"No... No..."
"No!"
Xiang Wanniao woke up from a nightmare, gasping for breath, her forehead covered in cold sweat.
She opened her eyes, staring at the blank white ceiling overhead, taking deep breaths for a long time until her breathing finally steadied.
"Awake?"
A cold male voice rang softly in her ear.
Xiang Wanniao pulled herself together and looked in the direction of the voice.
Gu Jingzhan's cold, dark face came straight into her view, radiating an aura as freezing as an ice cave that made her shudder.
Xiang Wanniao froze.
Gu Jingzhan?
Didn't he die in prison?
How...
"Do you love Xiao Xu'an that much? To be with him, you didn't even hesitate to use suicide to force me into a divorce."
Gu Jingzhan clenched his back teeth, his jaw tightened into a cold, hard line.
His hands hanging at his sides were clenched into fists so tight that the veins stood out on his pale skin, laying bare the anger raging in his heart.
Suicide?
Xiang Wanniao lowered her gaze and saw the thick white gauze wrapped around her left wrist.
Her nerves hadn't reacted just a moment ago, but now a dull ache was beginning to set in.
Had she... been reborn?
Realizing this, Xiang Wanniao sat up abruptly and touched her face with her hands.
Her face was fine; it hadn't been disfigured yet.
Could it be... she really had been reborn!
And she had gone back three years in time!
Xiang Wanniao abruptly raised her head, meeting Gu Jingzhan's bottomless eyes. A sharp pain stabbed through her heart, and her eyes instantly turned red.
"Gu Jingzhan..."
"If you want a divorce, I'll grant it. You don't have to hurt yourself like this anymore."
Seeing Xiang Wanniao's pale face from excessive blood loss, coupled with her red eyes and pitiful appearance, Gu Jingzhan ultimately couldn't bear it.
He turned around, his back to her, and tried his best to suppress the pain and morbid possessiveness deep in his heart.
"This afternoon I'll have Xiang Yuan bring over the signed divorce agreement, and tomorrow we'll go to the civil affairs bureau to finalize the divorce."
No matter what he did, she despised him to the core.
That frozen heart could never be warmed after all.
He was tired and had chosen to let go.
Hearing Gu Jingzhan say he wanted a divorce, Xiang Wanniao panicked, and the tears pooling in her eyes spilled over.
"No! I don't want to!" she blurted out in a panic.
Gu Jingzhan lowered his gaze, gave a bitter, self-deprecating laugh, and didn't take her words seriously.
"Get some rest, and stop acting out."
With that, the man turned and started walking toward the hospital room door.
"Gu Jingzhan, don't leave!"
Seeing that he was genuinely about to leave, Xiang Wanniao forgot all about the injury on her wrist. Panicking so much that she didn't even push back the blanket, she scrambled toward the edge of the bed to stop him.
As a result, she rolled right off the bed, tangled up in the quilt.
Before Xiang Wanniao could even ask for help, a pair of shiny leather shoes appeared within her field of vision.
The next second, she was lifted into the air and scooped securely into the man's warm and sturdy embrace.
Xiang Wanniao wrapped her arms around Gu Jingzhan's neck, gazing unblinkingly at the man before her.
Instigated by Lü Siwei, she had staged a suicide scene by slitting her wrists in her room, all to make Gu Jingzhan utterly despise her, force him into a divorce, and escape his clutches.
Yet she remembered that in her past life, Gu Jingzhan had not divorced her because of this; instead, his temper had grown even more violent, and his possessiveness toward her had become even more paranoid and morbid.
He had torn off the polite, gentle mask he wore on the surface, no longer caring about her feelings, and locked her away in the basement of Guiyuan.
Not only did he chain her up and restrict her freedom, but he also forced himself on her in that basement.
Because of this, she had grown to hate Gu Jingzhan all the more, falling for the lies of that scum Xiao Xu'an, believing that Gu Jingzhan had murdered her parents.
Seeking revenge, she had pretended to be obedient in front of Gu Jingzhan to lower his guard, before stealing the confidential documents of the Gu Group and sending him to prison with her own hands.
From then on, Gu Jingzhan—the almighty, peerless figure in Kyoto—fell from his pedestal.
In the end, he suffered endless torment and died in a cold prison cell.
Recalling all this, Xiang Wanniao felt as though countless needles were piercing her chest, leaving her breathless with pain.
Yet the current turn of events baffled her.
Living her life over again, why was Gu Jingzhan letting her go so easily?
Could it be that he really was ready to give up on her?
With a dark expression on his handsome face, Gu Jingzhan picked Xiang Wanniao up from the floor and placed her back on the hospital bed.
Xiang Wanniao looked at him with tear-filled eyes, refusing to let go for a long time.
He furrowed his brows slightly, displeasure tinging his voice: "Xiang Wanniao, what are you doing?"
"Gu Jingzhan, I don't want a divorce," Xiang Wanniao said, her voice choked with tears. "I won't agree to a divorce."
At these words, a flash of extremely complicated emotion crossed the depths of Gu Jingzhan's eyes.
He coldly pried her fingers apart, his tone still chillingly devoid of warmth: "Isn't a divorce the result you wanted? Why are you unwilling now?"
"I..."
"Don't worry, I'll compensate you financially, and I'll also clarify to the public that the divorce is my personal matter and has nothing to do with you."
Xiang Wanniao hurriedly wrapped her arms around the man's waist, burying her face in his chest as tears streamed down her cheeks.
"Gu Jingzhan, I'm sorry, I was wrong. Please don't give up on me."
Her "I'm sorry" was heartfelt and sincere, laden with remorse for her past life and the past half-year.
Gu Jingzhan lowered his gaze, staring in astonishment at Xiang Wanniao, who was sobbing as she nested against his chest.
His hands hung frozen in mid-air, every finger at a complete loss.
Didn't she always despise him and hate him?
For the past six months or so since their marriage, she had never allowed him to touch her. She even found it disgusting to sit at the same table for a meal, let alone take the initiative to hug him like this.
Didn't she make such a huge fuss last night precisely to force him into a divorce?
How was it that now that he agreed to a divorce, she was suddenly unwilling?
And she seemed like a completely different person.
"I won't divorce you. I don't want to divorce you."
Xiang Wanniao hugged him tighter and tighter, as if afraid he would run away.
Gu Jingzhan tightened his grip on his hands at his sides, let out a soft sigh, and spoke with utter helplessness: "Then what do you want?"
Xiang Wanniao choked back a couple of sobs, then replied firmly: "I want to be with you, and I want to live a good life with you."
A glimmer of hopeful light surfaced in Gu Jingzhan's deep eyes, but the moment he thought better of it, that glimmer of hope was extinguished.
A self-deprecating smile tugged at the corner of the man's mouth as he asked with bitter irony: "Then what was the point of your throwing a suicide tantrum at home last night? To live a good life with me?"
"..."
Xiang Wanniao had no way to defend herself.