While Yu Antong slept soundly, a certain person was destined for a night without sleep.
That certain person, Yu Qingnian, got up from the bed when he received a call from his secretary. He hurriedly went back to the company overnight for an emergency meeting.
“Suppress it, suppress it quickly!” Yu Qingnian slapped the table to vent his anger.
The PR manager sweated. He was embarrassed, but he really was helpless. “The matter is fermenting too fast, and it is too late to suppress it now.”
This incident broke out at night when the traffic was the highest, and it happened that the PR staff was already off work, so they couldn’t find out and deal with it in time. It was too late when the person in charge of Baifang House’s official Weibo found out that it had been mentioned by countless netizens.
“If you can’t suppress it, then find another way!” Yu Qingnian angrily pointed at the employees who were like turtles with their heads buried in their necks. His wrath was terrifying. “The company doesn’t pay you to loaf around!”
The PR manager was also a respected senior within the company. He was pissed at being pointed and blamed like this, especially considering his age wasn’t that far apart from Yu Qingnian.
Seeing the matter objectively, this matter was Yu Qingnian’s private troubles. Whether or not he paid his nephew’s inheritance shouldn’t affect his employee’s pay. However, this matter had become too big, and it spilled over to the innocent employees of the company. In the end, they had no choice but to pitch in with the clean-up effort. Not that they did it gladly, though. They cursed with all their might in their heart.
But the matter must be resolved as soon as possible. If it was not handled properly, it would affect the reputation and efficiency of the company, which would threaten their own interests.
The PR manager bit the bullet and said, “President Yu, the most urgent thing is to clear up straightforwardly. It’s best to return Young Master Yu’s inheritance as soon as possible. With this, it won’t further affect the company’s reputation and damage the company’s image.”
“You!” Yu Qingnian pointed at him and turned his head. Then, he yelled at the company’s lawyers, “What did you promise me before again?! Didn’t you say that there’s a way for me to delay this indefinitely? Talk!”
All the lawyers lowered their heads and chose to remain silent. They knew better that if they engage in dirty tricks now, it would be dangerous. All eyes were on them. Any suspicious movements would be caught, and if they were to be exposed… they would be finished.
Yu Qingnian saw that everyone in the conference room was silent. With all his anger gone, he slumped on his chair weakly. He knew things had come this way. He had no choice but to pay that inheritance money. With the last vestiges of his wrath, he yelled one last time, “All of you, get out now!”
Handing over the inheritance? It’s easy to say. How can he get so much money at this moment!
Not long ago, one of his friends introduced him to a lucrative project. He was so excited that he invested almost all of his available liquid assets in it. He had an ambition to participate in the real estate industry, and that required a huge amount of capital. He was betting on this project to deliver him the money he needed.
He originally asked Yu Antong to marry into the Xing family in order to exchange him for monetary benefits. However, he never thought that Yu Antong was hiding his steel all along, and dared to fight him once he got married off.
All these years he pretended to be a fool. As soon as he had a powerful backer of a husband, he immediately removed his disguise and bit him hard.
Yu Qingnian came home with a gloomy mood. When he saw his wife Liu Qian who was well-dressed as she went to play mahjong with her friends, he became irritated. All his leftover anger spilled over to the surface, burning his wife in the process. “Where are you going?”
“Where else? I’m going to play mahjong!”
Liu Qian could hear her husband’s awful mood from his tone. On top of that, he had hurriedly went to the company for an emergency meeting just now. She knew something was wrong. “What happened in the company? Why did you come home at this time?”
“You–! You only know how to spend money all day long! Do you know how difficult it is to earn them? Useless woman!” Yu Qingnian vented all his anger. “Our family will soon have no money! Our house and belongings will be gone!”
“Ah!” Liu Qian turned pale with shock, “This… how is it possible!”
“Why are you still standing here? Hurry up and pack up your belongings.”
“Is it… because that little bastard Yu Antong?!” Liu Qian hissed. With a grim expression on her face, she cursed, “That white-eyed wolf has no conscience! Does he forget who raised him all these years? If he dares to take our house, I will go find him and educate him myself!!” (ungrateful person; back-stabber.)
