Chapter 134: Jin Yan's Breakdown

"Stop acting so righteous and painting yourself as some modern-day Adam and Eve who can resist any temptation. I don't believe a single word of your nonsense. We've known each other long enough; do I not know what you're really like? Let's not even look too far back—just last year when you attended the conference at MC, you couldn't wait to bring that fellow named Yun Jiu back to Dahe and move in together. Are you going to tell me you slept with him purely out of true love?" Ma Shengwei retorted with unconcealed skepticism.

"Yes, after I arrived in Dahe, I remained strictly unattached, and that was purely because I genuinely practiced self-discipline. But the moment I laid eyes on Yun Jiu, my heart was pounding. It was love at first sight—do you even know what love at first sight feels like?" Gao Yating emphasized that her feelings for Yun Jiu were born from genuine emotion.

"Oh, there's just no reasoning with you. Everyone else's promiscuity is just reckless lust, but somehow President Gao's affairs always stem from pure affection. What am I supposed to say to you? If your feelings are so genuine, then what is the deal between your man and my girl? You may have feelings for him, but he certainly seems utterly merciless toward you!" Ma Shengwei brought up Gao Yating's painful spot once again.

"People are just complicated like that. You might as well ask your own daughter about this and see if she can give you a satisfactory answer. It's precisely because she is your daughter that I put my personal emotions aside and chose not to let petty grievances spark a conflict between us, because I know that would ruin our grand enterprise," Gao Yating replied with a grand, composed demeanor.

"True, we reached a consensus on that matter long ago, yet here we are, going in circles and bickering endlessly. Just look at us—what are we even doing this for?" Ma Shengwei sighed.

"What for? Aren't you just satisfying your own endless desires? To put it nicely, your overactive adrenal glands are acting up and flooding you with hormones. To put it bluntly, your abnormal sex drive has turned you into a total predator. Are you still unsatisfied with the women around you? From what I gather, you've been involved with no less than twenty women, haven't you? Have some basic decency! It's only a matter of time before you tear other people's families apart and ruin their lives completely. If you don't believe me, just wait and see," Gao Yating warned.

"How could you say that? Those women either come to me for my money, or they seek me out because they can't get satisfaction from their own husbands at home. I give them money, and I provide them with both material and emotional fulfillment. Their happiness is a gift from me, and they should be thanking me instead of talking about broken families and ruined lives. You just don't understand them at all. In this world, no one understands women better than I do, you know?" Ma Shengwei continued to spout his warped and eccentric theories about life.

"You are truly hopeless. Let's not even look at the past—look at Xiao Jing lying in that hospital bed right now. You claim he'll never wake up, or if he does, he'll suffer permanent amnesia. If destroying a perfectly good family like this isn't a crime, what is? Right now, your daughter is sitting by her father's bedside, swearing she will never acknowledge a father like you. You probably didn't pay attention to what Xiaoyi said earlier—she mentioned she had no idea where that shameless woman had run off to. Didn't you catch the hidden meaning behind those words?" Gao Yating asked.

"What hidden meaning? Wasn't she just angry that her mother wasn't taking better care of Xiao Jing?" Ma Shengwei dismissed the thought.

"I find it fascinating that you possess such high intelligence when you're plotting schemes, yet your intelligence drops to absolute zero when it comes to basic human situations. She cursed that 'shameless woman' with such venom, and you didn't even realize she was using a metaphor to curse the adulterer—you! Your lawlessness and your habit of stealing what doesn't belong to you—aren't you feeling the pain of it now? When you look at Xiaoyi like that, don't you feel even a twinge of heartbreak?" Gao Yating pressed.

"That's only temporary; time will wash away her memories," Ma Shengwei answered airily.

The two were locked in a sharp, tit-for-tat verbal battle with no end in sight. Fortunately, at that moment, Ma Shengwei's phone rang.

He answered it, and Jin Yan's frantic voice came through the receiver: "Where are you right now? I'm at the hospital, and I need you urgently."

"What is it? Speak," Ma Shengwei demanded.

"Just a moment ago, my husband's vital signs experienced a drastic change, and his cerebral blood oxygen saturation dropped to dangerous levels. They managed to pull him back from the brink through emergency resuscitation, but the doctor told me that logically Xiao Jing should have woken up by now. However, brain scans show that he seems to have slipped into a deep, drug-induced sleep, and the doctors say they can't determine when—or if—he will ever wake up." Jin Yan burst into loud sobs.

"What are you crying for? Wailing like a ghost," Ma Shengwei grumbled impatiently.

"Is karmic retribution finally catching up to you? I just heard what that woman on the phone said. See? Wasn't I right? No matter how much you claim she's your woman, when a crisis hits, she still refers to him as her husband. After all, they are the legal couple—you're nothing more than a home-wrecking third party," Gao Yating scoffed. "And what do you think your daughter's reaction will be if she ever finds out that you're the reason her father can't wake up?"

"Stop talking. You women are truly exhausting—veritable sirens bringing nothing but disaster," Ma Shengwei muttered, growing increasingly agitated.

"Realized that women are disasters now, have you? Everything I've told you comes from experience; you need to chew on those words carefully to understand the truth behind them. Hurry up and comfort your girl, and make sure Xiaoyi never finds out about the dirty work you've pulled," Gao Yating reminded him.

"I don't have time to bicker with you anymore. I need to rush to the hospital and see what's going on. See you in court the day after tomorrow," Gao Yating said as she took her leave.

