After Death, I Discovered My Wife Was the Villainess of a Supernatural Novel - Chapter 1

The glow of the setting sun gradually disappeared behind the mountains.

At home, the food on the table had been reheated again and again. Two sets of bowls and chopsticks were laid out neatly on the table, making it easy to guess that there were supposed to be two owners of this home.

A pitch-black little cat was curled up in the corner, listlessly pawing at its cat food.

At this moment, there was only one owner sitting at the table. The other owner had not returned for many days. Perhaps because of that, even the little cat had barely been eating.

The last rays of sunlight were about to fade, and the faint shadow of the bright moon hung indistinctly in the sky.

“Aunt Liu.” The person sitting alone at the table opened her mouth, her voice carrying a trace of hoarseness.

As soon as she spoke, the lights were turned on.

There had been a death in the family. According to the local customs, the lights had to be kept on starting from six in the evening until the end of the first seven days after death.

“Don’t worry, I know,” the auntie who cooked for the family said, wiping her slightly reddened eyes. Looking at the untouched dinner on the table, she choked back a sob. “You should eat at least a little. You haven’t eaten properly for several meals already. Tomorrow… tomorrow will be very busy.”

As she spoke, the auntie was the first to shed tears. At her age, she could no longer hold them back so easily.

Wiping her tears, Aunt Liu walked over to the mourning altar set up inside the house. The incense in the incense burner was nearly burned out. The incense could not be allowed to stop burning, so Aunt Liu immediately lit new sticks and replaced them.

Behind the incense burner was a framed photo. The woman in the photograph had a smile as bright as blooming flowers, but the colors that should have been vivid and radiant had now turned into deathly black and white…

Such a good person…

Aunt Liu carefully wiped the memorial portrait. Madam had been a very gentle person, a match made in heaven with Miss. It was just that the heavens had no eyes.

After Aunt Liu finished tidying the table, she realized that the person sitting beside it still had not eaten anything, so she could only try persuading her again.

“Please eat a little, at least. Tomorrow is Madam’s seventh day. The elders all say that on the seventh day, the soul of the deceased will return home. If the family is not doing well, the soul will feel uneasy and won’t be able to reincarnate.”

Perhaps those words worked.

Aunt Liu, who had been persuading her for who knew how long without success, suddenly saw her young miss miraculously pick up her chopsticks. Like a machine, she brought some rice to her mouth. Although she did not eat much, at least there was something in her stomach.

Aunt Liu did not breathe a sigh of relief. Instead, she felt her heart ache even more.

She looked at her young miss’s cold and beautiful side profile. Miss was not someone who smiled much on ordinary days, but she had never been like this before… like a puppet on the verge of collapse, expressionless and held up only by invisible strings.

She and the old master were both very worried. If Miss broke down and cried loudly, they might actually feel more at ease. But she kept everything bottled up inside her, and that taut string seemed as though it might snap with the slightest touch.

The old master had said that once the funeral was over, they had to pay close attention. If there was really no other way, they would tie Miss up and bring her back to the old residence. The old master would personally stay with his granddaughter and help her get through this hurdle. That might be for the best.

After eating a little, Fu Yushang put down her chopsticks. Aunt Liu cleared the bowls and chopsticks from the table and brought them back to the kitchen.

“Senior…”

As if sensing something, Fu Yushang suddenly stood up in a hurry and opened the door. But outside, there was nothing at all. The person still gripping the doorknob stood frozen in place, and her emptied heart suddenly clenched with violent pain.

It had already been six days. Her wife had already been gone for six days. She could not possibly come back…

What was she still foolishly hoping for?

──────

Boom!

H City in September had not seen clear skies for many days. The sky was so oppressive it seemed as though it might collapse. Lightning flickered in and out of sight within the dark, heavy clouds.

After the continuous rumble of thunder, a torrential downpour blurred the vision of the pedestrians. Inside H City Funeral Home, countless vehicles came and went. People dressed in solemn clothes held black umbrellas as they walked inside.

“President Fu, please accept my condolences.”

“My deepest condolences…”

People came and went. Oppressive black and glaring white decorated the mourning hall as its main colors. Some people had sorrowful expressions on their faces, as if the deceased had truly been their friend. But in reality, how could the person who had already passed away have known them?

The reason so many people had come to attend this funeral was entirely because of her identity—or more accurately, because of her wife’s identity: Fu Yushang, the true person in power at the Fu Group.

However, the person who had issued the obituary and organized this grand funeral was not the deceased’s wife.

“As expected of President Fu. Her heart is as hard as stone, just like the rumors say. Her wife died, yet she can’t even shed a couple of tears. She could at least put on an act. No matter what, her wife died blocking a disaster for the Fu family.” In a distant corner, a man in a black suit looked at the stunningly beautiful woman from afar and laughed mockingly.

