Xu Zixi turned her gaze to the Xu couple. “In fact, I have nothing to do with the Xu family,” she said. “When I was at my lowest, you were the ones who shoved me out the door and refused to acknowledge me as your daughter. If that’s how it is, you have no right to call yourselves my parents.”
The old Mr. Yuan’s face went white as he suddenly remembered the household registration papers—taken from them, along with a batch of supposedly free equipment, by Yan Yincheng. The realization of having been played washed over him. He ball ed his hands into fists. “So long as you keep the name Yuan, you will always be a child of the Yuan family!” he barked.
“I can stop being a Yuan,” Xu Zixi answered simply.
The words made something ache inside her. She thought of someone who once told her, “I could stop being a Yan,” and the memory pinched sweet and sharp. For a second she missed him so much her chest felt like it would burst. Cheng… wait for me. I’ll come back as soon as I can.
Her eyes swept over the unfamiliar faces arrayed before her. Then, to the assembled hall she said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Since we’re all here, I might as well make this clear: from now on I will no longer be Yuan Xi. My name is Xu—Zi—Xi.”
The surname “Xu” and “Xu” sound almost identical in the crowd’s ears, and the Xu couple were about to interject, thinking they could still control the moment—until she cut them off.
“Listen carefully. Not the Xu with the two-person radical,” she enunciated, “but the Xu written with the speech radical; Zi like ‘midnight’; Xi like a stream.”
For a long, stunned beat neither the Yuan family nor the Xu family could find their voices. No one at the wedding had expected it would turn into this kind of spectacle—but if truth be told, it was far more intoxicating than a sterile, by-the-book ceremony. Plenty of guests were itching to spread the gossip; even some of Fengcheng’s reporters, sensing a scoop, had already turned on their cameras and captured the scene. This was too delicious to hoard.
What nobody noticed, because all eyes were trained on the stage and the guest area was dim, was two figures who had slipped quietly into the banquet hall. They melted into the shadows in a corner, caps pulled low, black coats swallowing their frames.
Mrs. Yuan reacted first, aghast. “How can you do this? You can’t change your name by yourself! Do you still consider us family?”
“If you really change your name to those three characters, Yuan Xi,” Mr. Yuan thundered, “I will use every resource the Yuan family has to pressure you. You’ll never set foot in Fengcheng again! Don’t even think of making a life here!”
Given the Yuans’ power in Fengcheng, he could very well make good on the threat.
Xu Zixi was done playing their game. She wanted the ceremony over so she could put her plan into motion and, for Yan Yincheng—who was still lying in a hospital bed—take back what was owed to him.
“Has the performance run its course?” she said coldly. “If you only wanted Yuan Ya’er as a daughter, then stop clinging to me. Consider Yuan Xi dead. Treat me like a stranger—how hard is that?”
The words hit Yan Zhen like a blade. He had been silent until now, but at “Yuan Xi is dead” he snapped. He lunged forward and shoved her hard. “Don’t you say that! Don’t you change your name! You are Yuan Xi—Yuan Xi is not dead!”
Xu Zixi hadn’t seen him coming. The shove sent her stumbling to the edge of the stage; for a heartbeat her foot found nothing and she felt herself falling backward.
“Zixi!” someone cried. “Madam!” others shouted.
Hands lunged to catch her—everyone braced for a fall. Instead, there was a firm, warm force at her waist, arresting her descent. She tumbled not into the hard floor but into a broad, safe hold; someone had scooped her up with a single arm. A small, involuntary sound of pain escaped next to her ear.
That sound landed in her heart like a bell. She looked up in disbelief and the name burst out of her: “Cheng!”
Mrs. Yin clapped a hand over her mouth. “Ah—Cheng!”
The hall, which had been buzzing with tension, suddenly went silent. Guests leaned forward on tiptoe, craning to see. The man who had crept in unnoticed—tall, cloaked in a black overcoat and a cap pulled low—was Yan Yincheng. The very Yan San everyone had been whispering about: late, enigmatic, and finally present.
It was no wonder he’d gone unnoticed; the lights were fixed on the stage while the rows of seats were dim. With the cap shadowing his face and the oversized coat, he’d looked like a figure in the dark—easy to overlook.
But his arrival detonated the atmosphere.
Yan Yincheng’s lips were unnaturally pale; his face ashen enough to make Xu Zixi worry. He tightened the hand at her waist to hush her concern, then spoke in a voice that, though not loud, carried absolute weight.
“She is my fiancée,” he said. “If she wants to change her name, she can. She requires no one’s permission.”
He looked at the Yuan and Xu families, and the words that followed were quiet but unambiguous. “Whether it’s the Yuans of Fengcheng or the Xus of Xingcheng, those names don’t matter. One day she will make ‘Xu’ indispensable in Fengcheng. The Yan family will always be her strongest backing.”
Then he turned his attention to Yan Zhen. “Yan Zhen—your Yuan Xi is dead. From now on she is my Xu Zixi, and yes, that makes her your aunt by marriage. Mind your manners. Keep your hands to yourself—your wife is still waiting to finish the ceremony.”
Each sentence landed like a gavel. He was making a choice, staking his position opposite the Yuans, backing Xu Zixi even though she had once been his nephew’s fiancée and had been raised by the family across from him for eighteen years.
He didn’t care about their history. He only cared about her.
At that moment Yan Haikun’s long-held anxiety finally settled. He stepped out from behind the red carpet and stood beside Yan Yincheng and Xu Zixi, his presence amplifying the declaration. He addressed the Yuan family across the aisle with a heavy, deliberate tone.
“Mr. Yuan, did you not hear me earlier, or was I not clear enough? Miss Xu Zixi is the woman my son will marry. If you refuse to let her live in Fengcheng, are you trying to pick a fight with the Yan family? If that’s your stance, then perhaps we should call off Yan Zhen and Yuan Ya’er’s match.”
“Father!” Yuan Ya’er cried in a panic.
As Mr. Yuan faltered, another voice rose from the crowd. Xie Shi—standing now, deliberate and composed—moved to Mrs. Yin’s side and faced the Yuans.
“Miss Xu Zixi is the head chef Shiqing hired at great cost,” Xie Shi said evenly. “If you’re planning to prevent her from appearing in Fengcheng, are you prepared to take on Shiqing as well?”
The question hung in the air like a challenge. The wedding hall, once a stage for family theatrics, had become ground zero for something far larger.