166. If You Don’t Answer
2024.03.14.
Gerret Pelliese, who had been talking endlessly, suddenly realized the atmosphere in the room had subtly changed.
The crown prince had wiped the mocking smile off his perfect face and was now silently staring at him, unmoving.
Gerret Pelliese, believing at last that the crown prince was seriously considering his flawless plan, gave a triumphant smile.
“This won’t be a losing deal for you. Before I came, I did some research—Rocksenhart has been developing at an incredible pace recently, with its population steadily increasing. But expanding a city with insufficient food and weak foundational industries requires an enormous amount of gold. Well, am I correct?”
Just as Gerret Pelliese began to feel increasingly uneasy under the crown prince’s piercing gaze fixed intently on his face, he shivered slightly, as if shaking off a sudden chill, and pressed forward once more.
“Yuan—I formally demand shared usage rights over that insolent girl. The divorce terms I propose to Your Highness are: half of the dowry you gave to the Pelliese family, plus the right for you to use Yuan for one season each year. In exchange, during the remaining three seasons, Yuan will remain under the use of her birth family, the Pellieses. After the divorce, I will fully support your remarriage to Duchess Ariesta.”
Gerret Pelliese declared with ambition, feeling as though he had just concluded a life-or-death gamble with a hundred percent chance of success.
“Of course, if we draw up a contract, I also plan to share the profits! Compared to Yuan’s abilities, this is absolutely, absolutely not a losing proposition.”
This was the conclusion he had reached after days of deliberation, even conceding certain benefits—a compromise and concession akin to stepping back one step to advance two.
It was only natural that the crown prince finally reacted after silently listening all this time.
Gerret Pelliese inwardly smiled with satisfaction, convinced he possessed negotiation talent rivaling that of the greatest merchants.
It was clearly an offer impossible to refuse.
At least, that’s what he thought, judging from how the crown prince, who had been staring motionlessly at him, quietly stood up and began walking toward him.
The crown prince he had seen up close at the black mansion’s wedding celebration was no longer before him.
Instead, a unique aura—exclusively possessed by those born to dominate and lead—slowly enveloped Gerret Pelliese, overwhelming him with oppressive weight.
He expected the crown prince to offer a handshake, but instead, he simply walked past him. The movement was graceful, impossibly slow.
Peaceful—more peaceful than anything imaginable.
Yet Gerret Pelliese soon realized that this peace had been the calm before the storm.
“Guh—!”
Because the crown prince had locked the door behind him, then strode forward and seized Gerret Pelliese by the throat.
It happened so suddenly that he missed the chance to even scream.
Gerret Pelliese’s feet lifted off the ground. His leather shoes, stretched to bursting, flailed helplessly in midair.
The crown prince lifted his entire body, which even a warhorse would struggle to carry, as lightly as a feather, still gripping his throat.
A merciless hand crushed his windpipe, cutting off his breath completely, leaving him writhing like a freshly caught fish.
“Ability.”
Up close, the crown prince’s face was no different from a demon’s.
His eyes, bloodshot and completely wild, looked inhuman—like a monstrous humanoid creature under attack.
“L-Lord… Your Highness?”
“What ability?”
A rough, trembling voice poured directly onto Gerret Pelliese’s face.
He desperately struggled, kicking and thrashing to free himself from the iron grip around his neck.
But the crown prince, utterly indifferent to Gerret Pelliese’s breathing, only tightened his grip the more he struggled, growling:
“Stop rolling your eyes and answer properly. What ability does that woman have?”
Oh no.
In that instant, Gerret Pelliese’s vision blurred.
‘Could it be…?’
Could it be that the crown prince knew nothing at all? That he had been circling his own wife without divorcing her, unaware? Had Yuan concealed her ability from her husband and won his heart? How?
His mouth, which had paused in thought, snapped shut in panic.
Instead, his face, deprived of breath to its limit, swelled up like a red balloon. Gerret Pelliese was then callously thrown onto the cold wooden floor like a sack of goods.
Immediately, a dark shadow loomed heavily over him.
The crown prince’s eyes, shadowed beneath, glared with a sharp, demanding light.
Gasping and coughing violently, Gerret Pelliese crawled desperately along the floor, trying to escape the shadow, but to no avail.
