My sister, whom I raised, has turned evil after faking her death for three years.

The air in the ward seemed to have been mostly sucked out, leaving only the tireless beeping of the monitor and the occasional bird calls from afar outside the window.

Wu Yue buried his face in his wife's cold palms, and the trembling in his shoulders gradually subsided. The secrets that had been suppressed for more than a decade finally poured out from his chest, like emptied turbid water, leaving only an empty and weary feeling.

Just then, applause rang out at the door of the ward.

The rhythmic, unhurried beats—one, two, three—reverberated jarringly in the quiet corridor.

"That's really touching."

Cui Jiayi leaned against the door frame, her hands still clapping gently, a smile on her lips that Wu Yue had seen for over a decade, a smile that sent chills down his spine every time he saw it.

She was dressed in a smart black suit, like a snake that had just emerged from its molted skin, radiating a cold, smug glow.

"I saw this scene as soon as I arrived. It's such a touching story of a loving couple who are inseparable. It's a scene that makes you reluctant to disturb them."

Wu Yue slowly straightened up.

He subconsciously moved half a step towards Yin Wan's hospital bed, blocking her view.

  

He took a deep breath, lowered his voice, but each word seemed to be ground out from between his teeth: "We agreed long ago that we absolutely couldn't tell Awan about this. Why did you do this?"

"You still dare to ask me why?" Cui Jiayi's smile vanished instantly.

She took a step forward, raised her hand, and slapped Wu Yue squarely across the left cheek.

The slap was extremely powerful, the sound of which echoed through the ward, even causing the monitor's alarm to sound briefly.

Wu Yue was slapped so hard that his head was turned to the side, a few strands of his gray hair fell down, and a bright red handprint slowly appeared on his face.

Yin Wan let out a hoarse gasp and tried to sit up to pull her husband's arm, but as soon as she moved, the newly inserted needle on the back of her hand pulled the IV tube, causing her to fall back into the pillow in pain.

She couldn't even get up; she could only lie in bed and watch helplessly as tears silently streamed down her face and disappeared into the sparse hair at her temples.

Cui Jiayi shook her wrist, which was aching from slapping it, and looked down at Wu Yue with the same look she gave him as a disobedient dog.

"When did you feel that you could question me like that in that situation?"

Her voice wasn't loud, but every word carried a condescending, unyielding pressure: "Wu Yue, who do you think you are? You're nothing but a dog living under my thumb. Without me, your half-dead wife would have rotted in her coffin over a decade ago. How dare you speak to me like that? Do you even deserve it?"

Wu Yue covered her face and stood there in a daze.

He recalled how, in the side hall earlier that day, he had asked her in a cold and restrained tone, "Why did you provoke her?"

It turns out that she didn't react at the time not because she felt guilty, but because she didn't want to make any more mistakes in front of the Jiang family.

She kept all her resentment to herself and drove all the way to the hospital before he returned, pouring out everything to Yin Wan.

This was her punishment for him... not by beating him, not by scolding him, but by precisely stabbing him in his most fatal spot.

"Kneel down."

Cui Jiayi pulled out the chair next to the hospital bed, sat down, crossed her legs, and spoke in a casual tone as if she were ordering a servant to bring her a cup of tea.

"No...don't..." Yin Wan squeezed out broken pleas from her throat, her fingers gripping the bed sheet tightly, her knuckles turning white and blue.

Wu Yue stared intently at Cui Jiayi.

His left cheek was still burning with pain, and his hand, which had worn a white glove for more than ten years, hung limply at his side, the knuckles cracking from being clenched.

Seeing his expression, Cui Jiayi remained calm and unperturbed. She simply picked up the stack of medical records from the bedside table, pinched the corner with two fingers, and gently waved them in the air.

"I don't want to repeat myself a second time."

Wu Yue's gaze fell on the stack of medical records.

