Chapter 80 The Red String Breaks: This is Yue Jin's Punishment for Him
When Le Zhao saw the letter from the Prince, the world spun before his eyes.
The letter, written in black and white, announced his sister's death, but made no mention of the cause. He turned the thin yet heavy sheet of paper over and over, reading it countless times, his mind blank with only one thought: How could the terrible news in this letter possibly be about Le Jin?
This young woman was so lucky; despite being abandoned by her biological parents due to congenital asthma, he found her and raised her to this beautiful age. But today, upon opening his eyes, he received an obituary from afar, saying she was dead?
Le Zhao couldn't believe it. His heart pounded, each beat accompanied by a dull ache. He hadn't even told his parents that he had ridden alone on his cloud-like horse to Luoyang, a journey that would normally take a month, but he had forced himself to complete in just six days and six nights.
Le Zhao constantly wondered if the notice of no cause of death was just Le Jin playing a prank on him. She was probably angry that her parents and brother were all in Shuzhou after their marriage, and none of them had come to visit her. Yet, he wrote to Le Jin every ten days, telling her about things at home, but dozens of letters had gone unanswered…
During the journey, the wind whipped against his face until he could no longer feel it, and his once handsome face became gaunt and sallow. But Le Zhao didn't care. He even thought: if Le Jin were to stand before him in Luoyang, alive and kicking, he wouldn't be angry even if she was playing a prank on him.
Upon seeing the Meng residence, Yue Zhao's eyes flashed sharply, and his whole body trembled.
There was no written inscription of "offering sacrifice" on paper, nor was there any white silk hanging high. The vermilion plaque on the gate shone brightly in the spring sunshine, and the stone lions on both sides stood majestically, still presenting an imposing atmosphere.
Le Zhao let out a long sigh of relief on his horse, a smile involuntarily creeping onto his lips. However, the next moment, people from the Meng family came to greet him. Their faces were clearly filled with sorrow, and they avoided his gaze, not daring to say a word.
A mountain seemed to press down on his chest, shattering Le Zhao's beautiful illusions bit by bit. Without saying a word, he dismounted and rushed straight to Meng Shutai's residence.
When Uncle Wang came out, he came face to face with him. Seeing him rushing over with a gloomy face and a long sword in his hand, he was so frightened that he immediately stopped him.
"Uncle! Please calm down. The young mistress's passing was an accident; none of us expected it..."
Le Zhao ignored his explanation, shoved him aside, and strode into Meng Shutai's room. He gripped his long sword, his knuckles white, and his anger and hatred boiled over in his chest.
The room was eerily cold. Le Zhao, unaware of Meng Shutai's intentions, used his longsword to part the curtains and slash straight at him.
However, after the sword tip pierced through the last layer of gauze, the scene before her eyes overwhelmed Yue Zhao with grief and made her faint. Her legs went weak, and she seemed to be weighed down by a weight.
Who else could the girl lying on the ice bed be but Le Jin?
"Meng Shutai, aren't you going to give me an explanation?"
The sword tip continued to approach the man's neck until a drop of blood rolled down.
Meng Shutai looked into Le Zhao's weary and worn-out eyes, not understanding why he had come.
"She is not your sister."
He didn't want to explain anything to anyone, and casually uttered a sentence, implying that Yue Zhao had no right to question him.
In this world, only Meng Shutai and Le Jin are inextricably linked and inseparable; all other people and things are just heartless dust, only arousing people's disgust.
Le Zhao's eyes reddened instantly. No one knew how much effort he had to exert to restrain himself from stabbing Meng Shutai to death with his sword.
He lowered his voice and took a deep breath. "She wasn't my sister when she was born, but over the years we've cherished her like a treasure and treated her as our own daughter. She's no longer the orphan in swaddling clothes she once was."
“Meng Shutai, you don’t understand what love is, nor do you understand what feelings are.”
As Le Zhao poured out his heartbreak as an older brother, Meng Shutai suddenly felt a twitch between his brows, and the scene before Le Jin fell from the tower flashed before his eyes.
