Chapter 70
Lin Zhiqiao froze completely, his entire mind filled with just two words—married and sister-in-law.
The people at the evaluation venue froze with him, as did the many viewers squatting in the livestream rooms.
‘…Huh?’
‘Holy shit, either nothing happens or it drops a world-shaking mega gossip bomb [my jaw just hit the floor.jpg]’
‘Baby Li is actually married? I refuse to accept this, wuwuwu, how did my precious baby already get snatched up by some damn man [pounding the floor and crying.jpg]’
‘No, wait, so Baby Li is the twins’ sister-in-law? Are the twins seriously into their own sister-in-law now [you rich families really know how to play.jpg]’
‘Good lord, real-life sister-in-law fiction [getting increasingly excited.jpg]’
‘Is no one finding this weird? If he’s already married, how is he still here participating in a trainee survival show? Isn’t that against the rules?’
‘So… is this a scandal now?’
‘Not really, right? I just checked. Neither Idol Star Dream nor Mingguang Entertainment’s trainee rules explicitly say married people aren’t allowed, and Zhou Zili never claimed he was single and unmarried either.’
‘Why do I feel like being married actually makes this even better? I’m even more excited now, cough cough [I’ll admit I’m a freak first.jpg]’
‘Baby Li’s husband is called Heng Yuan? Why does that name sound kind of familiar…’
Ji Ran, standing to the side, was equally stunned.
“No wonder…” he muttered softly, unable to hide the shock in his tone.
Cheng Xia didn’t catch it clearly. “No wonder what?”
Ji Ran glanced at Lin Zhiqiao, then leaned toward Cheng Xia and lowered his voice. “No wonder I thought Zhou Zili looked a little familiar. I saw him once before at a banquet held by the Heng family.”
But only that one time. Not long after that banquet, news came out that Heng Yuan had passed away, and Zhou Zili—who had only just married into the Heng family not long before—also vanished from the sight of high society like a fleeting bloom.
‘Heng Yuan? Isn’t that the Heng family’s eldest son who’d been in a vegetative state for ten years?’
‘I remember now. Didn’t the Heng family find a bride for Heng Yuan before, as a good-luck marriage? They said her birth chart matched his, and if he married her there was hope he’d wake up or something.’
‘Wasn’t that on trending searches back then too? I never thought it was actually Baby Li… [still frozen.jpg]’
‘But didn’t Heng Yuan still die in the end? So the good-luck marriage failed?’
‘This just shows that feudal superstition is useless. It’s all a scam anyway [shrug.jpg]’
‘So… does that mean Baby Li is actually single now? [I’m standing back up again.jpg]’
‘Not single. Widowed.’
‘Alright, alright, so Baby Li is a beautiful young widower who married early and lost his husband at a young age, is that it? This setting is kinda delicious [I’m even more into it now hehe.jpg]’
It took Lin Zhiqiao a long time to finally digest this earth-shaking piece of gossip.
[Zhou Zili didn’t come from a good family. Both his parents died pretty early, and there were still younger siblings at home. Even while studying, he often worked part-time jobs to make money.]
[At fifteen, while working part-time at a café, he was spotted by an agent from Mingguang Entertainment, and that’s how he signed on as a trainee.]
[Just when his family’s situation had started to improve a little, an accident suddenly struck—his younger sister was diagnosed with a serious illness and needed a huge amount of treatment money, something he absolutely couldn’t afford at the time.]
[That was when the Heng family found him and offered him a deal: as long as he married Heng Yuan, for every extra year Heng Yuan stayed alive, the Heng family would pay him one million a year.]
At the side, Ji Ran’s mouth twitched, and he couldn’t help muttering under his breath, “Only one million a year? Who are they fooling? Are they treating him like some beggar because they thought he didn’t know the market rate?”
Cheng Xia fell silent for a long moment, then couldn’t help asking, “There’s even a market rate for this?”
“Of course there is. Contract marriages usually start at a million a month. For a special case like Heng Yuan…” Ji Ran lifted a hand and gestured. “At the very least, triple that.”
‘If someone else said this I might not believe it, but this is Young Master Ji saying it [spiraling into the sky with shock.jpg]’
‘Good lord. One million a month times three means three million a month, thirty-six million a year, but the Heng family only gave my Baby Li one million a year? That’s one-thirty-sixth of the market rate??’
‘After Zhou Zili married in, Heng Yuan didn’t even last a full year before dying. Maybe he didn’t even get the full one million.’
