Falling After Marriage - Chapter 23

Chapter 23: I Linger in Her Forgotten Past

Amidst Lin Jin’s frantic laughter, Cheng Sangluo disappeared into the deep, endless alley without looking back.

Her head was slightly bowed. Hidden beneath her scattered bangs was a pair of wolf-like eyes, gathering a shrewd and fierce glow.

Had Lin Jin not driven her to a dead end, she wouldn’t have revealed the true nature she had buried so deeply for so long.

Cheng Sangluo composed herself and returned to the entrance of the convenience store.

The old man was putting away the fruit platter. Seeing her approach, he casually asked: “Did you send your friend off?”

“Yes.” Cheng Sangluo nodded faintly, not in the mood for conversation. Just as she was about to step into the stairwell, she turned back: “Grandpa, I want to discuss something with you. I won’t be renting the attic anymore.”

The old man put down the platter, puzzled: “Did you find a good job? Fine, if you’re quitting the rent. But… you’re only quitting the attic?”

Cheng Sangluo unconsciously glanced back at the empty alley, digging out her wallet and explaining: “Yes, I’m only quitting the attic. I’ll move directly into that room on the third floor. The rent here is cheap. I can’t bear to leave.”

“Hahaha, of course!” The old man burst into laughter again upon hearing the compliment.

“Here is one year’s rent for the third-floor room.” Cheng Sangluo handed the money to the old man without hesitation: “Please count it.”

The old man trusted her and put the money straight into his pocket: “I trust you with the money. Settle in comfortably. When I have time, I’ll put a new lock on that room for you.”

“Thank you, I appreciate it.” Cheng Sangluo politely thanked him, then found an excuse to leave: “I have some things to attend to. I’ll head up first and come down to chat later.”

The landlord waved his fan at her: “Go, go, go. Go take care of your business first.”

Cheng Sangluo walked straight up to the third floor. The seldom-used room was at the end of the corridor.

The yellow-painted door was badly affected by moisture, the paint peeling haphazardly. It still had an old-style lock, making it easy for people to mistake it for a storage room.

She unlocked and pushed the door open. A heavy smell of dust immediately assailed her, and she raised a hand to wave away the unpleasant air.

The windowless room didn’t let in any light, which was one of the reasons Cheng Sangluo chose it.

Highly vigilant, she forcefully shut the door, turned the deadbolt, and then switched on the light.

The low-wattage incandescent bulb cast a dim, yellowish glow, unable to fully illuminate the small space.

Instantly, the character relationship chart, the size of the wall, came into view.

Cheng Sangluo played with an oil-based marker between her fingers. Her other hand supported her on the desk as she looked up, quietly observing the masterpiece of investigation she had compiled since her release from prison.

In that tangled web of relationships, like a complex spiderweb, everyone who had appeared, and those yet to appear, were tightly interconnected.

Her gaze, wolf-like, swept over every photograph, finally settling on one person’s face.

She uncapped the pen, drew a circle on the photo, and then marked a large ‘X’ across it, symbolizing the victory of conquering a citadel.

Below the photo, a card was firmly taped with transparent adhesive tape.

This familiar, pale white card looked somewhat similar to the one in the parking garage that day. Under the light, it always appeared scornfully chilling, just like its owner.

Cheng Sangluo narrowed her cold eyes, scrutinizing the person in the photo, before slowly shifting her gaze to the room keycard.

She leaned in close, a side of her face she had never shown anyone surfacing—a strange, dark smile, accompanied by an unfamiliar, terrifying laugh.

“How can you be so confident? Did you think a mere token could humiliate me?” Cheng Sangluo gritted her teeth, swallowing the pain of these days like shards of broken glass. It lodged painfully in her throat, even creating the illusion of a metallic, bloody taste.

She rubbed her forehead, enduring every injury Lin Jin had inflicted, etching them deeply into her memory. It took her a long, long time to soothe the violently fluctuating emotions. “So… it’s not just you who can act… I can act too…”

The flickering incandescent bulb, suffering from poor contact, blinked intermittently, emitting a hissing electrical sound that intensified the room’s eerie atmosphere.

Cheng Sangluo’s face was obscured in the shadows, but her sharp, eagle-like eyes, highlighted by the dim glow, were bright yet gloomy.

She didn’t linger too long on Lin Jin’s photo. Instead, she took the pen and began recording the latest new information she had gathered on the wall.

Initially, she wrote calmly, every stroke neat and tidy. But when the image of herself crawling on the ground picking up money flashed through her mind, she ground her molars together. She pressed the pen tip against the wall so hard that it snapped out of shape.

The hatred for Lin Jin lasted only a moment. Looking at the nearly broken pen, the malicious mood that had just dissipated was stirred up again.

Cheng Sangluo rubbed the bridge of her nose in distress. She returned to the table, threw the pen aside, and supported herself on the edge of the desk, seeking relief from the deep fatigue in her soul.

She couldn’t clearly recall when the seed of revenge was planted in her heart—perhaps when the final verdict was hammered down, or perhaps in the dark, sunless prison cell.

