Sun Xiaomei pursed her lips. Watching Lin Zhou counting the money, and then thinking about the bride price she had received, she felt much more at ease.
Her parents had taken more than half of it, but they had left some for her, which wasn't bad. Today, while on stage, she had specifically looked down at Fang Zhiyi and Chen Xuan in the audience. Seeing the envy and jealousy written all over their faces, she couldn't even describe how happy she felt.
"Where are we going for our honeymoon?" Sun Xiaomei asked.
Lin Zhou frowned. "Why travel? It's tiring and expensive."
"Everyone else goes traveling! How can you say that?"
Lin Zhou glanced at her, his eyes darting around evasively. "Let's talk about it tomorrow. I'm too tired today." As he spoke, he stuffed the counted money under his pillow.
Sun Xiaomei noticed this action and felt a flash of unhappiness.
The night passed without another word.
Early the next morning, Father Lin, who had specially prepared breakfast, was waiting for his son and daughter-in-law to eat. However, only Lin Zhou appeared; Sun Xiaomei sat on the sofa with a gloomy expression.
"What's wrong here?" Father Lin asked.
Lin Zhou looked at Sun Xiaomei, also baffled. He wasn't quite sure himself; he had woken up to find Sun Xiaomei sitting by the bed looking upset, refusing to say anything when asked.
Sun Xiaomei was just getting angrier the more she thought about Lin Zhou refusing the trip. She had given so much for him, even married him, yet he wasn't even willing to go on a honeymoon!
Lin Zhou eventually called her over to eat.
Sun Xiaomei turned her face away.
Father Lin looked displeased. In his view, marrying into their family meant she was one of them. "Little Zhou, discipline your wife properly. Who is she showing that attitude to early in the morning?" He stood up and walked out of the house.
"What are you doing?" Lin Zhou couldn't hold back either. The dust had settled on the wedding, and he actually had something important to discuss with Sun Xiaomei today.
"You don't understand me at all!" Sun Xiaomei suddenly shouted, tears bursting from her eyes.
Lin Zhou frowned. "How can I understand if you don't tell me? You've been unhappy since you got out of bed."
"True understanding doesn't require words!"
"I only understand if you say it."
"You should understand even if I don't say it!" Sun Xiaomei felt incredibly aggrieved. "You've changed. You changed as soon as we got married."
Lin Zhou felt like he was on the verge of a breakdown. Why was this woman so weird? Did she reveal her true form the moment they got married?
"Fine, fine, whatever you say is right. I need to tell you something." Lin Zhou deliberately glanced at the door.
Sun Xiaomei turned her head away in a huff.
Lin Zhou stopped caring about niceties and reached out his hand directly. "Give me the bride price."
"Why?" Sun Xiaomei was surprised.
"Let me ask you, are you married to me?" Lin Zhou said. Seeing Sun Xiaomei remain silent, he continued, "Yours is mine, and mine is yours. Give me the money, I'll keep it for you. If you need it later, I'll give it to you."
Sun Xiaomei got agitated. "No way!"
"Why are you so selfish? We are a family now; we have to consider the whole household," Lin Zhou said. "Can't you stop just thinking about yourself?"
Sun Xiaomei was caught off guard by his words. "I'm selfish?"
Lin Zhou dropped the act. "I'll tell you the truth. That money was borrowed. It has to be repaid."
"What?" Sun Xiaomei was completely shocked. "Borrowed?"
Lin Zhou looked at her without speaking. If he cared about saving face in front of outsiders, Sun Xiaomei was no longer an outsider, so there was no need for that. "Borrowed. You are my wife, so you have to bear the debt too."
"You, you..." Sun Xiaomei was dumbfounded. The image of Lin Zhou in her heart cracked completely.
"It's just over three hundred thousand. I'll do a few projects with my good big brother later and earn it back easily. Give it to me first."
Lin Zhou was confident now. Fang Zhiyi's words that day made some sense. Although Fang had only suggested this method, Lin Zhou had thought it through further. Sun Xiaomei had a job and her family's financial condition was decent. Couldn't he ask her to help repay the money he got from mortgaging the house earlier?
This was a joint marital debt!
Little Hei had come specifically early to watch, and ended up seeing something exciting. This "perfect match" of a couple accused each other, then dug up old grudges, going from money to looks, and from looks to character, until both were too exhausted to continue.
Sun Xiaomei held her head; she really hadn't expected to fall so easily into such a huge pit!
And Lin Zhou, realizing the bride price had been taken by the Sun family, also panicked and immediately told Sun Xiaomei to go get it back.
His thoughts returned to that day.
"I can't borrow that much money."
Fang Zhiyi had looked like he wanted to say something but stopped, simply sighing heavily.
"Good brother, help me think of a way. You have many friends, borrow some for me." Even at that moment, he was thinking of taking advantage of Fang Zhiyi.
Fang Zhiyi shook his head. "I can't borrow anymore either. You know my situation, I owe money everywhere..." As he spoke, he showed Lin Zhou the lending platforms on his phone, which he had carefully selected.
Lin Zhou immediately had an idea. He just needed to borrow it for a few days and then pay it back, right?
So he reached out and took Fang Zhiyi's phone, searching accordingly.
During the process, when it wasn't enough, he "coincidentally" found contacts like "AAA Low Interest Loans" and "AAA Fast Lending Brother Li" in Fang Zhiyi's contact list, and immediately took those numbers too.
As luck would have it, by scraping funds from here and there, he managed to gather exactly three hundred and eighty thousand, not a penny more, not a penny less.
But now you tell me you gave it to your family?
Yes, Sun Xiaomei still hid the fact that she had some money in hand.
"Anyway, divorce is impossible. Divorcing right after getting married? Don't you find it shameful? Think about those people watching our joke," Lin Zhou said.
Sun Xiaomei's face also turned ugly. She knew her family; they were vampires. Money that went into their pockets would never come out, especially since she had a younger brother.
The two looked at each other, both feeling that their partner was incredibly strange.
Lin Zhou's tone softened a bit. "It's all Fang Zhiyi's fault. It was his idea, otherwise I wouldn't owe so much money."
Hearing Fang Zhiyi's name, Sun Xiaomei said hatefully, "He is just jealous! I told you not to hang out with him! What do we do now?"
"Can you ask your family for it, or borrow from someone?"
Sun Xiaomei thought of her best friend and immediately took out her phone to call. However, as soon as she mentioned the need to borrow money, Chen Xuan sounded troubled. "Xiaomei, I don't have any money left..."
"How is that possible?" Sun Xiaomei remembered that Chen Xuan was very good at saving money.
"Well, you know that Fang Zhiyi, right? He suddenly told me about a project that makes a lot of money. I thought what he said sounded pretty good, so I... invested. I have two thousand left for emergencies, do you want it?"
"Fang Zhiyi again!"
Listening from the side, Lin Zhou's eyebrows were about to stand on end. "She was scammed! Where would Fang Zhiyi get a project now!"
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."
Cheng's father told him he was getting remarried—to a wealthy woman. Cao Cheng realized his time had finally come: he was about to become a second-generation rich kid. Sure, it might be a watered-down version, but hey, at least he'd have status now, right? The wealthy woman also had four daughters!! Which meant, starting today, Cao Cheng gained four stunning older sisters?? But that wasn't even the whole story... "My name is Cao Cheng—'Cheng' as in 'honest, smooth-talking gentleman'!"
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.
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