When Ma Shengwei arrived at the hospital and reached the vicinity of the ward, he was hit by a sudden urge to use the restroom.

After stepping out of the restroom, his phone buzzed. Glancing at the screen, he saw it was a call from his informant. "Everything you asked me to handle has been taken care of. That fellow named Xiao Jing looks like he's never waking up."

"How did you guys handle it? Was it done by the nurse we arranged beforehand? The injection dosage must be strictly controlled, or it'll cause complications. His wife just called me complaining about his vital signs. I don't want him dead; I just want him permanently unconscious."

Ma Shengwei muttered these words as he walked toward the ward, completely unaware that every single word had been overheard by Jin Yan, who was coming out of the cleaning supply room after emptying the trash.

Hearing this, Jin Yan was consumed by a blinding rage. She lunged forward, grabbed Ma Shengwei by the collar, and screamed, "What did you do to my husband? You said anyone whose vital signs act up and can't wake up—were you talking about my husband?"

Caught entirely off guard, Ma Shengwei froze in terror. He stared blankly at the woman before him, his throat tightening as he found himself completely speechless.

By the time Ma Shengwei realized that Yang Lihua had heard his incriminating confession, he knew he was in deep trouble. "How could that be? I was talking about that subordinate of mine named Wu Zhengzhe—he's already packed up and left," Ma Shengwei improvised on the spot, his mind racing. "This isn't a convenient place to talk. Let's find somewhere quiet."

The two went downstairs and stood in a secluded corner.

"Don't lie to me anymore! No matter how much of a thorn in your side he was, you had no right to lay a hand on him! Don't you know how deeply attached Xiaoyi is to her father? Don't you know how fiercely Xiaoyi defends her dad every time I mention him? Do you have any idea why a girl who always ranked first in her class ended up bombing the national college entrance exams? I read her diary. She discovered that the father she loves so deeply had been cuckolded by someone for nearly twenty years! Do you have any idea how much she hates the perpetrator? She didn't name names out loud, but she's known all along that you destroyed her family, don't you get it, Ma Shengwei?" Jin Yan wept bitterly as she exposed the depths of Xiaoyi's agony.

"I didn't know any of that, and frankly, I don't want to. All I know is that he held a gun to my head, trying to help that guy Wu Zhengzhe send me to prison. He secretly recorded videos and audio of everything I had him do. Don't you think he deserved it?" Ma Shengwei defended his actions.

"No matter how despicable you think he was, he is Xiaoyi's father. Compared to you, her biological father, she cherishes my husband infinitely more. What you've done is utterly monstrous, do you hear me, Ma Shengwei?" Jin Yan pressed on relentlessly.

After parting ways with Ma Shengwei, Gao Yating returned to the Supreme Bar, but she couldn't muster any enthusiasm. She had already polished off more than half a bottle of red wine.

A slow, swaying jazz track was playing over the bar's sound system.

Buoyed by the alcohol, Gao Yating swayed to the music, her hips moving with a sensual grace all on her own in the middle of the floor.

For ten years, no one had ever seen Gao Yating from Dahe Entertainment dance alone in the middle of a dance floor. The female bar attendants watched her graceful, swirling movements, whispering quietly among themselves from the sidelines.

Leng Junfeng walked over and began swaying his hips in front of Gao Yating. With Xiao Jing—his everyday partner in crime—out of the picture, Leng Junfeng had grown utterly bored out of his mind.

Three days later, Xiao Jing remained in a deep coma, plunging Xiaoyi into an abyss of unrelenting anguish. For reasons she couldn't fathom, her mother seemed to have suffered a severe psychological blow, acting erratic and muttering nonsensical things continuously.

"Mom, please don't scare me like this. Dad is still in a coma, and now you're acting this way—what am I supposed to do?" Xiaoyi pleaded, clutching the hem of Jin Yan's shirt.

Jin Yan's eyes were completely vacant, resembling those of a psychiatric patient as she alternated between laughing and crying.

Utterly helpless, Xiaoyi called Yun Jiu for help, and he rushed to the hospital without delay.

Seeing Xiaoyi's father lying motionless in the hospital bed, Yun Jiu felt a heavy knot in his stomach. Perhaps it was his and Xiaoyi's forbidden romance that had triggered this sudden catastrophe, leaving Xiaoyi feeling entirely abandoned and alone. A crushing sense of guilt washed over him. How he wished that night they spent together had never happened, yet he knew deep down that things were already beyond saving.

"Let's take Mom to a psychiatric hospital to see if she's developed a mental health condition, okay?" Xiaoyi asked Yun Jiu.

"Alright, let's go right now," Yun Jiu replied.

Xiaoyi packed up their belongings from Xiao Jing's hospital room and, alongside Yun Jiu, brought Jin Yan to the psychiatric hospital.

As soon as they stepped out of the vehicle at the entrance of the psychiatric facility, Jin Yan suddenly grabbed the arm of a passing police officer. "Husband! Husband! Our daughter is going abroad to study in Country M—hurry up and process her exit paperwork!"

Xiaoyi and Yun Jiu looked over and saw a police officer whose facial features bore a striking resemblance to Xiao Jing. Realizing that Jin Yan had mistaken the stranger for her husband, the two rushed forward to intervene. "We are so sorry, so sorry! We didn't mean to bother you."

"It's no problem at all. Since you're here for medical treatment, this kind of confusion is entirely normal," the officer nodded reassuringly.

Together, Xiaoyi and Yun Jiu escorted Jin Yan inside for a psychiatric evaluation... (To be continued)