Let me just say—the pacing in these chapters is absolutely masterful and I need everyone to understand what the author is doing here. We start with Jiang Wan's decision not to divorce, which feels like a step BACKWARD, right? Like, after everything, she's going back? But then the author immediately undercuts that by having her sit alone on the first step of the staircase where she lost her child. BOOM. The emotional foundation shifts completely. What looked like weakness is actually grief. The author is playing with our expectations like a cat with a string.
Then we cut to Sheng Jingcheng's group chat scene—this is such a brilliant structural choice because it gives us the external world's perspective on Jiang Wan. These people are mocking her, calling her a dog, and she just... deletes them all. The pacing here is almost comedic in its cruelty, but it serves a purpose: it shows us how far she's willing to go to cut ties. She doesn't even bother responding. That's not weakness, that's liberation dressed up as indifference.
And then—the car scene. The author builds tension so slowly. Jiang Lan gets in the car, gets drunk, confesses her love, sits on his lap, and all the while Sheng Lianjue is just... silent. Watching. Not pushing her away until the glass shatters. That sound is the narrative equivalent of a drumbeat, and then Jiang Wan is running upstairs. The chapter structure moves from external (the club, the group chat) to internal (the car, the guest room, the memories), and each transition pulls us deeper into her psychological landscape. The flashback to the first time she caught them is perfectly placed—it comes after she's already seen them again, so we understand the pattern, the cycle, the inescapable nature of her pain. The author doesn't rush any of this. Every scene breathes. Every silence has weight. I stayed up way too late reading this because I couldn't stop.