The Female Lead of the Abusive Novel Can Hear My Heart's Voice - Chapter 21

The small village was peaceful and serene, with wisps of cooking smoke slowly rising from the chimneys, a symbol of a simple, honest life in the eyes of a traveling poet.

Little did they know that beneath the placid exterior lurked a greedy, insatiable wolf a bloodsucking leech in the pond, a foolish, uncivilized savage.

When Xia Mucai and Xia Chi rescued Tang Mingming, seeing the girl who had been reduced to skin and bones in just a week, their heartache was quickly followed by a strong desire to nourish her back to health.

The girl was shackled by a heavy dog chain around her neck, tied to a load-bearing pillar in the house. Usually, her younger brother would be there, playing video games and guarding her.

Xia Mucai and Xia Chi arrived today just as the boy had been called out to do farm work, to drive the chickens and ducks from the back mountain into the house.

That was why they managed to rescue Tang Mingming safely. This place was not safe to stay in for long. Unlike people in the city, the villagers here were not indifferent; people in one courtyard often looked out for each other.

As soon as they discovered Tang Mingming was missing, one shout could rally the entire village, who would grab their farm tools and surround Xia Mucai and Xia Chi.

“Sister Xia, Sister Xia Chi, why are you here?” The girl’s iron chain was still around her neck, and she held it up as she spoke.

Her appearance was truly heartbreaking. She wasn’t crying or screaming, indicating an unusual resilience.

Xia Chi took a step forward and hugged her. If she hadn’t hugged her, it might have been better, but the embrace immediately brought tears to her eyes, and the pain in her heart wanted to spill out to her sister all at once.

“Mingming, you’ve suffered.”

Tears welled up in Tang Mingming’s almond-shaped eyes, blurring her vision with a hazy film of water. She sniffled and said in a muffled voice,

“Sister Xia Chi, I really want to escape from here. My parents don’t want me, and I have no family in this world. I’m so lonely.”

The girl clung to Xia Chi, tearful and sticky. An outsider might have thought she was just being pampered, but Xia Chi knew the character of the girl she had raised best.

She must have reached the limits of despair and helplessness to act this way. If she saw even a sliver of hope, she would typically hide her emotions, keeping them from everyone in the orphanage, including Xia Chi.

“You’re not alone; you have everyone from the orphanage.” Xia Chi offered words of comfort, knowing this feeling well, and also knowing she was just speaking empty words.

Before meeting Xia Mucai, she had always believed that everyone at the orphanage was parentless, a group of people piecing together a big family.

This must have been home.

But after meeting Xia Mucai, she felt she understood the feeling of family.

The girl in her arms sobbed, “But… but I still hurt so much. Why did they abandon me?”

Xia Chi felt a pang of sadness at this. It was similar to her own experience when she was first found by her long-lost parents during a student representative speech event that was being covered by the media.

First came the surprise, the discovery that she was no longer alone. But then, seeing her parents’ indifference, even coldness, made her heart turn cold.

It was Xia Mucai who saved her otherwise, she would have been foolishly trying to figure out why her parents didn’t like her, trying every means to please the people who had abandoned her, starting a life of filial piety borne of desperation.

“She is not just the sun, but my salvation.” She felt forever fortunate to have met Xia Mucai. She was different from everyone else, the first person to genuinely care about her.

“You will find your real family.” Xia Chi’s gaze was fixed entirely on Xia Mucai.

Xia Mucai stood awkwardly to the side, scuffing the dirt floor with her shoe tip, trying her best to minimize her presence so as not to interrupt the “conversation” between the two.

A familiar, soft voice reached her ear, “Xia Chi, let’s go.”

“Mhm.”

At night, Gu Baian came alone to a noisy, bustling bar. She rented a private booth and invited four attractive, sweet-talking hostesses to help her dispel her midnight blues.

She had money to spare; a single luxury watch on her wrist was enough for an average person to buy a million-dollar apartment in a small county.

Many people tried to please her, and many pursued her, but not one could capture her attention.

The void left for Mo Qi still ached in her heart. She held a lot of resentment in her relationship with Mo Qi.

Because she had personally messed up their college romance.

“Boss Gu~” A curvy woman in a cheongsam split up to her thigh rubbed against Gu Baian, her seductive voice dripping with charm.

“You come here, not drinking properly, who are you thinking about?” The woman’s long, manicured nails trailed across Gu Baian’s face, leaving a ticklish sensation.

Gu Baian didn’t push the woman’s hand away; instead, she playfully wrapped her arm around the woman’s slender waist.

“Do you care about me?”

“Yes, of course, who wouldn’t care about Boss Gu? A watch on your wrist is enough for us to have a good meal.”

Gu Baian gave a charming smile. Compared to the woman, she was also a captivating enchantress.

Finding the woman agreeable, and in good spirits, she decided to share her own story.

“I need to win back my wife. I made her angry for ten years.”

The woman who had just been flirting with her quickly moved off her lap, maintaining a safe distance.

“Boss Gu has someone she likes?”

The big boss was straightforward: “Yes, and you’re still sitting on my lap, being provocative.”

The vixenish woman looked reproachfully at her, “Then why were you hugging my waist? Boss Gu, aren’t you afraid of being seen and completely losing your chance at love?”

