slander
The asphalt road paved the way into the night, cars sped by, and the dust stirred up by the wind became visible under the lights.
"Thank you, Uncle Chen, for taking me home. I had a very fruitful day. Bye-bye!" Her clear voice even turned on the motion-sensor lights in the old residential building. Wen Dai closed the car door and turned to walk into the building. She climbed the short, narrow stairs one step at a time. When she reached the third floor, the red paint splattered on the ground caught her attention.
Under the dim yellow light, the remaining red paint looked like blood splattered at a crime scene. If it weren't for the strong smell of cheap paint, Wen Dai would have had a hard time identifying it as paint.
She continued climbing, the smell growing stronger. Her already aching head was further irritated by the pungent, head-on paint odor. She turned away, bracing herself against the wall to maintain her standing position, and gagged several times. But the papery texture under her hands drew her attention again.
By the light, she looked up and saw the paper in her hand—it was probably printed by herself, with varying shades of ink and the characters slightly crooked.
[That shameless 302, she was a mistress and then brazenly cursed people, causing my unborn child to die before even seeing the world! That shameless 302, she was a mistress and then murdered people! She caused my child to die!]
302? Isn't she 302?
Big-character posters, inexplicably meant to smear her, were plastered all over the walls of the staircase from the second to the third floor. Wen Dai frowned as she walked upstairs. The red paint splattered on the floor looked eerily strange in the yellowish light. When she reached her door, she just wanted to laugh.
The words "A life for a life" were written in large red paint on her door. Even the dark door couldn't stop the writer; the person covered the door with posters, pasting them all over it. The red paint even reached the door next door. An elderly woman used to live in the next room, but she passed away a few years ago, and the room is now empty.
Wen Dai tentatively touched the paint splattered on the doorknob with her finger, and the sticky red paint stuck to her fingertip, suggesting that the culprit had arrived not long ago.
Wen Dai lowered her hand, and she even had the leisure to take two steps back to admire her front door—well, it was a complete mess.
"Teachers, you should be able to tell me who the culprit is in this situation, right?" Already feeling unwell, Wen Dai didn't want to touch the paint-stained doorknob directly. She retreated to the corner of the stair railing, her lower back against the stainless steel railing, and lazily stood still, her unpainted hand groping for a tissue in her pocket.
The immortals didn't give her an answer immediately. In the quiet night, the first thing that rang in Wen Dai's ears was a disdainful laugh, "Didn't we tell you not to meddle in other people's business? Isn't this what happened? You want to push your own fortune onto others, so you're the one who will suffer the trouble."
“The mother and daughter you encountered at Zhong’an Temple, even if you hadn’t helped them then, they would have resolved their troubles sooner or later. You spared them the suffering they deserved, so aren’t you the one who suffers?” Just like most human parents, the immortals behind Wen Dai treated her the same way. When their children disobeyed and suffered, the first thing they did was to criticize them.
However, Wen Dai was a rebellious spirit. She fiddled with the tissue between her fingers, standing outside the door for a long time, keeping company with the cold wind. After a long silence, the motion-sensor light went out. In her heart, she slowly replied, "I'll eat it, I'll eat it. Anyway, I've suffered enough. Haven't I suffered enough? It doesn't matter. I'm carefree and have no burdens. But that mother and daughter are different. As a complete family, I can feel the bond between them. I know it won't do me any good, but so what? I did what I wanted to do, that's all. Whatever the result, I deserve it."
The immortal who had just been questioning her was now silent.
A moment later.
"It was the person in room 701 on the seventh floor who did it. She's the mother of the young man who called you a mistress today. Didn't you say she was going to get her comeuppance? She was two months pregnant and had a miscarriage."
The immortal merely answered her questions, and then avoided speaking, something that Wen Dai could sense. The old people behind her were furious with her… otherwise, they would have told her the whole story.
The act of fiddling with the thin paper finally stopped. Wen Dai took out a few more sheets of paper and covered the doorknob. As always, she was calm and composed as she opened the door and went inside.
Let's leave the troublesome stuff for tomorrow, and deal with the lawsuit; luckily, her perfect partner is a lawyer.
...
Poor sleep quality means being easily disturbed by the slightest noise.
