090 Do Not Want a Child

After returning to the manor, Duan Nanyu strode straight toward the Pavilion of Graceful Words, his face dark and storm-laden, his eyes blazing red with fury.

He flung the door open with a thunderous crash, stirring up a thin veil of dust that scattered everywhere.

Yun Xiyin stared at him in terror, the words caught in her throat. She dared not make a sound, only watched with wide eyes as Duan Nanyu advanced toward her, step by step, drawing ever closer.

“Yun Xiyin.” The name was ground out through clenched teeth, his voice cold as needles, stabbing into her and making her tremble.

Cold sweat broke out in her palms. Instinctively, Yun Xiyin retreated, trying to put distance between herself and him.

His face was wrapped in storm clouds, his gaze filled with hatred and something more complicated. Looking at the woman before him, who seemed eager to flee, his fists tightened. “What, exactly, have you done?”

His eyes dropped to her belly, sharp and frigid.

Panicking, Yun Xiyin shook her head. Supporting her stomach with one hand and bracing her waist with the other, her fingers would not stop trembling. “My lord, you cannot do this.”

She could not let this man harm her child. She simply could not.

“You know enough to protect your own child, so why did you go and harm someone else’s!” Duan Nanyu seized her hair and demanded coldly.

He must have been mad to blame Yun Xueyan without distinguishing right from wrong!

And because of this woman, he had repeatedly hurt Yun Xueyan!

Memories of the scenes not long ago flashed vividly through his mind, those horrifying images, unendurably cruel, all wrought by his own hand. He had created a hell, and then cast that hell upon her.

“I never imagined you would bribe the doctor and deceive me!” Twisting his hand in her black hair, Duan Nanyu was nearly beyond reason. He wanted to kill her. Yun Xueyan had lost her child, and hers could not be allowed to remain either. “Speak! How many months pregnant was Yan’er, really!”

Shaking uncontrollably, fear blurred Yun Xiyin’s eyes with tears, but beneath the fear was still more grievance.

This man before her had once held her in the palm of his hand, had once treasured her above all else. Why did he seem like a different person now? Why was it that everything she had, Yun Xueyan had to steal?

“That wretched woman deserved it! What right did she have to steal my man, to take away my favor from the start? I will not accept this, my lord, I will not! She was three months pregnant, but that child is gone now!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

Yun Xiyin howled in anguish. Why could she get nothing, no matter what?

His brows drew together deeply, his ink-black eyes bottomless. His expression grew even more sullen, carrying a chill. “So all of this, you did merely to compete for favor? Is that why you were so cruel?”

“That was a child…” That bloody mass had been his and Yun Xueyan’s child, the only blood tie that might ever have bound them together.

And he had slaughtered it brutally, all because of a single sentence from this woman.

He was the one who had pushed Yun Xueyan into an abyss with no return. Whom else could he blame?

It was his impulsiveness and mistrust that had forged today’s disaster. And yet, if this woman had not repeatedly stirred the flames, he and Yun Xueyan might never have come to this.

He had already granted her the honor of being his princess. He had told her that he loved only her. He had merely shared some of his tenderness with Yun Xueyan—why had she still had to be so cruel? She was cutting off her own road of retreat!

She had already extinguished every trace of feeling he had once held for her. What he owed her now was nothing but a debt of gratitude.

“Yes, it was a child. But that child should never have existed. I simply dealt with him a little early!” Yun Xiyin shrieked in a frenzy, then burst into wild laughter.

Duan Nanyu’s keen eyes fixed on the person before him. She was acting. Acting mad? Acting pitiful?

A cold smile rose at the corner of his mouth. He was impulsive, but he was not a fool. His lips pressed into a hard line, and after a moment his voice turned involuntarily icy. “Then your child ought not remain either. From this day on, you are unworthy of bearing my child.”