Chapter 91 Confrontation with Chen Ying and Geng Yunye led Cheng Xin to the second...
Geng Yunye took Cheng Xin to the second floor.
This staff family area was newly built by the factory a few years ago. The whole area is full of red brick houses. In the distance are several four-story staff dormitory buildings, with red brick walls and dark green wooden windows, and colorful clothes hanging on the balconies.
The building they lived in was a small courtyard exclusively for the factory director. It also had red brick walls, but was built in the style of a two-story building.
The lower half of the courtyard wall was made of solid blue bricks, reaching chest height, and was topped by an iron fence half a person's height. The black iron bars were welded into a diamond-shaped grid, with the tops bent into pointed flower shapes. Some of the black paint had fallen off, revealing the rust underneath.
The main door also had the same iron fence style, with two doors opening opposite each other and a brass buckle in the middle. When it was open during the day, one could see that the cement floor at the entrance of the main room had been swept clean, a red brick coal pool was leaning against the wall, and next to it was a clothesline with Cheng Xin's freshly washed blue cloth work clothes hanging on it.
Going up to the second floor, there is a square balcony outside the bedroom. The balcony is paved with cement, and there is a wooden cabinet with peeling paint against the inner wall. There is a bamboo pole next to the railing, and two pairs of freshly brushed Jiefang shoes are hung to dry. The balcony is spacious enough, not to mention sitting, even a small table is not crowded.
Geng Yunye moved the rattan chair to the railing and let Cheng Xin sit down, while he moved a small stool to sit next to her.
The evening breeze blew in through the iron fence, carrying the scent of leaves from the old locust tree in the yard. Looking down from here, workers were walking in groups of three or four on the corridor outside the red brick wall. If anyone wanted to get close to the wall, the shadows of the red brick wall and the iron fence would be long in the yard, and they could be seen by just raising their eyes from the balcony.
The sounds of conversation were mostly blocked by the floor. There was only the sound of wind blowing through the iron fence and the faint sound of laughter from the dormitory building in the distance. It really became a place where people could talk in peace. It was bright and open, and there was no need to worry about being eavesdropped.
Geng Yunye sat in silence, his eyes fixed on the fence below. An employee rode by on a bicycle, the bells jingling as they went away.
He suddenly turned his head to look at Cheng Xin, his lips moved twice, and he swallowed the words back.
Cicadas were chirping in the shadows of the trees in the distance, and crickets were chirping in the bushes nearby. Cheng Xin saw the hesitation in his eyes, but she didn't urge him, just quietly waiting for him to speak.
After a while, a firefly flew past. Geng Yunye took a deep breath, looked up at Cheng Xin again, and revealed the incredible secret in his heart: "Xinxin, do you believe that people have a previous life? I remember... our previous life."
The moonlight was quiet, and the chirping of insects seemed to have stopped.
Geng Yunye's deep voice tells the story of Cheng Xin's hardships in her previous life.
"In your last life, you got pregnant three times, but you couldn't keep the baby."
"The first time was in the middle of winter, and you didn't even know you were pregnant. I was out of town doing business, and it was just you and Chen Ying at home. You went out that morning and fell on the icy ground outside your home, and you lost the baby."
"The second time was in winter. You had just entered college and had a heavy workload. I was so busy at that time. You worked too hard for the final exam and had a high fever after the exam. The school doctor prescribed antipyretics for you. At night, you rolled around in the dormitory with a stomachache. When we were sent to the hospital, the child was gone again." He held Cheng Xin's hand tightly.
"The third time..." Geng Yunye's voice was extremely hoarse. "That time we were well prepared. On the day you found out you were pregnant, I turned down all my business and stayed at home with you all day. But who could have thought that you would fall down the stairs. The baby was already formed, and the doctor said it was a boy, but we still couldn't save it." He could hardly continue. "You were too badly injured and you can never get pregnant again."
Geng Yunye held Cheng Xin's hand, his voice shaking: "You hugged me and cried for three days and three nights, your eyes were so swollen that you couldn't open them, and after that, you refused to say a word."
"You don't even go to school. You sit by the window all day long, with the curtains drawn tightly. The room is dark, and you sit there from dawn to dusk without moving at all."
