Transmigrating As The Scummy Ex-Wife Of The Cold And Aloof Tycoon - Chapter 40

“I really can’t guarantee it.”

In the distance, there was the illegal bid-rigging closer to home, there was the melodramatic “stand-in” drama.

Ye Yichi averted her eyes, unable to look at the screen.

“See? You can’t guarantee it, can you?” Xin Ning laughed softly, her voice thin. “I figured as much. I’m just a stand-in. You lied to me, kept things from me. I have no right to say anything. But what about you? Are you completely blameless for seeking out a stand-in? Why do you keep clinging to my deception… why, after I fell in love with you, do you not want me anymore?”

“I thought I could accept being a stand-in; being a substitute is better than losing your heart entirely. But people are greedy, Yichi. Don’t you know? The more I realized how much I love you, the less I wanted to be a replacement.”

The crisp laughter was wrapped in rain a damp, stifling weight that made it hard to breathe.

It couldn’t go on like this.

If they kept spiraling into this mistake, the snowball of misunderstanding would only grow larger.

“I never said I didn’t want you, and I’m not trying to hold your deception against you.” Ye Yichi took a deep breath. “Moreover, I have never not once, viewed you as a stand-in. Never.”

The screen froze. A moment later, the video call was disconnected.

It was natural for Xin Ning to feel fear and withdraw, but as Ye Yichi stared at the darkened screen, she felt uneasy. To hang up without a single word… she felt that…

A low rumble echoed from somewhere unknown.

Vibration accompanied a sudden wave of vertigo.

Ye Yichi collapsed uncontrollably, her fingers brushing her coat off the back of the chair. With a small thud, a circular object rolled out of the coat pocket.

A pale yellow rose ring.

The ring, the one she had returned to Xin Ning how was it here? The coat pocket… right, Xin Ning had hugged her from behind before they parted. She must have slipped it in then.

Ye Yichi reached out to grab it, but the ring rolled toward the window.

The shaking and dizziness intensified. The window began to clatter and crack. Ye Yichi looked up; the narrow glass was covered in bright, pixelated fractures.

Ye Yichi had experienced something like this before back when she was lying in a coffin, and the next time she opened her eyes, she had traveled into the book.

Was she being pulled back?

No way! Is it really going to be this melodramatic?

No, no, absolutely not!

She had just confessed everything to Xin Ning. If she vanished now, what would Xin Ning do? That “Clam Girl,” who had only just begun to crack open her shell, shouldn’t…..couldn’t be forced to endure this. That cold plum blossom had finally begun to bloom…

Following the thunderous roar, the bed, the desk, and the walls began to shudder. One by one, every object joined in until finally, even the floor began to tremble.

Gritting her teeth, Ye Yichi tried to crawl up several times, only to fall heavily back onto the bed.

Don’t. Don’t let me go back.

Ye Yichi gripped the bedsheets with a death’s hand. She couldn’t leave. She had just been fighting with Xin Ning. Xin Ning had just hung up on her. If she disappeared like this, what would happen to Xin Ning? How would she live the rest of her days?!

Please. Even if there is sadness, even if there are quarrels, even if we are tangled in an unbreakable Moebius strip, I don’t want to leave her.

With a sharp crack, the glass shattered completely. The rolling ring was buried under a flurry of transparent shards.

Then, with a loud bang, everything fell into pitch-black darkness.

What happened?

The surroundings returned to silence. Ye Yichi reached out tentatively the bed was still a bed, and the desk and cabinets were still there. Her phone… after feeling around for a while, she found it. She turned it on; the screen was still stuck on the disconnected call with Xin Ning.

She hadn’t traveled back?

The tension in her heart snapped with relief. Soon, the sounds of a distant commotion reached her ears.

“Is everyone okay?” “What happened?” “Sister Ye? Sister Ye? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Ye Yichi called out, turning on her phone flashlight.

The room was a mess. The window was broken, and outside, tangled tree branches were piled high. She squinted slightly. Had a tree fallen? Had it knocked down the power lines?

“It was a landslide! Luckily our position is good, we only got hit by the edge of it!” the director shouted. “Forget your things for now, everyone gather in the clearing!”

A landslide?

Ye Yichi called out an acknowledgment and immediately sent messages to Xin Ning and Su Fanxing.

The small grey loading circle spun for a long time before turning into a red exclamation mark. She frowned. The already poor signal was now completely gone.

After asking a few others, she realized no one had a signal.

Ye Yichi guessed that the signal tower had likely been damaged in the landslide.

Fortunately, no one in the crew was injured, and the nearby village seemed largely unaffected. Before the crew moved to the village, Ye Yichi went back to her room to search. Amidst the shards of glass under the windowsill, the pale yellow rose ring was nowhere to be found.

To be honest, she felt a pang of sadness.

She had worn that ring for so long not just Xin Ning, but she herself had always regarded it as their wedding ring.

There was no electricity in the village either. Ye Yichi and the others huddled around a fire with the villagers. The fire burned brightly, and they tossed small potatoes into the embers. When cooked and dipped in chili powder, they were fragrant and warming.

“The weather’s been bad this year; I figured something would happen.”

“Tell me about it. Freezing rain since before the New Year. But it’s fine; a landslide hit the neighboring village two years ago, and rescuers came pretty quick.”

“Nowadays, thanks to the media, word gets out almost instantly when something happens.”