She also said he didn't understand love, that he was a cold-blooded monster in human skin. But he wanted to die with her, to have his soul and body intertwined with hers, to imprint himself on her for eternity—wasn't that love too?
How could that be?
Le Zhao's grief-stricken gaze fell on Le Jin, and he spoke in a trembling voice, "You've really gone mad, you won't even give her a funeral..."
The sword tip was pulled from Meng Shutai's neck. With a twist of her wrist, Le Zhao plunged the sword deep into Meng Shutai, shouting, "If you don't love her, why did you scheme so hard to force her to marry you back then?!"
Le Zhao's sword was aimed straight at his life. However, just as the tip of the sword was about to pierce his heart, Meng Shutai grabbed the sword with his bare hands, his palm embedded in the blade, blood dripping from it.
"She's not dead, so why should I send her underground?"
Meng Shutai looked at Le Zhao expressionlessly, scoffing at his sorrow.
"She will come back, she definitely will."
Le Zhao sneered, his gaze falling on Meng Shutai's bleeding hand. "Wait for her to come back to life? Too much trouble. Wouldn't it be faster for me to send you down to see her?"
As Le Jin's husband, he not only failed to protect her but also prevented her from resting in peace after her death. He deserved to die!
Meng Shutai looked listless, as if saying another word to him would be a waste of energy.
"She's not dead, so why should I die? She'll be sad if she comes back and can't find me."
As Meng Shutai spoke, a dark crack appeared in his heart, from which bitter blood seeped out, seeping into the rest of his life, a future that could be foreseen at a glance.
This was the punishment Le Jin gave him.
He had been devoted to death since childhood, but she made him afraid to die even if he wanted to. Her ghost did not go far, but lurked in the shadows like a shadow, waiting to jump out and mock him after he went mad.
But Le Zhao was completely unaware that, in his eyes, his beloved younger sister, whom he had cherished since childhood, was gone, while her suspicious husband was still pretending to be crazy, which made him so angry that he saw stars.
In his line of sight, Meng Shutai had a red rope with a golden bell tied to his wrist, one end connected to Le Jin and the other to him, forcibly binding the two people separated by life and death.
But since the person is already dead, isn't all his lingering affection just an act?!
Enraged, Yue Zhao saw that the man was determined to live a life of madness and despair, so he twisted his sword and slashed at the red rope.
With a flash of sword light, the red rope was severed in two. The broken rope hung dangling in the air, the bells tinkling softly for a moment before falling silent and still.
"Her soul has returned to the underworld, what use is this kind of nonsense to her?"
Le Zhao's sarcastic remarks caused Meng Shutai's mental defenses to crumble.
That red rope, so alluring and captivating when it was wrapped around Yue Jin's body, was their most passionate memory. How dare Yue Zhao sever it with a single sword stroke?!
Meng Shutai's pupils dilated in astonishment, his phoenix eyes turning into bulging, malevolent bulges, filled with a burning hatred that surged towards Le Zhao. He abruptly stood up, knocking Le Zhao down, and snatched the longsword as Le Zhao staggered. He gripped the hilt with both hands, raised it high, took a deep breath, and prepared to stab Le Zhao in the abdomen—
He paused, turned to look at the quiet Le Jin on the ice bed, and suddenly felt a sharp pain in his heart.
She jumped from the tower that day, perhaps out of disgust for his repeated killings… Would he really strike again in front of her? Le Jin would definitely be angry. What if she got so angry that she came back to life and stopped looking for him?
After a moment's hesitation, Le Zhao regained her composure, kicked Meng Shutai away, and heard him groan before falling heavily to the ground.
He leaned on a small display case for support as he stood up, but unexpectedly pushed the case off the display stand.
The cabinet door shattered, and letters slid out, each one of which he knew intimately.
The letter he wrote to Le Jin was actually hidden away.
Le Zhao could no longer hold back and kicked Meng Shutai hard in the chest.
A sharp pain shot through his heart, Meng Shutai's ears rang, and he vomited a mouthful of blood. Le Zhao, still not satisfied, grabbed him by the collar, lifted him up, and began punching him repeatedly in the face.
