Chapter 393: Gu Sen Gave Song Shiwei a Slap

The instant their gazes met, Song Shiwei was the first to look away, shifting her eyes elsewhere.

They had only exchanged a couple of brief words when they first met in B City.

"Hello, I'm Jiang Lai."

"No, I've got the wrong person."

After that, nothing more.

This morning at the Gu family home, Jiang Lai was surrounded by people—she stood in the frontmost row when paying respects to the ancestors, and sat at the first table at the family banquet. After the meal, Song Shiwei left on the pretext of feeling unwell and was absent the entire afternoon.

Only in the evening, upon hearing that her son had been punished to kneel in the ancestral hall, did she rush over in a panic.

The guests had long since dispersed, and Jiang Lai shouldn't have still been here. Song Shiwei had timed it carefully, yet still ran into Jiang Lai.

Like a nightmare.

Jiang Lai was the exact opposite—her gaze at Song Shiwei was dark and heavy, like a night so thick it could never dissolve, staring straight and unblinking.

Being stared at by a nightmare was an even greater nightmare.

Song Shiwei had no choice but to speak: "Are you all leaving soon?"

She didn't even dare speak to Jiang Lai alone, her eyes looking toward Ke Zhongyu's direction.

Ke Zhongyu had long suspected that it was Song Shiwei who abandoned Jiang Lai. During the day, in front of the many elders and guests, he needed to present himself as the head of the Ke Family, but now it was evening, the bustle of the Gu family's old estate had long faded, and only the Gu family's own people remained.

Ke Zhongyu asked coldly without any courtesy: "Is there even a place for her in this family? There hasn't been since the moment she was abandoned at birth."

Song Shiwei's breath caught, and she slowly widened her eyes.

Jiang Lai spoke slowly: "There's always been a question I haven't asked you, Song Nvshi. Back then, why did you leave me in the snow?"

The air instantly froze.

A ghostly silence fell among the three of them.

Song Shiwei's eyes shifted slightly, and she asked back: "Wasn't it the nurse who carried the wrong baby? The nurse carried the wrong baby, I didn't know. Drive safely on your way, I need to go check on Zhi Yan, see my son, my son is still in the ancestral hall, the ancestral hall, right, the ancestral hall..."

She walked away muttering to herself.

She walked past Jiang Lai, going faster and faster, as if a ghost were chasing her from behind.

Jiang Lai turned her head instinctively. Ke Zhongyu's hand slipped behind her neck and turned her face back forward. He said in a low voice: "We should head back."

"Mm," Jiang Lai nodded, lowering her eyes to glance at her chest. Only after taking a couple of steps did she say to Ke Zhongyu, "Ke Zhongyu, I thought I'd be fine, but just now my heart hurt a little."

Ke Zhongyu's nose stung suddenly, and he looked at her and said: "I'm sorry."

Jiang Lai smiled, and as she smiled her eyes grew red: "Why are you saying sorry again? What does it have to do with you..."

"It does." Ke Zhongyu held her tightly, as if holding an icicle. Jiang Lai was cold and stiff all over. He held her in his arms and looked up at the plaque above the main gate of the Gu family's old estate, a chilling coldness showing in his eyes. He had never hated the Gu family as much as he did at this moment.

Because Jiang Lai told him she was in pain.

Jiang Lai could endure pain very well.

Jiang Lai almost never said she was in pain.

But just now she said her heart hurt a little.

Ke Zhongyu's arms tightened around Jiang Lai more and more, almost embedding her into his bones. Jiang Lai finally felt a different kind of pain. She raised her arms to hold Ke Zhongyu, believing that the pain from an embrace wasn't really pain, but rather a return to a world of sensation.

"Ke Zhongyu..." Jiang Lai's face rubbed gently against Ke Zhongyu's chest. "I'm a little hungry, I want to eat."

"I'll make you something when we get back." Ke Zhongyu released Jiang Lai and took her hand to the car.

Jiang Lai's gaze followed Ke Zhongyu's profile the whole time: "Besides rice noodles, what else can you make?"

"Very, very spicy spicy chicken."

Jiang Lai paused slightly: "When did you learn that?"

Ke Zhongyu: "Dad found a chef to teach me, a chef from G Province."

Jiang Lai's body gradually warmed: "I want it very, very, very spicy."

Ke Zhongyu: "How did it upgrade again?"

Jiang Lai smiled but didn't explain.

Spiciness is a kind of pain.