At this point, Gerret Pelliese had decided to remain stubbornly silent.
Even if the crown prince was a reckless brute, surely he wouldn’t harm his wife’s uncle inside someone else’s estate.
Clutching his mouth shut, Gerret Pelliese leaned heavily against the wall, rubbing his back as he slowly, painfully pulled himself upright.
Then, he quickly devised a plan to end this disastrous situation by claiming he had come at Yuan’s request to return the dowry.
His thoughts raced to completion, and he abruptly lifted his head.
I came because Yuan asked me to. She told me to return the dowry, so I obeyed.
As for her ability… well, cleaning solution! Yes, she has the ability to make special cleaning potions!
While Gerret Pelliese rapidly fabricated dozens of plausible excuses in his mind, he stretched out his fat hand forward, as if to calm Clade, who was silently drawing closer with chilling intent.
“J-just hear me out first! You must have misunderstood!”
Gerret Pelliese, who had spent his life talking his way out of trouble with smooth words, firmly believed he could do so again.
He was glad he hadn’t come empty-handed.
He had brought a wagon full of gold—the very dowry Yuan had warned him to return. With that, he believed he could talk his way out of any excuse.
“Uuuuuaaaahhh!”
That is, until a sharpened blade sliced off one of his fingers in an instant.
“I’ll ask you exactly nine more times.”
A chilling sensation, like hair standing on end, spread from his little finger to the tips of his toes. The fine hairs in his ears prickled with sensitivity.
The carpet beneath Gerret Pelliese’s feet was soaked—first with blood from his severed finger, then with the urine that had soaked the front of his pants.
“Uwaaah! Uuuuuaaah! Uuugh!”
As Gerret Pelliese screamed mindlessly, his throat was seized once more.
A sharp sword tip, smeared with blood, hovered right before his eyes.
“Fail to answer, and you’ll never hold anything with your hands for the rest of your life.”
***
Lancelot, who had stepped away from the room to give privacy to Count Pelliese and only now returned, believing the meeting had ended, saw Maxim’s face turned deathly pale as he stood guarding the door—and immediately sensed something had gone terribly wrong.
Lancelot knocked repeatedly on the door, then pressed his ear against it. Hearing the sound of breaking objects, he slammed the hilt of his sword against the doorknob, breaking it, and flung the door open.
He stood frozen, unable even to cry out, staring at the horrifying scene inside.
On the damp carpet, reeking of blood and urine, Gerret Pelliese crouched like a butchered slab of meat, drenched in blood.
He trembled violently, unable even to scream, whispering only “Save me… save me…” over and over.
And before him stood Clade.
All around him lay shattered furniture—torn horizontally, vertically, broken and split apart—as if every intact object in the room had been violently destroyed.
Sensing movement, Gerret Pelliese suddenly raised his head, clutching his blood-soaked hands over his head.
Unable to stand on his legs, he crawled toward Lancelot on his elbows.
He wailed desperately, as if Lancelot were his only savior.
“Save me! Please save me! Save me… h-hhhhuuuu….”
Hearing Maxim moan as if about to faint, Lancelot ordered someone to fetch the doctor, then closed the door.
Regardless of whether Gerret Pelliese turned ashen-faced or not, he quickly turned to assess Clade first.
Beneath sweat-soaked golden hair, Clade’s darkened eyes still stared wildly at Gerret Pelliese, as if not yet recovered from fierce combat.
“Say it again.”
Yuan Pelliese had the ability to absorb the pain of others.
Since childhood, she had used this ability to conduct business and earn money, reviving her family’s fortunes.
This ability only manifested in a chosen few within the Pelliese family—it was a rare and precious gift.
With tears streaming endlessly from his already ruined eyes, Gerret Pelliese recited the explanation he had repeated many times, like a prayer.
“Anything else.”
“Pain—absorbing pain! T-the pain goes to Yuan, hhhhuuuuu… and becomes mine. Simply put, she takes the pain instead—she suffers in their place.”
The excruciating, near-death agony that had tormented him for over ten years—pain that had turned him from a man into a beast—had gradually lessened after meeting Yuan.
Then, all at once, it vanished completely alongside her. Where that pain had gone was now obvious.
