Why men change so much before and after marriage, and what women need to know

Chapter 1 Thrown Out

"Shen Zhixia, go out and live well. Keep moving forward. Don't come back in, and don't look back."

The prison guard's formulaic words were still echoing in her ears when the prison gate slammed shut behind her with a "bang," kicking up a cloud of dust and completely cutting off the nightmare that had been Shen Zhixia's past three years.

It had only been a short three years since she was imprisoned, yet the world had become so unfamiliar that she barely recognized it. How could someone like her possibly live well?

What's more, she didn't even have a place to change her clothes now.

Shen Zhixia was so cold that her lips had turned deathly pale. Could it be that... she had to go back there?

But that place would no longer take her in.

But in the end, she was still that man's wife, wasn't she?

Even though, on the day she was imprisoned, she had been forced to sign a divorce agreement.

Before she could think it through, Shen Zhixia had already used the little change she had on her to board a bus, and the stop she got off at was none other than the Ji family villa.

She wasn't so delusional as to think she could still live here, but her clothes from three years ago were still here. She had only come to take them away. Such a small request shouldn't provoke that man's thunderous rage again, should it?

Shen Zhixia stood outside the carved gate. Before she could even ring the doorbell, a servant of the Ji family recognized her.

"Heavens, isn't this the young madam? On such a cold day, what are you doing standing outside?"

"What young madam? The young master already signed a divorce agreement with her three years ago! She personally killed the young master's mother. How could a woman with such a vicious heart deserve to be our young madam!"

"What? She killed the young master's mother? Wasn't it said she was hit by a car?"

"She was the one driving the car that hit her. She should have been sentenced to death, but the Shen family is wealthy and powerful, and she's their only daughter. Who knows what methods they used behind the scenes to get her sentence reduced to three years. If you ask me, a wretch like this wouldn't be worth pity even if she died ten thousand times."

"Tsk, forget it. She did serve three years in prison after all. Think about what kind of place prison is, a place that eats people without spitting out the bones. And the young master specifically made arrangements. She's probably suffered worse than dying ten thousand times. Stay away from this kind of person, lest you catch her bad luck."

All kinds of sarcasm pierced through Shen Zhixia's ears like blades. She should have been numb to it long ago, but when she heard the words "the young master specifically made arrangements," her heart still couldn't help but tremble violently.

Shen Zhixia's heart ached until she could barely breathe. She was just about to turn and leave when the villa's carved gate suddenly opened. First, two rows of bodyguards hurried out, and the next second, a man as handsome as a god was escorted out.

The man's slender hand was still clutching a phone, as if something urgent had happened on the other end. His handsome face was full of anxiety that did not match his usual way of doing things.

In just an instant, he raised his eyes, and they happened to meet Shen Zhixia's gaze.

Ji Liangchuan!

Even now, Shen Zhixia's heart still trembled at this name. Only, unlike three years ago, the flutter of her girlhood had long since faded.

She no longer dared.

She was no longer the carefree girl who chased after him every day, and he was no longer the cold youth who walked past her with his schoolbag every day. Between them lay a human life.

His mother's life!

He hated her to the bone, hated her so much he wished he could grind her bones to ashes.

Sure enough, the moment Ji Liangchuan saw Shen Zhixia, the knuckles of his hand seemed to bulge. The overwhelming hatred made him unable to resist hurling the phone in his hand at her, and he snapped coldly, "Did I hire you people to come here and eat for free? Where did this filthy thing come from? Throw her out right now!"

With that, he quickly got into the car, as if even one more glance at Shen Zhixia would dirty his eyes.

Shen Zhixia's face was deathly pale, without a trace of color. The next second, the bodyguards had already rushed over and seized her. In such an undignified posture, they threw her out like garbage.

"Liangchuan..."

Shen Zhixia couldn't help but murmur softly. But what she never expected was that it was this barely audible sound of hers that made the luxury car, which had already driven away, begin to reverse.

