Chapter 7: New Life on the Line Between Life and Death, the Arrival of the Twins

The day An Yilin went into labor, the sky hung low and heavy, thick clouds pressing down over the hospital's top floor, as if foretelling an enormous storm.

In the later stages of her pregnancy, the entire An family had taken turns watching over her almost around the clock, terrified of the slightest mishap. After all, given her fragile heart and abnormal clotting function, every delivery was, in the doctors' eyes, no different from walking a tightrope at death's door.

From the moment she was admitted to await delivery, Ji Yunshen had come nearly every single day.

He never forced his way into her room; most of the time, he was simply a silent shadow, quietly waiting at the end of the corridor or on the bench outside her door. Through that heavy door, he waited — waited for her to wake, waited for her vitals to stabilize, waited to see whether she could get a peaceful night's sleep.

He made no noise, caused no trouble. He simply existed.

In the dead of night, Ji Yunshen was occasionally permitted into the room. He would sit at her bedside and, in that low, unhurried voice of his, tell small, inconsequential stories. He never demanded a response — even when An Yilin merely lay with her eyes closed, listening quietly, that voice became the one warmth in her boundless darkness.

He would peel apples for her, slowly and steadily, the peel curling off in an unbroken spiral. He would push the peeled slices toward her, and even though she ate only the smallest amount, he never once stopped this small ritual.

That morning, death finally came knocking.

An Yilin's face, which had been lying peacefully still, turned ghostly pale in an instant. She suddenly furrowed her brow, her slender fingers gripping the bedsheet in a death grip, her breathing turning ragged all at once. Shen Tinglan was the first to notice something was wrong, screaming as she slammed the emergency call button.

An Jingheng came sprinting into the room almost at a dead run, and the moment he saw her condition, his pupils constricted sharply, his expression instantly hardening to the utmost gravity: "Her water broke — signs of a severe hemorrhage. Prep the delivery room, now!"

The entire An family medical team moved with the precision of machinery. By the time An Yilin was wheeled into the delivery room, her face had already turned nearly transparent white. She didn't scream, only bit down hard on her lip, gripping the rails of the delivery table, her whole body strung as taut as a steel wire on the verge of snapping.

Outside the delivery room had become a battlefield of its own.

Ji Yunshen arrived at the very first moment, standing at the door, his back ramrod straight, yet in those eyes that were always calm and composed, a fear he couldn't hide churned violently.

Shen Tinglan pressed her palms together, her fingertips deathly pale; An Hengchuan's face was drawn tight, radiating a chill that warned everyone to keep their distance; An Jingche stood guard at the door like a stone statue, his fists clenched so hard the veins on the backs of his hands bulged; An Jingchuan stared fixedly at the door, his brow locked in a deep frown; and An Jingheng paced back and forth by the doorway, ready at any moment to charge in and save her.

Inside the delivery room, the battle raged fiercely.

"The patient's showing a coagulation disorder!"

"Stop the bleeding! Increase the transfusion!"

"Fetal heartbeat's unstable, prep for surgery!"

All manner of urgent commands overlapped in the air, the room thick with the heavy stench of blood. An Yilin's mind blurred from the pain, yet her survival instinct made her bite down hard on her lip, forcibly swallowing back the scream rising in her throat. She couldn't collapse — she still had two children inside her... the last flesh and blood Yu'en had left her.

"It's out! A boy!" the doctor's voice rang out, accompanied by the first faint cry of a newborn.

Everyone outside held their breath at once. Shen Tinglan's eyes reddened instantly, An Hengchuan's shoulders relaxing slightly. But right after came the doctor's even more urgent voice: "There's another one! Hurry!"

An Yilin, nearly slipping into shock from the pain, drew on the last shred of her willpower as the second wave of agony struck, gritting her teeth and summoning every last bit of strength in her body.

"A girl! She's out!"

When the cries of the twins, safely born, finally rang out, the entire corridor seemed to spring back to life.

But the true crisis had only just begun.

"Postpartum hemorrhage! Her blood pressure's dropping!"

An even more urgent shout came from inside the delivery room. Every member of the medical staff snapped into full combat mode; Shen Tinglan broke down outside the door, covering her face and sobbing. Ji Yunshen never once left, leaning against the doorframe, his knuckles turning bone-white from how hard he gripped it. He was waiting — waiting for the one sound that would finally let him breathe.

No one knew how much time had passed before the harsh light inside the delivery room finally, slowly, dimmed.

The door opened, and the doctor stepped out, dragging a body utterly exhausted, his forehead covered in cold sweat: "Mother and children are safe. It's a pair of twins, and the mother... has been saved as well."

The moment those words fell, the tension that had stretched taut through the entire corridor finally, completely, snapped.

Shen Tinglan collapsed into a chair, An Hengchuan let out a long, heavy sigh, An Jingchuan released the death grip he'd had on the back of a chair, and the tension on An Jingche's face finally eased, if only slightly.

Only Ji Yunshen remained standing at the door, his gaze sinking deep into that door which had just closed once more.

He knew she had survived.

He also knew that she had traded on that very life to bring back two children.

But gazing at the tightly shut delivery room door, Ji Yunshen's eyes only grew more unfathomable. He understood clearly that, from this moment on, the birth of these children meant that the power struggle lurking in the shadows between An Yilin and the Li family was only now truly beginning.

Some things, in the end, could no longer be kept hidden.