Chapter 16

Knowing that Mo Junhua had returned, Lan Tian deliberately waited for him downstairs. As soon as he entered the house without taking off his shoes, a call came from the military, saying that woman had a car accident. He dashed out of the house with a terrifyingly pale face.

Lan Tian was still at the staircase, climbing the stairs with her pregnant belly was exhausting. Hearing the phone ringing at home and then Mo Junhua rushing out, Lan Tian instinctively reached for him, lost her footing, and they both tumbled down together, a piercing scream echoed through the entire building. The pain in her belly was like being torn apart, and there was a large pool of blood under her buttocks. Lan Tian, losing consciousness, instinctively held her belly and called Mo Junhua's name.

The people in the building took her to the hospital where she gave birth to a stillborn boy. She stayed in the hospital for seven days, crying for all of them, unattended, and had to drag her weak body to fetch water, only to see Mo Junhua fetching water going up to the fourth floor. Lan Tian, like a wandering ghost, followed him to the fourth floor and saw him tenderly and cautiously attending to that woman, which was particularly irritating to her eyes.

Thinking about her deceased son, Lan Tian exploded, rushing in and started cursing and hitting both of them like a madwoman. After this incident, Lan Tian gave up on Mo Junhua and held no more illusions about him.

After this incident, as compensation, Mo Junhua took Lan Tian to the Military District Mansion. After Mo Junhua became a commander, he was allocated an apartment in the Mansion. Lan Tian wouldn't even have known about the apartment in the Military District Mansion if this incident hadn't occurred.

Taohua came to visit her once, saying she had retired from the military and came to confess that she had feelings for Mo Junhua. After Lan Tian left, she tried various reasons to get close to Mo Junhua and even confessed to him once. Mo Junhua ignored her; Taohua thought he was bewitched by that fox spirit, unable to distinguish right from wrong. She often tried to sabotage that woman secretly, once drugged her while she was out shopping and took her to a motel, stripped her and slept her with a man, taking photos to threaten her to leave Mo Junhua.

Just when that woman was being undressed, Mo Junhua caught them red-handed. This incident had severe negative consequences. The military, considering Taohua's previous merits, discharged her from military service.

After leaving the military, Taohua, resigned to her fate, found people to ruin that woman's reputation everywhere. Knowing that woman caused Lan Tian's miscarriage, she purposely came to team up against her, but Lan Tian did not agree.

Doesn't Lan Tian hate them?

Of course, she does, her heart aches as if cut by a knife.

But she had no capability, no rights, and no money, what could she use to confront them? Her grandma in the countryside was no longer alive, and she had nowhere else to go. Knowing that Mo Junhua and that woman were intimate, Lan Tian still dared not leave; she was afraid of death, without Mo Junhua she had no means to support herself, and could only live invisibly in the mansion.

Don't listen, don't look, don't think.

When she was almost in her forties, that woman, bringing her child, came to drive her out. Saying she was a barren old hen, monopolizing someone else's man, she begged Lan Tian to pity her and leave quickly to give her child a legitimate status. Lan Tian knelt down begging her not to drive her away, saying she'd do any work for a meal to eat.

That woman firmly disagreed, leaving Lan Tian no way out. Lan Tian declared she was Mo Junhua's legally wedded wife, and she had no right to drive her out. The woman responded that they were not legally husband and wife at all, telling her that military personnel had to file a marriage report with their units and obtain a marriage certificate to be considered married.

Lan Tian didn't know how she left the Military District Mansion, having lived together for decades and even held a wedding ceremony, how could they not be considered married? It was done this way in the villages, but when it came to her, she was told it was illegal.

Lan Tian always lived in her small planned circle, never stepped out, didn't know how to interact socially, wasn't aware of societal developments, and had long been disconnected from society.

Stepping out of the Military District Mansion, she didn't even have a place to stay, nor the face to return to her village. She tried to find a dishwashing job at meal times to support herself, but others disliked her for being slow. Other jobs despised her for being old, and besides washing dishes, she knew nothing else, eventually wandering to picking garbage, spending nights under a bridge, and was called 'cave master'.

In her fifties, she found a ring, became a Cultivator, and never saw Mo Junhua again, then... she returned to her childhood.