The door didn't feel like it was being knocked on by a hand, but rather like it was being pounded by a thousand-pound hammer. The violent pounding forcibly woke her from her sleep, and her body's instinct was to pull the blanket up to cover her face and ears. However, a major characteristic of old residential buildings is their poor sound insulation.
"A life for a life! -- Open the door! You've got the guts to do it but not the guts to admit it, haven't you!"
The shrill female voice almost ripped off one's eardrums. Before Wen Dai could even lift her eyelids, her brows were so tightly furrowed that there was no room for even a moth to hide. Impatiently, she threw off the blanket and staggered off to the bathroom.
The banging and smashing outside the door continued, accompanied by two female voices, one young and one old, and a male voice playing music.
"Get out here!" Two muffled thuds as the door was kicked open, followed by, "You filthy bitch, you made my sister lose her baby, and you dare to destroy someone else's family but don't dare to admit it!?"
Unfortunately, the person in the bathroom slowly raised their eyelids, glanced at their reflection in their glasses to see if the toothpaste had touched their teeth, and then closed their eyes again, as if they were dreaming even while standing.
After Wen Dai finished washing up and changing clothes at her leisure, the noise outside the door subsided a little, but the muffled thuds from kicking the door continued intermittently.
Wen Dai walked to the door with her phone in hand. She leaned against the wall, giving the door, which creaked whenever it was opened or closed, a quick glance. Hmm, it's time to replace it.
The call was made to Chen Sizhe. Wen Dai kicked the insole in the entryway, her eyes glazed over, lost in thought.
"Another order? Is it urgent?" A deep, slightly hoarse voice slipped out from the receiver. Wen Dai glanced at it briefly, then said with feigned seriousness, "Yes, there is indeed a very urgent order, but how did you guess?"
The rustling of pages turning intruded into the receiver, followed by the crisp sound of a pen cap closing. "If you're not in a hurry, you should tell me via WeChat. Just give me a brief overview of the situation."
The loud bang that came in again made Wen Dai raise her hand to cover the phone's receiver. She glanced at the door, which seemed to have been knocked and shook slightly, and sighed, "Well... the situation is a bit complicated. Why don't you come over first? It's my house—you still remember the way, right? Be careful when you go upstairs, okay? I live in 302."
She hung up the phone immediately, turned around to face the only barrier between herself and the troublemakers outside, and reached out to touch the doorknob.
Before pressing the button, she silently asked the spirits who probably wouldn't care whether she lived or died, "If I open the door now, I hope I won't get kicked or slapped in the face, right? It's quite undignified, and being beaten and scolded doesn't suit me. Can you bear to watch me get beaten up?"
"No, show your face; act pitiful and play the victim, and the man outside won't have the heart to lay a hand on you. You can try to turn him against you first. Do you think we'd have the heart to watch you get beaten up? When it's time to be beaten up, you still have to be beaten up."
The fairy's reply sounded cold to her ears. Before Wen Dai could even utter the word "heartless," she slapped him on the cheek.
She hissed and raised her hands to cover her face, her features almost contorting into a grotesque shape. "Is it really necessary for you all? Oh dear, I was wrong, I was wrong."
Having shamelessly admitted her mistake and apologized, Wen Dai took a few deep breaths, then gripped the doorknob and pushed it open with a click, revealing her head.
From the man's perspective outside the door, just as he was about to kick the door shut, the door suddenly opened, and a white rose emerged from inside.
Her long, flowing hair, as smooth as black satin, cascaded down her chest with loose strands. Beneath a short, grey-apricot coat resembling a scarf, she wore smoky grey wide-leg trousers. The sophisticated look of her outfit, combined with her beautiful face, which was about the size of a palm, gave off an air of dignified elegance, like a white rose.
The stigma of being a mistress seems completely out of place for her; she doesn't even seem like someone who lives in this area.
As the man stood there, stunned, the woman in white rose spoke again in a gentle voice: "When I came back yesterday, I saw that my front door had been vandalized. You did it, didn't you? Why did you do this? You say I'm a mistress, do you have any evidence? You say I killed someone—but I was hardly ever home yesterday. Why are you slandering me and causing me trouble?"
Wen Dai was carrying the only luxury brand handbag she had recently bought with great difficulty. She pushed open the door and walked out, placing the bag in front of her. The light reflected off the bag, making the brand logo on it gleam. The woman standing by the door, leaning against the stair railing, seemed to have her eyes glued to the door.
