Often, people are like this. After living a life of plenty, they tend to stop striving. The so-called pursuit of success is no more than indulging in lustful fantasies once their basic needs are met.
If this conversation had taken place twenty years ago, when Gong Zheng was a ruthless, penniless young man, had a woman appeared before him, he would likely have simply sold her to a brothel. There would have been no love, no marriage, no children.
Material wealth shapes the contours of emotion.
As these people grow wealthy, some of those who gained their riches through cunning tactics begin to recapture their conscience. They selectively bestow their kind-heartedness upon a select few, such as their kin or lovers.
So even a despicable villain can be seen as a loving father in the eyes of his child. There's no contradiction between these two identities coexisting in the same person.
