Volume 1, Chapter 45: Wanting to Have Your Cake and Eat It Too, While Being Utterly Shameless!

Duan Yixiao actually had a soft spot for Chen Nianke’s haughty and willful temperament. To put it precisely, Chen Nianke knew very well how to handle him.

"I was raised in the pampering of my parents since I was a child. What right do I have to be trampled on like this by you? Duan Yixiao, it’s all because of you that I was labeled as a mistress and even ended up in the police station today. Were you deliberately taking revenge on me just because my parents had a bad attitude toward you back then? But as parents, isn't it only human nature for them to want their daughter to live a good life?"

"I didn't want to go abroad back then, but you and Jiang Yunmiao... You were the one who wronged me first! Do you have any idea how I felt when I saw you together that morning?"

"Do you know that for a long time afterward, I had nightmares every day? In my dreams, Jiang Yunmiao was intimately entangled with you, looking at me triumphantly and saying: So what if you were born with a privileged background? You still lost to me, the daughter of a nanny. Now your boyfriend is mine!"

"During that period, I often woke up from nightmares and suffered from insomnia. My mental state was extremely poor. Later on, I went to see a doctor, and the doctor told me I had depression."

"What were you doing while I was being tortured by depression? You registered our marriage with Jiang Yunmiao and even got her pregnant. Duan Yixiao, you are a bastard!"

"Yet I am truly so spineless! I don't even know how I ended up like this. Clearly, I told myself repeatedly not to bother with you anymore, but I still couldn't help seeing you over and over again."

Chen Nianke brought up the past once more. It seemed as though she was immersed in painful memories, but in reality, she was shifting all the conflicts onto Jiang Yunmiao. She attributed the end of their relationship to Jiang Yunmiao's intrusion.

"I'm sorry, please don't get so worked up. It was my lack of consideration that made me overlook your feelings." Under such circumstances, Duan Yixiao could only offer gentle coaxing.

Almost every time the two of them argued, it followed this pattern: she threw a tantrum, he coaxed her, she compromised, and they finally made up.

Chen Nianke never blindly fawned over him, because excessive flattery ultimately became tedious and invited contempt.

She provided Duan Yixiao with a high degree of emotional value. She wanted him to perceive her as someone with individuality and temper, yet willing to make sacrifices and concessions for him, thereby granting him a deep sense of internal fulfillment.

It was an hour later by the time Duan Yixiao finished coaxing Chen Nianke and returned home.

So much had happened today. He was exhausted and only wanted to take a comfortable bath and get a good night's sleep.

However, the moment he stepped through the door, he heard his mother, Zhou Manhua, shouting furiously, "Jiang Yunmiao, I think you are not only stupid, but also malicious. There is no wife on earth who would personally call the police to have her own husband locked up. Have you ever considered the consequences of doing this? If the Duan family finds out, Axiu's position in the Duan Group will be compromised. If he fails to inherit the Duan family, what good will it do you?"

"I said I had no idea it was him."

"Ugh! Who would believe you? You did it on purpose!" Zhou Manhua had originally planned to go to sleep, but upon seeing Jiang Yunmiao return from the outside wrapped in a biting chill, she had glared at her and demanded to know where she had run off to in the middle of the night. She even accused her of wandering outside aimlessly while heavily pregnant, calling it utterly disgraceful.

With a cold and stern expression, Jiang Yunmiao informed her that she had gone to the police station to bail out her precious son.

Upon hearing that Duan Yixiao was in trouble, Zhou Manhua asked with a tense expression what had happened.

Jiang Yunmiao then gave a blended version of the truth and falsehoods regarding the whole incident.

Consequently, Zhou Manhua immediately started a fierce quarrel with Jiang Yunmiao.

"Will the two of you stop fighting!" Duan Yixiao walked in with a dark expression. "Can't you just keep the peace for a moment? Do you have to turn a perfectly good home upside down to be satisfied?" His gaze was as cold as frost and snow, radiating a heavy aura of low pressure.

He stared resentfully at Jiang Yunmiao, evidently sharing Zhou Manhua's view. Given Jiang Yunmiao's intelligence and astuteness, she had probably orchestrated tonight's episode on purpose.

Even though Jiang Yunmiao had mentally prepared herself, when Duan Yixiao blamed the entire situation on her, her worldview shattered completely.

"Is this a life I chose not to live peacefully? Was I the one who made you go to Xifuyuan to drink with another woman in the middle of the night?" Jiang Yunmiao's eyes were grim, brewing a brewing storm, while suppressed anger choked her clear and elegant voice.

A trace of embarrassment flashed across Duan Yixiao's handsome and refined features, but he still defended himself stubbornly, "I've already told you, Nianke and I have nothing. It's your own overactive imagination and dirty mind."

Jiang Yunmiao was laughed into rage by his words. "Would you like me to help you recall how everyone at the police station looked at you just now? Stop treating everyone else like fools, will you? You and her lost all sense of boundaries ages ago. You want everything—the cake and the eating of it. What makes you think you deserve to have every good thing in this world?"

The sharpness in Duan Yixiao's brow abruptly intensified. "What do you mean?"

Jiang Yunmiao clenched her fists tightly and uttered the words she had brewed for a long time, one by one: "Let's get a divorce."

She no longer wanted to remain entangled in his chaotic life.

She needed to distance herself from his magnetic field and return to her own territory.

"You want a divorce from me?" Duan Yixiao looked thoroughly surprised, his dark eyes seemingly glazed with ice while an aura of destructive fury surrounded him.

Finding herself a bit tired of standing, Jiang Yunmiao sat down. "It will just happen to fulfill things for you and Chen Nianke."

Duan Yixiao protested, "Why won't you just believe me? There is nothing between her and me..."

Jiang Yunmiao shook her head, cutting him off. "It doesn't matter anymore. Once divorced, you can go choose someone better, someone matching your family background. My origins are humble, so I won't stand in the way of your bright future."

Duan Yixiao's pupils widened slightly, a flash of ruthlessness creeping in. "You! So you heard everything outside the study that day?"

"Yes, otherwise how else could I have heard your inner thoughts? I'm sorry for taking advantage of your vulnerability back then and making you suffer grievances for so all these years." The words he had spoken at that time had felt like a blade fiercely piercing her heart. Now, she was pulling that blade out to return it to him.

"I..." Jiang Yunmiao bringing up a divorce at this moment caught him completely off guard.

"Get a divorce then, who cares!" Zhou Manhua's expression shifted to one of smug elation, as if she were exceptionally pleased with this outcome.

"However, since you're the one initiating this divorce, you'll leave with nothing." She was so overjoyed that her common sense seemed to have abandoned her.

Ignoring her entirely, Jiang Yunmiao dropped a single sentence: "I will hand you the Divorce Agreement tomorrow."

With that, she headed upstairs to rest.

Hearing the sound of a door closing upstairs, Zhou Manhua excitedly nudged Duan Yixiao. "I never expected her to bring up a divorce so quickly. Consider her sensible! But are you really together with Nianke now? Although Nianke's family background is better than Jiang Yunmiao's, she's not quite good enough for you right now. Since you're getting a divorce, you must carefully choose and look around this time..."

"Mom, I'm tired. I'm going upstairs to rest." Duan Yixiao did not take in a single word of what Zhou Manhua was saying; his mind was currently in complete chaos.