A moment later, Fang Wanwan opened the door, but only a crack, looking warily at the woman outside.
Li Juan had originally wanted to come in, but seeing Fang Wanwan's expression, her face showed some awkwardness.
"Xiaoli suddenly has a fever. We... we have no money at home. Could you lend me some?"
It matches!
Fang Wanwan felt her hands and feet turn cold. That dream was real!
"I'm begging you!" Seeing Fang Wanwan silent, Li Juan pleaded repeatedly.
Fang Wanwan's mind was in turmoil. She wanted to close the door, but Li Juan swiftly shoved her hand into the gap. The door clamped on her hand, and she let out a sharp cry: "Miss Fang! Miss Fang! Please help me, I'll kowtow to you!"
The next moment, the door was suddenly pulled open. Fang Wanwan looked at her sister in surprise.
Fang Zaolao looked down at the woman before her. "The New Year hasn't even come yet, and you're already asking for red envelopes?"
Li Juan looked up. This woman wasn't the one from yesterday...
Unlike Fang Wanwan, Fang Zaolao looked like someone not to be trifled with.
"Get lost. Why should my sister take care of your son? I'll count to three. If you don't scram..."
Li Juan hesitated. Would she actually hit her? But then she thought, if she does, I'll just demand even more money!
To her surprise, Fang Zaolao simply plopped down on the floor. "Outrageous! Robbery!"
The sudden wail startled Li Juan. She didn't understand why this woman had suddenly started this.
The early morning hallway had people; those going to school or work were leaving at this time. The sudden cry attracted them, and immediately someone came over to look.
"Come and see! This woman comes to my door first thing in the morning demanding money! She even threatened to kowtow herself to death right here if I didn't give it!"
Seeing people approach, Li Juan panicked. She cared about her reputation; otherwise, she wouldn't have covered up the signs of her husband's domestic violence. Li Juan immediately stood up, forcing an awkward smile. "How could that be? Don't talk nonsense. Miss Fang, is this your friend? How... how can she slander me like this?"
Fang Wanwan also felt a bit embarrassed now. Her sister was still the same, always going for the extreme.
"This is my sister."
She quickly pulled her sister inside, habitually apologizing to Li Juan, and then closed the door.
"You apologized to her? For what?!" Fang Zaolao was furious.
Fang Wanwan also realized and said with a bitter face, "Habit..."
"You, you... you..." Fang Zaolao rolled her eyes. "Anyway, starting today, I'm staying with you. I want to see how that whole family dies!"
"Sis..."
"It's decided! If you're scared, you can..." Fang Zaolao paused. "No, you're not going anywhere. You're sticking with me."
"I still have to go to work."
"Go to work then. I'll take you and pick you up!" Fang Zaolao planted her hands on her hips, striking a pose like a mother hen protecting her chick.
Fang Wanwan couldn't help but laugh.
Outside the door, Li Juan, having been shut out, looked very displeased, especially when she saw people pointing and whispering. She went straight back to her own apartment, closed the door, her face full of resentment.
"All talk about helping me, my foot! Bitch!" Looking at her feverish son, she went over and touched his forehead. "Son, you must be okay. Blame that Fang Wanwan next door! It's all her fault!"
She never once considered her husband's issues or her own. Instead, she blamed everything on Fang Wanwan, who hadn't helped her. The more she thought about it, the more wronged she felt, and she began to sob quietly.
Her complaints woke up Zhang Xi, who had been carousing all night and was particularly irritable. "Stupid woman, crying first thing in the morning! What are you crying for? My bad luck at gambling is all because of your crying! Jinx!"
Without another word, Zhang Xi got up and started hitting her. Li Juan's resentful expression instantly changed. "Husband, I was wrong! No, it's... it's Xiaoli who's sick. Xiaoli has a fever!"
Zhang Xi looked fierce. "A fever is just a fever. He won't die from it!"
Seeing she was about to be hit again, Li Juan suddenly thought of Fang Wanwan next door.
"I went to borrow money from Fang Wanwan next door. She wouldn't lend it to me, and she even cursed at me. I couldn't help but cry."
"What?" Zhang Xi was puzzled. That girl next door? He'd seen her a few times. Nice figure, pretty face, but she always looked at him like he was a virus.
"Wasn't she pretty nice to you? She even invited you for meals." Zhang Xi remembered his wife often brought back leftovers from next door, and he'd benefited too.
"I don't know. A really fierce woman came to her house, seems to be her sister."
Zhang Xi snorted. "I told you long ago not to hang around with those people. You think they pity you? They look down on you! It's that, that thing people often talk about, right, a sense of superiority. She looks at you and feels superior, you know?"
"Is that so?" Li Juan was somewhat doubtful. Turning to see her son's flushed face, she grew anxious again. "But... but Xiaoli is sick now. What do we do? There's no money at home..." She didn't dare say the money had been lost by Zhang Xi gambling, and just started crying again.
Zhang Xi glanced impatiently at Zhang Xiaoli. "No money? Don't you know how to borrow? Stop crying here. If you disturb my sleep again, I'll beat you to death!"
Li Juan shut her mouth.
Borrow? Where from? She'd borrowed from all her colleagues and hadn't paid back a cent. The neighbors weren't on good terms with her because of Zhang Xi. Now, the only neighbor willing to help her, Fang Wanwan, had a fierce woman at her place.
Seeing her son's fever wouldn't break, Li Juan was out of options. She could only cautiously knock on the neighbor's door again.
Fang Wanwan had already gone to work. Fang Zaolao was tidying up at home, her mind troubled. Would her sister really die? She wanted to tell their dad, but he had disappeared somewhere.
Just then, the door was knocked. Fang Zaolao opened it to find the woman with the bitter face standing outside.
"Get lost."
She tried to close the door directly, but Li Juan quickly stopped her, forcing a smile uglier than crying. "Um, your surname is Fang too, right? Miss Fang, I'm Fang Wanwan's neighbor. I helped her a lot when she first moved in."
Fang Zaolao looked at her. In the dream, she had helped, but she'd also taken plenty. Her foolish sister had given her many things. But looking at Li Juan's expression and thinking about how she could kill the only person willing to help her, a thought arose in Fang Zaolao's mind.
"Oh? Is that so."
Seeing the atmosphere soften a bit, Li Juan quickly nodded. "Yes, Wanwan and I are very close. My son always calls her sister."
"And then?" Fang Zaolao looked at her, several times wanting to slap her, but she held back.
Li Juan smiled unnaturally. "Our family is having difficulties. My son is sick now, and I wanted to borrow some money to take him to the doctor... Um, is Wanwan not home?"
d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