During those days of awaiting freedom, she could only rely on marking tally lines to mitigate the day-to-day suffering.

Tossing and turning in the dark nights, she could no longer envision a beautiful future life. The mounting despair grew wildly within the four white walls, eventually transforming into an unforgivable hatred that she was destined to spend her life nursing.

Lin Jin was the person who suddenly pulled back the curtain on this revenge when Cheng Sangluo was still lost.

The room keycard, deliberately left unpicked up, echoed with scorn in the silent parking garage, becoming Cheng Sangluo’s painful moment of realization.

She was trampled under an insurmountable class barrier, her soul scraped by that thin card, and the chaotic, formless hatred finally took concrete shape.

It was Lin Jin’s scornful smile when she curled her lips, the pale cold light of the keycard, and the shimmering tears welling up in her eyes as she stood in the club’s parking garage, holding her forehead and laughing helplessly.

She eventually picked up that keycard, and at that moment, her revenge began to take a vivid form.

Cheng Sangluo needed to leverage Lin Jin’s power, yet simultaneously peel away the humiliation inflicted by that authority. This winding, painful road involved every step being trodden on sharp glass shards, walking alone and bloodied.

Today, she had successfully leveraged that power using her own methods, but she had also paid the heavy price of enormous debt.

Good. Right until the end, she never truly bowed.

In the dim room, a piercing, desolate laugh suddenly echoed.

Cheng Sangluo’s shoulders shook. She couldn’t stop the trembling laughter, which was saturated with the pain of having no turning back.

She suddenly grabbed the dagger nearby and threw it fiercely at the wall. The sharp tip accurately plunged into the photograph at the center of the relationship chart.

The man in the suit was not Xu Songheng. His deep-set brows bore a slight resemblance to Lin Jin’s. He was the culprit who had ruined Cheng Sangluo’s life.

He was the origin of the hate.

In the silent Land Rover, Sheng He drove with heavy pressure overhead, trying his best to keep the ride smooth.

Lin Jin hadn’t specified a destination, so he could only drive along the main road, aimlessly cruising.

The scenery along the seemingly endless coastline was pleasant.

Despite the blazing sun, the sky was dull, and the sea was muted. Light could not penetrate Lin Jin’s world, nor could the wind disperse the thick gloom.

Sheng He glanced at the rearview mirror. The silent, distressed person had her eyes closed, radiating an exhaustion and loneliness that couldn’t be dispelled.

Lin Jin was not happy.

She leaned against the car window, weak and stripped of her outer shell, as if her soul had been drained, her mind blank.

The ostentatious mockery and condescending arrogance disintegrated now, leaving behind a profound, uneasy self-reproach.

This powerful figure, who could have anything she wanted, slumped her shoulders in defeat. The person she couldn’t hold onto transformed into an intense sense of failure, clinging to her fragmented heart—an irresistible inner demon and an undispellable nightmare.

Lin Jin mentally traced Cheng Sangluo’s handsome face. The one in her memory was never blurred, so she remembered her vividly. But the one in reality was hazy, a haziness she couldn’t forcefully retain despite all her efforts.

Lin Jin rarely showed such a bitter smile. She pondered why she had skillfully manipulated Cheng Sangluo but gained no sense of achievement.

It turns out clumsy tactics only push the person one loves but cannot possess further away. This simple truth had become an unsolvable problem for her.

She merely wanted to keep that sliver of moonlight, but she failed to consider that moonlight is gentle. It cannot be hidden or locked away; it can only be cradled in the palm and admired closely in the eyes.

Sheng He hesitated for a long time. Just as he was about to ask his boss where she wanted to go, Lin Jin spoke first: “Sheng He.”

Sheng He flinched at the sound, asking guardedly: “What is it, Boss?”

Lin Jin turned her head to look at the rapidly passing street scenery. She seemed to have thoroughly prepared herself psychologically before slowly asking: “Do you think I was wrong?”

Perhaps, in asking this question, she had already lowered her proud head. But how could someone who naturally stood on the clouds easily accept the fact of being wrong?

This was the common arrogance of the powerful.

For Sheng He, this was undoubtedly a deadly question.

He slowed the car down slightly, sighing helplessly: “As an observer, I feel quite sorry for Miss Cheng. I don’t know why, but every time I see her, I feel a sense of profound bitterness. Forgive my lack of eloquence; I can’t describe that feeling.”

“Hmph, you didn’t answer the question, but you’re quite empathetic.” Lin Jin snorted and closed her eyes again.

“How many seven-year periods does a person have in their life?” She took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled the bitterness ingrained in her bones: “She doesn’t know she is my deepest joy. So, she doesn’t know how much weight she carries in my world.”

Lin Jin’s brow furrowed gradually, but she couldn’t suppress the increasingly choked-up voice: “She is trapped in my dreams. I linger in her forgotten past. Both are illusions that cannot be embraced.”

The beautiful woman who had worn a mask of false smiles, aristocratic arrogance, and manipulative power was now tightly hugging her slight frame, curled up in the corner of the car window.

Weeping silently.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city.

