Chapter 59, Chapter 2

Xie Zitong left in shame and anger, leaving Zhong Xiangdong amazed and Ding Lujia thoroughly embarrassed. After hesitating for a long time without knowing what to say to Fu Wei and his wife, she could only apologize to Lin Xuexia first.

"I am so sorry, Sister-in-law. Sister Zitong... I really had no idea why she suddenly acted like that today... She almost made you misunderstand." As a woman, no matter how oblivious Ding Lujia might usually be, she knew that Xie Zitong's words just now were overly ambiguous, sounding as if she had deliberately come to make people uncomfortable.

It seemed as though she had brought Xie Zitong over just to pick a fight, and seeing Fu Wei's dark expression, Ding Lujia was terrified that her stepbrother would misunderstand.

As step-siblings, her relationship with Fu Wei was lukewarm, but she certainly did not want to harbor any enmity with him. After all, they had no conflicting interests, and Fu Wei was Pei Ying's only biological son.

No matter how strained things became between Fu Wei and Pei Ying, he remained her only son, a status no outsider could ever surpass. On this point, Ding Lujia was well aware of her own standing.

Lin Xuexia offered a brief hospitality to Ding Lujia, who did not stay long. Before leaving, she said to Fu Wei, "Brother, since you're married, you need to let Mom know."

"You can tell her." Fu Wei had no desire to contact Pei Ying. Now that he and Lin Xuexia had registered their marriage and decided to hold the wedding in December, he was not afraid of Pei Ying finding out, and even if she did, she wouldn't be able to disrupt their plans.

After Ding Lujia left, Fu Wei briefly explained his past to Lin Xuexia. He and Xie Zitong truly had nothing going on; it was purely his mother's wishful thinking to arrange a job for him and try to play matchmaker. But he had refused to walk the path Pei Ying had paved for him.

"Wife, don't pay attention to those things. We'll live our own lives."

Lin Xuexia nodded, not taking the matter to heart. In her past life, Fu Wei had very little contact with his family, maintaining a slightly closer relationship only with his uncle's family. Both of his parents had started new families of their own, and both held high-ranking cadre positions. When they got married in her past life, neither side had raised any objections. Lin Xuexia had met Pei Ying once; she was a very stern woman who merely dropped a few words telling them to live well together, with nothing else of note.

Lin Xuexia touched her lower abdomen. "Fu Wei, accompany me to the hospital for a checkup tomorrow. I haven't been feeling well these past few days, and my period hasn't... I'm afraid I might really be pregnant."

"You—" Fu Wei opened his mouth, pulling Lin Xuexia into his embrace, unable to tell whether he felt anticipation or panic.

He was going to be a father, and the pregnant one was the girl he loved. Any man in his position would likely be beside himself with excitement.

Yet, he and Lin Xuexia hadn't held their wedding yet, and he hadn't yet experienced a true bridal night with his beloved... If his wife was indeed pregnant, would the traditional bridal night be gone?

Fu Wei was torn between yearning for the child's arrival and wishing it had come a little later. They had only shared that single night, and she was really pregnant?

Now that he shared a bed with Lin Xuexia, the only thing giving him the willpower to endure was the knowledge that their wedding would take place in half a month, when he would finally consume and claim his bride completely.

But if...

Fu Wei covered his forehead. Holding a piece of fine meat in his arms every night, able only to look and not taste, was truly an agonizing ordeal.

The next day, Fu Wei accompanied Lin Xuexia to the hospital in the morning, where she underwent blood and urine tests, receiving the results a few hours later.

"Congratulations. If you intend to keep the child, go ahead and complete the paperwork."

Holding the test slip, Lin Xuexia felt no surprise at the result. She carefully asked the doctor about her various metrics, and the female doctor patiently explained everything to her, even prescribing some folic acid.

Her hand rested gently on her belly. The fetus was still small, and an ultrasound wouldn't show much yet. Now that it was confirmed and all her indicators were normal, Lin Xuexia finally set her mind at ease.

Lin Xuexia had a robust constitution, and during this period, she had also taken care to supplement her nutrition and avoid overexertion.

"Wife, did—did you really conceive?" Comrade Fu Wei, in his capacity as an expectant father, wore a subtly shattered expression.

The caring female doctor had just warned them that during the first three months of pregnancy, the couple should try to avoid marital relations.

Only by the second trimester, and after a hospital checkup to assess the situation, could they resume.

Their wedding was set for half a month from now, and the bridal night he had been yearning for day and night was just like that... gone?

Lin Xuexia couldn't help but laugh, patting his head. "Wait a bit longer. You can accompany me for the ultrasound."

"You must accompany me to all the prenatal checkups before the birth."

Fu Wei promised, "Of course."

"We need to go pick out wedding dresses today. Fortunately, our wedding is coming up soon, or I'd really be worried I wouldn't fit into the dress by then."

Fu Wei had always wanted to give her a grand wedding, and Lin Xuexia herself had no wish to leave any regrets. They planned to take wedding photos by the seaside and hold the banquet at a large hotel, which was estimated to cost around ten thousand yuan. Given Fu Wei's extensive network of business friends, he should be able to recoup quite a bit through cash gifts.

Leaving the hospital, Fu Wei accompanied his wife to try on wedding dresses, selected a few traditional Chinese ceremonial gowns, and scheduled the date for their wedding photos. Upon returning home, they went to check on the renovation of their neighboring new house.

