“Does your head still hurt?” Xu Yi showed a chagrined expression. “Did I frighten you? There really was no other way—I could only use force. I apologize to you.”

But Li Weiyi only felt the man before her was utterly strange. The more gentle he was, the more numb her heart became. She asked coldly, “How is my brother-in-law? How is he?” Her tears fell again.

Xu Yi glanced at her and walked over, also sitting on the edge of the bed, but keeping a distance of two people between them. Li Weiyi instinctively stiffened her back and leaned away. He crossed his long legs, rested both hands on them, and said softly, “Don’t be afraid. He’s your relative—how could I be ruthless? It’s just that Zhong Yi was too formidable and forced my subordinates to use their guns. They didn’t hit any vital areas. He’ll be fine, just needs to stay in the hospital for a while.”

He looked at her with sincere eyes.

Li Weiyi indeed breathed a sigh of relief.

She said, “Xu Yi, how could you do such a thing? What exactly do you want?”

He answered, “After all these years, you still don’t know?”

“But this is illegal!” Li Weiyi looked at him incredulously. “Xu Yi, I know you might have acted on impulse, but with your status and position, there’s no need to make mistakes over something like this! Let me go, let me go back. As long as Zhong Yi is alright, I… I’ll pretend I know nothing, pretend those people were just criminals, robbers. Given our years of friendship, I won’t tell the police anything! Let me go. I know you’re not that kind of person—you just got confused for a moment, right?”

She looked at him with both hope and fear, but Xu Yi lowered his head, gazing at his interlaced fingers, smiled faintly, and answered, “What if I am that kind of person? What if, from the very beginning, I was a crazy, vicious person?”

This demeanor of his terrified Li Weiyi. Her hands clenched into fists on the blanket as she turned her head to avoid his gaze.

Xu Yi actually laughed aloud, his tone still gentle and accommodating: “Afraid of me? You never need to fear me, because I absolutely cannot bear to hurt you.”

“But you’re hurting me right now!” she shouted.

He suddenly stood up, hands in his suit pockets, walking toward her step by unhurried step. The hair on Li Weiyi’s back stood on end as she retreated again and again, finally hitting the wall at the headboard. Xu Yi smiled again, standing before her, looking down at her, saying, “Only in this matter do I apologize to you—there’s no other way. I’ve reached my limit.”

“You’ve gone mad.”

He sat down beside her, wanting to hold her hand. Li Weiyi slapped his hand away with a sharp sound. His expression remained calm as he suddenly exerted force, pressing her shoulders and pinning her on the bed. Li Weiyi lifted her leg to kick. He used his elbow and body to pin her down completely, his eyes dark as he looked at her. Li Weiyi struggled for a while, knowing it was futile, then stopped moving.

Xu Yi’s voice grew slightly hoarse as he said, “You ask what I want? I want to date you again, to be your boyfriend. I want to see you every time I wake up, want you not to refuse when I kiss and embrace you. I want you to have only me in your heart. I want to propose to you, marry you, be together for a lifetime—just like we once did.”

Li Weiyi’s heart jolted violently as she stared at him in a daze.

But he smiled with some sadness, saying, “We were together, weren’t we? All these years, I’ve only had some blurry fragments in my mind, but they’re so vivid that even my dreams give me no peace—I’ve been tormented for many years. Xiaoyi, was that a past life? Or through life after life, were we always meant to be together? But why have you remained so indifferent? Such deep feelings—how can you bear to give them up? Li Weiyi, where is your heart?”

His eyes actually contained tears, just like she had seen in her dreams—precipitated with emotions that could only come from years and years.

He asked the same question again, asking where her heart had gone.

Li Weiyi’s heart ached, and certain emotions sealed away for so long seemed to reverberate faintly in her heart.

“There is no ‘life after life’! We couldn’t possibly have life after life!” Li Weiyi’s eyes also reddened. “Only in that previous life, that one time, did I wrong you! But that was because the timeline went askew—we were never supposed to be together!”

The room suddenly fell quiet.

