Blissful Days After Widowhood - Chapter 373

The carriage moved hastily, and Ge Zhu, who could barely walk, leaned heavily on Aunt Ge.

“Child, what happened to you? Did the old lady give you some strange medicine?” Aunt Ge’s eyes filled with tears.

Ge Zhu shook her head weakly and replied, “It’s just that, in the past few days, my… Mrs. Qin has been having only one and a half meals delivered to me every day. I’m starving.”

Upon hearing this, Mrs. Wang clenched her fists angrily and exclaimed, “She’s deliberately trying to starve you to death! And that Duke Lu, he’s absolutely vile, talking so much about husband and wife relationships while watching you suffer like this?”

“Even if Feng Yuan knows, as long as Mrs. Qin claims that I refused to eat, he won’t suspect anything,” Ge Zhu said with a faint smile. “But it’s alright. From now on, I want nothing to do with his family.”

She gazed at Gu Yin with a composed expression and added, “I don’t need to thank you because you’re like a sister to me, but rest assured that I truly appreciate your kindness.”

To be fair, Ge Zhu considered herself no less intelligent than anyone else. Feng Yuan did harbor some affection for her, and if she played her cards right, she could have maintained a relationship with Mrs. Qin. However, she refused to become someone like Mrs. Qin.

Now that she was finally free from those entanglements, she had extricated herself from the muck without becoming the person she despised.

With those words, Ge Zhu smiled and peacefully fell asleep in Aunt Ge’s arms.

Mrs. Wang felt her heartache and whispered to Gu Yin, “Why did we rush away so hastily? We’ve already got the divorce paper, so I wanted to give that old lady a piece of my mind and vent some frustration.”

Aunt Ge chimed in, “That woman harmed someone. She accepted the threat and agreed to the divorce, but the witness, once handed back like this, the child who was wronged and lost his voice can no longer seek justice without any evidence. It’s a real shame.”

Gu Yin waved her hand and replied with a smile, “I’ll answer you. Why did we leave in such a hurry and hand the witness back so easily? Because it was all a farce!”

The thing was fabricated, and the butler who confessed was part of the act.

The night before Wu Qingyi’s return, Gu Yin had arranged for her guards, who resided in the mansion, to apprehend the butler, the theater owner, and Hua Dan. The theater owner and Hua Dan readily confessed under interrogation, but without any concrete evidence and with the medicine powder already consumed, they couldn’t support their claims.

As for the cunning butler, he was a servant of the Feng family who had been trained from a young age. He didn’t flinch under pressure and asserted that he knew the theater owner but had never met anyone from the theater troupe. Claiming that during his leisure activities, he came into contact with many such individuals, he asked whether he could be held responsible for their actions.

He possessed a solid understanding of the law, and his calculated words prevented Gu Yin from intimidating him.

Thus, Gu Yin had waited for Wu Qingyi’s return to address the matter. Given his expertise in disguise, they decided to create a “witness” who appeared credible but was, in fact, entirely counterfeit.

However, the man playing the witness couldn’t be exposed, so Gu Yin swiftly left with the documents once she obtained the divorce paper, all without risking exposure.

Upon hearing the explanation, Mrs. Wang laughed and said, “So there’s no victim, no evidence, and we had no legitimate grounds for demanding anything from the Feng family. This was all a ploy to expose the old lady?”

Gu Yin confirmed her suspicions.

Aunt Ge voiced her concern, “But what if this false witness scheme comes to light? The old lady might accuse us of—”

Mrs. Wang interjected, “What can the old lady accuse us of? Telling officials that we used fabricated witnesses to coerce her into agreeing to a divorce? In response, people would ask her why she was fooled by such false testimony if she hadn’t intended to divorce in the first place. This is an embarrassing situation for her, and she’ll want to save face. As long as she isn’t completely irrational, she won’t go around spreading the story!”

Gu Yin nodded in agreement and, raising the curtain to peer outside, she remarked, “We’ve been away for almost a quarter of an hour. They should have discovered that by now. I hope the old lady can handle the excitement.”