Chapter 2: Blood and Accusations Outside the Operating Room

The ambulance arrived with extraordinary speed, its shrill siren mercilessly piercing what remained of the romance and floral scent in the air, dragging this once-dreamlike wedding straight into an icy hell.

The moment Li Yu'en was lifted onto the stretcher, An Yilin's legs suddenly gave out, and she nearly collapsed to her knees right along with him. Fortunately, An Jingchuan's quick reflexes let him catch her firmly by the waist from behind, or she would have fallen straight into the pool of blood. Her whole body shook violently, her fingers gripping the blood-soaked skirt of her wedding gown so hard that her fingertips turned a lifeless white from the strain. Her eyes were hollow yet stubbornly fixed, glued to Li Yu'en, as if a single blink would make him vanish forever.

"Yilin, don't panic, stay with me." An Jingchuan spoke low, his voice pressed unnaturally steady, his tall frame planted firmly in front of her, shielding her from the chaotic, jostling crowd and flashing cameras around them.

An Jingheng had already leapt into the ambulance along with the paramedics. As a top authority, he had completely shed his usual gentleness, taking over the emergency equipment while calmly and swiftly giving orders to the medical staff: "Massive blood loss, carotid pulse is weak, get two IV lines running immediately for rapid fluid replacement, notify the ER to prep for surgery directly!"

On the other side, Song Yunze had been placed on another stretcher. His face was pale as paper, his right leg and arm unnaturally twisted, cold sweat beading on his forehead. Despite the pain nearly making him black out, his mind remained strangely clear. He turned his head, staring fixedly at Li Yu'en lying beside him, his cracked lips moving slightly as if trying to say something, but in the end it only came out as a pained, muffled groan — nothing more.

Inside the cramped ambulance cabin, the air was thick with the pungent stench of blood and the suffocating beeping of electronic monitors.

An Jingchuan half-supported, half-carried An Yilin into a corner. She couldn't even sit up straight, curling entirely into her brother's arms. Xia Xingcheng and Gu Yanxi squeezed in too. Xia Xingcheng, her eyes red, held An Yilin's ice-cold hands tightly in both of hers, her voice trembling with urgency: "Yilin, look at me... listen to second brother, don't be afraid, Yu'en will be fine... he loves you so much, he would never leave you!"

Gu Yanxi, jaw clenched, stared straight ahead. Though her own hands were shaking uncontrollably too, reason forced her to stay calm. "I've already contacted the hospital director. Top teams from neurosurgery and cardiac surgery are on standby. The moment we arrive, he goes straight into the operating room."

Yet not a single word of comfort reached An Yilin.

Her entire world had shrunk down to that lifeless man on the stretcher. She watched, helpless, as Li Yu'en's once warm, gentle face drained of color bit by bit, turning as white as paper about to crumble.

[Outside the ER — A Line of Defense Torn Apart]

The instant the red "In Surgery" light lit up at the end of the corridor, An Yilin's whole body was nailed to the spot by that glaring red glow, as if impaled.

As the heavy operating room doors slammed shut with a merciless bang, the world seemed to be split brutally in two.

Behind the door: an abyss where life and death hung in the balance. In front of it: a mortal world teetering on the edge of collapse.

An Yilin stood alone in the middle of the corridor. That priceless, floor-trailing pure white wedding gown was now covered in dried, blackened bloodstains, too glaring to look at directly. Her once-flawless bridal makeup had long since been washed into a ruined mess by tears, which fell one after another, silently, onto the floor. Yet she stood there like a puppet who had lost all sense of pain, simply staring blankly at the tightly shut door.

"Sit down first, Yilin, listen to me, sit down." An Jingchuan never left her side for even a moment, his broad hand steady on her thin shoulder, murmuring low words of comfort. "I'm here. Your brother is here."

But it was as if she heard nothing at all, simply shaking her head over and over like someone possessed, her pale lips murmuring endlessly: "Yu'en... Yu'en is still in there... he's in so much pain..."

Xia Xingcheng and Gu Yanxi flanked her on either side, the three girls' eyes red enough to bleed. Gu Yanxi, her nerves stretched to their limit, kept scrolling through her phone, checking on the medical resources and the progress of keeping the news contained; Xia Xingcheng kept dabbing at An Yilin's tears with tissues, but they fell like a string of broken pearls, impossible to stop no matter how she tried.

Just as the corridor sank into a dead, suffocating silence, a rapid, chaotic patter of footsteps broke the stalemate.

Li Yu'en's parents had arrived.

