Kill The Marriage Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Mental Journey

By the time Zhang Qingyuan rushed to the hospital, he found Ren Zhong sitting in one of the hospital’s public wheelchairs, dressed in a patient gown.

The pregnant woman had been transported to the hospital half-lying across Ren Zhong’s lap on his electric wheelchair. Both his clothes and the wheelchair were soaked in amniotic fluid and blood, essentially ruined.

The emergency doctor was briefing Ren Zhong on the situation.

“Right now, a natural birth is looking difficult. Because her freedom was restricted, the trafficked victim never received any prenatal care. We’re flying blind, and anything could happen during the delivery process. We will do our absolute best.”

Since Ren Zhong was merely a Good Samaritan who had stepped in, he couldn’t sign the consent forms or take legal responsibility. The doctor quickly exchanged a few words with him before hurrying off to the medical affairs office to handle the necessary paperwork.

Ren Zhong spun his wheelchair around and saw Zhang Qingyuan.

“You’re here.”

He didn’t seem surprised, simply offering a flat, casual greeting.

“Captain.” Zhang Qingyuan naturally grasped the handles at the back of the wheelchair. “Let’s go home.”

Ren Zhong shook his head. “No rush, let’s wait a bit longer. I want to see with my own eyes that mother and child are safe.”

Labor takes a long time, but Ren Zhong was stubborn. He intended to wait, even if it took until midnight or tomorrow morning.

Knowing that ten bulls couldn’t drag this man away once he made up his mind, Zhang Qingyuan went along with him. “Alright, then we’ll wait until she gives birth before heading home. But the delivery could take hours, and you need to eat, Captain. After everything that happened today, aren’t you hungry?”

If he hadn’t mentioned it, Ren Zhong might have been fine, but now he realized he was actually starving. Thinking back, he had done rehab all morning, taken down a trafficker at noon, and gone through all this chaos, only having managed two bites of fried chicken the entire day. It would be strange if he wasn’t hungry.

They had been living together for a while now, and Zhang Qingyuan could see Ren Zhong’s resolve softening. He continued coaxing, “The hospital corridor isn’t a place to eat. Let’s go to a restaurant nearby. You eat fast, Captain; the whole trip will take twenty or thirty minutes tops.”

Ren Zhong didn’t hesitate for long, deciding to grab some food first.

Surprisingly, the hospital wasn’t filled with moaning patients or wailing relatives. People hurried back and forth, expressionless, clutching test results or medication, weaving between the floors. The noise and the smell of disinfectant enveloped everyone in the building.

Zhang Qingyuan pushed Ren Zhong’s wheelchair forward in silence, brushing past countless hidden pains while standing right amidst them.

“Captain,” he broke the silence. “How is your rehab going?”

Ren Zhong belatedly remembered that the man pushing him hadn’t fully recovered from his shoulder injuries. “Your shoulders aren’t completely healed. You don’t need to push me.”

“It’s fine, they’re mostly better.” Zhang Qingyuan stubbornly held onto the handles.

They walked in silence for a while.

As they exited the hospital lobby on the first floor, Ren Zhong suddenly spoke.

“I sat in the obstetrics department for a long time.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I’ve seen horrific, gruesome deaths on the border. But I never imagined that ‘birth’ could be just as terrifying.”

The woman Ren Zhong saved was placed in a large labor ward with many other expectant mothers.

“No matter what your gender is—male Omega or female Beta—you’re all in that room, and all genders are reduced to ‘maternal patient.’ Doctors and nurses you’ve never met… anyone walking into the room can lift your clothes and examine your body at any time.”

Zhang Qingyuan pressed his lips together. “Public hospital resources are limited, and maternity patients require special care, so it’s unavoidable. Many hospitals truly lack when it comes to humanistic care.”

“Look at you, acting like a rational, objective observer, staying completely detached,” Ren Zhong scoffed. “Don’t forget, you’re the one who said you’d be the one getting pregnant. I don’t believe you wouldn’t feel entirely stripped of your dignity lying in that room with your legs spread.”

The wheelchair came to an abrupt halt.

Ren Zhong tilted his head back to look at Zhang Qingyuan’s expression.

Sure enough. It wasn’t pretty.

“You’re right.” Zhang Qingyuan avoided Ren Zhong’s gaze and continued pushing the wheelchair.

The sun was glaringly hot, causing Ren Zhong to squint.

A shadow fell over his head. Zhang Qingyuan had freed one hand to open a parasol for him, considerately slipping a pair of sunglasses onto his face as well.

Since Zhang Qingyuan was holding the umbrella and couldn’t push the wheelchair, Ren Zhong spun the wheels himself.

He continued, “In the bed right next to her, an Omega boy suffered an amniotic fluid embolism. In the blink of an eye, his heart monitor flatlined. A swarm of doctors and nurses rushed in with equipment. There was no time to get him to the operating room; they performed CPR and a C-section right there on the bed.”

Without even a moment to pull the privacy curtains, a life-or-death, ultra-high-risk emergency surgery commenced right in the middle of the ward.

“In less than five minutes, they got the baby out and stabilized his heart rate. But his reproductive cavity kept hemorrhaging. Two suction canisters filled up completely, and white gauze turned soaking red seconds after being pressed down.”

Hearing this made Zhang Qingyuan feel sick to his stomach. Unable to help himself, he asked for a spoiler, “Did they save the Omega boy?”

“They saved him. He’s lying in the ICU right now. But they couldn’t stop the bleeding in his reproductive cavity, so they cut it out,” Ren Zhong took a deep breath. “If his husband hadn’t kept refusing to sign the consent form to remove it, he wouldn’t have bled so much.”