Yu Qingnian held her back, “Come back! That bastard is known to everyone on the Internet. If we don’t give him the money, our family’s reputation will be completely ruined.”
“But that’s more than 60 million!” Liu Qian screeched. Then, all energy seemed to be drained out of her. She sat on the sofa dejectedly.
They both owned quite a few properties, totaling hundreds of millions. But, the thought of parting with so much money made her soul feel like flying out of her body. It’s much more painful than cutting her flesh.
To cover up all the costs, Yu Qingnian had to sell several properties he had purchased over the years to make up the 60 million yuan.
The next day, he returned the inheritance money, plus several villas left by Yu Antong’s father.
“Yu Antong, you better remember this!” Yu Qingnian stared at Yu Antong fiercely, hatred clearly painted all over his face.
Yu Antong didn’t take this threat seriously. He pretended to look scared, the kind that was very obvious it was fake. With sarcasm dripping from his voice, he lamented, “Ooh! You’re really embarrassing me! I have sooo many university classes now, and my energy is limited! How do you think I have the room in my brain to remember all these messy things?”
“Y-You!! Very good!” Yu Qingnian gritted his teeth and said, “We’ll see!”
Yu Antong looked at his perfectly-manicured nails. His tone was indifferent as he chided, “Uncle, don’t be angry all the time, yeah? You’re old now, so it will hurt your body. What if it leads you to stroke? If that happens – God forbids! – you’ll get paralyzed, you know?”
With that, Yu Antong left with a happy hum. While Yu Qingnian was so angry that it almost sent him to the hospital.
Yu Antong didn’t have classes in the afternoon, and after receiving a large amount of assets, liquid and fixed, he decided to indulge himself for a bit. He happily went shopping. During this trip, he also paid attention to the decor of several shops he liked. He daydreamed about the interior design of his future shops.
Seeing that it was almost time, Yu Antong called Xing Lixuan. “Hello? Husband, are you off work?”
Xing Lixuan closed the document in his hand, “Well, what’s the matter?”
Yu Antong: “Come with me to pick up my meimei. It’s the weekend, and well, you know about my family’s messy situation. It’s not appropriate for her to return to my uncle’s place. So, I was thinking of letting her stay with us during this weekend, as I haven’t got the time to tidy up the house for her.”
Yu Annan was in her third year of high school this year, and she lives in the campus’ dormitory. With the national college entrance examinations1高考; gāokǎo; ‘Higher Education Exam’. It’s… well, this is the reason why the education system in China is under fire at the moment. To put it simply, this one set of tests determines which college you can enter. And since good private colleges are very few in number… well. You better do well in this one test or else you’ll fuck up your future career (unless you’re rich enough to study abroad). The huge pressure made the high-school students’ curriculum to be very intense, to say the least. If you want to know more, I suggest you do some research on your own. looming over, the school only let them take a break every two weeks.
Now that he and Yu Qingnian and he were hostile, naturally Yu Annan can’t be allowed to go back to that house. Although Yu Qingnian’s family had moved out and returned the house to him, they had made a mess. Plus, he still needed to hire trustworthy and loyal housekeepers and such. Yu Annan was a young girl after all, her safety was a huge concern for him.
Xing Lixuan was not used to letting strangers into his territory. However, this was his wife’s little sister, so he understood. With a frown, he agreed, “Only this once.”
“Only for two days.” Yu Antong replied. The truth is, he actually was very reluctant to let Yu Annan return to that Yu family house. He knew that the original Yu Antong wasn’t happy growing up there. As his little sister, Yu Annan must have unpleasant memories associated with that place too. Well, he still had other properties. If Yu Annan preferred to live there instead, he would be happy to oblige.
After getting Xing Lixuan’s permission, Yu Antong was content. He waited for his little sister to arrive at the school gate alongside other parents.
The school didn’t allow students to bring mobile phones, so Yu Antong called Yu Annan’s class teacher in advance and asked him to tell Yu Annan that he was coming to pick her up.
The school bell rang, signaling the end of class. The students spare no time to pour out from their classes, like birds flying out of their cage the moment it opens.