"One day when I went out to buy groceries, you locked yourself in the back room, and your medicine bottles fell to the floor. I pried the door open, and you were so limp that you didn't even respond no matter how I called out. I had to send you to the hospital to have your stomach washed before you were able to be revived."
Cheng Xin moved his fingertips, and he looked down at their clasped hands. "Another time, I woke up in the middle of the night and found you were not there. I ran to the balcony and saw you standing on the railing. I carried you down, and you grabbed my arm and bit it. You said that life was too tiring and you wanted to be free."
"You always cry. You cry when you eat, when you drink water, and even when you sit up and cry while you sleep at night. You also refuse to eat." His eyes were filled with tears. "I stayed by your side, but you became more and more withered day by day. I watched you wither before my eyes, and my heart felt like it was cut by a blunt knife. It has been cut for my entire life."
He raised his hand to wipe his face, and rubbed his palm across the corner of his eye: "So I can't bear to see you shed a single tear in this life. I will fight to the death to make up for the suffering and hardship you have endured."
Geng Yunye pulled his thoughts back to this life, and finally said: "I hesitated because I was afraid, afraid that the bad luck in the previous life would haunt you again. I went to see Chen Ying in person these few days and witnessed her end. I am sure that she has always brought us bad luck. I am confident that I can protect you and the child. I want to have children with you and grow old together. Are you willing?"
As Geng Yunye finished speaking, the balcony fell into silence.
The evening breeze brought the vague voices of people in the distance and the chirping of insects nearby, but in this small space, the air seemed to be frozen.
Cheng Xin stared at Geng Yunye steadily. The moonlight outlined the tense lines of his profile and the pain in his eyes that had not yet completely faded away.
Although she had no memory of her past life, the despair of losing her children three times, the withering of self-isolation, the thrilling moment of attempted suicide, and the heart-wrenching pain of being unable to save the situation despite his day and night care for her, all chiseled into her heart like a sharp chisel as he told her story.
Her heart felt tight, as if it was being gripped by an invisible hand, and the pain was so severe that she could hardly breathe.
Tears burst out without warning, blurring my vision in an instant.
Not for his past life self, but for the man in front of him, for her who he said had endured great pain, and even more for the sadness and self-blame that was about to overflow in his eyes. He remembered it too deeply, and it hurt too long, as if the mark of that tragedy had never faded.
She didn't remember anything, but he was still punishing her over and over again with the memories of his previous life. She raised her trembling hand and gently stroked Geng Yunye's clenched fist, feeling the stiffness of his knuckles.
She sobbed, her voice broken: "Brother Yunye." The rest of the words choked in her throat, leaving only surging tears and the heart-wrenching pain for him.
Cheng Xin sniffed and wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand. Then she leaned forward and used her tear-stained fingertips to very gently wipe away the moisture from the corners of his eyes and face.
"Silly boy." She finally choked out a sob and pulled his hand to press it against her violently heaving heart. "It hurts here. You've been through it for so long. Seeing you like this makes me feel worse than anything else."
She stretched out her hands, held his face, and forced him to look directly into her tearful eyes: "Look, I'm fine now, right in front of you, I can eat, sleep and be healthy. The past life is over!"
She emphasized: "Promise me that you won't torture yourself with the past anymore, okay? We have to move forward together and live our lives well."
Cheng Xin leaned against him tightly, holding his arm and leaning against him: "I am your wife. In this life and the next, I am willing to be with you. We can have children and grow old together."
Her fingertips curled up on the back of his hand, and confusion gradually emerged in her eyes besides heartache. She felt a little flustered: "Brother Yunye, there is something I want to tell you. Let's go back to the house and talk. It's a bit cold outside."
She rubbed the nonexistent goose bumps on her arms as she spoke. What we were going to talk about next was unusual and required a more private space.
Cheng Xin walked to the window and drew the heavy curtains. The room suddenly fell into a warm dimness, with only the bedside lamp emitting a soft halo.
She walked to the door and locked the bedroom door.
Geng Yunye watched her series of actions, and his heart moved slightly, and he had a premonition that she had something more secret to say. He leaned against the head of the bed, waiting quietly.
