Collapses, sobs, wails, and even curses—these were sounds the hospital heard all too often.
In the obstetrics and gynecology department, one could see the faces of new parents, brimming with joy and hope. But if one were to pass by the oncology department, the heavy atmosphere, as stagnant as cooling cement, was enough to suffocate anyone with a single glance.
Though Li Zi was young, her father was a titan in the field of neurosurgery, and she had inherited his medical genius. Since her internship, she had demonstrated talent that far surpassed her peers. Not only was she brilliant, but she was also incredibly driven. The nurses often remarked that Dr. Li seemed to want to live in the operating room. With such relentless dedication and professionalism, becoming a chief physician was merely a matter of seniority and time.
Dr. Li wore a ring on her finger, so everyone knew she wasn't single. However, people wondered: with someone so busy, did her family truly have no complaints?
In the eyes of her colleagues and patients, Li Zi was calm, professional, meticulous, and infinitely patient. They had never seen her lose her composure; in the hospital, she was almost a perfect icon.
Until one day, Li Zi emerged from an eight-hour surgery looking slightly weary. A nurse was waiting at the door with a phone, saying worriedly, "Dr. Li, your phone has been ringing all day. I thought it might be an emergency, so I brought it over as soon as you finished."
Li Zi took the phone and thanked her politely. She tapped the screen, her expression initially one of confusion.
Then, they watched as the perfect, almost inhuman Dr. Li’s composure began to crumble after she answered the call.
"Dr. Li, are you alright?"
The nurses watched in fear as her face became a distorted mask of horror, disbelief, daze, and even a flicker of twisted rage. Li Zi spoke slowly into the phone, "It’s April Fool’s Day, isn’t it? This kind of joke isn't funny."
The person on the other end said something more. The nurses could only hear the rising sound of background wailing from the receiver.
Li Zi’s facade of calm shattered completely. For the first time, the nurses saw her look so terrified and desperate. She didn't even have time to take off her white coat or her surgical cap before she turned and bolted toward the elevator.
"Dr. Li! Careful!"
The prolonged standing at the operating table had left her muscles tight, and the sudden sprint caused her body to protest. They saw the usually graceful doctor stiffen and take a hard fall in the hallway. Yet, she didn't pause for a second, scrambling up immediately and continuing to charge forward with a limp.
Dr. Li went to the internal elevator that led directly to the morgue.
After that, Li Zi wasn't seen at work for a long time.
A month later, Dr. Li returned to the hospital, but only to process her resignation, accompanied by a friend.
She left the medical world entirely.
Patients who had been under her care inquired about her, but no one knew the full story. However, everyone present that day seemed to know a fragment of the storm.
Some said Dr. Li’s lover had died in an accident.
Some said her lover had been murdered, and that he had called her for help at the first opportunity, but no one had answered.
Some said that by the time Li Zi arrived, he had been dead for a while, and his final wish was to be cremated immediately so she wouldn't have to see him one last time.
Some said Dr. Li’s lover had been pregnant at the time, and their relationship hadn't been recognized by their parents. He wasn't far along, but perhaps because of a heavy blow to the abdomen, he had lost the strength to resist. In the end, he died from excessive blood loss after failed resuscitation.
They said the body was covered in wounds. When he was brought in, the stretcher and the hospital bed were soaked through with his blood. Upon seeing it, Li Zi collapsed on the spot. She could no longer face blood, and she lost the ability to stand at an operating table.
Another patient asked, "So what did Dr. Li do after that?"
It was a student of Li Zi’s father, Yan Yan, who revealed to everyone that Li Zi had gone home to inherit her mother’s business. She had likely gone into trade.
What a pity...
Everyone who heard the story sighed. It was hard to say who the pity was truly for.
In that nightmare.
Li Zi shut herself in her room for days on end. She didn't eat, didn't drink, and didn't speak. She simply lay on their shared bed, staring at the string of missed calls on her phone.
Days turned to nights. Li Zi’s parents came to persuade her, to scold her. Even the usually gentle Yan Yan wept and begged her to say something, but she did not listen to her father as she usually did.
"How did things ever reach this point?"
Yan Yan looked sorrowfully at the closed door. His already thin frame had wasted away even more from worrying about his daughter.
Li Shian supported him, her face full of regret. "If I had known, I shouldn't have made things difficult for those two children... Li Zhenting was clearly a good boy."
"It really is such a tragedy."