Li Zhengde, who always prized composure and dignity, now looked utterly ashen, even the buttons of his suit jacket fastened crookedly, as if he had aged over a decade in a single instant.

And Lin Shuhua, walking ahead of him, the moment she rushed into the corridor and saw An Yilin in her disheveled, bloodied state, her anxious eyes instantly twisted into something of pure venom and madness.

She had never approved of this marriage to begin with. From the very start, she had fiercely opposed her son being with An Yilin. In her conservative view, a background like the An family's — reaching into both the legitimate world and the underworld, untouchably powerful — was simply not something a modest teaching family like theirs should have anything to do with. What's more, she had already lost one elder son; now Yu'en was the only hope left in her life, the root she would fight to the death to protect!

Now, her only son lay in the operating room covered in blood, his fate unknown, all because of this woman. Years of suppressed fear and resentment toward the An family's status exploded completely in that instant.

"It's all because of you, you bringer of misfortune!"

Lin Shuhua let out a shrill scream and, like a woman who had lost all reason, charged forward without warning, raising her hand and slapping it hard across An Yilin's face!

"Crack!"

The crisp, resounding sound of the slap exploded through the empty corridor, shattering whatever fragile composure everyone had barely managed to hold onto.

The blow sent An Yilin's whole body reeling to one side, a bright red handprint instantly blooming on her pale cheek. But she didn't even try to dodge, didn't even raise a hand to cover her face. She simply turned her head slowly, her bloodshot eyes staring blankly at Lin Shuhua, as if her soul had already left her body.

"If it weren't for you, how could he have ended up like this today!" Lin Shuhua's voice cracked with shrillness, tears mixed with towering rage streaming down as she jabbed a finger at An Yilin's face, cursing viciously. "I said from the start I'd never agree to this! Your An family, with that kind of background, was always going to get someone killed sooner or later! What right do you have to stand there playing the victim? Give me back my son! If anything happens to my son, I will never let this go with you!"

Having completely lost her reason, Lin Shuhua raised her hand again, moving to lunge forward and claw at An Yilin's hair.

But in the split second before her hand could land, a large hand — knuckles sharp and defined, gripping like an iron clamp — shot through the air and caught her wrist with precise, ruthless force.

It was the eldest son of the An family, who had just arrived — An Jingche.

His strength was immense, and without the slightest hesitation, he yanked Lin Shuhua's entire body backward with brutal force. His tall, imposing frame planted itself in front of An Yilin like an immovable god of death. Those eyes, which had weathered a storm of gunfire, now churned with a killing intent chilling enough to freeze the blood.

"Enough."

An Jingche's voice was extremely low, yet it cut through the noise of the corridor like a blade laced with ice.

Lin Shuhua, wrenched back by that irresistible brute force, staggered two steps and nearly fell to the floor. Shocked, she looked up and met An Jingche's utterly cold, temperature-less eyes, and her entire body froze in fright, even her breath catching for half a beat.

"Right now, the person in there is still fighting for his life. If you dare so much as touch a hair on her head again, or make even the slightest sound—" An Jingche leaned in slightly, the warning in his tone and the bloody menace of an underworld power holder released without any restraint whatsoever. "Once he's truly beyond saving, it won't be too late for you to lose your mind then. And at that point, let's see if there's a single soul in this hospital who dares to stop me."

His words were spoken with such cold, absolute finality, carrying the crushing pressure of someone at the top of a hierarchy, that they forced all of Lin Shuhua's hysteria right back down her throat.

And while An Jingche's presence silenced the entire scene, An Jingchuan had already decisively pulled An Yilin back, sheltering her completely beneath his wing, cutting off Lin Shuhua's hate-filled gaze entirely.

"Don't look at her. Don't listen to her either." An Jingchuan looked at Lin Shuhua, his eyes lacking the bloodthirsty edge of his elder brother, but carrying an unusually firm, cold resolve. "Mrs. Li, if you came here today just to vent your feelings on someone, please stay away from my sister. She doesn't owe your family anything."

An Yilin cowered behind An Jingchuan, her whole body trembling as if every drop of blood had been drained from her in the dead of winter. Her fingers clutched desperately at the sleeve of An Jingchuan's suit, nails nearly tearing through the fabric, as though this were her last remaining connection to this world.

She slowly lowered her head, tears falling silently onto the bloodstained wedding gown.

She had always known Li Yu'en's mother never liked her.

But she had never imagined that, at the very moment her own heart was being torn apart alive, she would become, in this tragedy, the most hateful, most unforgivable criminal of all.