You are not an object, you are my lover.
Looking at the unfamiliar face before her, Xiuya gazed into his eyes and knew deep within them that it was her Li Yuan.
Her self-esteem was finally stripped away. She clenched her hands and asked with difficulty, "Would you find me...dirty? If I had escaped from the Wang family back then, would you still want me? In this day and age, is a woman's chastity still so important?" Her voice was broken and fragmented.
It was too difficult to step out of the place where she was confined; the iron shackles on Xiuya's wrists were still there.
Wen Dai opened her mouth, almost instinctively wanting to answer for Lai Yuan, but after a moment of furrowing her brow, she swallowed back what she was about to say and turned her gaze to Lai Yuan's face.
"No, you did nothing wrong. Those things only make me feel sorry for you." There was a look of regret in his eyes. When he gazed at Xiuya, his hands clenched into fists, whether he was enduring the pain in his soul or something else was unclear.
Lai Yuan couldn't help but walk closer to her until he could see her face clearly in the dim space. He said, word by word, "If you had been able to escape the Wang family back then, I would have welcomed you. It's not a matter of wanting or not wanting. You are not an object; you are my lover."
But his resolve didn't last long. His tone abruptly changed, his eyelids drooping, and he spoke with some reluctance: "But... I can't give you the position of a wife anymore. I was already married then, and if I suddenly divorced her, it would be too ungrateful. In that era, divorced women usually didn't have a good ending. The specifics will probably need to be discussed with her. If she's willing to divorce, I'll continue to compensate her; if she's not willing to divorce, I'll ask you if you're still willing to marry me. If you're not, that's okay too. As long as you need me, I'll be by your side."
Lai Yuan laid out the path he couldn't take in his past life from a speculative perspective, his tone sincere. Xiu Ya's lips, still slightly parted, didn't fall. She thought, if there really were a "what if," it would probably be as he said—he had always been a very responsible person.
What she heard next made Xiuya even more relieved that she hadn't loved the wrong person. Laiyuan answered her question: "This era is quite polarized. Some people don't care, and some people do care, but the definition of chastity has been misunderstood by later generations. As far as I'm concerned, I don't think a woman's purity has anything to do with whether she's a virgin or not. As long as she doesn't willingly degenerate, she will always be clean."
The accumulated stuff inside her suddenly emptied, her elegant shoulders relaxed, and the smile on her lips became much more genuine. Her almond-shaped eyes, raised in repose, seemed to hold a sense of relief. "I understand. I will continue to wait for you, if there is a chance to meet again; but for now, I wish you happiness, with your family." Her voice gradually became ethereal.
After the last note faded, Lai Yuan raised his hand to his forehead. He slumped his head, frowned, and remained silent for a long while before his eyes rolled back and he fainted. Lai Wenyi, who caught him in time, was too weak to lift him up, so she made sure he didn't fall too hard. She squatted down, and Lai Yuan's head rested in the crook of her arm.
Lai Wenyi looked up with worried eyes, "What's wrong with my dad?"
Chen Sizhe, who had been standing with his arms crossed, looking like an outsider, moved his eyes. He glanced at the unconscious Lai Yuan and said succinctly, "Brain overload. He'll wake up on his own in a while."
"Her resentment is gone, she's been released from suffering." Wen Dai glanced at the sword still hanging above Xiuya's head, then turned her gaze to Chen Sizhe's face. After their eyes met, she fluttered her eyelashes twice, and the latter frowned. "Is your eye twitching?"
The friendly, conciliatory look she gave was questioned as a sign of her eyes twitching... Wen Dai twitched her lips twice, puffed out her cheeks, and said irritably, "I'm implying that you should get rid of that thing you're hanging over people's heads."
Lei Jian was taken away, and the task of the exorcism was taken over by the immortal who hadn't done any real work behind Wen Dai. Before Xiu Ya left with the immortal who was with Wen Dai, the iron chains and shackles binding her body disappeared. She stared at Wen Dai with a sincere smile on her face, "You will succeed. What you seek will be achieved."
Not yet knowing whether it was a blessing or a prophecy, Wen Dai smiled back at her, "You too, you will find your happiness."
As she witnessed the soul gradually turn into nothingness, Wen Dai answered the question posed to her by the immortals in her heart.