"Drag her onto the car for me!"

Chapter 2 The Evil Doer Lives a Thousand Years

Ji Liangchuan had somehow changed his mind again. Although his eyes still held piercing contempt and hatred for Shen Zhixia, he actually took the initiative to open the car door and order the bodyguards.

So before Shen Zhixia could react, she was already dragged onto the car by the bodyguards again.

The car sped all the way and finally stopped at the entrance of a hospital.

Shen Zhixia was dragged along by the bodyguards the whole way, and finally, at the door of the operating room, Ji Liangchuan pushed her coldly in front of the doctor. "The RH negative blood is here. Draw as much as you need. Draw her dry for all I care. But if anything happens to Qingran, I'll make your entire hospital pay for it!"

After Ji Liangchuan finished speaking, he took out a handkerchief and wiped the fingertips that had just touched Shen Zhixia's body, his expression cold and disgusted to the extreme.

Whoosh!

Like a basin of cold water poured over her from head to toe, Shen Zhixia's body trembled as she looked at the man she had loved throughout the best years of her youth, her entire body turning cold to the bone.

She was still so foolish. Just now in the car, she had actually thought that after three years had passed, perhaps he no longer hated her so much, and maybe he could even sit down and talk with her properly.

Now that she thought about it, it was utterly ridiculous.

How could he not hate her?

That was the hatred for a murdered mother. He hated her so much that he personally sent her to prison, and hated her so much that with a single word, he easily created three years of hellish life for her in prison.

What's more, everyone in Ancheng knew that Ji Liangchuan and Gu Qingran had grown up together as childhood sweethearts. If she hadn't interfered back then, he might have long since been united in bliss with the woman he loved most, whispering sweet nothings together.

Now, draining her blood to save Gu Qingran did indeed sound like something he would say.

"Mr. Ji, Miss Gu's car accident was severe, and the amount of blood needed is large. This young lady's body may not be able to..." The doctor looked Shen Zhixia up and down, at her deathly pale face, his tone full of hesitation.

Where did this woman come from? On such a cold day, she was still dressed so thinly, and her figure was far too skinny. Never mind drawing blood, she would probably collapse after a couple of gusts of wind.

As a doctor, he truly could not bring himself to do it.

"It's all right." Shen Zhixia interrupted softly. Sorrow had seeped in at some point, and she actually sounded a little choked up. "Saving a life is what matters. Just draw mine. My health is very good. I'll be fine."

Ji Liangchuan, standing to the side, narrowed his eyes when he heard this.

After three years apart, this woman really seemed to have been reborn.

The once unruly, lawless Miss Shen. He had thought that when he dragged her here to draw blood, she would have a massive reaction, even tearing down the whole hospital would not have been too much.

But to his complete surprise, she could actually say such words.

What? Was it guilt over running over his mother? Or was this another new trick she had come up with to play hard to get?

"Good people don't live long, while evil doers live a thousand years. A woman like you wouldn't die even if your blood were drained dry. So why put on this hypocritical show?"

Ji Liangchuan parted his thin lips slightly, every word a blade that cut deeper than anything.

Shen Zhixia's body trembled violently, as if she had moved her lips to explain something, but in the end, she could not say anything at all.

Let him hate her, she thought.

Ten years of love, in the end, reduced to a single sentence: let him hate her.

In the end, ignoring the doctor's objections, Shen Zhixia indeed did as Ji Liangchuan said and gave as much as was needed. She had 800 ml of blood drawn for Gu Qingran.

But because her body was too weak, just as she walked out of the operating room door, her vision went black and she fainted.

When she woke up again, she found herself lying on a hospital bed, with an IV drip in her right hand and the air filled with the smell of disinfectant.

Her whole body felt as if it had fallen apart. Shen Zhixia had barely moved when the pain made her frown.

"You're awake?"

The hospital room door was suddenly pushed open. Shen Zhixia thought it was a nurse and instinctively looked up, only for the pained expression on her face to freeze instantly.