She sighed softly, tapping the bag handle with her fingers. "I haven't even bothered with you spreading rumors about me, so why are you turning around and accusing me? And this door and the walls around it, these are all losses."
Her slowly rising peach blossom eyes, paired with her slightly furrowed brows, made her look pitiful when she looked at people, even though her words were sharp.
The man swallowed hard, then raised his chin and spoke in a rough voice, "My sister said she ran into you yesterday and then miscarried. Yesterday, my brother-in-law was even considering divorcing her. It's not that we want to smear you, but this is too strange. How could my sister miscarry right after running into you?"
"Didn't you notice?" Wen Dai maintained her previous expression, her brows furrowed and her eyes soft as she looked up at the man beside her.
The burly man blushed under her gaze; the red on his tan skin looked rather incongruous. His eyes flickered several times, and he stammered, "What...what did you find?"
Straightening her back, she adopted a serious tone and said in a self-righteous manner, "Every woman who has a miscarriage has drunk water and breathed air before the miscarriage—which of these two things has anything to do with me?"
Talking to fools is exhausting and time-consuming. Wen Dai really had no intention of playing the betrayal trick again, so she simply revealed her sharp tongue to the public.
However, a fool is a fool, after all. The man seemed to take her words as truth, unconsciously furrowing his brow and stroking his chin thoughtfully, saying, "What you said seems to make sense..."
Seeing her younger brother being blinded by this beautiful woman, the woman was furious. She slapped the big man's arm hard, glared at him, and gritted her teeth, saying hatefully, "You men are all cut from the same cloth! You all lose your minds when you see a glamorous woman! Zhang Lin, are you all tall but brainless?!"
Embarrassed in front of the guests he was interested in, the man known as Zhang Lin suddenly became defiant. He shoved the woman's hand away as she tried to slap him, causing her to stumble back two steps. If it weren't for a woman in her fifties standing behind her catching her, the woman would probably have fallen down the stairs.
Even so, Zhang Lin showed no remorse whatsoever. His eyes blazing with anger, he pointed directly at the woman staring at him in disbelief and roared, "You son of a bitch, don't you dare lay a hand on me! Zhang Ai, I'm only helping you because of our childhood friendship. Otherwise, who would care about an outsider like you who's already married? Do you think you're still a member of the Zhang family?! My parents told me not to get involved in your family's affairs, but I still remembered our blood ties!"
The unintentional words uttered seemed to cause Zhang Ai even more despair than the miscarried child. Even Wen Dai couldn't help but frown as she listened. She glanced at the man who had turned his back to her, then turned to look at Zhang Ai, who was holding onto the handrail. She saw that the woman seemed to have lost her soul, standing there blankly, her eyes staring at Zhang Lin.
The woman who had been holding Zhang Ai's shoulder stepped forward. She glared at Zhang Lin with exasperation, her face contorted in a frown. She waved her outstretched hand in the air, as if trying to mediate. "Oh dear—don't talk to your sister like that. She's your only sister. Don't hold it against her. She lost her child and is about to get divorced. It's normal for her to be upset."
“My own sister…so what if she’s my own sister? Once she’s married, she’s like water spilled from a cup. I’m only helping her out of kindness! She herself says that someone else caused her to lose her child, but look at this—” Zhang Lin took two steps to the side, held up and down her hand in front of Wen Dai, “Look at this yourselves, how could anyone possibly cause her to lose her child? She doesn’t even look as fierce as her! And she calls that person a mistress, but she doesn’t look like a mistress at all!”
The woman sighed and glanced at him, turning her head away. Zhang Ai, whom the woman was holding, tilted her head and let out a few bitter laughs that echoed clearly in the stairwell. She raised her hand and waved it behind her, avoiding looking at Zhang Lin, her voice weary: "Then go, go. I don't want your kindness. Yesterday you helped me put up the big-character posters, carried the paint and wrote the words; I'll pay you for that."
At this moment, Zhang Lin fell silent. He stared at those eyes that were so similar to Zhang Ai's, choked back tears, and remained silent for a long while. Suddenly, he turned his head and crossed his arms, which were wrapped in a black cotton-padded coat. He said in a hard voice, "You think I'm your dog, coming and going as you please? Don't interfere. I'll stop here today and see what's really going on. If someone has been wronged by your slander, I will help them anyway."
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