CHAPTER 622: 240 SO THAT’S WHERE HER NAME CAME FROM

"Do you know who betrayed you? It was your grandmother, hahaha. She told this news to your great-grandmother and earned her forgiveness."

Shen Qiunong remained calm: "Zhi Lan is not that kind of person. You’re insulting your grandmother, leaving her spirit restless in the afterlife."

"Don’t try to trick me with this nonsense. Let me tell you something—when people die, they’re just dead. The living must cherish everything they have. You must get what you desire by any means necessary, or you’ll have come to this world for nothing."

"Oh, you don’t know yet, do you? Gu Chengzhao and that Amo had a son, about the same age as me. He’s the most outstanding heir of the Gu family’s generation. The Gu family values loyalty and is still stubbornly holding onto that marriage agreement. So today, the Gu family sent someone over to propose."

Yu Ruohuan grew increasingly smug as she spoke. "You and Yu Yisen have already been forgotten by the world. Even your old friends have abandoned you. In all of Hua Country, the only one worthy of Gu Bichen is me."

However, she didn’t see any loss of composure on Shen Qiunong’s part. She remained serene, even curling her lips into a soft, gentle smile.

That smile felt like mockery.

Yu Ruohuan’s blood instantly rushed to her head.

"Young lady, you don’t understand the Gu family, nor do you understand Sister Huiyin."

She chuckled wryly. "I fear it’s you all who wanted to climb onto this marriage agreement and were resolutely rejected by the Gu family, so you’ve come here in humiliation to vent your anger, twisting facts to try to watch me break down and lose control, hoping to satisfy your pathetic sense of self-worth. Alas, fake is fake—it will never become real. Mei Lvge endlessly chased after everything, but I wonder if she sleeps peacefully at night? The wrongful souls she has harmed will haunt her day and night."

The wind rattled the window. Shen Qiunong’s calm, elderly voice slowly narrated, like an ancient and distant curse.

Yu Ruohuan suddenly felt a chill run down her spine.

"You’re in high school now, right? You should’ve learned about the law of conservation of energy in physics. Energy neither appears out of nowhere nor disappears into nothing; it only transforms from one form to another. Life is the same—it’s a process of conservation. A person’s or a family’s success and fortune come from an intrinsic cycle of cause and effect. Love begets love; blessings lead to blessings. Only by doing good deeds can one accumulate good karma. Otherwise, when you watch a towering building rise, you’ll see it crumble just as swiftly. History is full of countless examples. The sins Mei Lvge committed will ultimately repay her descendants. If there is no accumulation of blessings, when disaster strikes, you’ll pay dearly for your past ignorance and malice. This is cause and effect, the Heavenly Dao, the balance of this world."

The elderly woman spoke a long string of words, her tone calm and lucid. It was inherently gentle, yet carried an air of deafening power.

Yu Ruohuan took a deep breath; these were words her grandmother had also once said.

"Who do you think you are? What gives you the right to judge us from such a lofty position? You’re nothing but a loser, a complete failure, a mudfish stuck perpetually in the mire. Don’t try to use your contrived ideas to manipulate me emotionally. If anything, it’s you who are pitiful, relying on Ah Q’s spirit of self-deception to numb yourself. If doing this makes you feel better inside, then suit yourself. Oh, by the way, I’ve already tracked down Yu Fuli."

As expected, Shen Qiunong’s calm demeanor finally broke. Her hands tightened around the armrests of her chair. The veins on her aged, wrinkled hands protruded like ridges on orange peel.

Yu Ruohuan smirked with delight at her fleeting victory of retaliation.

She took slow steps forward, standing before Shen Qiunong, now observing that Shen Qiunong wasn’t as destitute as she had imagined.

Though her clothing was worn, it was clean and tidy. Her cheeks were gaunt, yet, strangely, her complexion didn’t seem poor. Her pure white hair framed her head, and she sat quietly, exuding an enchanting beauty of white hair and striking features.

There wasn’t the usual sense of aging she expected; instead, there was a faint, clean fragrance, tinged with a hint of bitterness in its aftertaste.

She couldn’t understand why someone confined for decades still had such stable mental resolve.

As she thought about her next words, which she believed would shatter this detestable composure, she couldn’t help but curl her lips upward.

"He ran off to Qingzhou and became a firefighter. Later, he married a wife and had a daughter. He seemed to live quite a happy life."

Shen Qiunong froze, lowering her head so Yu Ruohuan couldn’t see the expression on her face.

A cruel smile flickered in Yu Ruohuan’s eyes—like that of a demon.

"Later, when his daughter was three years old, his wife died in childbirth—one birth, two lives lost. It was a baby boy. Such a pity, wasn’t it? When his daughter turned five, he died during a firefighting mission. He saved nine lives but couldn’t save himself."