"Don't……"
A surge of heat welled up in Meng Shutai's nasal cavity and gushed down, filling his mouth with it. But he ignored it and continued to plead with Le Zhao.
"Don't hit me! Ah Jin won't like me..."
If Ah Jin saw him disfigured, wouldn't it be better to just kill him with a sword?
Meng Shutai's broken pleas did not stop Le Zhao, but someone else rushed in.
"Stop hitting him! Stop hitting him! He's dying!"
Yuan Jingming and Meng Cizhang grabbed Le Zhao from the left and right, desperately pulling him and Meng Shutai apart.
Le Zhao's fists were no match for four hands, but he still managed to kick Meng Shutai's shin twice while being pulled along.
Meng Cizhang clung desperately to Le Zhao's arm, whispering urgently in his ear, "Young Master Le, she's gone. Even if you beat my brother to death, my sister-in-law won't come back!"
He gave Yuan Jingming a wink, and the two of them together dragged Le Zhao out, while Meng Shutai crawled towards Le Jin alone.
The red rope on his wrist had come loose, so he tightened it again and again until it made his skin drain of color. Holding the broken end between his fingers, Meng Shutai didn't even have time to wipe the blood from his mouth and nose, focusing all his attention on reconnecting the broken rope.
Waves of pain surged through his body, and blood kept flowing from his mouth, choking Meng Shutai, but he didn't care.
My fingers trembled like a leaf, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't tie the red string. I'd tie it, it would slip, I'd loosen it, I'd pick it up, tie it, it would slip again...
Time and again he concentrated intently, only to fail again and again. For the first time in his life, Meng Shutai experienced what it meant to be powerless to change the situation. Tears streamed down his face, landing on Le Jin's wrist and palm.
"Ah Jin, are you really angry with me? Why can't the red string be tied? I didn't kill Le Zhao, I really didn't, he hit me... I even vomited blood..."
Meng Shutai lowered his head and placed his cheek against Le Jin's palm, as if she were stroking him, hoping to receive a little tender pity from her in his fantasy.
"Ah Jin...it hurts so much. Did it hurt this much when you fell?"
Le Jin did not answer him, but Meng Shutai already had the answer in his heart.
"The physician! The physician!" He stumbled open the beaded curtain that blocked out the light, shouting at the top of his lungs, "Where's the physician! Get over here, quick!"
Meng Shutai rushed out of the room and stood in the bright sunlight for the first time in so many days. His eyes stung as if they had been gouged out.
Unable to bear it any longer, he knelt down and covered his eyes, his voice filled with even more anxiety: "The physician! Go find the physician! Ah Jin says she's in pain, quickly go and give her pain relief!"
Le Zhao was pulled away by Meng Cizhang to be comforted. Yuan Jingming was waiting in the courtyard. He witnessed Meng Shutai's terrible state of madness and could not bear to look at him. He turned away and said, "Alright, alright, I'll go find the royal physician."
But Meng Shutai seemed distrustful of others, crawling forward on the ground using both hands and feet, muttering, "Ajin, wait for me, I'll get someone to relieve your pain right away..."
After his eyes adjusted to the pale golden sunlight, Meng Shutai opened his eyes slightly and saw an exquisite silk dress come into view.
"Young Master Meng, Jingming has already gone to call for help. Shall I help you up first?"
Jiang Yingyun's nose stung with tears, and she choked back sobs as she spoke. How could the once renowned Meng Langjun of Luojing have become such a grotesque, inhuman creature?
She knelt down and reached out to him, but he suddenly pushed her away, and Meng Shutai even hit her stomach with the back of his hand, causing her a sharp pain.
"Get out of my way!"
Meng Shutai scrambled to his feet and ran off, his robes flapping wildly. But he hadn't gone far when he suddenly stopped and turned to look at Jiang Yingyun.
An unusually intense gaze focused on her lower abdomen, startling Jiang Yingyun into taking a few steps back.
She heard Meng Shutai ask:
"You have a living person inside you, right?"
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Author's note: Here I am! [cheering emojis]
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