Chapter 3: Falling from Heaven, the Day the White Veil Turned Red

Time lost all meaning in the corridor outside the emergency room. No one knew how long had passed — an hour, or an entire century?

Until, at last, the tightly shut operating room doors let out a heavy hiss, sliding slowly open to either side.

In that instant, the entire corridor, which had been filled with suppressed sobbing and murmurs, fell suddenly silent, leaving nothing but the sound of held breath. Every gaze, as if drawn by a magnet, lifted at once toward the doctor stepping out.

An Yilin lurched forward almost by instinct. Her high heels scraped a harsh sound against the floor, but her legs, weak beneath her, stumbled. She gripped the doctor's sleeve desperately, her voice trembling almost beyond recognition, carrying a note of near-humble hope: "Doctor... how is he? How is Yu'en? The surgery went well, didn't it?"

The doctor slowly pulled down his mask, revealing a face heavy with exhaustion. He didn't speak right away, only averted his eyes from An Yilin's gaze, brimming as it was with despair and pleading.

That expression, that near-death-sentence silence, was already enough to make every heart in that hallway plummet.

"We did everything we could." The doctor closed his eyes briefly, his voice low and clear, sending a cold echo through the empty corridor. "But the patient had lost too much blood by the time he arrived, multiple internal organs were ruptured, and the head trauma was catastrophic... I'm very sorry, we weren't able to save him. Please accept our condolences."

Please accept our condolences.

Three simple words, transformed into an invisible sledgehammer, smashing An Yilin's entire world to pieces.

In that instant, all the sound, all the light, all the air in that corridor seemed to be sucked away in a single breath. The whole world suddenly went silent. An Yilin stood frozen in place, her eyes opened wide, staring fixedly at the doctor's lips, like a foreigner who couldn't understand her own mother tongue.

"...What did you say?"

Her voice was very soft, so soft it seemed it would scatter like smoke with a single breath, carrying an absurd bewilderment: "Say it again... what do you mean, you couldn't save him? He was smiling at me before he left. He said he'd still be waiting for me..."

The doctor did not repeat himself, only let out a deep sigh and lowered his head, stepping to the side.

An Yilin's knees suddenly buckled, the world before her eyes spinning violently. If An Jingchuan and Xia Xingcheng hadn't both reacted quickly enough to catch her from either side, she would have collapsed straight onto the cold stone floor. Her lips trembled wildly, her exquisite face draining of all color within seconds, ghostly pale as paper, tears falling like a string of broken pearls, splashing in fat drops onto the white wedding gown at her chest.

"It's impossible... this can't be true!" She shook her head hysterically, her voice broken beyond recognition. "He promised me! He promised he'd stay by my side for the rest of my life!"

"Yu'en—!"

A high, anguished wail suddenly tore through the air. Li Zhengde's whole body seemed to have every drop of strength drained from it at once; he swayed and had to grip the wall to keep from collapsing on the spot, tears streaming down his weathered face, his lips trembling without a single word coming out.

And the moment Lin Shuhua heard the pronouncement of death, she completely lost her mind. Her bloodshot eyes bore into An Yilin with a look that was not grief but a towering, venomous hatred that wished nothing more than to tear her apart.

"It's you! It's you, you curse, who killed him!"

Lin Shuhua, like a beast out of control, hair disheveled, charged violently toward An Yilin. She sobbed so hard she could barely catch her breath, her voice shrill enough to tear through the corridor's very walls: "I already lost one son! Yu'en was my only hope! He was living just fine, why did he lose his life the moment he crossed paths with you? Give my son back to me! Give me back my Yu'en!"

Lin Shuhua, as if gone mad, stretched out both hands, her sharp nails clawing straight toward An Yilin's colorless face, so out of control she could barely keep her own footing.

Yet in the instant before she could reach An Yilin, a tall, tower-like figure once again cut between them, carrying the same aura of killing intent as before.

An Jingche's eyes were cold as a blade, without a trace of mercy. He grabbed Lin Shuhua's shoulder with precision, and this time, without any courtesy whatsoever, he forced his arm forward, shoving her body backward hard, slamming her into the waiting chairs behind her.

The man's handsome yet sinister face was covered in the gloom of an oncoming storm, his voice low and heavy with overwhelming pressure: "I told you, that's enough. Try touching her again, I dare you."

Lin Shuhua, shaken by that terrifying underworld presence, trembled all over before collapsing weakly into the chair, sobbing uncontrollably. Li Zhengde hurried forward to hold his wife, the two of them crying together at the other end of the corridor, their grief and curses intertwining, sharp enough to pierce the ears.

But by now, An Yilin could no longer hear any of it. That phrase — "we weren't able to save him" — was like a blunt knife, splitting her soul apart alive.

In the next instant, some unknown strength surged up from within her, and she wrenched herself free from An Jingchuan and Xia Xingcheng's grip, stumbling in a wretched daze toward the operating room.

"Yu'en—!"

She cried out, her voice hoarse, despairing, so piercing it barely sounded like her own. With her blood-stained hands, she pounded desperately against the cold, heavy operating room doors: "Come out! Don't leave me... you said you'd marry me today! Didn't you say so...? Li Yu'en, you liar! Come out!"

But the heavy doors gave not the slightest response.

All that answered her was the dead silence echoing through the corridor, and her own sobbing, which she could no longer stop, utterly broken.

After Li Yu'en's body was taken away, An Yilin's whole body seemed to have every bone pulled from it, collapsing limply onto a bench in the hospital corridor.

She was still wearing that pure white wedding gown, which should have symbolized happiness, promise, and eternity. But now, that elaborate, magnificent skirt had already been thoroughly soaked through with Li Yu'en's blood in all the chaos. Great swaths of scarlet bloomed cruelly, layer upon layer, across the snow-white lace and satin, as if some demon had taken the sharpest of knives and carved a wound into her life that could never heal.

That was no longer clean, sacred white.

This was a wedding gown soaked in death and despair.

An Yilin lowered her head, staring blankly at her own skirt. The bloodstains had already dried halfway, taking on a thick, blackened dark red. Her fingertips trembling, she reached out and touched, bit by bit, numbly, the coarse, still faintly warm bloodstain.

Her fingertips shook. Her heart bled.

A wedding veil was meant to be pure white, unstained — yet now it clung to the blood of the person she loved most, like an eternal, unwashable, unerasable piece of evidence, reminding her at every moment that her wedding had, from the very beginning, headed toward an irredeemable tragedy.

"Yilin..." Xia Xingcheng's eyes were red enough to hurt, her voice choking so badly she could barely speak. She reached out to hug An Yilin, but looking at that glaring, blood-red wedding gown, her hand froze in midair — she didn't know how to touch this best friend of hers, who seemed as though she would shatter to dust at the slightest contact.

Gu Yanxi stood on the other side, her usually proud, imperious face now completely ashen. She gripped her phone, its battery long dead and its screen dark, in her hand, her lips pressed into a tight, straight line, even her breathing kept as low as possible, terrified that even the smallest sound might disturb An Yilin's utterly fragile nerves.

And An Yilin simply held that same position, motionless, staring at the wedding gown stained red.

Amid silent tears, the corner of her mouth suddenly pulled into an achingly hollow, achingly desolate curve.

She suddenly found this world absurd.

She had come to be married carrying the fullest happiness, wearing the most beautiful gown in the world. Yet why was it that, in the end, she could only stand alone in this corridor reeking of disinfectant, wearing this blood-soaked wedding gown, watching with her own eyes as her fiancé died in front of her?

This wedding, this white veil, had become an abyss of nightmares she would never escape for the rest of her life.