Chapter 20: The Murder Scene, Recalling the Past

The atmosphere in the room seemed to freeze. Only Zhu Mingyue knew that the remaining rational nerves in his brain were on the verge of snapping.

Because he could clearly see that Xie Pei had a gleaming axe tucked behind his waist, which reflected a blinding light under the sunlight.

He was certain that if he tried to escape, Xie Pei would kill him with an axe in a matter of seconds.

With medicine in front and a knife behind, under these circumstances, no matter what Xie Pei did, he was doomed to die, as long as Xie Pei was unwilling to spare his life.

Zhu Mingyue was only a teenager, and once she understood her current situation, she could not calmly face death.

His face showed despair and grief, and tears immediately welled up in his eyes. At first, the sobs were just soft sounds coming out of his throat, but then he could no longer control his emotions and cried uncontrollably.

Zhu Mingyue was beautiful. Her long, slightly upturned eyelashes were adorned with glistening teardrops that fluttered in the wind. Combined with her rosy eyes, they resembled a painting of red flowers with dew. Any normal person who saw her would probably feel pity for her.

But Xie Pei is not a normal person.

Just like when he first met Zhu Mingyue on their wedding night, he watched her cry without feeling any emotion.

Zhu Mingyue cried for half an hour, and towards the end, tears mixed with snot dripped down her face. Xie Pei glanced at the unidentified liquid that almost fell onto the tip of his shoe and took a half step back in disgust.

How can someone cry so much?

Xie Pei looked at the person in front of him, and a sense of confusion finally arose in his heart.

The sound of shattering porcelain echoed through the room. Zhu Mingyue, stunned, swept the glass to the ground. The medicine bowl was smashed into pieces, and the dark dregs of medicine stuck to the yellow mud floor, continuing to emit an unpleasant smell.

Zhu Mingyue's eyes lit up as she turned to look at Xie Pei: "I don't need to take my medicine anymore?"

Xie Pei was already sitting in a chair, carefully wiping the blade of the axe.

Zhu Mingyue shuddered again upon seeing this, wondering if he was trying to kill himself by giving him an axe instead of drinking the medicine obediently?

Xie Pei had no idea what he was thinking. He only felt that his newlywed sister-in-law was a crybaby. He had only threatened her slightly, but her crying had annoyed him.

His feud with Xie Hong was none of anyone else's business. He had no intention of killing Zhu Mingyue, so he wanted to get rid of her beforehand.

Unexpectedly, a slight mishap occurred, which is why Zhu Mingyue happened to stumble upon it. Xie Hong insisted on eating meat before he would drink the medicine, and Xie Pei was not going to give in to him. Since he was unwilling to drink it, he forced him to drink it.

His mother never even had a decent meal before she died, so how could he possibly deserve to eat meat?

Xie Pei had waited for this day for so many years; he dreamt day and night of Xie Hong dying at his hands, just as his mother had died in the same way at Xie Hong's hands.

When his mother married into the Xie family, she was already two months pregnant. Xie Hong was only eight years old at the time, and his biological mother had passed away more than a year earlier.

His mother was kind-hearted. Even after giving birth to him, seeing that little Xie Hong had no mother's care, she took the initiative to take on the responsibility and care for him as well.

But Xie Hong used his youthful and innocent appearance to do the most vicious things in the world.

He spread rumors in the village that his stepmother had brought an illegitimate child into the Xie family, causing the mother and son to be constantly gossiped about behind their backs.

At that time, Xie Pei did not know what a bastard was. He only knew that no children in the village wanted to play with him. The people his mother made him call "brother" often beat and scolded him in secret and even stole his food.

Five-year-old Xie Pei vaguely understood that his older brother should have been one of the closest people in the world, but he didn't want that; he hated Xie Hong.

As Xie Pei grew older, he turned ten in the blink of an eye. Having never had any playmates since childhood, he became extremely withdrawn. Even his parents rarely spoke to him. Compared to his childhood longing to play with his peers, he preferred to run to the back mountain. Occasionally, his mother would hunt a rabbit, skin it, and prepare it as an extra meal for the whole family.

Xie Hong ate the most. He was eighteen years old and had long reached the age to get married. However, Xie Hong had a decent appearance, but his marriage plans had been ruined several times because of his idleness.

It is said that you can't raise a child who isn't your own flesh and blood. But the mother naively believed that she had won Xie Hong's heart with her sincerity. Sooner or later, Xie Hong would be honest with her. For this reason, the mother traveled around trying to persuade him, and her hair turned white with worry, just so that this stepson could see her heart.

Little did she know that Xie Hong, whose sexual repression had led to a perverted mentality, had already blamed her and Xie Pei for all the mistakes that had caused his terrible situation.

If it weren't for that mother and son, he would be the only son of the Xie family. Even if he was idle and lazy, everything in the Xie family would be his, and he could easily find a wife just because he was the only son.

So Xie Hong turned his evil hand to Xie Pei's mother, who was the easiest to manipulate.

When did Xie Pei realize something was wrong? It was probably when he was thirteen years old. His mother's health suddenly deteriorated rapidly during that period. Her appetite, which used to be able to enjoy even the humblest food, suddenly stopped.

By chance, he discovered that Xie Hong and his mother seemed to have an exceptionally good relationship at home, so good that it seemed that Xie Pei no longer had a place between them. Xie Hong went to town to buy medicine and personally brewed it for her to drink.

Only after asking did he learn that Xie Hong had been brewing tonics for her for the past three years. Xie Pei's mother believed that this was Xie Hong's way of acknowledging her identity and showing her filial piety, so she couldn't refuse and drank every single bowl.