Chapter 3 Deliberately Scaled

The visitor turned out to be Ji Liangchuan's sister.

Ji Rushuang.

"You had so much blood drawn, I thought you wouldn't wake up. Tsk tsk, I didn't expect heaven to be so blind."

Ji Rushuang's tone was sharp and biting as she walked toward her carrying a bowl of hot soup. "I also have to thank you for saving my sister-in-law's life. The grand Miss Shen spent three years in prison and was kicked out of the Shen family. You probably haven't eaten anything good either. Here, eat this ginseng chicken soup to nourish your body."

"Sister-in-law..." Shen Zhixia murmured unconsciously.

"Sister-in-law of course refers to Qingran jie. Don't tell me you thought I was talking about you?"

Ji Rushuang sneered, her gaze toward her full of contempt. "Back then, when the Ji Group had a financial crisis, if you hadn't made it a condition that my brother had to marry you before you would agree to inject capital, the one who married into the Ji family would definitely have been Qingran jie. Now that my brother's three-year mourning period for his mother has passed, the next step is naturally to marry Qingran jie into the family!"

"Their wedding date is set for next month. You happen to be out of prison too. So, how about it? Do you have time to attend?"

As Ji Rushuang spoke, she walked toward Shen Zhixia step by step. The motion of originally handing her the ginseng chicken soup suddenly paused, and instead she raised her hand high and poured the entire bowl of hot soup all over her.

"Ah..."

The soup was scalding hot, and Shen Zhixia was wearing only a thin hospital gown. The liquid instantly soaked through a large patch of skin, and she couldn't help but cry out, her back burning with a fiery pain.

"Does it hurt?" Ji Rushuang actually laughed out loud watching her suffer, slowly leaning closer to her, the hatred in her eyes now full. "Shen Zhixia, do you know? I've wanted to do this for a long time!"

"Do you think you're still the high and mighty eldest daughter of the Shen family? Do you think you still have the ability to beat my fiance into a cripple? Or dig my mother out of her grave and run her over again? Without the Shen family's protection, you're nothing but garbage. Crushing you to death is easier than crushing an ant. The pain you inflicted on me, I will demand back a thousand times, ten thousand times over sooner or later!"

Shen Zhixia was in so much pain from the scalding that she could not bear it, gasping sharply again and again.

She should have known long ago. She had once ordered someone to break Ji Rushuang's fiance's legs, and Ji Rushuang had always held a grudge over it. Now that she saw her hospitalized, how could she possibly be so kind as to bring chicken soup to nourish her body?

But if it was true that she had been wrong to force Ji Liangchuan to marry her by threatening the survival of the Ji Group, and she had no way to explain running over Ji's mother.

Then as for Ji Rushuang, she had already lost count of how many times she had explained that she had sent someone to beat her fiance into a cripple entirely for a reason.

"Ji Rushuang, there's no need for you to hate me. The reason I sent someone to beat him was only because..."

"Because of what?"

Ji Rushuang's voice suddenly turned shrill. "Are you going to say again that the reason you had someone beat him was because he's a scumbag, that he betrayed me? Shen Zhixia, how long are you going to keep telling such easily exposed lies! You ran over my mother, and you ruined my brother's happiness and mine. A woman with a heart as venomous as yours, how do you still have the face to live in this world? So many people die every day in this world, how are you still alive!"

The more Ji Rushuang spoke, the more agitated she became. She grabbed the soup bowl in her hand and was about to smash it at her head. Shen Zhixia knew she could not dodge in time, so she could only raise her hand to block.

But what she never expected was that although the soup bowl shattered on the ground with a loud crash, Shen Zhixia felt no pain at all.

She lowered the arm that had been shielding her forehead, only to be stunned by the scene before her. Ji Rushuang was actually standing in front of her with blood on her forehead. The next second, Ji Liangchuan pushed the door open and walked in.