While Zhou Youyou stood there talking to herself, Tang Xin’er stood in the doorway and gently patted her chest.
She had to hand it to her—as the female lead of the book, Zhou Youyou actually had some genuine wits about her. But unfortunately, with the assistance of her spatial dimension, Zhou Youyou was destined to come up completely empty-handed. She had all the right conditions, timing, and even luck on her side, but she just lacked a cheat code!
“Impossible!”
After tearing the entire room apart and finding nothing at all, Zhou Youyou gritted her teeth and insisted it was impossible. Tang Xin’er leaned against the doorframe. “Sis, you searched everywhere you wanted to, and you didn’t find a thing. Isn’t it time to kneel down and apologize to me now?”
“You!” Zhou Youyou bristled with rage, then glared at the family standing behind her. “Nobody else heard what she agreed to earlier! Our family had all our valuables stolen, so searching everyone’s room one by one is hardly unreasonable, right?”
She certainly knew how to twist words to her advantage.
Although Zhao Meifang and Zhou Zhigang looked a bit uncomfortable when they heard that, they still sided with Zhou Youyou. “Right, your sister didn’t give a direct confirmation earlier.”
Seeing the family band together to shield each other, Tang Xin’er rolled her eyes so hard they nearly rolled back into her head. She took a breath, turned around, and put on a bright smile.
“Fine by me,” she said, looking like a cunning little fox. “Since you’re claiming nobody heard what was agreed upon earlier, then I guess I never agreed to take my sister’s place in the marriage either. You guys already pocketed their bride price, so you can figure out how to clean up your own mess!”
She was washing her hands of the whole thing!
“What gives you the right to refuse the marriage? You clearly already agreed to it!” Unable to contain her fury any longer, Zhou Youyou let loose a rapid-fire barrage of insults at Tang Xin’er. “How can you go back on your word like this? You absolute liar!”
Watching Zhou Youyou fly into a towering rage, Tang Xin’er felt remarkably calm by comparison. “None of you heard her agree to kneel, so how could you possibly expect me to remember agreeing to marry in her place?”
“You’ll just have to marry him yourself, or else scrape together the bride price to pay them back!” The only reason Tang Xin’er brought up the second option was because she knew for a fact they couldn’t possibly scrape up the money.
Never mind that it had all been stolen; even before it was stolen, they would have never been willing to part with it. Two thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight yuan—that was roughly four years’ worth of a normal couple’s combined salary, and that was assuming they spent not a single penny of it!
“Tang Xin’er!” Zhou Youyou was beside herself with anger. “If Mom hadn’t brought you along when she married into our family, do you honestly think you’d have survived this long? What’s so wrong with you taking my place?”
“Qin Shiyao is just badly burned. Even if you didn’t marry him, with a background like yours—someone who never even made it to college—what kind of man do you honestly think you could marry?”
“You should just know your place and be grateful!”
Frowning deeply, Zhou Youyou let out everything she had been bottling up inside.
Hearing this, Tang Xin’er didn’t feel much of a reaction, other than thinking that the female lead certainly had a sharp tongue.
“Exactly,” Zhao Meifang chimed in to back her up. “Xin’er, how can you be so unaccommodating? It’s completely normal for your sister to want to check your room!”
“Then by what right did she interrogate me the second money went missing from the house? Why didn’t she suspect anyone else of stealing it? Why did it have to be me?” Tang Xin’er crossed her arms and fired back a question. Zhao Meifang choked on her words, thoroughly exasperated. “The stuff you lost isn’t even a fraction of what we lost!”
“So just because my losses weren’t as big, I deserve to be treated like a prime suspect and have my room ransacked?”
“Is my money not considered money either? That was cash I saved up through sheer hard work, you know!” Tang Xin’er’s sharp retorts left Zhao Meifang entirely speechless.
Stepping forward, Zhou Yaozu hollered angrily, “Stop acting so high and mighty! In any case, Sis is not going to kneel to you!”
Zhou Youyou shot a grateful look at her family. At least they still had her back.
Tang Xin’er curled her lip.
She genuinely wanted to ask how the original owner had managed to survive in a household like this. What kind of wretched garbage dump of a family was this?
They wanted to shear every ounce of wool off her back without feeding her a single blade of grass—a textbook definition of a toxic family!