Cheng Xin walked back to the bed, but did not lie down immediately. Instead, she sat on the edge of the bed, facing Geng Yunye.
Under the dim light, her expression was somewhat solemn, with a hint of confusion and fear.
"Brother Yunye," she took a deep breath and spoke softly, "What you just said about your past life was too real and too painful."
She organized her words: "In fact, I had a very real dream a long time ago. It was so real that I couldn't tell whether it was a dream or a memory from my past life for several days after waking up."
Geng Yunye had an ominous premonition in his heart.
He sat up straight and held Cheng Xin's hand: "What dream?"
Cheng Xinhui held his hand: "In that dream, we lived in a novel world." Her voice was uncertain: "I am an insignificant character. Chen Ying and you are the protagonists of the story. She is the chosen one, destined to shine, and you are the hero."
Geng Yunye's brows were twisted into a furrow.
Cheng Xin continued to speak, her voice getting lower and lower, with unspeakable shame and pain: "In the dream, I was a person forty years later, and I accidentally saw a novel with the same name as all of us. In the book, I married you first, and then I was admitted to university. In college, I fell in love with someone else, a classmate, and got pregnant with that person's child. In the end, I died on the operating table due to dystocia."
"Chen Ying is my cousin. She lives in our home and has been helping to take care of our child. In order to raise our son legitimately, she signed a marriage agreement with you. Later, you were moved by her and fell in love with her, and you became a harmonious and beautiful family."
Cheng Xin bit her lower lip and said, "This dream is very real. My job in the dream is a senior lecturer in a foreign language training institution. My English level and cultural knowledge have been improved in the dream. Otherwise, how could I have studied for so many years and scored more than 600 points in just half a year by self-studying?"
"Everything in the dream is real. Even the history materials of junior high school and high school in my mind are exactly the same as our current development. For example, in a few years, Shanghai will start to vigorously develop Jiangdong New District."
After she finished speaking in one breath, she seemed to have exhausted all her strength and did not dare to look Geng Yunye in the eye.
Geng Yunye's face turned pale, and he hugged Cheng Xin into his arms with such force that she almost couldn't breathe.
His voice was filled with unprecedented anger: "That's fake! It's a complete lie and vicious misleading."
Cheng Xin was so shocked by his intense reaction that she raised her head: "Brother Yunye, how can you be so sure?"
"Because I know myself, and even more because I know you!" Geng Yunye held her face and forced her to look directly into his eyes burning with anger. "Even if you weren't here, I would never like a selfish, dark-hearted woman like Chen Ying in my past life, this life, or the next. Your sense of responsibility for your family is engraved in your bones, and you would never do such a thing!"
His words were like a hot iron, melting away the haze and self-doubt in her heart bit by bit.
A cold light flashed in Geng Yunye's eyes, and he said with gritted teeth: "It must be Chen Ying's doing. People in their village say that she talks nonsense all day long, shouting that she is the heroine, and scolding the system for being greedy for life and abandoning her. She is also reborn, and she also played a trick on you, this crazy woman!" Everyone in the village thought that Chen Ying was abandoned by a lover named Xi Tong.
Cheng Xin took a deep breath: "She was also reborn? What about my dream?"
"That's right!" Geng Yunye's thoughts were extremely clear, and his anger made him even more perceptive. "It must be her! I don't know what vicious method she used to stuff her memories into your brain. She wants you to doubt yourself and sow discord between us. What a vicious mind!"
He became more and more angry as he spoke, his chest heaving violently. "But she never expected that I would be reborn. In this life, I have been on guard and never let her touch the key nodes of our life events. She didn't have the chance to harm you, and she was bitten by bad luck and became crazy. You stayed away from her and got rid of bad luck, so we have been smooth sailing in this life."
The couple looked at each other in the dim light, their eyes filled with shock, anger, and chill after piecing together the truth.
Geng Yunye's voice was filled with deep hatred: "In your previous life, you accidentally lost your child. It was definitely Chen Ying and her system that did it! She was present when you had three miscarriages, and we never doubted her. She is so cruel that she actually wants to use the same method to harm you in this life!"
Cheng Xin leaned in his arms, feeling his strong heartbeat. She hugged him back tightly, her voice full of determination after surviving a disaster:
"It's all over, Brother Yunye, I believe in you! I only believe in you!"
