Chapter 5: Fulfilling Your Happiness

She searched for him near Lixian County for almost a month without finding him, so she could only return home.

As soon as she got home, she saw him, covered in wounds, lying on a bamboo mat in her house.

When he saw her, his eyes were filled with apology, his expression a little awkward.

She felt more surprise than anything else.

He hadn’t broken his word.

He said he would take responsibility, and he actually found their house.

She had searched for him all over the mountains and fields, and he had been searching for her too.

It has to be said that soldiers are indeed very perceptive. After only being with her once, he was able to pinpoint her home.

Although later her grandfather told her that he had saved him.

She was overjoyed, her heart filled with happiness.

This was what fate was like.

She undressed him and took care of him.

Later, everyone in the village knew about her taking care of him.

Under her grandfather’s guidance, she and he were officially married.

After their marriage, he took her back to the Gu family, and then returned to his unit.

Not long after he returned, she discovered she was pregnant.

A little over a month ago, during their first encounter, due to the hallucinations caused by the wild fruits, they had been together only once, and she conceived.

This encounter was truly magical.

His sense of responsibility, his faint yet heartfelt smile when he smiled at her, diluted the rudeness of their first encounter.

Even that rudeness and the unpleasant feeling had turned into sweetness.

Now, looking back, it all turned bitter.

Apparently, if you don’t love someone, you can’t even love anything around that person.

If you don’t love your wife, you won’t love the child born to your wife.

Lin Moran felt as if countless tiny needles were piercing her heart.

She felt heartbroken and guilty.

Heartbroken that her child grew up without a father, and now that he had a father, he didn’t receive his father’s love.

Guilty for her youthful ignorance, for mistaking coercion for true love.

If Gu Jingyao had told her earlier that he had a beloved woman in his heart, she would not have married him.

“You don’t have to force yourself to raise the child. I gave birth to him, I will raise him.”

“Let me know when you’re free, write the divorce papers, I have no objections.”

Lin Moran looked at him calmly, her voice even.

Rather than wasting her life with someone who didn’t love her, it was better to set each other free.

Gu Jingyao was clearly stunned, feeling a blow to his heart. His handsome brows furrowed deeply, his gaze glancing over her face without a trace. After a long time, he slowly said, “I can tell that the Uncle Haoyang your child mentioned is indeed very good to you both. If you’ve decided to pursue your happiness, I won’t object.”

His tone was neither supportive nor relieved.

A sarcastic smile tugged at Lin Moran’s lips.

When someone wants a divorce, even overheard gossip becomes an excuse to leave.

He clearly had a white moonlight in his heart, yet he blamed their divorce on her.

In the future, when others mention their divorce, they wouldn’t blame him, only pointing fingers at her, saying that she had another man and insisted on divorcing him, a national hero.

“Gu Jingyao, don’t be so hypocritical.”

Lin Moran looked at him intently.

She even suspected that he had been afraid of being charged with assault, so even though he had a white moonlight in his heart, to avoid punishment, he had chosen to marry her.

“You’ve gone too far.”

“If you push me too hard, you’ll regret it.”

At that moment, Lin Moran felt like killing him.

She was granting him a divorce, but he was still trying to shirk responsibility.

It was better not to divorce.

In the end, she wasn’t the one who would be anxious.

Gu Jingyao took a deep breath, his eyes colder than before.

The woman before him was completely different from the one he had known.

Back then, she was gentle and romantic.

Now, she was fiery, unreasonable, and unpredictable.

“Knock knock knock…”

A knocking sound came from the door.

A young man in a police uniform stood at Lin Moran’s door, “Commander, there’s an urgent matter that needs your attention.”

Gu Jingyao’s eyes returned to normal, his face instantly cold and stern.

Then he turned to Lin Moran, “Something came up at work, if you need anything, you can come to the unit to find me.”

“Think carefully about what you just said.”

After leaving these two sentences, Gu Jingyao left quickly.

Looking at his departing back, Lin Moran felt a sense of emptiness.

She had struck hard, demanding a divorce.

He, however, remained calm, without any major reaction.

Lin Moran felt even more stifled.

In the following days, she didn’t see Gu Jingyao again.

Gu Jingyao didn’t come to see her either.

The Gu family was also quiet, not bothering her.

The world was so peaceful, as if Gu Jingyao had never returned.

Lin Moran didn’t have much time to be sad.  As long as Gu Jingyao and Xu Jingya didn’t come to disgust her, she would ignore their dirty affairs.

On the afternoon Gu Jingyao returned, she took half a day off to take Gu Quanzhe to see him. The next morning, she went to work at Liuli Street.

Liuli Street was backed by Liuli Factory. Lin Moran worked at an antique shop called Yipinge. The work was easy.

There wasn’t much to do every day.

She could also bring her child.

Besides that, she often did appraising and bargain hunting.

For years, there had been little economic exchange between China and other countries, and the exchange of cultural relics was rare.

Until a few years ago, a Dutchman discovered a sunken treasure ship in the South China Sea. He salvaged the ship and found millions of Kangxi porcelain pieces. This man was crazy.

There were too many porcelain pieces on the ship; he believed in scarcity, and to increase the auction price, he only kept more than 200,000 pieces, smashing the other 600,000 to 700,000 pieces.

Then he transported the remaining porcelain to foreign countries for auction, selling them for a huge price and making a fortune.

Foreigners, seeing how this could make them rich, were envious. The number of foreigners coming to China to hunt for treasures increased, and domestic cultural relics suddenly became popular, triggering a wave of cultural relic craze, with a large number of people becoming active in the cultural relic market again.

Lin Moran was one of them.

Relying on her experience traveling all over the country, the appraisal skills passed down by her grandfather, and the treasures she had collected over the years since moving out of the Gu family, she had made a lot of money.

Very few people around her knew about her making money from cultural relics.

The Gu family looked down on her work, finding it shameful.

Last time, the Cultural Relics Bureau received a report saying that she illegally collected bronze ware and intended to sell it abroad. She was detained for three days. Because of this, she was ridiculed again, saying she was not doing a proper job, and the Gu family even said they would cut ties with her.

“Hello! I heard you buy antiques. I have a treasure here, would you like to take a look?”

After wiping down the few antiques in the shop, a middle-aged woman with wavy hair, wearing a Dacron shirt and wide-leg pants, holding a blue-and-white porcelain jar with a lid, walked into the shop with an arrogant air.

Lin Moran’s gaze swept over her lightly, then fell on the lidded porcelain jar in her arms, her brows slightly furrowed.