Chapter 52: A Woman of the Tang Family Betrays Her Marriage

Tang Yuan returned to Moon Water Bay, opened her wardrobe, and hurled all the clothes inside onto the floor. Upon catching sight of that yellow pair of pajamas in particular, her face turned pale as a violent wave of nausea surged upward. She hurriedly pushed open the bathroom door and threw up over the sink.

She had long known that Shen Zhou was unfaithful, but she never expected him to humiliate her to this extent.

The domestic helper, upon seeing the pile of clothes outside the door, looked somewhat worried. "Madam, are these clothes supposed to be washed?"

Tang Yuan wiped the corner of her mouth and stared at her reflection in the mirror.

She looked utterly pathetic. How foolish she had been in the past.

Probably everyone in Shen Zhou's circle regarded her as a complete fool!

She took a deep breath and splashed some water on her face. "Throw them all away. My shoes too, throw away every single pair."

"But these are all very expensive..."

Tang Yuan had always been frugal. Previously, whenever Shen Zhou offered to buy her new clothes, she refused them all, believing that a single outfit should be worn for at least three years.

Consequently, she owned no clothes of the latest season.

Saving money for him turned out to be the most idiotic decision; there were plenty of women outside spending his money lavishly.

"Throw them all away."

She even felt disgusted by the very outfit she was wearing.

Shen Zhou had brought his mistress home, and the servants must have known it best, yet they had kept it a secret so tightly.

Recalling how nice she had been to every single servant over the past two years, never treating anyone harshly.

She wondered what those servants, upon hearing Shen Zhou and his mistress dallying in the master bedroom, must have thought of her as she remained entirely oblivious.

They must have thought her utterly foolish and intensely pitiful.

The color of Tang Yuan's lips was somewhat drained, and her fingertips trembled slightly. Having known Shen Zhou for fifteen years, her life was indeed a complete mess.

A burning anger smoldered inside her, yet she had no outlet for it.

By the time she regained her senses, she had already driven her car to the villa where Fu Yansheng lived.

He opened the door and found her standing outside with a pale face.

"Sister Tang Yuan..."

He called out softly and sidestepped a little. "I just got back. Is something the matter?"

The moment the words left his mouth, Tang Yuan walked in and slammed the door shut with a loud bang.

Fu Yansheng bent down, intending to fetch a pair of slippers for her, but she stretched out her leg and stepped directly on the shoes he had retrieved.

Fu Yansheng squatted on the floor and looked up at her.

She lifted her foot and pressed it right against his chest, causing him to fall backward.

His eyebrows arched slightly as he watched her shoe press against his sensitive spot.

After processing this for several seconds, he slowly straightened his torso, gripped her ankle, and adjusted the position of her foot.

"Step here instead."

His voice was hoarse, and his fingertips slowly traced upward along her ankle.

She was wearing straight-leg trousers, which accentuated her legs, making them appear long and straight.

She had originally acted purely out of suppressed anger, seeking a place to vent, but through the fabric and the thick soles of her shoes, the hardness beneath felt as though it might pierce right through the shoe leather.

Sudden hesitation washed over her as she snapped back to awareness of what she was doing.

She hastily tried to pull her foot back, but her ankle was firmly grasped by him.

Her ankle was slender yet held securely in a tight grip.

"Sister Tang Yuan..."

His voice was unmistakably husky, his gaze fixed unblinkingly upon her as his Adam's apple bobbed.

Tang Yuan glanced sidelong at him and felt as though he resembled an obedient yet desperate dog.

She forcefully pulled her leg back, suppressing the panic rising in her heart.

He remained seated on the floor without getting up, his eye rims flushed red, making him look somewhat pitiful.

Tang Yuan averted her gaze, at a loss for words, until a ringing phone broke the subtle, tense atmosphere.

She took a deep breath, hastily turned around, and pressed the answer button.

It was a call from her mother, Meng Lianzhi, demanding that she return to the old Tang family estate immediately.

Feeling somewhat uneasy, she prepared to open the door, only to hear Fu Yansheng ask, "Are you just going to abandon me?"