Later, under her parents' intervention, Li Zi finally became willing to take a few bites of the food sent in. Though it was barely anything, at least she was eating.
Liu Yan and the others visited. They told her that no matter what, Brother Li wouldn't blame her. He loved her too much. Before he died, he didn't want Li Zi to see his body because it would be too painful, which was why he instructed them to cremate him immediately. Liu Yan and the others simply hadn't followed through.
Liu Yan said, "No matter what happened in the past, Brother Li definitely wouldn't want to see you like this."
Li Zi remained unmoved, sinking deeper into silence. After they left, she placed Li Zhenting’s funeral urn on her pillow and pressed herself against it.
Just as Liu Yan left, Yu Tianwu arrived. Though she was already a renowned painter, she had flown back from abroad the moment she heard the news. Seeing Li Zi in this state, her usually eloquent tongue felt like it was stuck in paste; she couldn't squeeze out a single word. She merely watched Li Zi with a complex, weary gaze before finally sighing and turning to leave.
"I have no standing to persuade her, and I can't persuade her anyway."
Xie Bing had moved far away and lost contact with them long ago.
It was Hua Yi who rushed over from her law firm. She sat by the bed and made a move to take the urn away.
Li Zi immediately gripped the box tight, glaring at her. An Alpha’s cold fury erupted along with her pheromones.
Hua Yi’s pheromone intensity was not inferior to hers, and Li Zi was physically weak, unable to maintain the pressure for long.
Hua Yi said coldly, "What use is being like this? The dead are gone. Do you think you can wish the deceased back to life?"
Clutching the box, Li Zi mocked her mercilessly, "Do you think everyone is like you? Too cowardly to confess to the person you love while they're alive, forgetting them once they're dead, and then going off to marry and have children like a normal person?"
She successfully stung Hua Yi, who had long since armored herself to be invulnerable. Because she understood the other’s pain so well, she knew exactly how to attack most effectively.
That delicate, gentle face flashed through Hua Yi’s mind for an instant. She closed her eyes, suppressed the surging emotions, and struck back coldly at Li Zi:
"And what about you? Are you just going to lie in bed sighing, licking your wounds like a pathetic stray dog? Recalling everything over and over, regretting everything again and again, locking yourself in a tiny world of remorse and refusing to come out?"
"If you really have any backbone, if you're still the Li Zi I know, then get out of this room. Stop hurting the people who love you. Go find out why Li Zhenting was murdered. Go catch the killer, instead of playing the part of the belatedly devoted lover here."
Seeing that Li Zi was finally moved, Hua Yi delivered the final blow:
"At least I’ve made sure that bastard got what he deserved. What about you?"
Two days later, Li Zi finally walked out of her room. Her parents held her, tears streaming down their faces.
Many years passed. She followed her mother to learn the business, using a powerful network of connections and the power of money to investigate the case.
She learned that the killer from back then had been profiled as an Alpha male with multiple homicides and a deeply perverted psyche. His patterns and motives were inscrutable; even the reason why he suddenly attacked Li Zhenting, kidnapped him, and then allowed him to eventually escape remained a mystery that failed to form a complete criminal profile.
Thus, the police eventually concluded that Li Zhenting was a victim chosen at random.
She chased the case for years until she was nearly driven mad by countless false leads and dead ends. Then, she suddenly saw the views of a criminal psychologist named Xun Xin on the case. He believed the police's previous direction was wrong—that perhaps Li Zhenting was not a randomly selected victim.
Yu Tianwu and Hua Yi, who still had no children, were drinking with her. She told them, "I’ve decided to find this professor. I feel like the truth is right in front of me."
The two supported her and raised their glasses to see her off.
That night, she looked at an old photo of the two of them on her phone—one looking awkward and shy, the other looking cold and slightly impatient. She traced the man’s image nostalgically.
"Brother Ting, wait a little longer. I will definitely avenge you."
The man’s stubborn and feigned fierce face from childhood; his cautious, longing gaze as a teenager; his awkward silhouette as a young man, always arguing with her yet always waiting for her to turn back; those cries of "A-Zi" when his emotions ran deep; that look of infatuation he thought he hid so well; and that cold body shrouded in blood, that unborn child...
Li Zi closed her eyes, burying herself in their old blankets.
Brother Ting...
"Phew."
Li Zi woke up from the nightmare once again.
After sending Li Zhenting back and repeatedly telling him not to worry, she had returned to her dormitory and taken another nap.