The Lin family ancestral home was built within a privately planned mountain forest—a Suzhou-style garden courtyard villa that occupied nearly half the mountain.

The Lin family had thinned out by Lin Sheng’s generation, so the private estate was often sparsely populated.

Lin Sheng’s residence was in the deep, secluded back hill, the villa farthest from the ancestral home. The area was eerily quiet if one walked there at night.

The basement on the second floor below ground was a sealed fitness room that looked more like a dim dungeon for detention.

Xu Songheng was dressed in a tailored gray suit, his leather shoes gleaming.

But at this moment, he was sprinting frantically on a treadmill, the display showing the speed at its maximum limit.

His head was wrapped in cling film, his hands tied behind his back, and a string of fresh beef was hanging from his waist.

A group of tall, burly bodyguards surrounded the treadmill, each holding the leash of a fiercely vicious Pitbull.

The fresh beef was a fatal attraction. The Pitbulls snarled aggressively, straining desperately to reach the meat. Their sleek, developed muscles flexed under the tension, and they lunged with such force that the bodyguards struggled to hold their leashes.

Despite the extreme difficulty in breathing, Xu Songheng dared not slacken.

He had to maintain balance while moving at the fastest speed. The slightest lapse would cause him to fall, and falling meant being torn apart by the savage dogs.

Veins bulged on Lin Sheng’s forehead. His posture while bench pressing the dumbbells was perfect. Finishing the last set, he breathed heavily and slowly sat up, wiping the sweat with a towel draped over his shoulder.

The assistant beside him offered a bottle of mineral water. As he took the water bottle, he snapped his fingers twice, and the barking beloved dogs immediately sat down silently.

He walked to the treadmill, staring at the suffering Xu Songheng, mocking him coldly: “You lose half your life just running. Truly a useless waste.”

With that, he switched off the treadmill.

As the speed slowed, Xu Songheng’s energy reached its limit. His legs gave out, he stumbled, and miserably collapsed at Lin Sheng’s feet.

He gasped for air, causing the cling film on his head to ripple up and down.

Lin Sheng squatted down and ripped the cling film off his head. His contemptuous gaze bore a slight resemblance to Lin Jin’s, viewing everything as though it were livestock, but with a fundamental difference.

His smile was not just hypocritical; it was subtly vicious—the kind of brutality that could stab someone in the back while laughing.

Xu Songheng twitched his neck, struggling to breathe, and pleaded: “Boss… could you give me some water… I’m sorry… I…”

As if hearing a forbidden word, Lin Sheng’s ominous smile vanished instantly. He raised the bottle and poured the mineral water over Xu Songheng’s head.

Perhaps feeling this wasn’t humiliating enough, he tossed the bottle away, grabbed Xu Songheng’s hair, and yanked it up hard: “How many times have I told you, I hate hearing the words ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘I’m sorry’ means failure, and failures are not qualified to beg for forgiveness.”

Xu Songheng couldn’t move his arms, only wriggling his body like a maggot.

He was despicable, so he didn’t need dignity. He was willing to be a dog under the feet of the powerful, making his pleading face look utterly ridiculous.

He nodded in terror, quickly explaining: “I truly regret it… I didn’t expect… No, I shouldn’t have let Cheng Sangluo forge this connection with Lin Jin…”

“No, no, you still haven’t realized where you went wrong.” Lin Sheng made a shushing gesture, interrupting Xu Songheng.

He shook the water from his hands, signaling the bodyguards to drag the man away to feed the dogs. He rubbed his forehead tiredly, his tone full of bitter disappointment: “Cheng Sangluo is just an ant. Even if she clings to Lin Jin, she won’t cause any trouble. What angers me is that you made me lose face—losing face in front of Lin Jin. You know how much I despise that crazy woman.”

Hearing Lin Sheng’s deeply disappointing words, Xu Songheng broke free from the bodyguards, knelt, and crawled toward him: “Boss! Give me one more chance! I promise I can fix things. Please believe me!”

Lin Sheng didn’t kick him away. Instead, he enjoyed having someone under his foot, enjoying this person begging for mercy like an animal.

He grabbed Xu Songheng’s tie with one hand, humiliatingly slapping his face hard: “Anyone who kneels easily to beg for mercy is worthless. You’ve caused me too much trouble. The mess from years ago still hasn’t been cleaned up. Why should I give you another chance?”

Xu Songheng, in a moment of desperation, suddenly cried out loudly: “I know, I know the Old Man has been unwell recently, and this is a crucial moment! I will think of every way to stall Lin Jin. This time, I absolutely won’t ruin your plans, absolutely not!”

Lin Sheng sat back in his chair, beckoning his assistant to hand him a cigar.

Listening to Xu Songheng’s suggestion, he did not continue the topic.

Xu Songheng knelt on the ground and moved a few steps closer, afraid of being ripped apart by the pack of vicious dogs. He leaned in, whispering some plan.

Lin Sheng took a deep puff of his cigar. The smoke curled up from his lips, creating a haze of conspiracy. His sinister eyes gathered a glimmer of excitement: “Hmph, you are a clumsy dog, but you still have some use.”

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