A Scumbag Always Gets What He Deserves

1: Prologue - Life and death

A thin woman was slowly walking towards the cold river.

The surging waves pitched pale gray mist into the air, forming a fog that grew thicker and deeper, gradually shrouding everything nearby. The gloomy sky was depressing, and the oversaturated moisture seeped into the lungs, giving people a sense of suffocation unto death.

The woman used a phone as she walked, and the little boy who was tightly clamped under her arm could not help coughing.

"Mom, I can't breathe. Mom, I'm so cold, can we go home? Mom, don't go there, if you go further won't the water come up? Mom, mom..."

The child's tender voice, mixed with sobbing and helpless pleading, reverberated on the open river.

The woman looked down at her son.

Her eyes were bloodshot as if she hadn't slept for several nights. The despair in her eyes was more intense than the rushing river and denser than the diffuse mist. She continued to carry the phone that wouldn't connect, stubbornly waiting for a response from the other side.

Her son's pained face and tear-filled eyes seemed meaningless to her, scenery without any significance.

She lifted her head, looked towards the deeper water, and kept walking.

The little boy choked on his saliva and began to struggle violently.

She fiercely clamped her arm, not caring that she might take her son's life before the flooding river could.

Suddenly, the phone connected. A lazy male voice spoke slowly, "Didn't I tell you to stop contacting me?"

The woman's eyes, which were completely occupied by despair, suddenly showed a glimmer of light. Her pace towards the deep water finally stopped.

The little boy breathed a sigh of relief, but he couldn't stop coughing.

"Be quiet!" The woman scolded fiercely.

The little boy quickly let go of the hand that tightly gripped his mother's clothes. He covered his own mouth, staring at the phone with dark eyes full of expectation. He hoped this call would save him.

"Will you get a divorce or not? If you don't get divorced, I'll take Jian Qiao into the river!" The woman's voice trembled.

The man gave an unconcerned chuckle. "I have no shortage of women or sons. Go ahead. You're not the first person to use a child to try to force me to divorce, and you're not the first person to commit suicide for me. Save it, I won't be pushed around."

The man was about to end this conversation which was so meaningless to him, but the woman suddenly pressed the phone against her son's ice-cold cheek, her voice eager: "Call for Dad, Jian Qiao! Tell Dad to come and save you!"

The little child didn't understand the grievances between his parents, he just wanted to live. It was too cold here, too terrible.

He opened his mouth and shouted again and again, "Dad, save me, Dad, save me...."

However, the phone screen went black in the middle of his cry for help. The man decisively hung up the phone and quickly blocked all the woman's contact information.

Even if the child's cry for help was real, even if the woman's suicide threat was genuine, he didn't care. A madwoman who considered love more important than her own life and the life of a child, she would only cause him more trouble. He might not be able to get rid of her entanglement in his life otherwise, so it was better to let mother and son die cleanly.

The woman could no longer hear the man's voice, but she was still screaming like crazy, "I love you! I love you more than anyone else! Why can't you love me? Why? Fine, so you don't love me, do you? Then I'll go ahead and die, and I'll take your son with me! You'll regret it!"