Among the many students wearing the same school uniform, Yu Antong immediately spotted a short-haired girl who was somewhat similar to him, and his intuition told him that this person was his little sister.
Sure enough, the girl with short hair came straight to him after seeing him.
This was the first time Yu Antong saw his body’s blood-related younger sister after his transmigration. Perhaps because of his body’s leftover instincts, or perhaps it was because of their blood relation, Yu Antong had an inexplicable sense of closeness to this teenage girl he never met before. He might not know her personally, but he already loved her.
After living two lives, this was the first time he found a person he could regard as a blood-related family.
No, he refused to acknowledge that shitty uncle. He already disowned the old man in his heart.
Yu Annan’s eyes lit up when she saw Yu Antong. She quickened her pace, and slowed down when she was about to walk in front of him.
Her piece of shit of an uncle used her to force her big brother to marry into Xing’s family. She didn’t want to be the knife that stabbed her brother, her uncle notwithstanding, so she made a huge fuss to prevent this from happening. But in the end, her brother agreed to the wedding to protect her.
On the day of the wedding, she locked herself in the room out of anger. She didn’t attend her big brother’s wedding, which she now regretted. Plus… she didn’t know if her big brother was still angry with her.
Yu Annan walked up to Yu Antong with a sullen face, pursed her lips, and called out awkwardly, “Ge.”
Yu Antong took his sister’s schoolbag. He decided to tease her, “Who upset this little beauty? Gege will help you beat him up.”
Yu Annan’s eyes turned red all of a sudden. She grabbed her brother’s hand, and said with a pout, “No, no one bullied me.”
Xing Lixuan, who stood beside Yu Antong, helped them open the car door, “Get in the car.”
As Yu Antong was about to get in the car, the teenage girl stood still. Feeling this, Yu Antong turned around and saw her staring at Xing Lixuan with an eye full of hostility.
Yu Antong looked at Xing Lixuan, smiled maliciously, pointed at him and whispered to Yu Annan, “This is your saozi2嫂子 “sǎozi”; sister-in-law, specifically older brother’s wife..”
Xing Lixuan could still hear him, and gave him a warning look.
After getting in the car, the siblings pair were sitting in the back. Yu Annan asked her big brother in a low voice, “Ge, is he treating you well? He didn’t bully you, right?”
That man looked stern and scary at first glance. If he bullied her soft-tempered big brother, how can he resist?
Yu Antong was shameless, and also a master of bullshit. With a straight face, he easily lied, “He loves me to death, he can’t leave me even for a moment. How can he bully me? You see, he insists on following me when I come to pick you up from school.”
Xing Lixuan’s hand holding the steering wheel suddenly clenched tightly, the veins on his forehead throbbed.
This brat sure is good at talking nonsense. He’s very interested in measuring Yu Antong’s face thickness, really.
Yu Annan watched Xing Lixuan’s back warily, then turned to look at her brother, “Really? I don’t believe it.”
‘Tsk, why is this little girl so hard to fool?’
Yu Antong patted the back of the driver’s seat, and said to Xing Lixuan with the air of a spoiled wife, “Husband, she doesn’t believe me. Tell her yourself, are you inseparable from me?”
The author has something to say:
Yu Antong: “He loves me to death.”
Sister: “Really? I don’t believe it.”
Xing Lixuan: “This meimei is good.”
Translator Notes
Just a note: for my translation, I only used the untranslated “ge/mei/di/etc” version only in dialogue. This is just my preference.
Though, since Chinese family appellations are Complicated, I translate the “uncle/his wife/etc” that is not a direct family member. They’re too complicated otherwise – for an example, there’s a difference between your mother’s big brother (舅舅; jiùjiu) vs. your father’s big brother (伯伯; bóbo). I’ll save you the pain of having to learn it… like me……………….. ;~; I’m 25 and I still haven’t remembered all of them! Well, mainly because my mom has 6 older siblings + 1 younger sibling and my dad has 1 older sibling + 5 younger siblings. Do you understand my pain?
Also: no, I don’t live in China, but my family is Chinese, so I still follow this tradition.
The other exception would be if it’s an untranslatable/awkwardly-translated word (because there’s no direct English equivalent), like shijie/shixiong/and such.
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