Free Web NovelChapter 193: GRANDFATHER PLEASE PERMIT ME TO SAY A FEW WORDS.
A faint pause settled over the table at those words, because the admission carried enough weight to make even the surrounding relatives sit more carefully in their seats.
"I thought if there was something wrong," he continued, his voice tightening slightly as he spoke, "someone would tell me honestly, but instead I was given reports and updates that made everything sound stable, I believed them when I should have checked for myself."
His eyes lifted again, sharper now, but not at Guiying.
At the room.
"At this point I do not even know what was real and what was arranged for me to see, but I do know this much," he said, and the firmness returned fully to his tone as he reached the end of the thought, "you were never the problem, don’t let them deceive you."
The sentence landed cleanly in the silence.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
But firmly enough that it shifted the atmosphere around the table in a way that could not be ignored.
A soft laugh broke the moment from one of the British aunts seated further down, and it was not loud, but it was deliberate in the way someone chooses a sound to cut through tension rather than avoid it.
"Oh, how touching," Lady Paggie said lightly, her tone carrying an elegance that did not match the edge beneath it, and as she set her glass down her gaze drifted lazily toward Deyong as though she had just noticed something amusing.
"Did I misunderstand earlier, or was the young man beside you not introduced to us as the future match for your son, because I distinctly remember you speaking quite proudly about aligning the Shen connection with your family?"
Her smile deepened slightly, and she tilted her head as though genuinely reflecting on a memory rather than delivering a strike.
"It is rather unfortunate when one spends so much time praising a road that leads somewhere, only to discover that the traveler has already chosen a different direction entirely."
A brief silence followed her words, not because anyone disagreed, but because the phrasing itself had landed too neatly to be interrupted.
Deyong’s expression tightened immediately, and the discomfort in his posture became visible enough that several relatives shifted their attention away from him in anticipation of what might come next.
But it was Guiying’s silence that made it worse.
Because he did not react at all.
He simply remained seated beside the patriarch, as though the conversation about him belonged to a different table entirely.
Then the voice from across the table cut in sharply, and the softness that had briefly existed in the room disappeared.
"Guiying," Zhou Meilin said, her tone controlled but strained in a way that betrayed how long she had been holding herself back, "do you understand what you have done by bringing someone here without informing anyone beforehand, because you are not only embarrassing your father but also making your brothers and me look like fools in front of everyone present."
The words came out all at once, and the restraint she had maintained earlier finally gave way to something sharper and more personal, as though every silent frustration had finally found its opening.
"I have tolerated many things from you," she continued, her voice rising slightly despite her effort to control it, "but this is not something that can be excused as carelessness, because you are standing in front of the entire family and behaving as though rules do not apply to you at all."
Across the table, Xue Jiaming’s expression remained cold and unmoving, his gaze fixed on Guiying with the kind of detached disdain that did not require volume to feel cutting, while Xue Bowen sat beside him without speaking at all, his silence neutral but observant, as though he had not yet decided whether there was anything worth reacting to in the first place.
Deyong’s expression hardened as Zhou Meilin finished speaking, and instead of restraining her, he straightened beside her in a way that made it clear he was not correcting her but aligning himself with her position entirely. His gaze settled on Guiying with the same cold disappointment he had carried for years, as though the outcome had already been decided long before the conversation began.
"My wife is right," he said, his voice steady and controlled in a way that made it sound even more absolute. "You disappeared for months without explanation, returned without informing anyone, and then arrived here bringing someone with you while announcing matters that none of us were prepared for. Did you consider how this would look? Did you consider what your actions would do to this family?"
Guiying did not respond, not because he lacked words, but because his attention had already moved past the voice of his father and the pressure of the surrounding table. His eyes drifted across the courtyard until they settled, almost against his will, on a familiar figure seated several tables away.
Shen Zihao.
The moment he saw him, something inside Guiying tightened sharply.
The colour in his face drained in a quiet, involuntary reaction as his fingers pressed together beneath the table, his body responding before his mind could regain control. The presence of the man did not belong to that moment, yet it pulled the past forward anyway, dragging with it years of suffocating memory where every breath had to be measured and every action calculated to avoid punishment.
For a brief moment, everything in Guiying’s expression fractured under the weight of recognition, the controlled composure slipping just enough to reveal something raw beneath it, something that had never fully healed.
Then it was gone.
He rebuilt himself with practiced precision, the shift so smooth that anyone not watching closely would have missed it entirely, but Liuxian was already watching him.
His hand moved beneath the table and found Guiying’s without hesitation, his grip firm enough to ground him while remaining careful enough not to draw attention. When he leaned closer, his voice carried only to Guiying, low and steady in a way that cut through everything else around them.
"Don’t worry," he said quietly, his tone carrying a certainty that did not allow contradiction. "Unless Shen Zihao is Buddha himself, he cannot take you away from me."
The statement was so direct that it almost bordered on absurd, yet it anchored something inside Guiying that had begun to loosen under pressure.
Liuxian lifted his hand gently, pressing a brief kiss to his knuckles before releasing him and standing as though the weight of the entire room no longer concerned him.
"Grandfather," he said with a respectful bow, his posture composed and unshaken, "please permit me to say a few words and clear the air."
