Chapter 26 - ​Chapter 26: The Poisoned Compassion

​In the hospital across the city, Ning was being force-fed a soup of "care" and "gratitude." Her mother sat by her side, pale and trembling, her voice a fragile weapon of guilt. "He's a dangerous man, Ning. The Wei family showed us the police reports. He has a history of... intensity." Ning's laugh was a hollow, haunting sound that chilled the room. "Intensity? You call it intensity. I call it the only truth I've ever known!" She pushed the tray off the bed, the porcelain shattering—a small echo of the vault she had been dragged from. The jealousy on her side was a fever; she couldn't stand her mother's hand on her brow because it wasn't his hand. "You sold me for a hospital bill!" she shrieked, her voice reaching a level of extreme cryingness that brought the nurses running. "You let Wei Chen put his jacket on me while my husband was being beaten! You are the monsters, not him!" The misunderstanding was absolute; her parents truly believed they were saving her from a predator, while Ning knew they were hand-delivering her to a parasite. She looked at the window, her reflection a ghost of the woman she used to be. The extreme level of her lovingness for Xuan made the rest of the world look like a grey, blurred static. She began to plan her escape in the silence of her mind, a desperate, manic plot fueled by the need to be back in his cage. She would rather be a prisoner in his arms than a "free woman" in a world where the Wei family were the heroes. The misery of her debt was a suffocating weight, but her obsession with Xuan was the only light she had left to follow.