"Grandpa, I want Mu Rong Shu kicked out of the Yan family!" Yan Wan was screaming at Yan Yue in a very shameless and spoilt manner. "She caused me to lose my boyfriend and humiliated us like this in front of the Long Chuan Hotel! We can't let her get away with this! Don't allow her to come bak in the future!"
Yan Yue stared at her as if she had gone mad. "Are you insane?"
"What's that supposed to mean? You saw what happened!"
"Yes, and that's why I'm wondering if you're insane." Yan Yue was rubbing his forehead and shaking his head, wondering how delusional his granddaughter could be. Mu Rong Shu did nothing. She and her husband were invited to have dinner by Tang Li, who wanted to host them and show his hospitality in return for them selling to him such a valuable piece of relic. It had nothing to do with Mu Rong Shu wanting to humiliate Yan Wan.
If anything, Yan Wan getting dumped by Liu Zhang Feng was entirely her fault. If she hadn't provoked Mu Rong Shu and pulled all those stunts such as driving them out of her house, blocking their phone numbers on his phone, as well as harass and insult the Zhao couple, then Liu Zhang Feng wouldn't have been so quick to sever ties with them.
He said as much, but Yan Wan shook her head stubbornly.
"Are you crazy, grandpa? How can that trash know Tang Li? It's obvious that Mu Rong Shu used the finances of the Mu Rong family to hire Mr. Tang and requested him to put on an act! All so they can humiliate me!"
"You think people have nothing to do, ah? That they have so much money to waste on such nonsense?" Yan Yue couldn't help but be exasperated.
"Well, the Mu Rong family certainly has the money to waste on such thing," Ru Feng pointed out.
Yan Yue could only bury his face in his palm. These idiots were delusional. The truth had literally unfolded before their eyes – Tang Li treated me with utmost respect and deferred to me – yet they continued to deny reality. They were just like Donald Trump supporters, unable to accept that he had lost the election and bought his lies that the voting process had been rigged and that he had been cheated out of his presidential victory.
Of course if he won, it was legal and fair, but if he lost, then he had been cheated and the voting process was corrupted, right?
The Yan Wan family trio was similarly deluded. They just couldn't accept that the formerly "trash" son-in-law of the Mu Rong family was actually such a major figure. Now that Yan Yue thought about it, it made sense. Mu Rong Lao was such a shrewd and cunning fellow. Why the hell would he ever allow his most precious granddaughter – one he had personally raised by himself when her parents pased away – to marry a supposed trash? That made no sense and went contrary to everything Yan Yue knew about the clever old man.
Yeah, Zhao Huan Shi couldn't possible be a wasteful, useless person. There must be a reason why Mu Rong Lao was willing to allow me to marry his beloved granddaughter. Well, Yan Yue and the Yan family had no idea that I was from the Zhao family, but even if they did, they would have known I was kicked out of the Zhao family. Not that it mattered. If they only knew that I made a lot of money by trading in relics and artifacts from mysterious tombs…
But it was too late.
Yan Yue glared at the trio. "From today onward, none of you are to provoke and find trouble with Zhao Huan Shi and Mu Rong Shu. If anyone dares to disturb them, then I will immediately expel them from the Yan family. Is that understood?"
"WHAT?!" Yan Wan yelled. "You can't do that!"
"If you would just open your eyes and accept reality, you can see why I decide on this course of action," Yan Yue declared coldly. "Zhao Huan Shi is someone we can't afford to offend."
"Don't you get it, grandpa? His relationship with Tang Li is fake! The Mu Rong family must have hired him to put on an act!"
"Use your brain," Yan Yue retorted angrily. "Do you think Tang Li is the type of person to be bought? Also, is Tang Li in such desperate need of money that he would throw away his dignity for someone from another city?"
Not only that, he was aware that the Mu Rong family wasn't that big of a figure in Cheng Shi City. Yes, they had powerful influence and connections in the underworld, but officially they weren't supposed to make any waves in the public. Outwardly, they were considered a second class family. Moreover, Tang Li was practically king of Jiang Nan City. He had no reason to give the Mu Rong family face. Plus, from his interaction with me, Yan Yue could tell that our relationship wasn't a simple one. I was clearly his benefactor.
No, there was something amiss in all this. Yan Yue realized that I might just be a hidden dragon who concealed my true power.
"What did they say, humility is a virtue?" he mumbled to himself.
"What humility?" Yan Wan sneered. "Chinese culture is all about face! Humility is useless! If you are Chinese, you must brag and show off, to gain face! Losing face is the worst thing that can happen to a Chinese!"
"DON'T YOU DARE MISREPRESENT CHINESE CULTURE!!!" Yan Yue roared, unable to control his fury anymore. "You've been reading way too many CEO, son-in-law and cultivation stories! That is NOT Chinese culture at all! Who told you that?!"
"But…but all the Chinese webnovels I read always talk about face, face and face…"
"Oh, shut up! Go read proper Chinese stories! Instead of the trashy cultivation stories you read online, go read Jin Yong/Louis Cha's wuxa novels! Read paperback stories published by official companies, not just the countless of nonsensical stories published online on Yue Wen websites!"
