They also urged her to be more magnanimous, asking who Sheng Sinian was. Wasn't it perfectly normal for him to have a few close female friends? As long as those outsiders didn't affect her status as Mrs. Sheng, what was there to fuss about? Men were all the same, weren't they? If she couldn't hold onto Sheng Sinian now, she should focus on having a son and securing her position as Mrs. Sheng above all else.
She couldn't believe her parents could say such things. The reality shattered her illusions about her family. The Lin family, worried that her divorce from Sheng Sinian would harm their interests, disregarded her wishes and sent her back to the Sheng family on their own. In front of Sheng Sinian, they declared that if she, Lin Qingyu, didn't want to be Mrs. Sheng, they wouldn't acknowledge her as family anymore. From that moment on, she truly understood she had no family left.
From then on, she acted as if she had no natal family, never visiting them once over the years. When her family came to see her, she turned them away at the door. Yet they remained close with Sheng Sinian. To win her forgiveness, Sheng Sinian lavished her with money and gifts, spending extravagantly. It was almost laughable—two-thirds of those gifts worth hundreds of millions were things he bought to appease her.
Eventually, she came around. She had the child, and if she broke things off with Sheng Sinian, the child's future would be bleak. She even thought that as long as she didn't love him and treated him like a boss, life wouldn't be so hard. In their circle, there were cases where men indulged outside women to bully the legitimate wife, but at least Sheng Sinian valued his reputation, giving her face both in public and private.
She talked herself into it, no longer seeing Sheng Sinian as a husband, just a boss. Sensing something was off, Sheng Sinian patiently tried to win her over for a while, but when her attitude didn't soften, he grew blatant, and their conflicts piled up. Eventually, another woman got pregnant, hinting at replacing her. When that woman, with her swollen belly, came to force a confrontation, Sheng Sinian stood by coldly, watching.
Heartbroken and despairing, she climbed to the rooftop, ready to end it all. If she wasn't wanted, she couldn't believe her child would be. Sheng Sinian already had other children; he must despise hers. So she planned to take the child with her to death.
But that time, Sheng Sinian knelt before her, begging her to think of the child, saying she had no right to deprive it of its right to live. When she was set on jumping, he threatened her: if she jumped, he'd have doctors perform a C-section on the spot to save the child. She could die, but he'd do everything to keep the child alive, then slowly torment it. At that moment, she was intimidated. She saw the ambulances already prepared. She suspected she might die instantly, but the child might not. What if he truly went mad, saved the child, and then abused it? She was threatened by him.
Like a defeated coward, she came down, was taken to the hospital for seven days of bed rest, but the child was born prematurely anyway. After birth, Sheng Sinian sent the child to the old family estate to be raised. She went on a hunger strike in protest, and he threatened her again: if she dared to die, he'd dare to abuse the child. As long as she obeyed, when the child turned eighteen, it would naturally return to her. He said all Sheng family children were raised that way.
But she had never cared for Sheng Mingyang. When he reached adulthood and saw her again, there was no bond of shared hardship between them—only cold distance and respectful formality.