Just a Wet Nurse, Just a Plaything? Everyone Wept After My Death - Chapter 63
Chapter 63
“You poisonous woman! You vicious, poisonous woman!”
A furious roar shattered the deathly silence in the hall.
Old Madam Huo trembled with rage. She raised her dragon-headed cane high and brought it down hard on Shen Yingyue’s shoulder with a vicious whoosh.
Thud!
The blow carried every ounce of her strength. Shen Yingyue grunted and collapsed to the floor, an almost bone-shattering pain tearing through her shoulder.
But she had no time to care about the pain. She struggled to rise, desperate to protect Nuannuan nearby.
“Old Madam, it truly wasn’t me… I have no reason to harm Huzi…”
“No reason?”
Old Madam Huo reacted as though she had heard the most absurd joke in the world. Her clouded old eyes brimmed with venomous cunning, as if she had seen through every layer of the plot.
“The evidence is irrefutable! The safflower powder was hidden in your daughter’s quilt, and you still dare deny it?
“You clearly planned this long ago!
“You took advantage of my grandson being a motherless infant and deceived the general into favoring you. Then you let your wicked ambitions get the better of you! You wanted to poison my precious grandson so that bastard child of yours could take his place and seize the General’s Manor’s entire estate one day, didn’t you?!”
The vicious accusation came crashing down on Shen Yingyue like a bucket of filth poured over her head.
She shook her head in disbelief. “No… I’ve never entertained such thoughts! Nuannuan is only a girl…”
“So what if she’s a girl? If you cut the weeds but leave the roots, they’ll grow again when spring comes!”
Old Madam Huo was now utterly blinded by rage. Looking at her eldest legitimate grandson lying unconscious in her arms, still coughing up blood, all the ruthlessness bred into her as the matriarch of a noble clan erupted at once.
She turned and pointed at the wretched Shen Yingyue on the floor, barking an order at the personal guards and old maids who stood frozen in terror around them.
“Someone!
“Drag this wretch who tried to murder her master into the courtyard and beat her to death!
“Once she’s dead, throw her into the potter’s field and let the wild dogs feed on her!”
“Yes, Old Madam!” Several servant women had long found Shen Yingyue displeasing. The moment they heard the order, they lunged forward viciously and pinned down her arms and legs.
“As for the little one…”
Old Madam Huo’s venomous gaze fell upon Nuannuan, who was still wailing in her cradle from fright.
The child was barely over a year old and understood nothing. All she knew was to cry out for her mother.
“She was the one hiding the poison, so she’s a vicious little monster by nature! She’s nothing but trouble!”
A cruel chill flashed through Old Madam Huo’s eyes as she snarled through clenched teeth, “The General’s Manor will not harbor such a menace.
“Someone, pick up that little bastard and throw her into the wolf pen in the rear courtyard!
“Didn’t Xiao’er recently capture several wolves to raise? Good. Let those beasts have a taste of fresh meat!”
Boom!
To Shen Yingyue, those words hurt ten thousand times more than the blow from the cane.
The wolf pen!
Huo Xiao kept several wild wolves captured in Beishan in the rear courtyard. They were true predators, fed raw meat every day. Nuannuan was so small that if she were thrown in, not even scraps of her bones would remain!
“No! Don’t!”
A heart-rending scream tore from Shen Yingyue’s throat. Summoning strength from some unknown source, she broke free of the two servant women restraining her.
Half crawling, half stumbling on her knees, she rushed to Huo Xiao and wrapped both hands tightly around his boot. She slammed her forehead against the floor again and again until blood streamed down her face.
“General! General, I beg you!
“You can kill me! You can cut me into a thousand pieces!
“But Nuannuan is innocent! She’s barely over a year old! She’s a person, not a piece of meat! Please don’t throw her into the wolf pen! Please!”
Her voice was hoarse, choked with blood and tears. Even the guests present could not help turning to look, pity stirring in their hearts.
But Huo Xiao merely looked down at her.
He held Huzi in his arms, uncertain whether the infant would live or die. His eyes were bloodshot. Whatever faint trace of tenderness he had once felt for Shen Yingyue had now been washed away by the blood staining his son’s lips.
He hated her.
He hated himself for being careless, but he hated this two-faced woman before him even more.
Faced with the “irrefutable evidence” presented by his mother and cousin, and the seemingly sound logic that this woman had done it so her own daughter could take Huzi’s place, he chose to believe what he saw.
“Shen Yingyue.”
Huo Xiao’s voice was as cold as ancient ice, devoid of the slightest warmth.
“When you fed Huzi the safflower, did you ever stop to think that he was only four months old?
“If your daughter deserves your love, then who is supposed to love my son?”
With a sudden, merciless kick, he knocked Shen Yingyue away.
“Drag them out. Do as Old Madam said.”
That kick shattered Shen Yingyue’s last shred of hope.
“No!”
She screamed in despair as a burly personal guard strode over and snatched Nuannuan from the cradle as easily as if he were picking up a chick.
“Mama! Mama!”
Nuannuan wailed in terror, her tiny hands grasping wildly through the air as she desperately reached for her mother.
“Nuannuan! My Nuannuan!”
The servants dragged Shen Yingyue toward the door. She clawed desperately at the floor tiles until her nails broke and her fingers streamed with blood, leaving a long, bloody trail behind her.
“Huo Xiao! You’ll die a horrible death!”
“Even as a ghost, I’ll never let any of you go! You monsters! All of you are monsters!”
It was a mother’s despairing curse.
Her shrill screams, sobs, and curses mingled with the howling wind and snow, echoing above the General’s Manor long after she was gone.
Standing at the back of the crowd, Liu Ruyan watched it all unfold, a cruel, satisfied smile curling across her lips.
Finally.
Those two hateful wretches were both about to disappear.