Since high school, she had rarely dreamed of these things.
Back then, she truly couldn't manage the distance between herself and Li Zhenting. She didn't want him to be with her again, yet she couldn't leave him alone, only able to watch as he fell for her step by step once more.
On the day of her susceptibility period, she still hadn't restrained her inner longing for him and had sent Golden to find him.
Everything seemed to have returned to the way it started.
Only this time, she was determined to cherish their relationship, no longer putting on airs or making him chase after her.
She had never forgotten that blood-stained day. So this time, she would not pick up a scalpel, nor did she plan to take over her mother’s business. She was going to approach that industry early, to become someone close to Xun Xin, to prevent the tragedy from happening again.
If possible, she would find the killer herself this time.
She sat on the bed, head lowered, her face covered in cold sweat.
Just then, someone pushed open her door and shouted excitedly, "Li Zizi! I’m moving in with Brother Yan!"
Li Zi looked helplessly at her practically non-existent door lock and replied, "I know. Liu Yan told Li Zhenting."
"Hee hee! I’m moving out. Will you miss me?"
Yu Tianwu was beaming with joy, plunking herself down on the nearby stool.
"Don't be so mushy."
Li Zi got up, walked past her, and went to the bathroom to wash her face.
"Don't say that~ I’ll definitely miss you guys." She followed behind Li Zi, chattering away. "I’m so looking forward to living with Brother Yan. I’m telling you, he’s really wonderful—gentle, mature, and so cute. He even makes amazing food!"
Yu Tianwu, in the throes of a honeymoon phase, was like a girl in spring, listing Liu Yan’s virtues one by one.
"Mature?" Li Zi thought of Li Zhenting’s chat window and felt noncommittal.
Seeing Yu Tianwu’s expression—as if she were about to reach the peak of her life and embrace a beautiful future—Li Zi thought of the middle-aged version of her she had last seen.
She suddenly asked Yu Tianwu, "What happens after that? Will you live with Liu Yan forever?"
Yu Tianwu was stunned by the question and blinked in confusion. "Huh? What do you mean?"
Li Zi asked, "Will you just live together from now on? Have you thought about marrying him?"
The future? Marriage?
The joy on Yu Tianwu’s face slowly faded. She pursed her lips. "It’s a bit too early to think about that, isn't it...?"
"I’m just asking." Li Zi didn't press further, leaving her to her own thoughts. "I just think Liu Yan is a very serious guy. Once he decides to be with you, he’s definitely going against his family’s expectations. He will be thinking about these things."
"By agreeing to live with you, he’ll need to explain it to his family, and he’ll be separated from his work and friends. If he didn't think there was a future with you, he wouldn't have made this decision."
Yu Tianwu fell silent.
She leaned against the doorframe of Li Zi’s room, her usually carefree expression turning vacant.
"Why... do we have to talk about the future?"
"Isn't it enough to be happy now?"
"Between an Alpha and an Alpha... is there really a future?"
Hearing this, Li Zi frowned. It was just as she thought.
Yu Tianwu always seemed like the most cheerful and optimistic person in the dorm, with a personality so sweet she seemed to have been raised in a sugar jar. She was the best at sweet talk and pleasing people, yet she was a pessimistic coward to her core.
Li Zi actually knew why she had become this way, but she couldn't spell it out for her now.
She could only offer one more piece of advice: "Is a fleeting happiness really all you want?"
"Whether or not you have a future with someone depends only on the two of you. No matter how many other difficulties there are, as long as people are firm, they can overcome them together."
"I believe Liu Yan thinks so too."
Although Liu Yan seemed to have a good temper, if someone stepped on his bottom line, he would absolutely not tolerate it.
Li Zi had watched these people grow up; she knew these men, who had struggled through the mire of life since their adolescence, better than anyone.
Seeing Yu Tianwu lost in thought, she picked up her phone to reply to Li Zhenting’s message letting her know he was safe.
"I'm home."
"Good. Get some rest. Stay away from the shop for a few days."
"I know, you nag!"
...
"...Do you really not mind my body?"
"What's there to mind? Aren't you still you?"
"Besides, since you'll still have those symptoms in the future, won't it be even more comfortable for us?"
"Damn it, is that all you have in your head!"
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My Fierce Beta Husband is Surprisingly Sweet | Chapter 39 | Shadows of the Past | Novela.app | Novela.app
