☆ 36. Falling off the Horse

As the night deepened and the sky darkened outside, the moonlight was thin tonight, making it hard to see anything inside the house, so the light was turned on.

Su Cheng was wearing a white tank top and an old-fashioned pair of shorts, busy in the room.

He gently finished cleaning up the person lying on the bed, whose eyes were half-closed from exhaustion. He tossed the towel into the basin, went to the cupboard to fetch a clean nightgown, and changed her into it. He then cradled her in his arms, moving her to the reclining chair he had just brought in from the living room. He leaned over to kiss her reddened eye corners and slightly swollen lips, softly saying:

“You rest here for a while, I’ll change the sheets.”

Ji Meng lazily opened her eyes to glance at him, saying nothing, her gaze shifting to the bed.

The usually tidy and clean bed now had a light blue floral sheet with large peonies, wrinkled and in disarray.

It was a mess, damp, muddy.

On the large patch of wetness, a significant bloodstain had soaked through the peony print on the sheet, resembling a decayed flower, glaringly red.

“Don’t you have anything you want to ask me?” Ji Meng withdrew her gaze, glancing down at the old patterned quilt in her hand, which was already wrinkled from her sporadic gripping.

Sansan had already played dead, but the previous penetrating pain, combined with the sight of the blood-soaked bed, made it clear to her that she wasn’t just experiencing a dream, she was living it.

The man in front of her, who had been married for a long time, discovered that he had slept with a young woman during a moment of intimacy with his wife… It’s a terrifying thought, isn’t it?

Aren’t you going to ask?

The imagined questions never came. Ji Meng realized she couldn’t express what she was feeling or her mood right now.

She didn’t know whether to be angry at the damn system for its concealment or to be terrified that she was impersonating someone else, possibly having already revealed her true identity in front of her supposed husband, and might even be regarded as a spy.

Oh, maybe she should be glad that she had been using her own body all along?

At the same time, she should also mock herself for having lived for over twenty years and still not recognizing her own body, it truly was foolish.

Su Cheng followed Ji Meng’s gaze to the bed, his expression pausing slightly. After a moment, he looked back at her with gentle eyes and said, “Can we talk about this later? Just wait for me, it won’t take long.”

After saying this, Su Cheng got up and pulled the sheets off the bed, crumpling them up and tossing them into the enamel basin. He then added the wrinkled magenta dress that had a broken strap before taking a stool to reach for clean sheets and a duvet cover in the wooden chest on the high shelf.

In this day and age, sheets and duvet covers aren’t something you can just buy whenever you want, the ones they were currently using were still the ones Ji Qing had prepared before they returned. They didn’t have enough for washing, and last month, Ji Meng bought two pieces of flawed cotton fabric from the large market and had someone make a new set.

The orange floral sheet had been pressed in the chest for a long time, and when taken out, it was slightly wrinkled, but compared to the one on the bed, it was clean and fresh.

A man who had spent over a decade in the military had a remarkable speed for changing sheets, in just a few moments, he was done. After that, he carried her to the bed, got in himself, and held her close under the covers without letting go.

“Mengmeng, can I tell you a secret about myself?” After a moment of silence, Su Cheng said to the person in his arms.

Ji Meng looked up at him upon hearing this.

Su Cheng smiled slightly: “Let me think about it, I should figure out where to start.”

After saying this, he pressed his lips together, contemplating for a moment. After a while, he seemed to have made up his mind and looked back at Ji Meng: “Let’s start from when I joined the army. I want you to know more about me…”

“I was seventeen, or more precisely, I joined the military before I turned seventeen…”

Su Cheng spoke slowly, gradually sharing his story. He talked about how his father had passed away, his mother’s hardships, his determination to enlist after graduating high school, and how after enduring life-and-death situations, his mother began to worry about his future and marriage. He recounted how, at twenty-five, he finally gave in to his mother’s repeated requests to come back for a blind date, and that’s when he met her original body…

“She had already been in the countryside for a year and had just turned eighteen. She was far too young and was a young intellectual. My mother originally disagreed, but after she saved my mom when she fell while chopping wood on the mountain, my mother relented.”