“Fine, if she doesn’t want to kneel, she doesn’t have to. It’s not like I care!” Tang Xin’er rolled her eyes. “In that case, I’m just calling off the marriage. It’s not like you guys can physically tie me up and drag me there, can you?”
“If you dare try that, I’ll go straight to the police station and report a kidnapping!” With that, Tang Xin’er turned on her heel and headed straight for her bedroom, refusing to waste another breath on this bunch.
Some people’s toxic nature is simply incurable; continuing to bicker with them was a complete waste of time.
Standing nearby, Zhou Youyou clenched her fists so tightly that her fingernails nearly pierced into her palms, her entire body trembling.
Her mind was flooded with memories of what Qin Shiyao looked like when she went to visit him. He was completely unrecognizable compared to when they first met—his body covered in extensive burns, his face ruined beyond recognition, stripped of all former handsomeness and left with only a terrifying, grotesque appearance.
Just the thought of spending the rest of her life shackled to a man like that made Zhou Youyou feel suffocated, as if she were being denied air.
She refused! Absolutely not!
“Tang Xin’er, are you really going to force me to kneel down to you?” Just as Tang Xin’er was about to step through her doorway, Zhou Youyou took a deep breath, stopped her, and asked with an expression of intense resentment.
“Sis, you don’t have to kneel! No matter what, she’s the one who has to get married!” Zhou Yaozu still held a certain level of respect for Zhou Youyou; after all, she was a college graduate with a decent job and a decent appearance. Who knew, maybe she’d land a wealthy brother-in-law down the line who could look out for him. That was the only reason he was willing to throw in a few words on her behalf.
“What’s the matter?” Tang Xin’er raised an eyebrow. “I already told you I’m not afraid of the police. If you insist on forcing me into this marriage, I’ll just go die right outside the Qin family’s front gates!”
“Anyway, I’ve already died once—I’m not scared of anything anymore!”
Tang Xin’er stood her ground firmly. Zhou Yaozu opened his mouth to argue back, but Zhou Zhigang reached out and yanked him back, strictly signaling him not to utter another syllable.
Tang Xin’er couldn’t care less about their internal drama. She rolled her eyes once more. “Aside from kneeling, I won’t accept any other form of apology!”
“Fine!”
Tang Xin’er had figured Zhou Youyou would eventually cave, and sure enough, the moment she reached her doorway, the other girl relented.
The rest of the family stared at Zhou Youyou in shock. Was she actually going to do it?
Hearing the concession, Tang Xin’er turned around. Zhou Youyou gritted her teeth, dropped straight to her knees on the floor, and spat out, “I’m sorry!”
The moment the words left her mouth, she popped right back up to her feet in a lightning-fast motion. Though the gesture was rushed, Tang Xin’er felt thoroughly vindicated.
While she was internally doing a happy dance, she deliberately kept a slightly aggrieved expression on her face. “Sis, you got up way too fast. You certainly didn’t look like this when you were falsely accusing me earlier!”
“Tang Xin’er!” Zhou Youyou felt like her lungs were about to burst from pure rage. “I already apologized to you! What more do you want? Wipe that miserable look off your face—for all we know, this whole theft could still be tied directly to you!”
If it weren’t for the desperate need to avoid marrying Qin Shiyao, she would never have swallowed this monumental insult!
“Oh.”
Faced with Zhou Youyou’s meltdown, Tang Xin’er remained entirely unfazed. “Alright then, since you’ve apologized, I’ll let it go.”
Even though Zhou Youyou had dropped to her knees and gotten back up in the blink of an eye, she had still witnessed it with her own eyes, and that was more than enough.
This was the first time Zhou Youyou had ever lowered her head to her, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
Zhou Youyou’s hands shook with fury. Standing beside her, Zhao Meifang gave Tang Xin’er a sharp tug on the arm. “Things have already reached this point, and you’ve gotten what you wanted—can you stop making a scene now?”
“A scene?”
Tang Xin’er found the remark laughable. “Our belongings got stolen, and instead of looking for the thief or trying to figure out how to borrow money for Zhou Yaozu’s wedding, you all pinned the blame squarely on me and tried to frame me for the crime. And I’m the one making a scene?”
“You’ve spent my whole life bullying me, and now that I’m getting married off, you’re still trying to crush me. What—do you plan on tormenting me for the rest of my life?”