Five years without pregnancy means you're too weak; I remarried a powerful man and had triplets

On the other side, Xu Zhesheng's phone was smashed to pieces, so he naturally couldn't answer calls.

Fortunately, he still had some change on him, enough for him to take a taxi and slink back home.

After the beating and psychological assault he had just endured, his mind was in complete disarray, and he had long forgotten about his promise to buy durians for Su Manman.

When he pushed open the door with his empty hands, the scene inside made his already gloomy face even darker.

In the living room, Su Manman was wearing a silk nightgown, lying on the sofa with her legs up, enjoying the air conditioning.

She was holding half a watermelon in her arms, scooping it out with great enthusiasm. A noisy variety show was playing on TV, which she watched with great interest, with a few watermelon seeds still stuck to the corner of her mouth.

And in the crib less than half a meter away from the sofa, a child whose parents didn't know was wailing loudly, the cries so shrill they could pierce eardrums.

But Su Manman seemed deaf, not even bothering to lift her eyelids, and continued to spoon-feed the chilled watermelon into her mouth.

Xu Zhesheng glanced around. Su Manman's mother, Liu Tehui, was not in the living room; the bedroom door was tightly closed, presumably she was fast asleep inside.

The kitchen was deserted and cold, without even the steam from a hot pot, let alone the aroma of food.

At that moment, Xu Zhesheng felt a familiar spasm in his stomach.

He remembered that even when Shen Zhiyi had to work overtime, she would worry that he wouldn't have a hot meal when he got home. She would prepare the next day's meals the night before, categorize them, and put them in the refrigerator so that he could just heat them up when he got home.

More often than not, even when she was extremely busy, she would rush back from the company to cook him a hot meal whenever she thought about him not having enough to eat. She would watch him eat it before hurrying back to continue working overtime.

At that time, he thought she was making a mountain out of a molehill.

What could have been solved with a simple takeout order turned into a complicated and messy affair, and the two even argued about it.

But Shen Zhiyi would always look at him with a wronged expression, her eyes red, and say, "Takeout food is oily and salty, and not clean. Your stomach isn't good to begin with, I'm afraid you'll get an upset stomach."

Although he found it troublesome at the time, he thought again that it was her who was going through the trouble, not him, so he let her do as she pleased.

But now?

Since Liu Tehui and her daughter moved in, the house has never smelled of food again.

Every day it's just takeout, greasy food containers piled up in the sink and no one washes them.

He already had a delicate stomach, and these past few days he has experienced firsthand the excruciating pain of his stomach churning.

"Bang!" He slammed the door shut, as if only in this way could he vent his dissatisfaction.

Hearing the door close, Su Manman suddenly sat up from the sofa.

Seeing Xu Zhesheng return empty-handed, her face instantly contorted in anger, and she launched into a tirade of abuse:

"Xu Zhesheng! How dare you hang up on me!"

She slammed the watermelon onto the coffee table, and the spoon clattered onto the carpet.

She pointed at Xu Zhesheng's nose, her voice shrill and sharp, like fingernails scraping against glass: "Where the hell have you been? What have you been doing? Didn't you just say you were going to buy something nearby? Why did you take so long?!"

The baby's cries were drowned out by her yelling, creating an extremely jarring duet in the living room.

"Who are you giving that attitude to with your head down? Say something!"

Su Manman jumped off the sofa, her bare feet stepping onto the cold floor, and approached him step by step, her spittle almost spraying onto his face.

Xu Zhesheng felt a wave of dizziness and irritability.

The cramping in his stomach, the stinging pain from the wound on his face, and Su Manman's nauseating screams almost made him vomit on the spot.

After changing his shoes, he wanted to go back to his room to rest, but Su Manman wouldn't let him go, grabbing his wrist directly.

"Are you fucking deaf? Can't you hear me when I talk to you..."

Su Manman's cursing stopped abruptly.

Her gaze swept over Xu Zhesheng's empty hands like a searchlight, finally settling on his arms hanging at his sides.

Her face twitched violently, her eyes widened instantly like saucers, and her previously suppressed fierceness was replaced by a furious rage at being deceived.

"Xu, Zhe, Sheng!"

She almost screamed, her sharp nails stabbing directly into his chest with such force that Xu Zhesheng staggered back half a step.

"I told you to go buy a durian, and you came back empty-handed? Are you made of human hands or pig's trotters? You can't even handle this simple task, what else can you do? Huh?!"

Xu Zhesheng felt a sharp pain in his chest from her poking, and the nausea churning in his stomach intensified.

He instinctively wanted to retort, but before he could speak, Su Manman's gaze fell on his face, or more precisely, on the dried but still hideous wound at the corner of his mouth.

The air seemed to freeze for a second.

The anger on Su Manman's face vanished instantly, replaced by a chilling coldness.

She tilted her head, a mocking smile curving her lips, and her voice suddenly dropped, yet it was even more chilling than her previous scream:

"Hey, which stray cat scratched you?"

She reached out the hand that had just been scooping watermelon, her fingertips still sticky with watermelon juice, and pinched Xu Zhesheng's chin, forcing him to look up.

"Let me see, those claws are pretty vicious, they're even bleeding."

She leaned closer, her breath carrying the cloying sweetness of watermelon and the perfume she habitually wore—a scent he used to enjoy, but now it only made him nauseous. "Xu Zhesheng, you're something else. You dare to cheat on me while we're together? Do you think I'm easy to bully?"

"Snapped!"

She abruptly shoved his face away, as if throwing away something filthy, her eyes filled with contempt and violence: "Tell me! Did you go to see that bitch Shen Zhiyi?! Are you still thinking about her?!"

Xu Zhesheng felt nauseous from her sticky hands pinching him, and the rough tugging at his facial wound made him gasp in pain.

He instinctively tried to dodge, but Su Manman's fingernails had already left two red marks on his chin.

"I didn't!" Xu Zhesheng gritted his teeth, squeezing out the words, "I just tripped and fell on the way."

He lied on the spot, saying that he was feeling really nauseous and didn't want to argue with her.

"Took a fall?" Su Manman sneered, her eyes scraping his face like knives. "Are you kidding me? You think you could fall and hurt your lip? I bet you went to see Shen Zhiyi and got beaten up by her new boyfriend!"

"Xu Zhesheng, you're such a coward! Before, you relied on Shen Zhiyi to edit your videos, depending on her while trying to gain attention from me. Later, all I wanted was for you to get me promoted to a star, but after all these years in the entertainment industry, you don't even have that much of a connection! Now that Shen Zhiyi has abandoned you, you're desperately going back to her?"

"Ha!" She sneered, poking his injured spot with her finger. "Xu Zhesheng, listen to me! No matter what you're thinking, you said you'd marry me. So, you'd better fulfill your responsibilities as a husband! Don't look at people you shouldn't, and don't mess with people you shouldn't!"

"Now, I want to eat durian! Go buy some right now!"