Remarried to a top-tier playboy, her reborn ex-husband is filled with regret.

Yi Wang leaned against the door frame, squinting at Shen Shi.

After watching for a while, he suddenly laughed.

The laughter was muffled and carried the smell of alcohol; it seemed to be laughing at her, or perhaps at something else entirely.

"Still not resting?"

The Wing King walked in and closed the door behind him.

The latch made a dull thud as it fell, and Shen's heart sank.

The Wing King walked up to her and looked down at her.

The moonlight shone on his face, distorting his gentle, jade-like features.

Looking at it now, it resembles a mask that has been worn for too long.

Under the influence of alcohol, one corner of it curled up slightly, revealing something murky and cold underneath.

"I will stay here tonight."

He said it casually, as if he were announcing a perfectly ordinary decision.

Shen's shoulders stiffened almost imperceptibly.

She looked up and saw the expression on his face.

The Wing King came here not out of remorse, not to appease, and not even out of habit.

He had just been drinking and was in high spirits.

While her father was imprisoned and the fates of her mother and sister were unknown.

He came to her room, wanting her to serve him.

Ms. Shen felt she should be angry, but she didn't even have the strength to be angry.

She simply turned her face away very, very gently.

"I am not feeling well today."

Her voice was so flat that even she herself felt unfamiliar with it.

"Please, Your Highness... rest in another courtyard."

The air in the room suddenly became quiet.

That silence wasn't just ordinary quiet; it was the suffocating stillness before a storm.

The thin smile on the Wing King's face faded little by little, like rocks exposed after the tide recedes.

He pressed his hand on the bedpost, a little too hard, making a dull thud.

Shen's fingers twitched slightly at the sound.

"I've come to comfort you out of kindness."

The Wing King's voice was very soft, so soft that it sent chills down one's spine.

"And yet you give me such a hard time?"

comfort?

When he uttered that word, Ms. Shen suddenly felt nauseous.

Her father was to be exiled, her mother confiscated, and her sister sold into the brothel.

And he called it comforting when he was drunk and broke into her room in the middle of the night?

She looked up in disbelief, her gaze carrying so much.

Shock, disgust, disillusionment, and something that has been utterly shattered and can never be put back together.

The Wing King saw that look in his eyes.

His expression changed.

It wasn't guilt or shame, it was anger.

It's the kind of sinister rage that comes from someone challenging one's authority.

He had been married to Shen for so many years, and this woman had always been compliant and submissive.

Whatever he says goes.

Shen never refuted him, never resisted him, and never looked at him with that kind of gaze.

That look reminded him of the ambiguous smile in Xiao Fang's eyes when he impeached his men in the imperial court.

He thought of all the people who didn't respect him.

But those people are one thing, but what is the Shen family?

The entire Shen family was wiped out; all of this woman's honor and disgrace were in his hands.

How dare the Shen family look at him like that?

The Wing King's gaze swept around the room before settling on Qiu He, who was trembling in the corner.

Qiuhe was only sixteen years old and was a maidservant that Shen brought with her from her maiden home as part of her dowry.

She was born with delicate features and fair skin. She always followed behind Madam Shen with her head down and eyes down, not daring to speak loudly.

Suddenly, the Wing King reached out and grabbed Qiu He's wrist.

Qiuhe screamed, struggling desperately like a sparrow whose wings had been caught.

"Your Highness! Your Highness, spare me... Your Highness, save me—"

Shen stood up abruptly, but the Prince of Yi only glanced back at her.

What she saw in that glance made her feel as if she were nailed to the spot.

It was a malicious, retaliatory, and condescending provocation.

You don't want to, do you? Then you can just stay here and watch.

The Wing King dragged Qiu He to the bedside.

This rosewood canopy bed is carved with mandarin ducks playing in the water and a hundred sons and a thousand grandsons.

This wedding bed is covered with a bright red brocade quilt and hung with a curtain of children.

Six years ago, on their wedding night, it was on this very bed that Prince Yi lifted Shen's red veil.

That was what the Wing King said with a smile: "I will treat you well for the rest of my life."

They drank the nuptial wine on this bed; she drank half, and he drank the other half.

Then throw the two wine glasses under the bed, one facing up and the other facing down, which is a very auspicious sign.

Madam Shen personally cut off a lock of her husband's hair, tied it together with a lock of her own hair, and placed it into the brocade pouch embroidered with twin lotus blossoms.

We became husband and wife, and our love for each other is unwavering.

She truly believed it at that time.

At this moment, the brocade pouch is still under the pillow, and the twin lotus flowers on it have faded with the passage of six years.

Meanwhile, her husband was on that bed, tearing open another woman's clothes.

The Wing King's actions were rude, a stark contrast to his usual gentle and refined manner.

The maid's cries and pleas for mercy echoed in the room.

The voice went from sharp to hoarse.

From a high pitch, it gradually became weak.

In the end, only intermittent whimpers remained, like a kitten being choked.

Shen stood still, motionless.

She didn't rush forward to stop him, didn't cry out, and didn't kneel down to beg him to spare the maid.

Because she knew it was useless.

Nothing she said mattered.

She just stood there and listened.

Listen to every sound coming from that bed.

Hearing the maid's cries and pleas, her sobs gradually turned into sobs.

Listen to his panting, along with the creaking sound of the bed frame shaking.

Shen's heart grew colder and colder, inch by inch.

The chill spread from her heart to her limbs, to her fingertips and toes, freezing her whole body into an ice shell.

Inside the icy shell lies the woman who once believed in love, in her husband, and in "treating others kindly in this life."

At that moment, he died completely.

After an unknown amount of time, the sounds finally stopped.

The Wing King got up from the bed, slowly and deliberately straightened his clothes and adjusted his belt.

His movements were calm and graceful, as if he had just done something extremely ordinary.

He picked up his teacup from the table, took a sip, and then walked a few steps toward the door.

He paused for a moment as he passed by the Shen family.

Shen did not look at him.

His gaze was fixed on the figure curled up in a ball on the bed.

Qiuhe had already fainted, and her clothes had been torn into a pile of rags.

His exposed skin was covered with bluish-purple finger marks and bruises.

The sixteen-year-old girl at this moment was like a flower that had been crushed and thrown on the ground.

Shen's tears finally flowed.

Silently, scalding hot, it dripped down her numb cheeks, drop by drop, onto her clothes.

The Wing King snorted coldly as he looked at her tearful face.

The snort carried disdain, annoyance, and an inexplicable impatience.

It seemed as if her tears were not caused by him, but rather by Shen's own doing.

She was ungrateful and made a fool of herself.

"Since you're so ungrateful..."

The Wing King's voice was as cold as ice shards in the twelfth lunar month.

"From now on, I will never set foot in your courtyard again. Let you suffer in the cold."

The door opened, then closed again.

The footsteps faded at the end of the corridor, and gradually nothing could be heard anymore.

Shen, holding onto the bedpost, slowly slid down to the ground.

She reached out, trembling, and pulled the torn brocade quilt over Qiuhe's body.

Then she looked down at her hands.

This hand, from our wedding night six years ago.

He held her hand and, stroke by stroke, wrote "Holding your hand, we will grow old together" on the marriage certificate.

Now this hand is empty; there's nothing left.

She raised her hand and wiped her face, her palm covered in cold tears.

The moonlight outside the window was like water, shining on her pale face and the red mark on her forehead that had not yet faded.

Looking at the dirty, tainted rosewood canopy bed behind her, which was once called the "wedding bed".

She sat by the bed all night.