Geng Yunye held her tightly, his chin resting on the top of her head: "We must find her and ask her clearly."
A few days later, Geng Yunye drove and brought Cheng Xin to the village where Chen Ying lived. He did not enter the village, but asked someone to take the crazy Chen Ying to the abandoned garbage dump outside the village.
Chen Ying was lying on the ground, digging her nails into the mud and giggling, drool dripping from the corners of her mouth. She waved her arms at the air. "In 1990, the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets opened up, and you could become rich overnight if you bought stocks." She stared straight at Cheng Xin. "The courtyard houses in the capital are worth more than mountains of gold and silver. I know everything."
As soon as he finished speaking, he shrank back, holding his head and huddled in the corner, mumbling more and more vaguely: "What the system said... I remember it all... It ran away... I'm going to write it down to make a fortune..."
When Chen Ying was brought in, her hair was disheveled like dead grass, her clothes were dirty and torn, her eyes were cloudy and distracted, and she kept muttering to herself.
She caught a glimpse of Cheng Xin standing on the side of the road, and a creepy light burst out of her cloudy eyes, like a starving beast suddenly encountering fresh meat.
"Ah! Cheng Xin! Cheng Xin!" Chen Ying screamed shrilly, and rolled to Cheng Xin's feet, knocking her head wildly. Her forehead hit the hard yellow mud ground heavily, making a dull "dong dong" sound, and soon her face was covered with blood.
"Cheng Xin, cousin, I was wrong, I was really wrong! Please, please forgive me, let me go!" Chen Ying burst into tears, "Don't suck my luck anymore! Please, I kowtow to you! I'll work like a slave for you! Please don't bring me bad luck anymore!"
This sudden crazy action scared Cheng Xin, and she subconsciously took a step back.
Geng Yunye immediately stood in front of Cheng Xin, looking down at Chen Ying who was kowtowing on the ground.
He squatted down, with an invisible sense of oppression, and asked her in a guiding manner: "What is luck? How to absorb it? What did you do to Cheng Xin in your previous life? What is the system?"
When Chen Ying heard the word "system", her whole body shook violently, as if she had been electrocuted.
She raised her head, stared at Geng Yunye with bloodshot eyes, then suddenly looked at Cheng Xin, her face full of fear and resentment.
"The system...it ran away! It's afraid of death and doesn't want me anymore!" Chen Ying screamed incoherently, "You are the protagonists of this world. You have the luck of being a protagonist. I am a cannon fodder who can't even control my own destiny."
Her voice was like crying and laughing, and she danced with joy: "The system ordered me, as long as I get close to you and suck away your luck, I can change my fate and go from being a cannon fodder to becoming a winner in life...hahahaha...I am the protagonist..."
She suddenly started to cry, pointing at Cheng Xin: "In my previous life, I pretended to be pitiful and miserable to get close to you. I was your cousin! You got married in 1983, and I lied to you that my family forced me to marry an old man in exchange for a dowry for my brother. Then you kindly took me in and let me live in your house... Woo woo woo... You were so good to me... You treated me like your own sister... We ate and lived together..."
Her expression instantly became hideous and distorted. "But I came here to absorb your luck, idiot! The longer I stay with you, the more luck I absorb, and the more unlucky you will be. You'll break bones when you walk, your college entrance exam scores will be replaced by others, and every time something big happens to you, nothing ends well. You're a jinx who brings disaster upon yourself! Hahaha, you deserve it! Who told you to block my way!"
Geng Yunye suppressed his rage and continued to ask, "Did you cause Cheng Xin to have three miscarriages?!"
Chen Ying's eyes flickered wildly. She didn't admit it directly, but laughed shrilly, "She's so unlucky! Her luck was sucked dry by me, so isn't it normal that she can't keep the child? The system said that if I sucked her luck dry, I could replace her! Who knew that time would go backwards and the system would run away! It ran away! It lied to me!"
She pounced on Cheng Xin when she was not prepared and tried to hug her legs, but was kicked away by Geng Yunye.
