Chapter 1474: Madness and Sorrow
The pixels on the screen flickered in the prison common room. Yun Xi, who was smiling on their screen, seemed so elegant and so far above the inmates as they looked up at the hanging television set.
Liang Xiuqin watched the screen with her head held high. The Yun Xi on the screen seemed so glorious, and she was shining so brightly. She recalled her years of abandonment and negligence and hatred, and she’d never felt more bitter and wrong as she did now.
She could not believe her eyes as she ran in front of the television screen, her fingers gesturing at the girl who was thanking the judges as she cried out, “Look! Look! It’s my daughter! My daughter has become the first-class socialite!”
“Are you kidding? How can she be your daughter? If that’s your daughter, then my daughter is a princess.”
“How can someone like her have a mother like you? You must be insane!”
“Shoo, shoo, go be insane somewhere else. How can a lowlife like you have such a talented daughter? Who would believe that?”
Liang Xiuqin could only gaze at the faces of the other inmates as they hurled insults toward her, but they could not quell the strange feeling in her heart. She looked back to the screen as tears streaked down her face, her fingers pointing at her daughter who had risen above the clouds as she cried out tearfully, “She really is my daughter…”
And she had been, once upon a time.
Their relationship had completely crumbled in her hands. They were who they were today as a result of her own doing.
The daughter she had loved deeply was the one who had had a hand in ruining her life.
Yet the daughter she had always despised was the one who had brought all glory to her in the form of being the first-class socialite in Jingdu.
The fortune-teller had fooled her, Not a single one of his predictions had come true, and he had landed her in the situation she was in today. She had fallen from her place as a director’s wife to a nobody in prison.
Liang Xiuqin laughed bitterly and cried like a fool. She had finally realized what she had done wrong and what she should have done all those years ago.
…
Yun Ziling’s sanity was holding on by a few threads within the mental institution. The pace of life and every other resident in the institution were completely different from what she had been used to, and it had disrupted her sense of reality.
She was sane, but being around others who were not was taking a toll on her mental condition.
No one would believe her when she said she was sane. No matter who she called or who she asked for, there was no one who would offer her a hand and take her out of this facility.
Yun Yuanfeng would transfer some money to her, but he swore off all kinds of visits to her. All she could do was to hold her ruined face and think about the anger she held in her heart. Every day was a further descent into madness.
For some reason, an unknown force had compelled her to turn on the television today, and the moment she did she lost all the forms of logic and composure that she had fought so hard to maintain within the facility.
She’d thought she was mistaken at first glance, but when she took a closer look, the words Yun Xi that flashed boldly on the screen had proven her suspicion.
“It’s you! It’s the jinx!”
The moment she got the confirmation, she rushed in front of the television, her eyes widened in surprise as she watched the figure who was being crowned the number one first-class socialite.
The Yun Xi on the television was elegant and graceful, every move she made shining with radiant beauty. She was nothing like the bumpkin covered in dust who had returned from the countryside nor the jinx they had bullied.
She was the number one first-class socialite of Jingdu. She was the star that everyone aspired to become. She was the sun, and Jingdu was going to revolve around her like the earth and every other planet in the Milky Way.
Yun Xi had gotten everything, the wealth, the prestige, and a bright future. They all awaited Yun Xi more than Yun Ziling could ever comprehend.
But there was nothing for her.
Yun Ziling watched as all that should rightfully have been hers was taken away from her, and she had been reduced to being another insane patient of a mental institution.
“No…this can’t be real!”
Yun Ziling’s hands shook as she caressed her ruined features. Her eyes were filled with every ounce of hatred in her heart as she stared at the smiling figure on the screen. All her dreams had been burned to ashes. The television screen turned black as she turned off the device in anger. Her ruined features stared back at her, and the black mirror was a black smoke that smothered her last hopes.
“Ah! You wretch! I will never forgive you!”
Her sharp screams echoed down the hallway. The employees of the institution were already used to the antics of the mental patients, and they treated these occurrences as nothing more than ordinary. The orderly watching over Yun Ziling’s room gazed at the monitor and returned to his messages with a shrug.