“No way. You’re still thinking that?” The person standing beside him lowered his voice and laughed. “Behind her back, we all say that President Fu is now a legitimate black widow!”

“Black widow? You people are really vicious.” The man who had spoken first held back his laughter so hard he nearly injured himself internally. He did not dare laugh out loud. “The one lying in the coffin really was unlucky. Maybe she was killed by her wife’s aura! Ah, in the end, one’s own mother is still the closest. At least at the funeral, she’ll cry for you.”

The middle-aged woman crying the hardest beside the coffin was the deceased’s biological mother. Several times, she cried so hard she nearly fainted. Even the grown men present were somewhat moved by the sight.

An old person sending off a young person—was that not one of the saddest things in the world?

“Brother, you’re saying that too early.” The person beside him shook his head mysteriously.

“What else is going on here? I’m all ears.”

“You don’t know. Back then, in order to show how much she valued her wife, President Fu gave her a lot of shares in the group. At the annual auctions, she also bought jewelry worth hundreds of millions for her wife. And those are only the things out in the open. Who knows how much there was behind the scenes? That’s a huge inheritance! Madam Fu’s maternal family’s company is having cash-flow problems and badly needs money. How could they not have their eyes on their daughter’s inheritance?”

“Surely not? They’re her biological parents. Did Madam Fu not help them while she was alive?”

“Help, my ass. Back then, her biological parents nearly sold her off as a second wife to that Boss Huang in real estate—the one you’re thinking of, that Boss Huang with certain strange preferences. Their daughter probably wanted to cut ties with them completely. Help them? Like hell!” The man got worked up, and a bit of his hometown accent slipped out.

“In that case, Madam Fu really was pitiful. When she was alive, everyone used her. Even after she died, she still can’t rest in peace. Her parents want to squeeze the last bit of value out of her bones… Tsk, tsk, tsk. How miserable. If she still had a complete corpse, she’d probably be so angry her eyes would open.”

“Don’t say things like that carelessly. I’m most afraid of this kind of thing!”

“Look how cowardly you are! Afraid of ghosts? Where would a ghost come from in broad daylight? Even if Madam Fu really did turn into a vengeful ghost and came back to claim lives, she’d go after her wife and her parents. What does that have to do with you?”

“Sigh. I encountered some things when I was young, so now I avoid this topic the most. Hiss… Let’s stop talking about this. I keep feeling a chill on the back of my neck, like my cervical spondylosis is about to flare up…”

Among the many kinds of people in the mourning hall, not all of them had come with sincere intentions. Who knew how many were secretly here to watch the show? They jeered and mocked, and perhaps the words in their hearts were the most vicious curses. They claimed to be afraid of ghosts, but every one of them seemed like a malicious ghost wearing a human face.

But they did not dare show it openly. When they went to see Fu Yushang, their faces were even more grief-stricken than if their own wives had died. Even the face-changing tricks in opera were not as impressive as they were.

“President Fu, I was shocked to hear the terrible news. Please accept my condolences.” A middle-aged man in a suit arrived at the mourning hall, surrounded by bodyguards. With a sorrowful expression, he spoke to Fu Yushang.

“I also heard some things. Those people were truly lawless and hateful! Although my old man has retired from that side, he still has some connections. If there’s anything you need help with, I, Old Zheng, will not refuse!”

“Thank you.” Fu Yushang nodded. Nothing could be read from her expression.

The man who called himself Old Zheng followed the procedure and offered three sticks of incense to Madam Fu, then stepped aside. In a place where Fu Yushang could no longer see him, his expression abruptly darkened.

“President Zheng, are you really going to have the old master help…”

“How could that be possible? Have you forgotten who Fu Yushang’s grandfather is? How could she possibly need my old man’s help? It was just polite talk for the occasion.” President Zheng quietly scolded the secretary beside him. Besides, the Zheng and Fu families were enemies. How could she possibly need help from an enemy?

This time, he had come partly because he wanted to see what tricks the two old bloodsuckers of the Mu family would use to disgust Fu Yushang. In any case, as long as Fu Yushang was disgusted, he would open champagne to celebrate!

On the other hand… he also wanted to see who was trying to dump the blame on his head!

Just a few days ago, an extremely vile intentional homicide case had taken place in H City.

A group of thugs had driven a car and deliberately rammed into a woman’s car on a mountain road, causing the victim and her car to tumble down the cliff together. And that was not all. Someone had actually planted a bomb in that car. The moment it fell, the car exploded! The firelight had shot into the sky, an extremely terrifying sight.

