Business Management

The day I decided not to get married, Chen Shuo was at the market buying a bass.

He sent me a photo and asked, “This one’s nine hundred grams.

Too big?

Mum said you liked it steamed.”

I stared at the fish lying in its plastic basket for ten or fifteen seconds, then replied, “Chen Shuo, let’s not register our marriage next week.”

He probably thought I was stressed about the wedding again.

After a while, he replied, “Sure.

We can push it back.

You’ve been busy with your project lately anyway, haven’t you?”

I said, “I don’t mean push it back.”

There was nothing from him for two minutes.

“What do you mean?”

I put my phone facedown on my desk and didn’t answer.

At 4:27 that afternoon, I was sitting in a windowless meeting room with a final account for a construction project worth forty-seven million yuan spread out before me.

The printer kept spitting out paper next door.

The air vent hummed overhead.

My supervisor, Wei, was arguing with the contractor’s people over a hundred and seventy thousand yuan in additional works claims.

Everything was ordinary.

So ordinary it hardly seemed like the afternoon a woman had decided to cancel her wedding.

No one had been caught cheating.

There had been no slap, no other woman, no sudden revelation of anyone’s true colours.

Chen Shuo hadn’t betrayed me.

He was, by most standards, a decent man.

He didn’t smoke, didn’t throw money around, wasn’t violent, and had no interest in going out for what men called “a night with the boys.”

If you drew up a job specification for a suitable husband, he’d score eighty-five out of a hundred.

So everyone asked me, “Then why on earth won’t you marry him?”

That turned out to be the hardest question to answer.

Because when an adult truly wants to leave a relationship, there often isn’t one devastating piece of evidence against the other person.

Just one small bill after another.

And suddenly you realise that, for seven years, every one of those bills has had your name on it.

On the first day after my wealthy birth family found me, my biological parents gave me a warning.

“Now that you’re back, don’t go thinking you can compete with Nian for anything.”

I surveyed the family’s opening show of hostility, smiled, and pulled out an employment contract.

“I think you two have misunderstood something: a parent-child relationship is a legal fact.”

“But asking me to play the sweet, obedient daughter while serving as your adopted daughter’s stepping stone would qualify as premium emotional labor.”

“It’ll cost extra.”

During an online meeting, the new intern accidentally turned on her camera.

Just as I was about to remind her, her boyfriend appeared on screen.

Oh, isn’t that my husband who’s been away on a business trip for a week?

Chapter 0

I am the most low-maintenance Canary in the Shanghai Circle’s elite social scene.

On the surface, I have no interest in causing trouble; in reality, I am single-mindedly focused on making money.

Everything the Big Boss gives me, I liquidate.

Stocks, bonds, and physical investments-I let the money breed more money, compounding the interest.

I secretly invested in his rival’s company and even took the opportunity to acquire shares in the Big Boss’s own firm.

On the day the truth finally came out, the Big Boss looked at my thick stack of asset reports and let out a cold laugh.

“Other Canaries want to climb the social ladder and take a seat at the table,” he said. “You, on the other hand, want to usurp the throne.”

On the day Song Cheng and I got married, his ex-girlfriend showed up in a wedding dress to steal him away.

“Song Cheng, I’m only going to be this brave once in my life. Are you coming with me or not?”

I looked at the panic all over Song Cheng’s face and was just about to marvel that this kind of ridiculous soap-opera scene was actually happening to me.

Then Song Cheng grabbed the emcee’s microphone and shouted, “Who the hell are you? Did you wander onto the wrong set?

“Mess with my wedding again, and I’ll punch your left eye into your right socket.”

In my second year at the army brothel, I became pregnant.

Every soldier who had ever entered my tent fought to claim the child as his own.

Chen Shitou had come to me only once, yet he dropped to his knees and begged, “Miss Yang, I’m about to go into battle with the vanguard. My parents have no child but me. I need to leave them something to remember me by.”

Later, I went to his hometown and met two of the kindest parents in the world.

Li Xiuyi was my fiancé.

Yet, at his own birthday banquet, he announced that he was marrying another woman.

Everyone turned to look at me, their eyes filled with uncertainty.

Amidst the awkward atmosphere, I was the first to start clapping.

I even presented a ring as a blessing.

“I wish you a long and happy marriage, and may you be blessed with a child soon.”

The Sect Cannot Disband Today I was toiling away in the Accounts Office until the hour of the rat when a crisp notification suddenly rang out overhead.

“Ding! Detecting the imminent and simultaneous start of ‘The Stand-in Junior Sister’s Bitter Love,’ ‘The Yandere Junior Sister’s Imprisonment,’ ‘The Amnesiac Junior Sister’s Wife-Chasing Anguish Arc,’ and ‘The Salted Fish Junior Sister’s Flat Life.’

If no intervention occurs, the Guiyuan Sect will suffer a total collapse of its reputation due to a series of Love-Struck Mind incidents in three hundred days.

Its assets will be liquidated, and it will officially go bankrupt.” I looked down at the bright red debt of 1.03 million High-grade Spirit Stones recorded in the ledger.

Closing the book, I seriously wondered for the first time if the Heavenly Dao was specifically out to get me.

I was a terrible stickler for the truth.

When my husband returned from war, he brought a woman home.

The moment she saw me, she dropped to her knees and declared that she wanted to marry the marquis, even if she could only be his concubine.

I said nothing at the time.

But after tossing and turning until midnight, I could bear it no longer and knocked on her door.

My husband wasn’t the marquis.

The marquis in this household was my widowed father-in-law; my husband was only his third son, born to a concubine.

Her dimming eyes suddenly lit up at the word widowed.

I am the wealthiest imperial merchant in Huizhou.

On the day of my coming-of-age ceremony, a man came to claim me as his bride, saying, “Miss Jin, I’m afraid you cannot safeguard your vast fortune alone.”

Before I could answer, dozens of neighbors charged out brandishing clubs.

“You think you can force a Huizhou girl into marriage? Dream on!”