The new house was almost completely finished and decorated. In a few days, after a thorough indoor and outdoor cleaning, the furniture and appliances would be moved in. According to Fu Wei's original plan, everything would be completed before the wedding, allowing them to spend their bridal night in the new house on the night of the wedding.

Now, it seemed the progress was fine, except that the "bridal night" wasn't going to turn out the way he had imagined.

Fu Wei sighed. "The two of us just got married, and already a little bun is joining us."

Lin Xuexia chuckled inwardly, thinking to herself that it wasn't just one, but two.

They did not hide the news of Lin Xuexia's pregnancy from outsiders. Soon, everyone around them knew. Zhang Yuqin had mentally prepared herself long ago and was not surprised by the matter, while sisters Lin Yuxia and Lin Yuexia were both overjoyed to learn they were going to be aunts.

When Zhong Xiangdong learned that his good brother was going to become a father, he was consumed by envy and jealousy. "You—you rascal, even getting your wife pregnant... You're truly a man who works in secret to achieve great things."

Meanwhile, Pei Ying, far away in the capital, was frantic upon learning that her only biological son had gotten married. Tracing Fu Wei's landline number, she bombarded him with phone calls and several pager messages.

"Call me back. Your mother, Pei Ying."

Fu Wei called Pei Ying back. "I'm getting married. We've already registered our marriage. My partner is Lin Xuexia."

"I am your mother," the woman on the other end of the line said sternly. "You must notify me of such a matter."

Fu Wei raised an eyebrow. "I am now officially notifying you, Comrade Pei Ying, your son is married."

"And your father?"

Fu Wei replied, "He doesn't know. Comrade Pei Ying, I want to make one thing explicitly clear: my marriage is my own affair, and no one else has the right to interfere."

Pei Ying on the other end let out a cold laugh. "Aside from you, no one else dares speak to me like that."

In her office with no one else present, an indescribable smile bloomed on Pei Ying's face, the rank insignia on her shoulders gleaming brilliantly under the light. If any outsider were to witness this at that moment, their jaws would surely drop.

Despite everything, Pei Ying was genuinely happy about her biological son getting married.

She had never been particularly close to Fu Wei since he was a child, nor did she know how to act affectionate toward her son. Initially, she had expected to give birth to a daughter, and the result being a boy had filled her with disappointment.

In her youth, she possessed an unyielding drive, determined to compete with men in everything. She wanted to crush males across the board with her female identity and achieve accomplishments that would make people proud.

During that period, she had also encountered certain gender-based biases. Pei Ying held a nameless aversion toward the son who had delayed her return to her unit, or perhaps she harbored a resentment toward her own female identity—why did she have to give birth at all? Giving birth cost her nearly a year of precious time, and after childbirth, her body struggled to return to its peak physical condition.

As soon as her confinement period ended, Pei Ying left. By the time she saw the child again, he was already walking and talking, yet completely distant from her. Reflecting on how she had gone through great pains to give birth to a child, only for the boy not to share a deep maternal bond with her, Pei Ying found herself unable to grow close to him. Accustomed to strictness in her daily life, she could never utter coaxing words to a child, and her relationship with her son had always remained lukewarm.

As she grew older and entered middle age, a sense of loneliness frequently washed over her. Stripped of the pride and stubbornness of her youth, Pei Ying began to yearn for her son. She thought about how, in this mortal life, nothing could be brought into the world or taken away at death, save for the child bound to her by blood—the human being she had brought into existence with her own flesh. She found the sensation wondrous.

Yet, by the time she wished to grow closer to him, Fu Wei couldn't care less about bothering with her.

And Pei Ying was even less likely to lower her pride to ingratiate herself with him. Their contact remained sporadic, and every interaction ended unhappily.

That was until she almost mistakenly believed her biological son had perished on the battlefield.

Pei Ying realized how deeply she cared for this son; she did not want to endure the agony of outliving her child. She admitted she had regrets. For all these years, she had never truly looked at her son properly.

She wanted to keep him by her side, but the brat refused outright and insisted on moving further and further away from her.

With such a vast distance separating them, as long as she knew he was living safely, Pei Ying let him be.

As a mother, she wished to see her son settle down and build a family. As for who he chose to marry, Pei Ying genuinely had no objections.

Pei Ying herself was hardly one to judge partners; in matters of romance, she was an arrogant and willful person. She simply liked good-looking people—both of her ex-husbands shared the common trait of handsome features. A major reason for her divorce from Fu Wei's father was that he had grown stout and his facial features had bloated, transforming his once-handsome visage into that of a fathead fish. She had simply refused to continue living with him.

Had it not been for that, Fu Wei's father would never have dared to divorce her.

Pei Ying had possessed a strong personality since childhood; she did not know how to act spoiled or lower her pride. Knowing that her nature in romance did not appeal to men, she didn't care about it either. She had simply picked the most handsome-looking man, caring little about his motives for pursuing her, as long as she herself was content. Much like the mindset of many men, when the time came, she married and had children—just as they sought out beautiful wives, she sought out a handsome husband.

Upon hearing from her stepdaughter that Fu Wei had found a beautiful wife, she felt neither surprise nor anger.

Pei Ying thought to herself that he truly was her biological son; like mother, like son.