No Love Left for You - Chapter 3

I stood frozen for a long time.

At last, I made up my mind to leave.

I went out of Hidden Beauty Courtyard and exchanged all my jewels for banknotes at a pawnbroker’s.

On the way back, I passed through a quiet alley.

Several men in ragged clothes suddenly rushed out at its entrance.

Their faces were sallow and gaunt, their eyes gleaming like those of wolves that hadn’t eaten for days.

“Hand over the money!”

The vagrants lunged toward me.

My eyes widened in terror.

This was the capital, right under the emperor’s nose.

How could vagrants be robbing people in the street?

Besides, ordinary refugees were thin and sickly.

These men looked powerfully built.

My heart plummeted.

Had someone deliberately sent them to harm me?

Their leader, a scar-faced man, fixed his eyes on me. “Get the money out! I saw you walk into that pawnshop with a whole bundle of jewels.”

“Hand it over, and I might let you live.”

“Refuse, and don’t blame me for what happens!”

I wasn’t about to value money over my life.

Before they could strike, I hurriedly took out every banknote.

“Take it all. Let me go.”

The man stuffed the notes inside his clothes, but he wasn’t finished.

He still barred my way, showing no intention of letting me leave.

He grinned, exposing a mouthful of yellow teeth.

“I’ll take the money. And I’ll take you too.”

He lunged at me, trapping me in the alley and attempting to assault me.

I struggled desperately, crying out for help.

But deep inside that narrow alley, the noise of the busy streets swallowed every cry.

In that moment, I thought how foolish I had been, how absurdly precious.

I had come from Hongfang House.

Li Jinyu had spent a fortune to keep me and had protected me for three years. I ought to have been grateful.

How could I—how dared I—ask him for love?

Ah!

I had been pampered in Hidden Beauty Courtyard for so long that I had forgotten how ordinary people survived in this world.

I thought of my parents.

During the famine that year, they had sold me to Madam Zhang for ten taels of silver, just to stay alive.

In the end, they still couldn’t pay their rent. Their landlord had them beaten to death on the ridge between his fields.

I had been without a family for a long time.

Now I had sold my jewels and had banknotes in hand. Even if I left Li Jinyu, where could I go?

In a world like this, what was a defenseless woman carrying a fortune but a lamb dragging a gold ingot through a crowded market?

I suddenly realized that I couldn’t leave Li Jinyu.

Love no longer had anything to do with it.

Once I left his magnificent cage, I would be alone and unprotected, at anyone’s mercy, with no one even to bury me when I died.

But what use was regret now?

The greatest rift between Li Jinyu and me had always been his belief that I was impure.

If these men succeeded—

If I really became what he thought I was—

I would never recover from it.

The thought struck my mind like a thunderclap.

From somewhere, I found the strength to scream myself hoarse. “Help! Help me!”

My resistance only made the man hold me down more brutally.

He slapped me hard across the face several times. “Shut your mouth!”

Blood ran from the corner of my mouth, but I didn’t dare give up. “Help!”

We were so close to the busy streets.

I prayed someone would come.

Otherwise, even if I survived this man, Li Jinyu would make my life worse than death.

“Damn you! You won’t shut up, will you?”

His eyes widened as he clamped a hand over my mouth.

The agony of suffocation engulfed me.

My thoughts grew even hazier.

Was this—was this really how my life would end?

At the height of my pain and despair—

I heard a familiar voice, taut with fear. “Zhaozhao! Zhaozhao!”

Like a drowning person grasping at a last straw, I gathered every scrap of strength and bit down hard on the man’s hand. “Jinyu! Jinyu, I’m—I’m here!”

Before I could finish—

His elbow slammed into my face.

Everything went black.

I lost consciousness.