Gu Baian glanced around nervously, genuinely afraid that Mo Qi might run into her flirting with another woman.

“I’ll give each of you one hundred thousand as a gag order. No one is allowed to speak a word about tonight.”

The four women in the booth widened their eyes in shock, hardly daring to imagine how they would spend the one hundred thousand dollars.

“Boss Gu, don’t worry. Even if you beat us to death, we won’t say anything.”

Gu Baian, with her natural sociability and instant rapport, quickly became close friends with the hostesses she had just met, sharing everything.

She recounted the beginning and end of her breakup with Mo Qi. She then told them about how today she had clearly intended to rekindle their romance and had an ambiguous moment in the car, but it turned out she had flirted with the wrong person.

She angrily thumped the table in the booth with one hand, “What do you think I should do? She doesn’t fall for me being direct. Do I have to be a sycophant, squatting by her company door every day to bring her flowers, picking her up after work, and sending her lunch?”

“I still have my pride. Everyone else licks my boots; I won’t lick anyone else’s.”

The seductive woman in the cheongsam rolled her round eyes. In the dazzling lights of the bar, she looked like she was solving a math problem, completely out of sync with the decadent atmosphere in the other booths.

She never thought she’d have a moment like this in her line of work.

After some thought, she finally came up with a brilliant idea.

“Boss Gu, if you were to become gravely ill, would she feel sorry for you?”

Gu Baian frowned, “A small cold? She’s so ruthless, how could she care about me or feel sorry for me?”

The woman quickly explained, “No, not a common cold, but a terminal illness, a near-death experience for her to witness.”

“Boss Gu could ‘accidentally’ let a ‘diagnosis’ slip into her view. She’d pity you, and then things would naturally fall into place. People always grant dignity at the end. After that, you two would get back together, and then you could tell her it was a misdiagnosis. She would surely be overjoyed.”

Hearing this, Gu Baian curled her lips, immediately cheering up and slapping her thigh, “Another one hundred thousand!”

All the sorrow on her face instantly vanished.

“Thank you, Boss Gu”

Please call her the Money Spreader. She wasn’t short on money she just lacked a brilliant strategist like the woman in the cheongsam.

The booth erupted in laughter. They stood up, each raising a champagne glass. The five women clinked their glasses, the crisp sound of glass collision accompanied by the women’s blessings.

“We wish Boss Gu an early success in winning back her wife!”

Overcome with joy, Gu Baian announced, “A reward! Another one hundred thousand each!”

The small, remote bar in Jiangcheng had never seen such a generous boss. The staff were shocked, and the working stiffs who came here to unwind were also stunned.

“Which boss is that? So generous.”

“There really is such a thing as getting rich overnight, too bad it’s not me.”

“Does the boss need more people?”

Amidst everyone’s envious gazes, Gu Baian, after a few drinks, grabbed her small clutch bag, curled her hands like a cat’s paws, and winked, “I’m leaving. Remember, none of you are allowed to mention what happened tonight.”

The four women nodded in unison, smiling, “Boss, don’t worry. Our mouths are sealed.”

She gave the four sweet-talking women a charming look and left the noisy bar. The night wind scattered the smell of alcohol and the perfume from others on her, leaving her feeling light and refreshed.

It would be easy for her to forge a misdiagnosis report. She remembered that her cousin ran a private hospital. A phone call, and the results could be in her hand tomorrow.

But first, she would post on her social media to make that ruthless woman a little nervous.

The caption would be…

“The world is so beautiful, I hope I can see it for a little longer.”

She casually took a picture of the night view, coupled with melancholy text perfect.

Gu Baian contentedly looked at the post on her social media, her finger pressing the green send button.

“I’m so smart. Mo Qi, I don’t believe you won’t feel sorry for me.”

Soon, her friends both at home and abroad saw it and all asked, “What’s wrong?”

Gu Baian didn’t reply. If Mo Qi asked her, she might consider it.

Closing her phone, she was unaware that her post had already exploded in her social circle.

Even the sycophant Teng Jingsi knew about it.

That night, the sycophant was too anxious to sleep. His moon goddess was sick, and it was a serious illness.

Gu Baian couldn’t recall ever having a sycophant named Teng Jingsi pursue her. If the name sounded familiar, it might have been from business dinners she occasionally attended with her parents, a name she often heard.

She had no idea who he specifically was, as she hadn’t attended many business dinners with her parents since graduating from college.

It was Teng Jingsi, back when he was a middle school student, being disciplined by his grandfather. His grandfather made him observe the people in the business world, but he was bored and hid in a corner playing games.

The presence of the college aged Gu Baian relieved his boredom. He experienced first love, but was too timid to tell her. The young man’s feelings remained hidden, and even now, he couldn’t forget her.

In the Teng family home, Teng Jingsi was frantic, “What should I do, what should I do? I still don’t know what illness Gu Baian has. What if she dies?

“No,” he sat up in bed, frowning with anxiety, “I’ve never confessed my feelings to her. If she dies, will she ever know my feelings?”

The man’s chiseled face looked sharp under the lamp light. He said darkly, “I need to prove to Gu Baian that I have nothing to do with Xia Chi. I don’t love Xia Chi at all.”