Even Lancelot, who had just entered and grasped the situation, felt cold sweat break out all over his body.
Clade’s face looked as if it had been shattered countless times and barely reconstructed, maintaining form only by a thread. For a brief moment, strength returned to his collapsing jaw and brow.
“She’s weak because of the Pelliese hereditary illness. It’s characterized by a short lifespan. So this isn’t the time for us to fight among ourselves. We must make her use her ability before she dies—”
Another brutal kick followed.
Gerret Pelliese, beaten senseless and unaware even of why he was being hit, was nearly unconscious when Lancelot finally snapped back to his senses.
He rushed to stop Clade, who was rampaging like a man possessed.
Gerret Pelliese howled like a beast and screamed:
“I don’t understand! I don’t understand! You used her fully! Why am I the only one treated so cruelly, guh—!”
Lying sprawled on the floor, Gerret Pelliese looked up at Clade with eyes full of resentment.
Those dark eyes. Last night, what had he said to the woman who had desperately reached out to him in the storm, trying to ease his pain?
“Don’t hurt. That’s your specialty, isn’t it?”
And what had he said to the woman who tried to reach him, to swallow his suffering?
“Just die—die alone.”
“Don’t die in front of me and ruin my luck.”
Ex-husband Wants Reconciliation
One-line summary: Chasing the wife to the crematorium (making an effort to attract someone who has become indifferent), the female lead doesn’t look back, the second male lead takes the position.
Intro:
To repay the kindness of the older generation, Su Mu crossed into a female-dominated world and became a live-in daughter-in-law of the Yan family, single-handedly saving the Yan family from fire and water.
But her husband, Yan Jiyue, the eldest son of the Yan family, treated her with sarcasm and never showed her a good face.
It wasn’t until after Su Mu’s death that this pampered and arrogant young master shed a few fake tears and pretended to want to die for love.
This life’s kindness was enough. If there was a next life, she would definitely kick Yan Jiyue away.
Who knew that the heavens would be so kind as to allow her to be reborn, returning to the time when she had just married into the Yan family.
Su Mu glanced at the Yan eldest son, who still spoke coldly to her, and threw a divorce letter in front of him.
“Let’s divorce!”
***
Yan Jiyue never imagined that he would be reborn. He happily went to find Su Mu, wanting to make up for the mistakes he had made in his ignorant youth.
Wasn’t the reason the heavens allowed him to be reborn to let him reconcile with Su Mu?
But when he pushed open the door to Su Mu’s room, the person lying on the bed was another man.
Su Mu’s personal attendant, Xie Yi.
Yan Jiyue hated him so much that his teeth itched. In front of Su Mu, Xie Yi was a gentle and considerate whisperer of sweet nothings, but in reality, he was vicious-hearted and deliberately sabotaged their husband and wife relationship.
In the previous life, it was he who secretly hid in Su Mu’s coffin and committed suicide, stealing a step ahead of him to be buried with Su Mu.
Yan Jiyue’s eyes were filled with hatred as he cursed, “What kind of thing are you? Your background is lowly, what right do you have to occupy Su Mu?”
Xie Yi looked at the sleeping Su Mu and no longer pretended to be a whisperer of sweet nothings.
He proudly stuck out his belly, “I have the right because my belly is capable of giving the Wife-master a daughter.”
***
Yan Jiyue was consumed with jealousy. He spread rumors that Xie Yi had once been branded with the mark of a “harlot” on his chest.
But on the night Xie Yi cut off the flesh bearing that mark, Su Mu suddenly realized something was amiss.
“How did you know the exact moment I was poisoned? And why did you show up a month early?”
Xie Yi remained silent, blood from his wound soaking through his robes. His sapphire eyes brimmed with anguish – or was it just a flawless act?
Between a once-arrogant husband now seeking redemption, and a gentle soul willing to die for her – who truly held the darkest secrets? And could it be that Su Mu and Yan Jiyue weren’t the only ones given a second chance at life…?
[Reading Guide]
1. True divorce, chasing the wife to the crematorium, the female lead doesn’t look back, the male lead is Xie Yi.
2. The ex-husband did not cheat, he just realized too late and didn’t realize that he liked the female lead.
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