Xu Yi’s pupils were exceptionally dark and bright. Li Weiyi’s heart sank with a thud. A terrifying thought surged up: Had he been tricking her? Had she fallen for his trick? He hadn’t been certain at all!

Li Weiyi regretted so much she wanted to bite off her tongue, but his very gaze had already changed. Li Weiyi pushed him away and sat up. He no longer pressed down on her forcefully, sitting quietly beside her, smiling to himself.

Li Weiyi said through gritted teeth, “What are you smiling about?”

“I’m happy,” he answered.

Li Weiyi immediately felt both frustrated and helpless, and a conjecture formed in her mind: probably the constant time travel had caused temporal disturbances. Just like how Zhang Moyun could see countless versions of her own death in dreams; just like how she could see fragments belonging to Zhang Jingchan’s past and some chaotic future scenes; Xu Yi had probably also been affected and gained hazy memories of the previous life.

“What would it take for you to let me go?” she asked, still unwilling to give up.

“Didn’t I already say?” Xu Yi smiled pleasantly. “When you’ve come around and are willing to become Mrs. Xu, we’ll complete everything we didn’t finish in the last life, one by one: the two of us spending day and night together, you constantly accompanying me, sleeping with me, bearing a few children. When enough time has passed, your heart will settle, and we’ll be just like the previous life—I’ll protect you for my entire life, definitely no worse than anyone else.”

Li Weiyi thought: Impossible, you’re dreaming. Her mind suddenly recalled the image of Zhang Jingchan sitting there with his head down eating oranges, and his smile with fingers interlaced and foreheads touching with hers, making her feel even more blocked and uncomfortable.

But she didn’t dare say anything harsh to provoke Xu Yi.

“Aren’t you afraid the police will find out? Track you down here?” she asked.

Xu Yi smiled, stood up and walked toward the door, saying, “Rest well. There’s still a long road ahead. I’ll bring you some bird’s nest soup later—I know you like drinking that.”

Li Weiyi’s heart sank. It seemed Xu Yi was confident that the police couldn’t trace anything back to him.

She suddenly got up and rushed over, grabbing his arm. He stopped but didn’t move.

“You’re really going to do this?” Li Weiyi’s tone carried some pleading. “Don’t force me, okay, Xu Yi? Don’t make me hate you, detest you. I know what you want, but this will only backfire.”

He looked down at her fingers, then his gaze fell on her face. He raised his hand as if wanting to touch her face, then lowered it, saying, “Trying to coax me into letting you out? Because there’s something you must do in the next couple of days, together with Zhang Jingchan, right?”

Li Weiyi’s face instantly paled.

Xu Yi pressed his lips together. His hand finally landed on her hair, gently stroking it twice, saying, “You need to go back to 2014, to change history again, to change everyone’s fate, don’t you?”

Li Weiyi stood less than half a meter from him, yet felt like she was standing on a tightrope high in the air, the tip of her heart trembling uncontrollably. His fingers slid down, caressing her neck. She turned her head to dodge, but his hand suddenly exerted force, gripping firmly, forcing her to face him.

“Xiaoyi…” Xu Yi bent slightly, face to face with her. “But I think this life is very good. You’re already by my side, Zhang Jingchan has nothing, and I could crush him with a flick of my finger. So I don’t want history to change anymore. I want this to be the ending.”

He smiled dryly, bending down to plant a light kiss on her cheek. She was held by the head, forced to endure it. But Xu Yi immediately released her and strode toward the exit.

“Wait!” Li Weiyi called out. “The day Zhang Jingchan had his accident, were you at the Furui Da factory?”

Xu Yi remained silent without answering.

Li Weiyi took a deep breath and asked slowly, “Embezzling Fu Ming’s assets, killing Zhang Jingchan’s parents, putting him in a vegetative state, snatching the voice recorder at the hospital, deceiving Li Jinxiong out of the evidence in his hands… For all these things, the person standing behind Liu Ying and manipulating everything—was it you?”

Xu Yi opened the door and left without looking back.