After falling ill, Xie Hong bought things even more frequently.

That wasn't some kind of tonic; it was a deadly poison, yet she was so engrossed in her own imagination that she couldn't pull herself out.

Xie Pei tried to stop her, but his mother slapped him. It wasn't the first time he had been hit, but it was the first time he had been hit by his own mother, all for an outsider.

Hong'er is right. You've never been close to me since we were little. Now that you see that I'm as close to him as mother and son, you want to sow discord. How can you be so sinister?

These were the words his mother had spoken. Xie Pei rushed out the door with bloodshot eyes, only to be met with Xie Hong's smug expression, which he found extremely ironic.

My mother eventually died that autumn, and she was buried on a hillside along with Xie Pei's resentment towards her for more than ten years.

The following year, his father accidentally fell off a cliff. Since there were no close elders in his parents' family who could make decisions, after his body was found, Xie Hong's maternal grandfather's family arranged for him to be buried with his ex-wife.

Xie Pei found it utterly ridiculous. The family and love his mother had pursued her whole life had not belonged to her, neither in life nor in death. And her only son, whom she truly loved, was being used as a tool to please Xie Hong.

After her death, Xie Pei began to conceal his talents and feign ignorance, deceiving Xie Hong and even everyone else.

Xie Hong caught a cold, so he added an herb that was incompatible with alcohol to the medicine for treating the cold. He knew that Xie Hong loved alcohol but also valued his life. After drinking the medicine, his health deteriorated, and the worse he got, the more he wanted to drink.

Over the years, his body had become weak on the outside but frail on the inside, and Zhu Mingyue's arrival inadvertently accelerated this process.

Even when Xie Hong was on his deathbed, he still did not know that his body had been harmed by Xie Pei. After all, who would suspect that someone who had been treated and insulted by him for many years would harm him, even if that person was not close to him?

Xie Pei revealed the truth as he lay dying. Looking at the other man's wide-eyed, unseeing face, the mountain that had been weighing on his heart for so long finally came to an end.

Joy? Perhaps a little, but not much, just like his mother's love for him.

He did this simply to give his innocent, kind, and foolish mother an explanation by exchanging his own life for hers, and to put an end to the nearly eighteen years of oppression he had endured.

A pair of slender, fair hands touched the handle of his axe. Xie Pei was jolted back to reality, only to see Zhu Mingyue had quietly approached him and tucked the axe behind her back.

Zhu Mingyue's hand missed its mark, and he felt bitter. It was clearly a matter of life or death, and he was waiting for the verdict, but this person had lost his composure right under his nose.

This gave him the audacity to try and pull out the other party's weapon, even though he was afraid of the consequences.

Seeing that she had been found out, Zhu Mingyue looked embarrassed and kept silent, clutching the hem of her clothes with both hands.

"You can leave now," Xie Pei suddenly said.

"You...you mean, let me, let me go?" Zhu Mingyue was incredulous and began to stutter with excitement.

Good heavens! He thought he was about to die here, but unexpectedly, things took a turn for the better. Not only did the other party not kill him, but they also let him go. Someone pinched him and told him that all of this was real and that he was not dreaming.

Xie Pei walked to the bedside and laid Xie Hong's half-reclined body flat on the bed.

Xie Hong's face was deathly pale. The fear of the corpse made Zhu Mingyue feel a greater sense of reality. Yes, all of this was real. It was true that Xie Pei wanted to let him go, and it was also true that he murdered her husband.

Zhu Mingyue asked cautiously, "Then shall I really leave?"

Xie Pei ignored him, standing in front of the bed with his back to him as if in a meditative state.

Zhu Mingyue was secretly pleased to see that the other party didn't care about her going or staying at all, but she was quickly overwhelmed by reason.

Although her husband was gone and her brother-in-law allowed him to leave, there were still so many eyes watching in the village, so she couldn't just leave the village openly.

However, if they stayed at the Xie family's house until night before leaving the village, they would inevitably run into Xie Hong's maternal grandfather's family, who were returning.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Zhu Mingyue racked her brains trying to come up with a better decision.

But the old lady acted faster than he made his decision.

The moment the courtyard gate was pushed open, Zhu Mingyue and Xie Pei's eyes met. The two, who were usually on different wavelengths, acted with remarkable tacit understanding at this moment.

When the old lady rushed in, the scene that greeted her was:

Zhu Mingyue knelt on the ground, half-lying on the headboard, tears streaming down her face, while Xie Pei remained expressionless, though his slightly reddened eyes revealed his inner grief.

And when I saw the person on the bed was stiff and motionless...

old lady:……

He leaned back, his eyes rolling back as he fell straight down.

"mother!"

"Mother!"

Two middle-aged men followed closely behind and quickly stepped forward to help the old lady.

The old woman was pinched in the philtrum and slowly woke up. Her two sons helped her up, and she collapsed in front of Xie Hong's body. After examining it for a moment, she let out a loud wail.

She knew Xie Hong didn't have much time left, and only wanted to hurry back to call her two sons and daughters-in-law to come and take care of him. Little did she know that this departure would be her last farewell to her grandson.

The two uncles also had tears in their eyes.

Although Xie Hong was a good-for-nothing nephew, he was the only bloodline left in the world by their eldest sister. It would be a lie to say they weren't sad that he was gone.

Zhu Mingyue's crying was initially quite genuine, but compared to the genuine crying of several others, it seemed fake. So she simply covered her face with her wide sleeves and occasionally let out a few muffled sobs by shaking her shoulders.