"Since we can't escape the world anyway, we might as well face it as we were before. Whether she will be reincarnated or not is uncertain now. Who knows if she will be recruited by the underworld? The future is unpredictable, and fortune-telling can't be 100% accurate, especially the future of the deceased. Even fortune-telling and numerology become ineffective then."
The heavy, gloomy energy that had gathered in this space finally dissipated, and Lai Yuan, who had been lying unconscious in Lai Wenyi's arms, slowly woke up as if he had chosen the perfect moment. His eyes were empty and blank.
Lai Wenyi happily helped Lai Yuan to his feet, stared at him with wide eyes, and asked anxiously, "Dad, are you alright? How are you feeling now?"
"I...I'm a little dizzy, and my arm hurts a lot. What happened? Did you kill that female ghost? I don't know why, but my head is spinning." Lai Yuan's brows remained furrowed. He rubbed his temples, turned to Chen Sizhe, and asked anxiously, "Mr. Chen, are you alright? I only remember you fighting with that female ghost just now, and there were so many spiders!"
Lai Yuan was now calling her a female ghost repeatedly, and his expression was completely different from before. Even Lai Wenyi found it strange. She loosened her grip on Lai Yuan's arm and asked hesitantly, "Dad, don't you remember what happened just now? And what about your arm? Don't you remember how it started hurting?"
With the three of them watching, Lai Yuan slowly shook his head, hesitation shifting from Lai Wenyi's tone to his face, "Is there something I should remember?"
An arm stretched out, and Wen Dai raised her hand and waved it. She glossed over what had happened earlier, "It's nothing, it's nothing, it's good to forget. It's just something from the past, you'll remember it when you need to. Everything here is taken care of. In this basement... the female ghost's name is Xiuya. Let's all be polite, okay? That's Xiuya's urn over there. If you're superstitious, I'll take it. It's time to bury her." Her wallet was about to get a little thinner.
“She should indeed be buried. I will handle this matter. However, we would like to trouble you two to take a look at the feng shui of the burial site. It is pitiful that she has encountered so many terrible things.” Lai Yuan nodded, his words carrying a sigh, but the look in his eyes was completely different from before; now it was pity.
Wen Dai turned her gaze and met Chen Sizhe's eyes. For a moment, her heart felt like it was beating prematurely. He seemed to feel the same way, and they both looked away in unison. She lowered her eyelids, feeling a sudden, inexplicable melancholy.
The door at the bottom of the stairs was opened again, and dust rushed in. The people covered in dust took off their masks as soon as they stepped out, and Lai Wenyi coughed as she closed the door.
Just then, Lai's mother, who had finished cooking, came over to greet them. "Oh my, you're out so soon!" She took a few steps back, tilted her head back to turn her face to the other side, and then looked at them again, saying, "It's only been an hour and a half."
She patted her chest and said thankfully, "At first, the basement door suddenly slammed shut. I thought you weren't going to be able to get out. I was thinking that if you didn't get out by nightfall, I would call the fire department to break down the door."
“We didn’t expect it to be so fast either.” Wen Dai patted the dust off her clothes. Her face, beaming with a bright smile, showed no sign of the danger they had experienced in the basement. They seemed to have resolved something easy—that’s what Lai’s mother thought.
Fortunately, the blood on Chen Sizhe and Lai Yuan did not carry away the illusion and had already disappeared when the environment changed; otherwise, I really wouldn't know how to explain it to Lai's mother.
The beautiful woman took two steps to Lai Yuan's side, grabbed his arm and dragged him toward the restaurant. Her movements revealed a hint of dependence as she murmured, "Come and help me taste that Songjiang perch. I don't know if it tastes like the ones here. I feel like I put too much cooking wine in it."
"Oh dear, you always find fault with things. I've never had a bad dish made by you..." Lai Yuan's footsteps stomped on the floor as he was being dragged along, his tone a mix of criticism and praise, revealing their intimacy.
Watching their departing figures, Lai Wenyi clutched her chest, feeling an inexplicable emptiness, and sighed softly, "Although I really want my parents to be happy, and I don't want my dad to leave us, I still can't help but feel sorry for Xiuya, and my heart aches for her. My dad's memories..."