“I came back just to go on a blind date with her, but after meeting her, I felt it wasn’t suitable. I hadn’t been transferred to this central area yet, and if I was going to be stationed with the troops, the environment was poor, which wouldn’t be ideal for marrying someone too delicate.”

“… So, what happened next?”

Ji Meng’s expression grew increasingly wooden, she didn’t know how to react. She felt like a mistress, listening to the encounter and relationship between the current wife and her husband.

“I refused her at the time, but it seemed she didn’t understand. Afterwards, she did many things that led to misunderstandings in the village…”

Su Cheng noticed that Ji Meng was unwilling to listen and could sense her discomfort and displeasure. However, he felt that if he didn’t clarify things, by tomorrow morning, they might go their separate ways.

“I planned to explain things to her and went to the Youth Educated’ point to find her, but I ended up being set up by her.”

Upon hearing this, Ji Meng paused for a moment before looking up at Su Cheng. She had this memory, which was the reason for the coldness in the original relationship between him and his current wife.

At that time, the original body knew that Su Cheng had come to clarify things, and she had graciously invited him into the house, offering him a glass of spiced water.

Su Cheng refused to drink it. She tried to appear weak, but he still didn’t drink. However, she had a backup plan, she lit some incense in the room, using mugwort to mask the scent. It wouldn’t cause anyone to faint but would slow down their reactions. She bought herself some time, and when the people from the Youth Educated’ point returned, she embraced him.

Su Cheng was slightly affected by the incense, and with her sudden movement, he didn’t notice in time, allowing her to take advantage and hold onto him. Even when he quickly broke free, someone saw them.

Su Cheng was unhappy at the time and sternly warned her.

The original body didn’t argue at the time, she just cried incessantly, saying she couldn’t help her feelings. The original body was skilled at appearing vulnerable, and with that reaction, Su Cheng couldn’t hold it against her and left.

But the matter didn’t end there. Soon, various versions of the story about the two of them embracing began circulating at the Youth Educated’ point.

Rumors spread quickly, and even though Su Cheng hadn’t done anything wrong and had pushed her away in time, his reputation in the village suffered. At this moment, the original body dealt Su Cheng a fatal blow.

She jumped into the river.

Right in front of the villagers and Fang Aihua.

She was rescued, crying nonstop, lamenting how her uncontrollable feelings had implicated Su Cheng and how she shouldn’t have liked him.

In front of Fang Aihua and the villagers, the original body never said a word against Su Cheng, everything was her fault, it was her uncontrollable feelings… yet she pushed Su Cheng into a difficult situation.

Su Cheng could hardly find a way out, after all, the fact that they had been on a blind date was true, and the fact that they had accidentally embraced was also true.

In the end, Su Cheng filed a marriage report with the higher-ups.

“I know about this, you don’t need to tell me. Just go ahead and say what happens next, what secret do you want to share with me?” Ji Meng pulled herself out of that memory and said, pressing her lips together.

That wasn’t a glorious matter, bringing it up would only lead to embarrassment, and she didn’t want him to go through such humiliation.

Su Cheng paused and looked at her: “You know about how she plotted against me, but do you know that she gave birth to Qiuqiu just seven months after marrying me?”

Su Cheng had always been puzzled. The fact that she could learn some things from that woman, smoothly resolve matters concerning Su Dazhi, and find the Ji family easily, along with her clear understanding of the Ji family’s situation, indicated that she had some of that woman’s memories. Alternatively, she might have learned some of the woman’s private matters through some means, but it seemed she didn’t know that Qiuqiu wasn’t his child.

If she truly investigated that woman thoroughly to obtain her identity, she shouldn’t be unaware of this.

