“I, I…”
"Speak." Xie Jian looked at her with a fierce look he had never had before.
She was frightened by the suddenness: "I didn't, I didn't."
"No? There was someone else outside the wall at that time. He saw you standing in the yard. Do you want to call him to confront you?" Xie Jian asked sternly.
Shen Heng was frightened by this and subconsciously said, "I didn't mean to do that. I really didn't mean to do that."
Xie Jian's face was grim, and he looked at her in disbelief. After an unknown amount of time, he said, "There is no such person at all."
Chen Heng's gaze moved upwards little by little, meeting Xie Jiansen's cold gaze.
"You've been having trouble sleeping, and sometimes in your dreams you'd say sorry to your sister-in-law and Min'er. Over the past two years, I've been harboring this doubt, so I tested you." Xie Jian slowly knelt down, looking the woman he considered a family member at eye level, his voice trembling. "Why? Why? If you had just shouted, if you had just told me, all these tragedies could have been avoided."
"Because you schemed against me, you deliberately told others that I had 1,000 taels of silver so that Li Dou and Li Quan could harm me. Xie Jian, you were the one who wronged me first." Even as she said this, Chen Heng's tears flowed more and more: "It was you who forced my mother to let me marry in her place. It's you, it's all your fault."
Xie Jian suddenly burst into a mournful laugh. Perhaps from the excessive grief, his eyes reddened slightly. "Chen Heng, if it weren't for my sister-in-law being afraid of gossip about you, she should have dismissed you the moment she found out it was you who married into the family. It was your Shen family who demanded the engagement, it was your Shen family who broke the engagement, it was you who married in place of me, and it was your Shen family who cursed me. In the end, all I did was scheme, and you blamed the Xie family for everything, completely severing ties with the Shen family."
"Ajian, I, I..."
"My sister-in-law once said that you were a miserable person and asked me to treat you well. But you never showed any sympathy for my sister-in-law's misfortune." Thinking of his sister-in-law's experience, Xie Jian burst into tears. "Min'er was so young and he loved you so much, and you watched him get hurt like this?"
"Ajian."
"You hate me so much, and you loathe my sister-in-law and Min'er so much. How can you enjoy the honor of becoming a scholar, a juren, and a jinshi with peace of mind?" Xie Jian placed his hands on her shoulders, forcing Shen Heng to look him in the eye. He asked in a hoarse voice, "Tell me, how can you enjoy it with peace of mind?"
Shen Heng was speechless except for crying.
"If you are so cruel, why don't you take a knife and kill me? Ah? Don't you hate me?"
"I don't know, I don't know." Chen Heng couldn't make out her own thoughts anymore: "Let's get a divorce. You let me go, and I'll let you go."
Xie Jian acted as if he had heard some ridiculous joke: "Divorce? You can forget about it in this lifetime."
In the following days, she was confined to this yard. She didn't know how long it had been before she heard that he was married.
Spring turned to autumn, and no one knew how many years had passed. When she was on her deathbed, Xie Jian came.
He was already the prime minister of the dynasty, full of imposing power. Not even thirty years old, but half of his black hair was already longer than a head of straw. He looked down at her condescendingly.
"Please let me go." Shen Heng begged.
"Chen Heng, do you think we are very similar? I said something on purpose, and you eloped with someone else. And you deliberately didn't remind me that my sister-in-law died, and Min'er's life was ruined. The two of us are really a match made in heaven. If we are not buried together, everyone will regret it."
Shen Heng choked with sobs.
"I've already completed the tomb, and the epitaph will contain our stories. Chen Heng, my epitaph will state that you died at the age of eighteen, the year you eloped." Xie Jian's expression was cold and emotionless. "How wonderful! There won't be all those disgusting scenes later."
Looking at the man in front of her who had become a complete stranger to her, Chen Heng was no longer able to answer him. She could only plead with the heavens in her heart that if she could live her life over again, she would never let these things happen again.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