Turning her gaze away from Lai's mother and Lai Yuan's retreating figures, Wen Dai sighed and shrugged, saying, "Xiuya erased it. She could have let Uncle Lai live his life with Li Yuan's memories, but she didn't."
"The reason for the brain overload is that after it accepts memories, they are selectively erased, and the memories are repeatedly modified, which the human body cannot withstand." Chen Sizhe added in a detached tone, his gaze lowered, and his unfocused pupils seemed to hold something.
At the dinner table, the group tacitly avoided mentioning what had happened in the basement. When Lai's mother inquired, Lai Wenyi complained, "The basement really needs a proper renovation. And it's probably because the previous owner was careless. They built one of those coffin rooms specifically to store the urns, so the person wasn't buried. My dad and I are planning to bury them. We'll continue to ask Wen Dai and Mr. Chen to handle the feng shui. They're both super reliable."
"Oh my!" Lai's mother put down her chopsticks, raised her hand to cover her mouth in surprise, and said in amazement, "Then we've been living with someone's urn for so many years? That's a bit scary... But the owner of this urn is also quite pitiful, not being able to be buried in peace for so many years; it would be good to find a place to bury him."
Lai Wenyi picked at the food in her bowl, a smile on her face, and said seemingly unintentionally, "I thought you would be very bothered by this, Mom, since this matter has nothing to do with our family and should be reported to the police. But Dad and I want to make a big deal out of it, and we also want her to have a good resting place after she dies. These are urns containing ashes from who knows how many years ago. If they fall into the hands of the authorities, they will probably just dispose of them haphazardly."
"Hey!" Lai's mother turned her head away indifferently. She scooped up some fish and put it into Lai Wenyi's bowl, and said with a gentle smile, "You are my daughter, so my thoughts are probably similar to yours. I don't know how the owner of this urn lived in life, but the fact that it was disposed of in the basement makes me feel that this person did not live well. It's not like they couldn't live well while they were alive, and they can't rest in peace after they die."
Watching the happy family together, Wen Dai felt a sense of relief. The Lai family are all very gentle people.
After the meal, Lai Wenyi used the excuse of seeing them off to go out with them. Stepping on the icy ground, her tone was even more cautious than her movements: "Will those people be punished? Xiuya has been given a proper rite of passage, but what about the two people who locked her up? Are they still in the basement?"
"No, their souls were already torn apart by Xiuya. They only exist because of Xiuya's power. Now that Xiuya is gone, of course their souls will be scattered. But it's still too easy for them," Wen Dai said regretfully.
Having always lived comfortably in the ivory tower built by her parents, even after traveling to many places, Lai Wenyi still couldn't help but sigh when faced with such a story: "The idea that good deeds are rewarded and evil deeds are punished seems like a lie. Heaven didn't punish the wicked. There were far more than just those two people who bullied Xiuya. I just searched for stories from that era on my phone, but I couldn't find anything. However, I did find that Wang Kun was very rich."
“There are countless stories like this, buried deep within. But if I happen to encounter one, I’ll dig it up.” Wen Dai raised her hand, making a prying motion. A thin smile played on her lips, but her eyes held a resolute determination. “Even if the damage is done, there will always be people, souls, who want the evildoers’ mistakes brought to light. That’s why I will continue doing this job, not just for the living; there are too many evildoers whose disguises need to be torn away, too many underwater tragedies need to be brought to the public eye. Ordinary people can’t see or hear, but I can. I won’t stand idly by.”
“Take Xiuya’s case for example. Few people know about it, and we don’t have enough evidence to make public, but at least we have seen the pain she has endured. Because it’s difficult for the living to overturn a verdict, let alone the deceased… We can only ensure that she is not forgotten. If more people can see her and more people can provide support for her, that is a positive reward.”
Lai Wenyi, who was walking beside Wen Dai at roughly the same pace, nodded vigorously and said without thinking, "Although it sounds bleak, it is indeed the reality. For example, my father, although he is the chairman of the case review committee, there are some cases where even if he provides help to those who want to overturn the case, he cannot really help them achieve their goal, because there are still procedures to go through. If any link goes wrong, the case cannot be retried."
"...Wait a minute, Uncle Lai is the chairman of the case-finding committee, right?" Slowing down, she put her hand on Lai Wenyi's arm and looked up at her in surprise.
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