Yan Yue had enough. All these face-slapping webnovels were giving Chinese culture a bad name. Thanks to that, all the foreigners reading the translated versions believed that all Chinese were arrogant braggarts, "courting death" and only cared about face. That wasn't true at all. The authors loved to exaggerate those facets, probably because most of them hadn't actually gone out much and were thus unfamiliar with how outside society actually worked, or how real people behaved. Admittedly, you did meet a few vile people in real life, but when every single character in the story acted like morons and their single life goal revolved around making the protagonist's life difficult and bullying him for no reason, then there was a problem.
"Anyway, none of you are to provoke or offend Zhao Huan Shi and Mu Rong Shu! Or I'll disown you! Is that understood?"
Neither daughter-in-law nor granddaughter understood it, but Yan Yang nodded. The man, like his father, had noticed how Tang Li was so respectful toward the so-called trash, and realized that all the rumors were mistaken. He had seen my influence and status for himself, so how could he continue to believe all the dumb rumors that he heard secondhand? Come to think of it, didn't he hear most of that nonsensical rumors about my being useless and trash from his daughter?
The same daughter who was behaving like an idiot and refusing to accept reality right now?
After that, they went home, but Yan Wan wasn't satisfied.
"We can't let that trash couple get away with this!" She insisted.
"You heard what your grandfather said," Yan Yang said sternly. Yan Wan blanched at that. Later, while he went to his room, Yan Wan pulled her mother aside.
"Mom! Help me! Dad and grandpa refuse to help me. Trash will always be trash! Without Mu Rong Shu, that Zhao Huan Shi is NOTHING! I don't understand why they are so afraid of that trash!"
Because I wasn't trash? Why did you continue to insist that I was one? Was this one of those so-called alternate facts and because it suited your own narrative?
"Don't worry, mom is on your side." Ru Feng consoled her daughter. "What do you plan to do?"
"I…I don't know." Yan Wan thought for a while. Then she brightened up. "I know! I can ask around and see if I can get some connections with the underworld. I'll hire some thugs from the secret societies and have them kidnap Cousin Shu."
"Uh…what?" Ru Feng stared at her in puzzlement. "This is the underworld you're talking abut, you know? Your cousin? What if she gets raped or killed?"
"That's exactly what I want to happen! I want Mu Rong Shu to be ruined! To be defiled! And that trash Zhao Huan Shi…I want him DEAD! I don't care how much I'll have to pay, I will ask them to kill him! Since they are the underworld, they should know how to make people disappear without alerting the law. And Mu Rong Shu can live out the rest of her life in shame and regret!"
Yan Wan began laughing hysterically. Ru Feng stared at her in fear, unable to understand how the daughter she had raised for over twenty years had suddenly gone psychotic and insane. Killing her cousin-in-law and destroying her cousin…how the hell did she even end up attempting such atrocities? Normal people didn't go to such extreme lengths…
"I get that you have a grudge with your cousin, but why do you want to go so far?!"
"Because she caused me to lose face and get dumped by my boyfriend!"
Ru Feng buried her face in her palm. Way to blow things out of proportion. While she was angry at her niece for causing her daughter, and consequently the family, to lose face, she wasn't so psychotic and deranged to jump to extreme measures like hiring underworld gangsters and thugs to kidnap her own niece, rape her and murder her husband.
This was criminal territory, and even without thinking about crimes or the law, it just simply wasn't something sane people would resort to.
Even if they did the whole "eye for an eye" thing, all Mu Rong Shu did at worst was cause them to lose face. So Ru Feng simply thought of revenge as embarrassing her and making her lose face. Hiring someone to kidnap and rape her, and murder her husband? What the hell? How did Yan Wan even think of such things!?
"Don't do anything stupid," she told her daughter with a sigh. "Your mother will help you think of something. I'll talk to some friends, see if we can set up another banquet. We'll get you a new, richer and more handsome boyfriend, then you can taunt Mu Rong Shu and thank her for breaking you up with Liu Zhang Feng. But just calm down for now, okay?"
Yan Wan bristled, but she knew it was useless to argue. So she simply nodded for now.
"All right, your daughter will listen to you, mom."
"Good."
The next day, when Yan Wan appeared to have calmed down, she then approached her mother to borrow money.
"Can I borrow 30,000 yuan?" she asked. Ru Feng was surprised.
"What for?"
"Now that Liu Zhang Feng has broken up with me, I need some money to…buy some clothes."
"Okay." Ru Feng didn't suspect a thing and immediately transferred the thirty thousand yuan into her daughter's account. Yan Wan then left, claiming that she was going to shop.
However, she didn't go to a shopping mall. Instead, she went to an alleyway where one of her former classmates waited.
"Oh, Yan Wan, it's been a while. Why do you want to meet?"
"Hei She Hui," Yan Wan greeted her former classmate. "I heard that you're involved with Jiang Nan City's underworld. I was hoping you can introduce me to somebody…"