Did she think he was already dead at that time and didn’t need to understand those things?

“What?” Ji Meng suddenly looked up, startled. “What did you say?”

When it came to the topic of Qiuqiu, Su Cheng hesitated for a moment, pausing for several breaths.

“Qiuqiu has always claimed to be a premature baby, but she was actually a full-term child…”

“What do you mean?” Ji Meng asked, her heart sinking.

She recalled the memory segment that Sansan had shown her about the original body searching for a marriage partner in the countryside.

The man who looked very much like Fu Junyan and tragically died while trying to save someone.

As a formal system, Sansan couldn’t pry into the most intimate parts of the original body’s memories, so there were many areas that were obscured.

Therefore, before the original body married Su Cheng, she had already…

“It’s exactly as you think. Qiuqiu isn’t my child. I never had any relations with her from the beginning, which is why that night, I…”

Su Cheng didn’t finish his sentence, feeling even less experienced than a sixteen or seventeen-year-old boy. It wasn’t worth mentioning.

“Later, I found out that before I came back for the blind date, she had been very close to a young educated who drowned while trying to save someone. When I asked her, she admitted it.”

“Did you never think about divorcing her?”

Ji Meng looked up at Su Cheng, feeling numb inside. She didn’t expect that the real-life fool, the one taking over the situation, would appear before her.

The key point was that this person knew everything, he had endured it and still treated Qiuqiu so well that no one would doubt the two were not biologically related.

“How could I not think about it?” Noticing Ji Meng’s expression as if she were looking at a fool, he couldn’t help but chuckle lightly, but his expression gradually grew serious.

“I’m a human too, and I can be angry. At that time, I even thought about suing her for marriage fraud and having her imprisoned for being a scoundrel…”

When it came to that matter and mentioning that person, the disgust in Su Cheng’s eyes was impossible to shake off.

“So what did you do?” Feeling Su Cheng’s anger and disgust, Ji Meng was even more puzzled, wondering why he had endured it for years.

During their time together, they had gotten along very well, and their relationship had progressed further. She felt that having no memories of the original body’s interactions with him didn’t matter, she didn’t need to see the little moments they shared, which was why she hadn’t asked Sansan to transfer those memories to her.

Seeing his unreserved expression of disgust made her realize that their relationship was probably even colder than she had imagined.

Su Cheng pressed his lips together tightly: “Because of Qiuqiu.”

“On our wedding night, I couldn’t touch her because I was still disgusted by her scheming against me. The next day, I received an emergency call from the army and had to leave home. That woman’s plans fell through, and fearing I would find out she was pregnant before marrying me, she kept it hidden from me until three days after Qiuqiu was born when I suddenly returned…”

“I was shocked and furious, and I dragged her into the room, wanting to kill her. But when Qiuqiu on the bed woke up and cried because of the noise, and I saw her tiny figure, no longer than my forearm, I hesitated.”

“I could have sent her to jail, but what about Qiuqiu? What would happen to her?”

Such a small child, only three days old, how would she survive?

A child without a father, with a mother who was a criminal, in this era, would hardly be able to survive.

He had considered sending the child to an orphanage, but when he went to see the environment there, it was truly terrible.

The dilapidated building had all its pots and pans set out to collect rainwater on rainy days.

In such an environment, it was filled with frail and pitiful children—there were abandoned baby girls and boys who were born disabled or mentally impaired…

In this era, not many people adopted or fostered children, the orphanages were overcrowded, and the meager subsidies from the government were simply insufficient. They had to fight over food just to survive.

The harsh conditions twisted people’s natures, and just by seeing the scenes, one could imagine Qiuqiu’s future fate.

At this moment, Su Cheng suddenly recalled the purpose of his battles on the front lines, the belief he held onto at all times.

To defend the motherland and protect the people.

Qiuqiu was an infant, but she was also a part of the people.

And her future fate was now in his hands.