He was sitting on the hardwood floor, his cheeks lightly flushed, a rosy hue spreading down his neck, with his stray locks hanging down, exuding an alluring and intoxicating charm.

"I have matters to attend to right now."

"Tang Yuan, you're acting like a heartless woman."

Tang Yuan froze by the door, wondering how her behavior differed from Shen Zhou's.

Fu Yansheng was only twenty-three years old and had never been in a relationship.

"I..."

Not knowing what to say, she threw out a flustered remark, "We'll talk another day."

Daring not to look at him, she got into her car, still feeling the phantom sensation of that foreign object beneath her shoe sole.

Taking a deep breath and forcing herself to stop letting her imagination run wild, she drove toward the old Tang estate.

Intuition told her that something had happened at the Tang household as well.

She disliked coming to the old estate, fearing the ancestral hall where punishments and kneeling were enforced, as well as the pitch-dark rooms.

Upon entering the grand hall, she saw Tang Baihe kneeling right in the center, trembling all over, looking as though she had just been released from the dark confinement room.

Anyone locked in there for days would lose their sanity.

Pitch-black and utterly silent, that space induced a terrifying panic of being swallowed by monsters at any moment.

Tang Yuan obediently took a seat off to the side.

Tang Baihe was the eldest daughter of Old Master Tang, married off to the Li family through an arranged alliance many years ago.

Tang Yuan had known beforehand that the man from the Li family had domestic violence tendencies, but the Li family was powerful, ranking among the top ten elite families in the Imperial Capital.

When Tang Baihe was married off, Tang Shangxu had not yet been born, and the Tang family was in extreme decline.

The Tang family seemed cursed, producing only a single male heir per generation.

The previous generation consisted of Tang Yuan's nominal father.

In her generation, it was Tang Shangxu.

Kneeling on the ground, Tang Baihe slammed her forehead against the floor with loud thuds. "Dad, I'm begging you, let me get a divorce, please let me get a divorce, I'm begging you, I truly cannot bear this anymore."

Her cries and shouts echoed throughout the grand hall, yet no one responded.

Tang Yuan knew that Tang Baihe was considered a disgrace to the Tang family because, after nearly thirty years of marriage, she had failed to produce a single child.

Tang Baihe's forehead was bleeding from the impacts, and her entire body shook like a sieve.

The main doors of the living room were kicked open unceremoniously.

The newcomer was Tang Baihe's husband.

The man aggressively hurled a pile of photographs directly onto the coffee table; they showed Tang Baihe engaging in an affair with one of the Li family's bodyguards.

Old Master Tang's expression changed instantly, anger threatening to make him faint on the spot.

The expressions of the other members of the Tang family turned equally grim.

Savoring the awkward plight of the Tang family, the man strode over and kicked Tang Baihe to the floor. "When you got married, your Tang family explicitly stated that if the woman dared to commit adultery, I could deal with her however I saw fit."

Tang Baihe vomited a mouthful of blood from the kick, then struggled back onto her knees. "Dad, I beg you to let me divorce him. I don't love this man, I really don't."

The man grabbed her by the hair and addressed Old Master Tang, "I am taking her back first. Dad, apologies for disturbing you tonight. But this marriage will not end in divorce; I will never let this slut go."

In truth, the relationship between the Li family and the Tang family was not entirely adversarial. In earlier years, the Tang family managed to extract resources from the Li family, which allowed the Tang family to survive.

Although the Tang family now had a rising star in Tang Shangxu, they were still somewhat outmatched when facing the Li family.

With her face covered in blood, Tang Baihe was dragged away by her hair, her miserable screams echoing all the way out.

Scarcely half an hour later, the photographs of her intimate encounters with the bodyguard were widely circulated across chat groups.

Intent on retaliating for her infidelity, the Li family man even permitted a group of vagrants to violate her, recording videos of the act and viciously spreading them among elite social circles.

Within three hours, Tang Baihe had become the laughingstock of everyone's tea-time conversations.

Tang Yuan's palms were slick with sweat, and she found herself unable to swallow a single bite of food at the old estate; the atmosphere during dinner was suffocatingly heavy.