Chapter 129: Doubt

Chapter 129

“Yes, I admit that I owe them, and I did benefit as well. But Anzhi Xia, can you really say that you didn't benefit at all?” Shen Hongmei said this not because she actually knew whether Anzhi Xia had benefited, but because it was just her own guess at what was in Anzhi Xia's heart. “Since you were able to help me get rid of that thing called the System, you must know just how incredible its existence was. Can you say for sure that you really eliminated it? Who knows if you didn't just take it from me and use it for yourself?”

When she was little, her wish was simply to be able to eat candy and have her fill of meals. After being bound to the System, her wish was fulfilled, but her family suffered deeply because of it. That was why she felt such panic.

But over the course of it all, her desires grew from merely being well-fed to becoming much grander.

She wanted to leave that village, to have a good job and a stable life, to have talent and accomplishment and the envious gazes of others...

She had gotten all that, but looking back she realized that her road to success had been built by trampling on the shoulders of her loved ones. Because of her alone, many people had sacrificed their health, even their lives.

As someone who still had some moral principles, she felt guilty.

But all people have their weaknesses, and it is easy to go from simple to extravagant but hard to go from extravagant to simple.

Shen Hongmei, who had lost the System, was clearly going through the difficult transition from extravagance to austerity.

She could no longer smoothly sail through life with the System's help, and she could no longer exchange affection points for the resources the System had brought her. This greatly inconvenienced her life, and without the halo around her, she also faced obstacles at every turn in her work.

Anzhi Xia knew full well what benefits she had gotten, but she wasn't foolish enough to tell Shen Hongmei about them.

“I don't know if it defied the heavens or not, but I won't keep something so harmful like you did, and then restrict my own life with it, deeply harming my own loved ones and friends. Perhaps you won't believe me, but can you deny that in all this time you haven't seen a single person around me suffer any effects?”

Shen Hongmei fled in defeat under Anzhi Xia's scornful gaze, even feeling that coming here had been nothing but humiliating herself.

She could not deny one fact: she did not have Anzhi Xia's abilities, nor could she control the System.

All of her success had been bought with the pain and lives of others.

She calculated her expected due date—she had gotten pregnant at last year's Mid-Autumn Festival, so her due date should be sometime in early May.

But her belly was very big, and there was no hospital to get checked at in the small town.

Sister-in-law Fengxia urged her not to eat too much, so as not to make the birth difficult. Anzhi Xia knew her own appetite really wasn't that big, and in her later trimester she was eating the pregnancy nutrition meals tailored for her by Divine Doctor Sister.

As for Pei Jing's side, she just gave some vague response about having eaten already or that she'd eat later when the time came. Anyway he was often not there, and coupled with her visibly large belly, he wouldn't insist that she eat more.

Thinking back to the pregnancy dream she'd had, plus Grandma's and Zhou Nuan's experiences having twins, she also had a premonition.

At night in April, the weather had already become hot.

The husband and wife lay in bed, Anzhi Xia on her back with her bulging belly exposed while Pei Jing looked at it with a smile, intently watching as small bulges would push up here and there.

Whenever that happened, Anzhi Xia felt an itchiness in her belly that she desperately wanted to scratch but couldn't reach. Both itchy and helpless.

After lying on her back for a while she became uncomfortable. She used one hand to prop up her belly, wanting to roll onto her side. Pei Jing hurriedly helped her.

The two of them hadn't been intimate as husband and wife for a long time now. For Pei Jing who had tasted but not yet had his fill, this clearly required a great deal of self-control.

But Anzhi Xia's pregnancy was arduous, especially recently with her inability to fall asleep at night and increasingly frequent trips to the bathroom. Seeing her like this pained him greatly, and he wished he could take on her suffering himself, yet he was helpless to do so. He could only be more attentive, and make her as comfortable as possible in other regards.

Perhaps it was the abrupt shift onto her side, but the child(ren) in her belly also seemed uncomfortable with the change. It felt like something scraped around inside her belly, an itchiness that made her want to smack her stomach to relieve it.

“Do you have time recently?” Anzhi Xia asked him. “I want to go to the hospital in the city to get checked out. I keep feeling like there's more than one in here.”

Not having done any prenatal exams since becoming pregnant was the norm for most people. Generally there were no issues, so no one would go to the trouble of running to a hospital.

And if it really was twins like she guessed, her due date would probably need to be moved up earlier, so they had to prepare well in advance.