CH 3

Although sister Wang was not an easy person to fool, she wasn’t the type to pry into every detail.

Jiang Tang didn’t answer, so she didn’t ask any further.

The male protagonist may have had a handsome appearance, but in Jiang Rao’s nightmares, he was abnormal and seemed to have lost his mind.

When he entered the venue, she noticed that he didn’t immediately spot her. Instead, his line of sight was blocked by numerous men and women rushing towards him. Jiang Rao naturally did not take the initiative to actively seek out communication with him about their marriage.

The small piece of steak and pile of greens she had for lunch had long been digested in her stomach. Her delicate and malnourished body soon made her feel dizzy and anemic while chatting with sister Wang.

After greeting sister Wang, she stood up and walked to the corner of the venue. Unexpectedly, after picking up five or six small pastries from the plate in a row, just as she faced the wall and ate a small piece of cake, she heard a steady clattering sound of leather shoes or high heels hitting the ground from behind her.

The sound was irregular and not urgent. Furthermore, it stopped at a certain distance from her. Jiang Rao concluded that the group’s target was not her, but the long sofa closest to her.

Adhering to the attitude of not getting involved in others’ business, Jiang Rao did not turn around to see who the person was.

As she raised her fork to continue eating, a very familiar voice suddenly came from the sofa.

“You guys go ahead and have fun. Don’t worry about me.”

The man’s voice was very gentle, but Jiang Rao’s body shook violently.

She turned her head slightly to glance behind her with the corner of her eye, and saw that the one sitting in the middle of the sofa was the male protagonist with his face looking just like a gentle scum*.

Leaving at this moment was clearly not a wise move, as no matter which side she chose, she had to pass by the sofa where the male lead and his group were sitting.

Looking at the food on her plate and after some consideration, she dug out a large piece of tiramisu and put it in her mouth, pretending to be immersed in the delicacy without noticing the presence of those people.

After a while, many of the people on the sofa behind her had already left, leaving only a few close friends of Li Jueyan who were still lingering around him.

“Young Master Li, you rarely come to these kinds of events. Are you here to hunt for beauties today?”

“Just taking a look.”

“Young Master Li liked pure and innocent women. ‘The Legend of Concubine Yun’ was a small production and they didn’t expect it to be so successful. So, most of the cast were newcomers, except for the main leads. Among those newcomers, many of the supporting actresses not only looked innocent, but were also pure in real life, some of them had never even been in a relationship before!”

“What does it have to do with me?”

The person being scolded didn’t show any embarrassment on his face from beginning to end, but he lost the desire to speak and couldn’t help but look around with his eyes.

As he looked around, he suddenly noticed a woman in a white dress not far from their dining table, who they had ignored.

He immediately found a topic to ease the embarrassment, “Damn it, what kind of a ghostly venue is this? The walls, the tablecloth, and everything is white. It almost made me miss seeing people! Young Master Li, someone over there dared to eavesdrop on our conversation.”

Li Jueyan didn’t turn his head to look. “Go teach them the rules.”

Hearing this, Jiang Rao couldn’t maintain her statue-like appearance any longer.

The visual development of ‘The CEO’s Beloved’ depended on the female lead, and Jiang Rao, who was delayed by the novel, originally thought that the male lead should be a normal person before he blackened, but she now realized that she was wrong.

This man was not a good person from beginning to end.

But at this moment, the most important thing was not this, but—

Turning around, she pursed her lips and looked arrogantly at the man’s back, “Li Jueyan!”

Li Jueyan was holding a cigarette at that time. The sudden burst of anger made the ash in his hand shake, almost falling on his pants.

His eyebrows furrowed suddenly, and he turned his head to look. Before he could say anything, he saw his lackey, who was insignificant to him, had already walked up to Jiang Tang and even grabbed her wrist. 

Jiang Rao’s wrist was painfully grabbed.