The villagers chatted quietly, and Ye Yichi caught snatches of their conversation.

It had been about thirty minutes since the landslide. News should have reached the outside world by now. With food, water, and a place to sleep, it didn’t matter if the rescue took a little longer. She was only worried about Xin Ning and Su Fanxing they would be frantic if they heard the news and couldn’t reach her.

By the time she finished two small roasted potatoes, the sky was turning dark.

Before total darkness set in, a buzzing sound came from the edge of the village.

Ye Yichi looked up. It was a moderately sized drone. It was too dark to see the markings on it, but it didn’t matter phones began to chirp and beep all around.

“Signal! We have a signal!” The crowd erupted in cheers.

Ye Yichi immediately sent a video call request to Xin Ning. It went unanswered for a long time. Surely a fight wouldn’t make the ‘Clam Girl’ cut off all contact? Or did the confession that she was never a stand-in scare her?

Biting her lip, Ye Yichi dialed Su Fanxing.

The call connected quickly.

“Sister?! Are you okay?! Ning said she was on a video call with you and it suddenly cut off!” Su Fanxing’s face appeared on the screen. “Thank god, thank god you’re not hurt. We saw the news about the landslide and were scared to death. We sent so many messages and you didn’t reply, waaaah.”

Suddenly cut off? So Xin Ning didn’t hang up?

Ye Yichi licked her canine tooth, offered a few words of comfort, and then asked, “Where’s Xin Ning? I called her but she didn’t pick up.”

“She drove out to find you!” Su Fanxing cried out. “Oh no, could she have lost her signal once she entered the mountains?”

Ye Yichi hung up immediately and tried Xin Ning again.

It rang for a long time, but still, no one answered.

Xin Ning had never been to this area and didn’t even know the exact location. How would she get here? Would she get lost? Would something happen to her on the road? Worries surged one after another, making Ye Yichi’s heart ache.

She felt deep regret. Had she known this would happen, she never would have said those things.

Was her “exclusive” love really that important? Even if it wasn’t exclusive, it didn’t change the fact that she was the one who had stayed by Xin Ning’s side for those three years.

So what if it was a one sided play? Anything was better than Xin Ning rushing into the mountains filled with anxiety and fear.

If something really happened on the way…

Ye Yichi steadied herself, stood up, and walked around the fire toward the exit of the village.

“Sister Ye? Where are you going?” A sharp-eyed young actor noticed and called for the director and others to stop her. “The road outside is covered in branches and rocks, you can’t get through. We’ve already contacted the outside; the rescue team will be here soon.”

Ye Yichi stepped over the muddy rubble and climbed over a twisted, fallen tree. “My wife is driving into the mountains. I’m worried. I’m going out to meet her.”

“Sister Ning is coming into the mountains?” The young actor’s eyes widened. “Right after a landslide? The road is so dangerous, and she’s coming in?”

Yes, a landslide had just happened, and the road was treacherous, yet Xin Ning had headed in without a second thought. Meanwhile, Ye Yichi had chosen that exact moment to confess, driven by her grievances over being lied to, her resentment, and her greed.

Damn it. I’m really a piece of work.

The fallen trunks were piled high, and behind the branches lay an endless expanse of black.

There was no electricity, and no moon in the sky. In such a terrible situation, could Xin Ning see the road and drive safely into the mountains relying only on her headlights? Ye Yichi didn’t have an answer, and she didn’t want to think about it.

She just needed to climb out. Once she reached the road, she would be closer to Xin Ning.

Suddenly, two headlights appeared in the distance.

“Xin Ning?” Ye Yichi called out tentatively.

Then a third pair of lights, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth… pairs of headlights lit up one by one. Someone with a megaphone began asking about the situation.

“They’re here! The rescue is here!” the villagers shouted back.

The young actors cheered excitedly. “We’re here! We’re over here! Everyone is fine!”

The trees ahead were cleared away with incredible speed. By the light of the searchlights, Ye Yichi finally saw that the original concrete road had been severed by silt and mud. The rescuers were driving specially modified off-road vehicles.

“Did you see a white Bentley on the road?” Ye Yichi grabbed the nearest rescuer, her heart gripped by an invisible hand.

Please, you must have seen her.

There was only one road into the mountain. Xin Ning had been driving for nearly an hour. If she hadn’t run into the rescuers, it meant…

“We saw it,” the rescuer smiled, pointing toward the back of the convoy.

Ye Yichi turned, but she didn’t see a white Bentley.

Instead, from the last off-road vehicle, a tall, slender figure pushed open the door. Across the cheering crowd, her eyes locked onto Ye Yichi without wavering.

She stepped out of the car and ran toward her.

Ye Yichi rushed to meet her. Amidst the scent of earth and trees, mixed with the chaotic smell of dead leaves and debris, she pulled the woman tightly into her arms.

It was the clear fragrance of rose and cedarwood.

“I… I thought I’d never see you again.” Xin Ning looked up, her tears falling like rain. “You said I wasn’t a stand-in, and then the video cut off. I thought… and then I heard there was an accident at the set, I thought…”

Beneath her cold exterior was an unhidden storm. Her sobs were punctuated by sharp intakes of breath, her delicate body trembling like a plum blossom petal in the wind.

“Don’t be afraid. I understand everything,” Ye Yichi comforted her softly.

The person in her arms trembled even harder.

Licking her canine tooth, Ye Yichi leaned down and kissed Xin Ning’s lips.