That was Yin Wan's. It was filled with detailed records of each month's chemotherapy regimen, targeted drug dosage, and treatment schedule. Each item was followed by a string of cold, hard numbers... He had to calculate those numbers repeatedly on a calculator every month. Each item was Yin Wan's hope for survival, and the only reason he had been tied to this rope for more than ten years without being able to break free.

His eyes churned with humiliation, anger, resentment, and despair, until finally all the storm subsided into a deathly silence.

He bent his knees and knelt heavily in front of Cui Jiayi.

As Yin Wan watched this scene, she felt something inside her shatter.

It's not bones, not organs, but something deeper, something more essential.

Her husband knelt there, his back bent at an angle she had never seen before.

She suddenly remembered many years ago, when they had just gotten married, they lived in a rented room of only a dozen square meters in the suburbs. Every day, Wu Yue would wear a meticulously ironed shirt to work at the Jiang family's house, and when he came back, he would bring her a wildflower picked from the roadside while she was curled up in bed.

At that time, he was kneeling by her bedside. He wasn't forced to do it; he just naturally squatted down, knelt on one knee, held the flowers in front of her, and asked her with a flushed face if she was feeling any better today.

Now he was kneeling there, his knees slamming against the cold, hard tiles, the sound dull and muffled, like a hammer striking her heart.

She didn't hate Cui Jiayi; she hated herself.

If she weren't lying here, if it weren't for her incurable body that only burdened him, her A-Yue wouldn't be in this state now.

A thought, like a vine, spread wildly from the darkest corner of her heart... She shouldn't be alive.

Cui Jiayi looked down at Wu Yue kneeling in front of her, and the corners of her mouth slowly turned up.

This man was once the Jiang family's most capable butler. Wherever he went, he always stood straight and was composed and proper. Even towards her, an unpopular relative, he would only give a slight bow, showing politeness to the point of no return.

Now he kneels at her feet, like an old dog whose spine has been removed.

She felt as if she had trampled the entire Jiang family under her feet, and that inflated, twisted sense of vanity filled a part of the satisfaction she felt at being destroyed by Su Qing.

"Wu Yue, wasn't what you valued most back then your unyielding spirit?"

Her voice was light and airy, as if she were talking about an old anecdote. "Back then, you would rather help me kill that child than lower yourself to borrow money from Jiang Mingyuan. How proud you were, how principled you were! And now? You're kneeling before a woman you despise the most, all for money."

Wu Yue knelt on the ground, head bowed, without uttering a word.

His lips trembled slightly, but he neither refuted her nor looked up at her.

Cui Jiayi stood up from her chair, looked down at him, and then glanced at Yin Wan, who was lying on the hospital bed with a deathly pale face. She had already exceeded her expectations for this trip.

He vented his anger, punished the disobedient dog, and incidentally, he also deepened the thorn stuck in Yin Wan's heart.

"Wu Yue, remember this lesson. If you ever dare to embarrass me in front of others again, it won't just be a slap."

She walked around his kneeling body, her high heels clicking crisply on the tiles. As she reached the door, she turned back and added, "By the way, let's postpone the medical expenses this month. I'm a bit short on cash lately, so you'll have to figure it out yourself."

The door closed gently behind her.

Wu Yue stood up from the ground, a dull pain shooting through his kneecap, but he didn't care.

He turned around and saw that Yin Wan's body was already halfway over the edge of the bed, her hand that was still receiving an IV drip was stretched towards him, the needle was bent, a bluish-purple bump had bulged on the back of her hand, and a bit of bright red blood had flowed back into the IV tube.

He rushed over and helped her back onto the bed, then grabbed a cotton ball and pressed it against the needle mark on the back of her hand, pressing hard and frantically.

Yin Wan was supported by him and leaned against his chest, but she didn't say another word.

She didn't cry, nor did she ask him if he was in pain. She just stared at the pale fluorescent light on the ceiling, the light in her eyes gradually dimming, like a lamp wick that had been turned to its limit, leaving only a faint, extinguished glow.