In the ancestral hall, father and son were talking.

One knelt with head bowed, the other stood with hands clasped together.

"Do you know how outrageously wrong you were?"

Gu Zhiyan kept his mouth shut about the big gift package Xie Yongsi and Li Dan had sent him, but this had happened at the Gu family home—how could Gu Sen not have heard about it?

So Gu Sen asked his son whether he knew how outrageously wrong he had been.

Gu Zhiyan kept his head lowered and refused to speak.

Gu Sen closed his eyes. The candlelight from the burning incense in the ancestral hall flickered gently across his face.

"Do you know that Lin Shutong turned your own younger sister Jiang Lai's four-year marriage into a joke?"

"When you helped outsiders against your own younger sister, did you ever imagine this day would come?"

"Gu Zhiyan, the fact that you're kneeling here willingly today must mean you've already realized how stupid you've been," Gu Sen said calmly. "Jiang Lai won't acknowledge me, won't acknowledge your mother, and won't acknowledge you as her own brother either."

Gu Zhiyan's head lowered even further.

"I am also at fault." Gu Sen slowly opened his eyes and knelt down. "I shouldn't have made that wrong decision back then. I shouldn't have considered everything for everyone else, yet failed to consider my daughter's feelings. I've wronged her."

Gu Zhiyan slowly raised his eyes, looking at his father's guilt-ridden profile, and showed a trace of confusion: "Dad, what do you mean by that? The nurse carrying the wrong baby—what does that have to do with you and Mother?"

Gu Sen lowered his head: "It wasn't..."

"Gu Sen!" When Song Shiwei rushed to the ancestral hall, she caught exactly these two exchanges between father and son. Like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, she raised her voice in a shriek, immediately rushed in, her legs gave out, and she collapsed in front of Gu Sen.

She grabbed Gu Sen's arm tightly, her eyes wide, her lips trembling slightly: "Did you have to say these things in front of the children?"

Gu Sen looked at her anguished expression, pain likewise entwined in his eyes.

"Mom, how did you come over?" Gu Zhiyan reached out to support his mother.

Song Shiwei grabbed her son's arm with her backhand, also wanting to help him up: "Don't kneel, the ancestral hall is so cold, kneeling too long hurts your knees, get up, go home with Mom, go home."

Gu Zhiyan, however, did not get up.

"Mom, I don't want to go home yet; I need to calm down by myself for a while."

"What happened to you?" Song Shiwei's expression began to turn tense, her grip on her son's arm tightening, her slightly long fingernails digging in enough to make Gu Zhiyan frown slightly, "Who told you what? No matter who told you whatever nonsense, don't believe it, don't believe it, okay?"

Gu Sen spoke up: "Someone told him what kind of person Lin Shutong really is."

Song Shiwei froze for a moment, her first reaction was to sigh in relief, then she said to her son: "I told you before that she's not a good woman; knowing now isn't too late, let's forget her—you now have Qu Mei, Qu Mei likes you a lot, feelings can be cultivated, if you stay with Qu Mei longer, you will surely come to like her."

Gu Zhiyan felt that he would not come to like Qu Mei.

Qu Mei, like him, is a person whose life has been arranged by the family; he just doesn't understand why Qu Mei can accept this so matter-of-factly—has she been disciplined into having no self?

Song Shiwei insisted on taking her son home, deeply afraid that if he stayed with Gu Sen something serious would happen—something she couldn't bear.

"Zhi Yan, come home with Mom."

"Mom, I'm not going back."

"He must kneel for a whole night."

Song Shiwei became displeased, questioning her husband: "Gu Sen, what exactly are you trying to do?"

"Song Shiwei, what exactly are you trying to do now?" Gu Sen likewise countered her: "You're desperately covering your mouth—does that mean nothing happened? Can what has happened just disappear?"

Song Shiwei had just been stimulated by Jiang Lai, and now her son and husband stimulated her one after another, her eyes red with anger, she shouted loudly: "What can I do? What can I do! Gu Sen, tell me what to do! Clearly if she doesn't come back to break all this, everyone would be fine, everyone would be peaceful, why does she have to come back!"

"Why does she have to reappear before me!!!"

Slap.

Gu Sen gave Song Shiwei a slap.

In fifty years, Gu Sen had never hit a woman; this was the first time.

After more than thirty years of marriage, Gu Sen struck his wife for the first time.

Gu Zhiyan stared, stunned.