Chapter 11

Just as I sent my message, Gu Siyin dropped a voice note:

“Sorry, Brother Che, I was just so happy to get your gift that I couldn’t help crying.”

Our two messages stacked together, and the group chat went eerily quiet.

Young Master Zhao was the first to break the silence: “What do you mean?”

I grinned.

Nidie: “Come on, weren’t you just making a scene? How come you suddenly don’t understand plain language?”

Nidie: “I told you to read more books, but you insisted on being a simp. Now look, when you go home for New Year, everyone else performs their talents, and you get to perform sitting at the dog table.”

The group chat, with its twenty or thirty people, went dead silent again-a sure sign the storm was coming.

I rolled over and fished out a few bags of chips from the coffee table.

Getting grossed out by my boyfriend and a manipulative girl teaming up was bad enough, but now even random cats and dogs were jumping in to stir things up?

Ever since Lu Che and I went public, I’d never brought up my family background, and Lu Che didn’t care much either. Naturally, he still had no idea I was the daughter of the Meng Family.

I always thought love was about two people connecting, nothing else mattered. Who could’ve guessed his friends would one day come after my identity, shouting “Gold Digger” at the top of their lungs.

Just a Pink Diamond worth a million, and they call me a Gold Digger?

I sneered, fingers flying across the screen.

Nidie: “Young Master Zhao, why aren’t you answering your daddy? Is the signal bad in your grave?”

Nidie: “Gu Siyin, what do you mean you couldn’t help it? Are you not going to survive the night?”

Nidie: “Young Master Zhao, I am a Gold Digger, but I’m not digging for money-I’m digging for the pig brain you dropped on Chinese soil when you ascended to heaven.”

Young Master Zhao was furious, snapping back at me.

We went from personal attacks to cursing each other’s whole families, from household registries to family trees, and even the dogs raised at the east end of our ancestors’ villages weren’t spared.

Eventually, he got bored of typing and started sending a bunch of 60-second voice messages, but I had zero intention of listening.

You could see it coming-there wouldn’t be a single decent word in there.

Besides, just like Song Zhimeng, his vocabulary for our country’s lesser-known linguistic heritage was seriously lacking. Listening to him talk was just boring.

I replied directly: “Nice teeth. My doorstep is missing a dog. Please report for work tomorrow.”

Young Master Zhao lost it.

By the thirtieth time he sent “What the hell are you,” I’d had enough and decided to teach him something new.

Nidie: “Wherever I die becomes your ancestral grave. So, what do you think I am?”

Young Master Zhao: “Bitch!”

Nidie: “Wrong answer. Here’s fifty cents. Go shake it out in front of the supermarket until you get it, then come back and talk.”

I hit send, fired off a transfer to the designated user, then quit WeChat and shut off my phone.

Unplug the internet, and all grudges can go to hell for now.

Seriously, who has time to tangle with a simp they’ve never even met? I’ve got a tough fight tomorrow.

Thinking of Gu Siyin and Lu Che being so timid and silent the whole time, I sighed, wrapped myself tighter in my blanket, and rolled over in bed.

I can’t wait to see the scene where both of them get carted away by an ambulance…