3. Rich Woman
The sky had just begun to turn pale with dawn when Tang Ning groggily woke up.
No one was beside her, but the sheets still held lingering warmth—he must have left not long ago.
She half-lay on the bed, brain foggy.
Her whole body felt drained of strength. She carefully lifted the blanket to peek downward, then immediately pulled it back, afraid it wouldn’t pass censorship. Her skin was too fair; even though Jiang Linye hadn’t been particularly rough, red marks still bloomed across her wrists.
Tang Ning slowly sat up.
She had no experience with this kind of thing… at least, none in her memory. Last night in the darkness, the man’s scent had overwhelmed her—strange yet familiar. At first there was a trace of fear, but when their noses brushed, she realized he knew her body like the back of his hand.
Only then did she realize…
This had clearly happened many times before.
But…
Who the hell sleeps with his wife in the hospital right after she’s been in a car accident and lost her memory?!
Tang Ning furiously punched the mattress: “This beast!”
Maybe she shouted too loudly. The moment her voice fell, she heard the sound of a chair scraping in the outer room.
Jiang Linye seemed to be working outside. He’d already showered and dressed, a pair of scholarly glasses perched on his nose. He walked back and leaned against the doorframe, voice cold and indifferent: “What’s wrong?”
“Are you an electric owl or do you have some kind of skin-hunger disorder?” Tang Ning’s throat was a little hoarse. “Why did you leave so many marks! And I’m still a patient—are you even human?!”
Jiang Linye folded his arms, looking at her without much expression: “You made such a fuss just to keep me here. Wasn’t it all for this?”
“Have you lost your mind? When did I ever say anything like that? And didn’t I already tell you I have amnesia—”
“Tang Ning.” Outside, the sky wasn’t fully bright yet. Jiang Linye slowly took off his glasses, letting out a mocking scoff. “Keep pretending and it stops being fun. I just asked the doctor—once you’re awake, you can be discharged. Are you going back to the company, or do you want to stay here a couple more days to escape reality?”
He paused, then added with mock generosity: “If you’re going to the company, I can give you a ride on the way.”
Tang Ning: “?”
How much courage had Liang Jingru given him to talk down to her like this?
“Go wherever you want.” The movement tugged at her body and she felt even deeper discomfort. Tang Ning’s anger flared instantly. She lifted her head and stared straight at him, mocking right back: “Where do you get the confidence to think I’m trying to keep you here? Do you have some kind of delusion about your skills in bed?”
Jiang Linye’s fingers paused. He was actually amused by her anger: “Say that again?”
His assistant had brought fresh clothes early that morning. This guy wore suits even at work hours, and when he looked down at someone, he exuded an inexplicable sense of oppression.
He walked to the bedside, voice low and heavy: “Tang Ning.”
The moment he got close, Tang Ning’s danger radar went off. Without thinking, she slid lower in the bed.
Her whole face disappeared under the blanket until only two round, shiny eyes peeked out—like some fluffy little animal.
The little animal blinked innocently.
The next second, it received the owl’s cold, indifferent mockery: “If your brain isn’t needed, you can donate it to someone who does. The company is yours—manage it or don’t, I don’t care.”
With that, he left with a dark face, not even glancing back as he swept out the door.
Tang Ning: “…?”
Tang Ning was so angry she was fully awake now.
She looked around, found her phone on the bedside table, and called her assistant: “Jian Wei, handle the discharge procedures for me this morning. This afternoon, have Finance come to the company for an asset valuation.”
“Got it, President Tang.”
After a quick agreement, Jian Wei hesitated, feeling something was off. She cautiously asked: “Should I have Finance come to the company right now and wait for you?”
“No rush, it’s not urgent.” Tang Ning sounded completely casual. “I didn’t sleep well last night. I just want to ask Finance exactly how much money I have. Say it out loud—let me hear it and feel good about it.”
“…”
There was a half-second of silence on the other end.
