face was now frighteningly distorted; his mouth was open, but he couldn't utter a word.

Xia Zhiyao's gaze remained unwavering, her voice as cold and resolute as ever: "In these seven years, the pain you have brought me has far outweighed the joy."

She lowered her head, took a deep breath, and when she raised it again, her eyes held only deep weariness and utter determination: "I don't want to wait any longer, Zhang Luyuan."

Xia Zhiyao stood still, her figure slender yet upright, her gaze still calm as still water. She did not shed tears, nor did she show anger or make any desperate accusations. Instead, she exuded a profound clarity that pierced through her exhaustion, the clarity of someone who had struggled out of the mire of emotions and finally stood on the shore.

She spoke quietly, "You can go now." Her voice was so steady it was almost gentle.

Zhang Luyuan did not react immediately. He stood there, as if he had been suddenly swept into a silent storm, his expression blank, his face filled with disbelief and panic.

She simply looked at him, without pity or hatred, but with a calmness that suggested complete detachment and withdrawal, making it impossible for anyone to approach her.

"Don't do that again," she added softly.

“Go back and treat her well.” Her voice was so soft it was almost indistinct. “She’s the most innocent one.”

These words were the final slap, striking his last line of emotional defense.

Finally, he just stared at her blankly for a moment, his eyes filled with too many things: anger, confusion, resentment, longing, lingering thoughts, and even... a trace of belated regret.

But in the end, he said nothing, like a gambler who had lost all his chips, not daring to even look at the gambling table again, and silently turned away.

The moment he took his first step, his back looked almost disheveled, his heels slamming against the floor with a dull thud, as if he had trampled all his failures underfoot, but could no longer find a glimmer of hope for victory.

Xia Zhiyao stood at the door, her expression unchanged. Suddenly remembering something, she called out to him in a light tone, "By the way, could you take the box by the door for me?"

She paused, a sarcastic yet polite smile playing on her lips: "These are all things you've given me over the years, please take them with you."

"Oh, wait, there's this too." She took a few steps, went into the restroom, and came out with a bottle of perfume in her hand, which he had given her.

Without any hesitation, she tossed it far away. The perfume bottle landed in the box and made a crisp popping sound as it hit something.

That familiar scent instantly filled the air, sweet, intense, even suffocating, just like the last embers of their relationship, shattered into pieces.

The door slowly closed, shutting out the mess, silence, and lingering atmosphere of the room. Finally, only his own breathing remained in the air.

Xia Zhiyao stood quietly in the center of the living room, neither moving nor in a hurry to take off her coat. She looked as if she had just emerged from a war without gunpowder but with sharp, piercing wounds; no visible wounds appeared on the surface, but inside she was already riddled with holes.

But she knew she had won.

At least, from this moment on, she finally has the right to start afresh, cleanly and without any regrets.

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Author's note: This is the latest revision, made on August 9th. You can read the rest tomorrow. [doge emoji with rose in hand]