‘Wait, if it didn’t make it to a full year, could it be that he didn’t get a single cent…’
Lin Zhiqiao had no idea what kind of uproar he had stirred up around him.
[After Heng Yuan died, the original contract became void. Zhou Zili received the one million the Heng family had promised, then moved out of the Heng family home and continued living alone.]
[But one million was nowhere near enough to cover his younger sister’s treatment, so Zhou Zili could only keep being a trainee and keep trying to earn money for her medical expenses.]
[As for Heng Yang and Heng Xing, the twins always believed that Zhou Zili married Heng Yuan for the Heng family’s money, so they hated him very much and would seize any chance they could to trip him up.]
[Verbal humiliation and passive-aggressive mockery were the mild stuff. Heng Yang and Heng Xing often made Zhou Zili lose face in all kinds of situations, putting him on the spot and tormenting him in every way they could…]
[Because of the Heng family, and because he felt he really had taken their money, Zhou Zili could only endure it silently and didn’t dare fight back. It wasn’t until after he moved out that he finally got free from the twins’ malicious harassment.]
[Until they met again on this survival show—]
Lin Zhiqiao was furious: [No, seriously, are the twins sick in the head? Your Heng family were the ones who went to find Zhou Zili in the first place! Your Heng family were the ones begging for help! Is this how you treat someone when you’re asking them for a favor?!]
‘Fuck fuck fuck, looking at it this way, there really isn’t a single decent person in the Heng family.’
‘I’m actually laughing. He married a comatose man for a good-luck marriage and only got one million at most—and that was an offer the Heng family made themselves. And that counts as coveting the Heng family fortune? Aren’t you supposed to be rich? How poor are you if your whole family fortune is just one million???’
‘This whole family has brain damage. I’m starting to suspect Heng Yuan died because his family pissed him to death [eye roll.jpg]’
‘So where exactly did Baby Li go? I’m so worried ahhh.’
Lin Zhiqiao was thinking about that too.
He opened several more useless mini-gossip blind boxes in a row, and finally the gossip blind box came through for once—
[After Zhou Zili left the Heng family, the twins were overjoyed at first, but slowly they started feeling bored and empty again.]
[Fuck fuck fuck, they felt bored because they lost someone to bully? What kind of idiots are they ahhh!]
[Could the twins and Baby Li’s plotline be one of those where they bully him and bully him until they suddenly realize how good he is, then fall for him and enter crematorium-chasing-wife mode? The kind where they say they didn’t understand love before and thought liking someone meant bullying them and trying to get their attention?]
Lin Zhiqiao was disgusted by his own guess.
But considering how every time the twins got close to Zhou Zili, they would unconsciously make overly intimate and ambiguous moves toward him—moves that perhaps even they themselves hadn’t noticed…
He felt that his guess was eighty to ninety percent right.
[Because they were empty and bored, the twins signed up for the survival show to pass the time. Who would’ve thought they’d run into Zhou Zili here too.]
[They loved seeing Zhou Zili all anxious and panicked. They knew this evaluation was very important to him, so they deliberately waited until right when the evaluation was about to begin and lied to him, saying that his younger sister in the hospital wasn’t doing too well.]
[Zhou Zili called his sister several times and no one answered. He was frantic, and right now he’s trying to hail a car to rush to the hospital.]
Now that he had finally gotten the information he wanted, Lin Zhiqiao shot to the window and looked toward the base’s front gate.
At the empty gate stood a lone figure.
It was none other than Zhou Zili, who had disappeared.
—Thank god, thank god. The base was in such a remote place that it was hard to get a taxi, so Zhou Zili still hadn’t managed to leave yet.
There wasn’t even time to throw the twins a look. Lin Zhiqiao hurried downstairs in a panic and ran straight for the front gate.
No wonder the twins had been standing by the window the whole time. So they had been watching Zhou Zili all along, treating him like some kind of joke.
That was way too much!
Maybe because he was so angry, Lin Zhiqiao ran especially fast.
From far away, he saw a car stop at the gate. Zhou Zili hurried forward two steps, pulled open the door, and was just about to get in.
Lin Zhiqiao shouted at the top of his lungs, “Zhou Zili!”
The figure in the distance paused slightly, as if hesitating for a moment.
Lin Zhiqiao hurriedly shouted again, “Wait! Don’t get in yet! Your sister is fine!!!”