Chen Ying fell to the ground, crying, "It's asking me to return my luck! Why? Why should I pay back the debt from my previous life! Only when Cheng Xin is doing well can my luck be a little better. If she is unlucky, I will be even more unlucky. It's all because of you that I have become neither human nor ghost! It's all because of you!" She accused hysterically, as if she was the biggest victim.
The truth is revealed!
It turned out that it was Chen Ying who used the system to deliberately harm Cheng Xin, and even found an excuse to claim that she was plundering her luck. It was also after she was reborn that she gave Cheng Xin her memories as a book-crosser, intending to mislead her.
Chen Ying lay on the ground, the blood from her forehead mixed with muddy water flowing into her eyes. She seemed to be unconscious, and she tightly grasped the hem of Geng Yunye's trousers and cried, "You were unlucky in your last life because I took your luck, but aren't you fine now? You have Geng Yunye, and you have a good life. You don't remember the pain!"
"Aren't you the protagonist? Shouldn't the protagonist be tolerant? You have already taken back the luck, why can't you be more generous! Can't you give me a chance to live?"
"You have so much luck, what's wrong with sharing some with me? I just want to live! If you don't even have this little mercy, what's the difference between you and me who try to steal my luck?" She cried more and more excitedly, "If you don't forgive me, you're forcing me to die. Then your hands will be stained with my blood, and you'll never live a good life with a clear conscience in this life!"
Geng Yunye's eyes were cold and sharp. He supported the pale-faced Cheng Xin and whispered, "Go back to the car and wait for me."
Cheng Xin glanced at Chen Ying, who was crying crazily on the ground, and felt nauseous and nauseous. She nodded, turned around and quickly left the garbage dump.
Geng Yunye watched Cheng Xin walk away, then slowly walked to Chen Ying, who was lying on the ground sobbing. He squatted down, leaned close to Chen Ying's ear, and said a few words in a cold voice that only the two of them could hear.
Chen Ying's body froze and her crying stopped abruptly. She raised her head, her eyes filled with fear, as if she had seen something more terrifying than hell. Her lips trembled and she couldn't utter a word.
Geng Yunye stood up, without even looking at her, turned around and strode away.
That night, the sound of chopping wood could be heard from the dilapidated courtyard of Chen Ying's home. The moonlight shone through the leaky window lattice, and she could be seen wearing a flowered shirt stained with oil. Every time the axe in her hand fell, the wood chips mixed with a little dark red stain fell on the gray ground.
The next morning, just after dawn, Chen Ying unexpectedly pushed the shabby food cart that had been sealed off and put it in the market. There was a crooked sign hanging on the cart: Buy a big meat bun and get a bowl of bone soup for free, cheap and affordable.
The meat filling of the buns was dark in color, with an indescribable fishy smell, and tiny fascia could be seen when bitten open; the bone soup, on the other hand, was cooked till it was white.
She dressed up carefully, put rouge on her face, greeted guests with a straight look in her eyes, and stared at the white mist rising from the steamer when no one was around. Since she went crazy, her alcoholic and violent husband has never appeared again, and no one in the neighborhood dared to ask about it, for fear that she would chop him with a kitchen knife if they disagreed with her.
After a few days, someone finally noticed something was wrong. The meat filling in the buns always had a tough texture, and occasionally in the soup you would find scraps that didn't look like bones and a human tooth.
Someone called the police and they went to search her house. They found the axe thrown in the corner, the dark red edge of the blade had turned black, and the things in the big water tank made the experienced detective feel sick.
Chen Ying chopped her missing husband into pieces with a kitchen knife, used the bones to make soup, and used the minced meat to make buns. Every day, she pushed a cart to sell the human meat buns and human bone soup to the neighbors.
The case shocked everyone.
In the end, after judicial appraisal, Chen Ying was found to suffer from severe mental illness. However, the means used in this case were cruel and extremely bad in nature, causing serious social panic, causing many people to accidentally eat human flesh, and having a very bad social impact. The court finally sentenced Chen Ying to life imprisonment, and she will spend the rest of her life behind bars.
Geng Yunye and Cheng Xin were not upset when they saw the news. The blood debt of their previous lives was completely settled with the disappearance of Chen Ying. The last trace of haze hanging over their fate was finally dispelled by the sun.
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