However, being weak and delicate was only the female lead’s matter, and it had nothing to do with the role she needed to play as Jiang Tang.

She could only endure the pain and imitated the long-standing superior tone of the real Jiang Tang to confront the male lead, “What do you mean by this? Are you sure you won’t let him release my hand?”

“Release.”

“Young Master Li, what did you say?”

Li Jueyan’s eyes were tinged with a touch of coldness as he threw the cigarette butt on the ground and stamped it out before repeating his words, “Did you go deaf? I told you to let go.”

Although the male lead’s domineering appearance was really handsome, Jiang Rao had no appreciation for it.

After her wrist was freed, she gave a cold snort and acted out the expected response of the real Jiang Tang before leaving this place of right and wrong as if flying.

So she didn’t know that after she left, Li Jueyan stood up straight and walked towards the man who had just grasped Jiang Tang’s wrist tightly. “You better pray that my guess is wrong. Otherwise, after I verify my suspicion, I will definitely find someone to chop off your hands!”

On the first meeting with the male lead, Jiang Rao got a wrist bruised with green and purple marks.

Even though he didn’t do it himself, it made no difference in the end. In all old-fashioned romance novels, all women who appeared near the male lead had a fate of being abused. There would be no good outcome for the female lead or the supporting female characters.

She was not surprised by the male lead’s appearance. She had naturally heard of the “butterfly effect”.

It must have been Madam Bai’s reckless text message this morning that made the male lead come to this celebration banquet!

Fortunately, according to the original plot, the male lead had never shown any interest in her before her first escape attempt. So during the entire banquet, except for the extremely coincidental encounter at the beginning, Jiang Rao never saw the male lead again.

On the way home that night, she purposely had sister Wang park the car in front of a pharmacy, where she bought a whole bag of Yunnan Baiyao ointment before returning to the car. 

Sister Wang looked surprised at the bag of medicine, “Why did you buy so much of the same medicine? Even if you accidentally bump your hand, one bottle is more than enough. Are you afraid that the Yunnan Baiyao factory will go bankrupt, and you won’t have enough when you change careers to be a stuntman in the future? Huh, you also bought garlic? The pharmacies these days even sell garlic now?”

Jiang Rao didn’t explain because she knew that no one would believe what had happened to her. 

When she got home, she not only sprayed a lot of medicine on her injured wrist but also sprayed her entire body with medicine— in the hope that tonight’s nightmare of abusive love would not cause her any pain.

Finally, she even hung the string of garlic that she had threaded onto a needle and thread around her neck, hoping it would ward off evil and prevent any nightmares related to runaway wives and abusive love.

However, after she closed her eyes and fell into a deep sleep, she found that all of this was in vain. Not only that, but the male lead tonight even gave her a shot in the middle of her knee in her dream.

Her knee suddenly hurt, and Jiang Rao woke up from the dream.

At the same time, in an office building in the city center, Li Jueyan, who had wanted to work overtime to numb his nerves but ultimately fell into a nightmare, gradually awakened.

As he recalled the innocent beauty who had appeared by his side in his dreams every night for a week, he threw the crystal glass on the table to the ground with a gloomy face.

After a while, he made a call to the hospital director he knew and said, “Arrange for a psychiatrist to come over later.”

Then he gave a call to the old residence, the ancient castle, “Tonight… I’m going back to stay.”

——

> Table of Contents <

TL/N: *Gentle scum | 斯文败类 (sī wén bài lèi)

-Also roughly translates to “cultured scumbag” or “refined jerk.” 

-This word has a long history. Before it became an internet slang, it was a very derogatory term. The term is typically used to describe someone who appears to be sophisticated or cultured on the surface but is actually untrustworthy, selfish, or morally corrupt. 

-Nowadays, the shift from a negative connotation to a positive one mainly involves complimenting someone on their attractive appearance while wearing glasses (perhaps while being a little bit of a scumbag).

-Another word for a hypocrite.

-Below are a couple of examples~