"Then why didn’t you continue insisting later?"
Zhou Wang asked curiously.
"Because she’s sick, really sick!"
The man spoke somewhat angrily, recalling something:
"I can tolerate living with a woman who’s emotionally cold, but I can’t stand living with someone who’s incredibly capricious. One moment she’s laughing and chatting with you, and the next she turns ice cold. Can you imagine the despair of being woken up in the middle of the night only to be kicked out of the house...?"
"I’ve experienced this more than once!"
Zhou Wang chuckled inwardly, it seemed even her ex-husband didn’t know that she genuinely had a ’serious illness.’
Indeed, who would normally think of a split personality like something from the movies, and Qi Jiayi’s secrecy clearly was well maintained, even when she sought treatment overseas.
Just as Zhou Wang thought that was all, the man’s voice got angrier:
"If it were just those things, considering the hefty allowance she gave me each month, I might have barely managed... but what I couldn’t tolerate was her constantly claiming to be emotionally cold, yet she cheated on me behind my back!"
"Cheated?"
Zhou Wang was genuinely surprised this time.
"Yes, definitely cheating!"
The man insisted emphatically, "Every month at the end, she suddenly disappears. Even if it’s on a business trip, it can’t always be those same couple of days... Once I followed her and found her entering a hotel. I followed all the way to outside her room, and I heard some strange noises... You know... the kind between men and women..."
"Oh?"
Zhou Wang thought for a moment and then asked, "Are you sure it was her voice?"
"Absolutely!"
The man said angrily, "Even if we weren’t like a regular couple, we lived under the same roof. How could I mistake it? The sounds were so vulgar, so shameless, no different from Japanese movies!"
"Then what about the person she cheated with?"
"That I don’t know. Later I confronted her but she never admitted it. Anyway, I was so disheartened that I proposed divorce, and she agreed without much thought, isn’t that proof she had someone outside?"
"Did you hear a man’s voice when you were outside that room?"
"Well..."
The man hesitated, seemingly trying hard to recall, and after a while spoke somewhat sheepishly, "I don’t really remember, maybe yes, maybe no... after all, it’s been two or three years ago."
"Alright, I understand."
Zhou Wang then asked the man some more details about his life with Qi Jiayi. Once he ensured there were no significant omissions, he hung up the phone.
"Supposedly emotionally cold, yet cheating actively?"
Zhou Wang again mimicked a fantasy protagonist by stroking his chin.
...
After ten minutes or so, Zhou Wang gently opened the bathroom door and stepped out.
Qi Jiayi’s apartment was quite spacious, a standard four bedrooms, two living rooms, roughly around 160-170 square meters. The total price would be almost twenty million yuan at least, fitting her elite status.
Only the entrance hall light was on, the rest was shrouded in darkness, though the street lamps outside reflected some light in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, avoiding complete blackness.
The house was silent, no sound could be heard.
"Jiayi?"
Zhou Wang tried calling out.
No response.
Zhou Wang walked to the corridor, noticing the master bedroom door at the end tightly shut, but some light seeped through the crack.
He quietly approached, listened, and didn’t hear any distinct sounds—just some vague ’rustling’ noises, yet not really clear.
"Sister Jiayi?"
This time Zhou Wang raised his voice considerably; he was sure the room’s occupant could hear, yet Qi Jiayi still didn’t respond.
Zhou Wang instinctively grabbed the door handle and tried to turn it, but the door didn’t budge, clearly locked from the inside.
Just as Zhou Wang was hesitating, he suddenly heard a strange sound, followed by Qi Jiayi’s low moaning.
Only then did Zhou Wang realize the door soundproofing was worse than he imagined—because earlier there had been no real noise from Qi Jiayi, he had heard practically nothing.
"Ah!"
Just then, Qi Jiayi suddenly cried out again, seemingly mixed with some sort of agitation.
"Sister Jiayi, are you okay?"
Zhou Wang persistently called out, but Qi Jiayi still didn’t respond to Zhou Wang. After a brief silence, her moans started to become continuous.
She seemed to be enduring some kind of torment, fragmented sounds filled with pain as the main theme.
Her voice vaguely contained some muffled cries as well, but Zhou Wang could hardly understand what she was saying.
Zhou Wang frowned, shouting two more times without any response. He felt he had to do something.
Everything was just speculation, but if Qi Jiayi really encountered some accident, Zhou Wang’s conscience would suffer grave condemnation...
Stepping back two strides, Zhou Wang took a running start and kicked hard against the door.
"Damn!"
Covering his foot and grimacing, Zhou Wang cursed inwardly—movies sure are deceptive; even if it’s a wooden door, ordinary people couldn’t possibly kick it open with one blow?
Damn it, lucky for me I’m a cheater!
Having no other choice, Zhou Wang opened the System Store once again, found an item called [Heimerdinger’s Universal Key], and spent fifty thousand Reputation Value points to redeem it.