My Dead Husband - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Since I couldn’t escape the plot, I decided to take a gamble.

It wasn’t until I met Lin Lanci that I understood why people had warned me to value my life over my lust.

He was truly handsome-a jade-faced gentleman with a refined and elegant bearing.

He was a man so indifferent he bordered on cold. Well aware of the rumors surrounding his birth, his gaze was dark and terrifying to anyone he looked upon. Beyond the world’s gossip, he had built a high wall around himself, locking his heart away within.

But for someone like me, who had read countless transmigration and dating sim novels, his “difficulty level” wasn’t actually that high.

All it took was care and affection-giving him the things he had never received since childhood. He had possessed so little in his life that my pursuit of him went unnervingly smooth.

Every time I maneuvered closer to him, the stagnant lake in his eyes would tremble with ripples. Taking an inch and wanting a mile, I went from claiming love at first sight to swearing that we would never part, in life or in death, if we were wed.

He seemed to love those words, gazing deeply at me. “Truly?”

I did succeed. I successfully married into the Lin Family.

On our wedding day, the candlelight reflected against Lin Lanci’s face, making his beautiful eyes look like deep pools with hidden undercurrents. His words still echoed in my ears:

“Since you’ve provoked me, you are never allowed to leave.”

At the time, I was simply happy to have climbed onto a giant tree that could shield me from the heavens. I was also completely infatuated with my peerlessly handsome husband in his red wedding robes. I had wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him. “Whatever you say!”

I never expected that two years later, I would become a widow.

Snapping back from my memories, I realized everything had changed. The man who told me never to leave was the one who had left first.

During the two years I was married to Lin Lanci, I had almost forgotten that as the heroine of an R-18 fiction, I was supposed to endure a specific plot. Thinking of this, a realization hit me: Lin Lanci had such a hardy, stubborn fate-how could he just die?

Could it be because I forcibly dragged him, an outsider, into this mess that I ended up killing him?

My heart was a mess of complex emotions and an irrepressible surge of anger.

After seeing off the neighbors who came to offer their condolences, I noticed that while they told me to restrain my grief, every single one of them wore an expression of relief. It made sense; the man they had viewed as a jinx since childhood was finally dead. They probably wanted to throw a feast and celebrate for days.

I drank some wine. When the draft blew through the hall, I felt a chill penetrate my bones. I staggered into the bedroom.

Wine entered my sorrowful gut, and even after piling on several quilts, I couldn’t dispel the coldness throughout my body. I didn’t want to think about Lin Lanci anymore. The protector I had hand-picked for myself had crumbled so quickly. He disappointed me.

I was so angry that the tears wouldn’t stop. My maid, Mengtao, came in with a lamp and urged me not to be so sad, lest I cry until I damaged my eyes.

“Who’s crying for him? He couldn’t even manage something as simple as staying alive. I won’t be sad!”

Mengtao sighed, tucked in the corners of my quilt, and left.

I buried my head under the covers and wailed. Since transmigrating here all those years ago, I had lived in constant fear. I hadn’t had many peaceful days; the two years married to Lin Lanci felt like time I had stolen. Now, I had a home I couldn’t return to, a plot that was watching me like a predator, and-

The tears wouldn’t stop. My pent-up emotions flowed freely. I even began to fear, as Mengtao had said, that I would go blind from crying.

However, a sudden wave of drowsiness hit me.

My consciousness blurred as I drifted off to sleep.

In my dream, it felt as though I was being pulled into a cold embrace. Two arms wrapped around me properly, with great care. The wind whistled incessantly outside.

I must have been going mad, for I actually thought the sound of the wind sounded like Lin Lanci. He lingered by my ear over and over again, offering an intimate, coaxing comfort:

“Ah He, don’t cry anymore.””