The result was obvious. The person inside the car did not even leave behind an intact corpse. The police compared the broken remains they found with DNA from Madam Fu’s parents, and the results confirmed that the owner of the remains was their biological daughter—Mu Zhao.

Mu Zhao had always kept a low profile. Aside from important occasions, she rarely appeared in public. This was clearly a deliberate murder. How could someone as kind as her have provoked such vicious thugs?

As the police investigated further, they followed the clues and uncovered some things.

It turned out that the car Mu Zhao had been driving that day was not hers at all. She had borrowed Fu Yushu’s car, the second daughter of the Fu family.

Speaking of the second daughter of the Fu family, Fu Yushang’s second sister, she was also quite a figure. If anyone in the entire South China region wanted to do something illegal, the person they were most afraid of seeing was her.

She was a police officer with an upright and incorruptible personality, and because of that, she had offended many underworld forces. The people who had pursued Mu Zhao on the mountain road at that time were preliminarily inferred to be remnants of several criminal forces that Fu Yushu had previously cracked down on, now fighting back.

They must have wanted to kill Fu Yushu. Who would have thought that the person driving the car that day would be Fu Yushang’s wife? They had killed the wrong person.

The unlucky Mu Zhao had thus blocked a disaster for her eldest sister-in-law and died without an intact corpse. Originally, this explanation was the most reasonable. But who knew who had suggested that the matter might be related to Fu Yushang’s enemies, directing the blame straight at him, Old Zheng? Because of that, he had been investigated several times by the Fu family’s second daughter! How unlucky!

Even Old Master Fu, who had been peacefully enjoying his later years, had been enraged enough to personally take action. To prove his innocence, President Zheng had spent several days acting like someone’s grandson and forcing himself to smile. H City had been frighteningly obedient these past few days. No one dared approach the Fu family.

Of course, that “no one” excluded their in-laws.

Perhaps Fu Yushang had treated them too well over the years, causing them to lose all sense of propriety and stir up this mess. The funeral had been organized by them, and the guests had been invited by them. Half the people in the entire mourning hall belonged to the Fu family’s opponents. How was this a funeral? It was clearly meant to disgust people!

Suddenly, a man in a suit and leather shoes, carrying a document bag and an umbrella, hurried inside. As Mu Zhao’s close friend during her lifetime, Qian Youyu wiped her swollen red eyes and quickly went up to greet him. After exchanging a few words with the man, she brought him to Fu Yushang.

“President Fu, this is Zhaozhao’s lawyer. He’s here to announce Zhaozhao’s will.”

A will?!!!

Those two words instantly silenced the entire mourning hall.

To two particular people, the word “will” was no different from a bolt out of the blue!

“What will? How could there be a will?!” Madam Mu refused to believe it. Her voice was so shrill it nearly cracked.

The married couple, whose little schemes had been clicking away like abacuses, were almost stunned silly. They had calculated everything, but they had never expected that that dead girl who always sided with outsiders had actually made a will! She was so young—how could she have made a will?

A will?

Fu Yushang’s expression seemed to shatter slightly, and her barely maintained mental state began to sway on the verge of collapse.

“This is the will Zhaozhao made with Lawyer Li three months ago while I accompanied her. It is valid and legally protected. I suppose…” Qian Youyu sneered as she looked at the two people who were beginning to tear apart their image as loving parents. “I suppose she knew exactly what kind of people certain individuals were and was afraid that after she died, her family would be bullied.”

Parents and wife were both family. But from Qian Youyu’s words, it was clear that the Mu Zhao of the past had only regarded her wife as family. There was no other reason. Her parents, blinded by profit, had already disappointed her completely, so she was no longer willing to see them as family.

“Impossible! My daughter was still so young. How could she have thought of making a will? Did you trick her into it?” The two people who had spent days crying at the funeral had calculated everything, yet they had never expected their daughter to have made a will before her death! They knew very well what “good things” they had done in the past. They also understood that if their daughter had made a will, the things they wanted were probably gone for good.

And everyone who knew Mu Zhao knew that she was naturally cheerful. She was not pessimistic or negative, nor did she have any terminal illness. She was only twenty-three this year. Under normal circumstances, who would make a will for herself?

It had only been three months ago. The timing was too recent and too coincidental, forcing people to think in that direction—for example, that Mu Zhao had known she might be murdered, and so she had arranged her affairs in advance.

It was not impossible.

Zhaozhao… what kind of state of mind had she been in when she made that will? What had she once known? Fu Yushang felt waves of darkness pass before her eyes. The mystery behind everything was growing deeper and deeper. How was she supposed to avenge Zhaozhao?

But the only person who knew the truth had already fallen into eternal sleep, taking the secret with her into the coffin…

At least, that was what every living person present believed.