The baby had been saved by the pediatricians, crying loudly and healthily. But the child’s Alpha husband was disgusted that it was an Alpha girl. He wanted the Omega to give birth to another Alpha boy, so he vehemently refused to allow the cavity’s removal.

The blood bank delivered bag after bag of blood, the Omega lay on the bed sliced wide open, yet the husband refused to sign.

“He said female Alphas are just fake men; he wanted a genuine heir.” Ren Zhong pointed toward a sleazy, pig-headed man smoking under the shade of a tree outside the hospital. “That’s him.”

A bulging beer belly, thinning hair, sloppy clothes, puffing away on a cigarette.

Just looking at him made Zhang Qingyuan feel his eyes were dirty. He sneered, “This man’s interior truly matches his exterior perfectly. You could say he’s ‘consistent inside and out’.”

“Pfft!” Ren Zhong couldn’t hold back a laugh. “Well said. ‘Consistent inside and out’ is a great phrase—it works perfectly to praise someone, and it’s brutally effective as an insult.”

The man was cursing loudly on the phone. Listening closely, he was complaining that the ICU was too expensive and was plotting to abandon his wife and child, get a divorce, and let the system match him with a young, beautiful Omega who could bear him a child he actually wanted.

Ren Zhong paused his wheelchair, turning back to look in the man’s direction.

But what could he do?

Helpless, he had no choice but to let it go and continue rolling his wheelchair forward.

He suddenly said, “I’ve thought about it… If I can’t find a way to delay the childbearing mandate of this marriage within three years, would I…”

“Captain, you wouldn’t.” Zhang Qingyuan smiled. He grabbed the back of the wheelchair, leaning down right next to Ren Zhong’s ear. “Instead, it’s me who has to beg you. Please, you must consent to every possible surgery that could save my life, including invasive emergency procedures.”

Ren Zhong raised an eyebrow. “You sound quite serious.”

“Of course, how could a promise I make to you be fake?” Zhang Qingyuan rested a hand on Ren Zhong’s shoulder. “I believe in the ‘Captain.’ I believe in your mission, faith, and dignity as a soldier.”

The subtext felt suspiciously like moral kidnapping.

Zhang Qingyuan’s eyes curved into a smile. “Protecting the lives and property of the people is your duty, Captain.”

Now it wasn’t just suspicion; he had completely confirmed it.

“If that day truly comes, I will respect your wishes.” Ren Zhong’s expression remained hidden behind his sunglasses, preventing Zhang Qingyuan from reading him clearly.

He continued, “I scoured every law concerning marriage and reviewed countless case files. I saw the division of property and the transfer of the right to life. It reads like a life-and-death waiver, or a contract of indenture.”

Zhang Qingyuan wasn’t surprised. “Exactly. Based on the current compulsory matching system and judicial precedents, marriage merely guarantees that every Alpha and male Beta is allocated a slave of their very own.”

“Perhaps it’s not just like this now,” Ren Zhong pushed his wheelchair forward. “Maybe love and marriage have always been two entirely different things.”

Zhang Qingyuan followed closely with the umbrella. “Captain, assuming the absolute worst intentions, is it possible… that for many people, ‘love’ itself is just a massive lie?”

His eyes flickered as he said, “Like rat poison in a sausage, or meat scraps in a bear trap—they’re just bait. Designed to trick people into willingly walking into an inescapable abyss.”

Ren Zhong glanced at him.

“Captain, don’t look at me like that,” Zhang Qingyuan said candidly. “No one educates Alphas to pursue a pure, perfect love. We weren’t raised that way.”

He added meaningfully, “The ones told that ‘seeking love and giving love’ is life’s ultimate inevitability… aren’t us.”

Ren Zhong froze. He stopped his wheelchair, lost in deep thought.

“Captain, hold the umbrella.”

Before he even finished speaking, he pressed the parasol handle into Ren Zhong’s hand.

Zhang Qingyuan suddenly lunged forward, snatching a camera lens from the corner and dragging out a paparazzi-looking man along with it.

“My journalist friend, we are trying to rest right now. Please excuse us for not accepting any interviews.”

The paparazzi had no idea Zhang Qingyuan was this fast; the man was completely dazed.

“We’ll just keep the memory card as a souvenir.” Zhang Qingyuan expertly popped the SD card out of the camera. “Thank you for taking photos of the Captain and me. But we’re done here.”

With that, he took the umbrella back, leaving the paparazzi with only a tall silhouette walking away under the shade.

Zhang Qingyuan secretly breathed a sigh of relief. The dark cloud of self-doubt that Ren Zhong had beaten into him a few days ago finally cleared up a bit.

It seemed his years of disciplined training weren’t entirely useless, and he hadn’t devolved into total trash. It was just that using an anomaly like Ren Zhong as his baseline reference had been a mistake.

A minor crisis like this, he could handle effortlessly.

That night.

The trafficked woman safely gave birth to a Beta baby girl. Mother and daughter were both safe.

A photo set and short video titled “Wheelchair Hero Enjoys Sweet Date With Newlywed Husband After Rescuing Trafficked Woman” spread like a virus across major marketing accounts.

The leaked media from the marketing accounts was far clearer than the few pictures Zhang Qingyuan had confiscated from the paparazzi.

Translator’s Note:

• Consistent inside and out (表裏如一): Usually a compliment meaning someone is genuine, but used here sarcastically to mean someone is as ugly on the inside as they are on the outside.
• Moral kidnapping (道德綁架): A Chinese term for using morality, duty, or societal expectations to force someone to do something.