Tang Ning was just about to hang up quietly and pretend none of this ever happened when a sudden flash of inspiration hit her. “Oh right, Jian Wei, there’s one more thing I wanted to ask you.”
Jian Wei immediately: “Go ahead, President Tang.”
“Yesterday Jiang Linye said my company needs crisis PR right now.” (Though his exact words were “you’re not a kid anymore and can’t even handle something this small”…) Tang Ning asked, “What exactly happened?”
“Um…” Jian Wei, who was usually decisive, suddenly hesitated. “There was a minor issue with one of our products. PR has already been handling it. You really don’t need to worry.”
“Oh, okay.” Tang Ning blinked, picked up her iPad from the bedside table, and searched Weibo for “TJ Syrup.” She didn’t hang up; instead, she slowly read out the top trending topic word by word to Jian Wei: “‘TJ Feeder Kills Pet,’ ‘Has TJ Gone Bankrupt Today?,’ ‘Smart Pet Care, Technology Delivers Death.’”
Jian Wei: “…”
“Smart Pet Care, Technology Full of Warmth” was TJ’s other slogan.
“Jian Wei.” Tang Ning propped her chin on one hand and scrolled through the comments below with the other. “This doesn’t really look like a ‘minor issue’ to me.”
The hot search had clearly been optimized—high discussion volume, but not ranking very high. Strangely, as the buzz grew, its position actually dropped.
The whole thing was pretty straightforward. A pet micro-influencer named Fu Caicai had gone on a business trip and left her dog at home. When she came back, the dog had been “fed cold” by TJ’s automatic feeder.
The feeder didn’t poison the dog—more precisely, after the device lost power, the dog had starved to death.
Fu Caicai claimed she took photos of the pet’s body at the scene, but she was too heartbroken to look at them again, so instead she posted a short video explaining what happened.
She used to be a live-streamer who transitioned into pet content; her vlogs were well-edited. In the short video, the girl—who looked about the same age as Tang Ning—had soft pear-flower curls and wispy air bangs. When she got emotional, her eyes reddened: “…I really never thought something like this would happen. I trusted TJ so much, and this is what I got in return. Coming home to its body… I don’t even know if it’s right for me to post this and publicly question them, but I’m truly heartbroken. To a company, it might just be a product glitch, but I lost a family member… I know there will probably be a lot of speculation and mockery directed at me, but that’s okay—I’ll accept it all. As long as TJ can give me an answer and make sure this tragedy never happens to anyone else again…”
The comment section exploded:
[Wait, didn’t TJ have a pretty good reputation before? How did this happen?]
[It’s been three days since the incident and TJ hasn’t issued any statement or response at all. Shows how little responsibility this company takes. Can’t support a business that doesn’t treat pet lives as lives. Poor blogger.]
[Capitalists have no conscience. They go crazy for money. I’m never buying TJ products again… Caicai is definitely the vulnerable party here. Heartache t.t]
[It’s already disappearing from hot search lol]
…
Some people even dug up Tang Ning’s account:
[“Want to Have a Fur Baby” Tang Queen, come out and take your beating!]
[This person still has the face to say she wants to raise a cat? Stick your face over here, I’ll smack it crooked.]
[Smart Pet Care | Want to Have a Fur Baby | Tang Queen—no statement yet???]
[Still refusing to respond even now. Fucking infuriating, I want to puke.]
Tang Ning: “…”
She couldn’t help but go back and double-check. Her Weibo hadn’t been updated in years, and it had zero connection to any Tang family or TJ topics.
How the hell did they find her with a microscope?
And moreover…
She frowned.
She had the nagging feeling she’d seen Fu Caicai somewhere before. Why did this girl look so damn familiar?
Translation to English (smooth, natural flow, keeping the sarcasm, excitement, pettiness, explicit capitalist vibes, and spicy revenge fantasy intact):
Jian Wei noticed the long silence on the other end of the line and, worried Tang Ning might actually explode from anger, spoke up nervously: “President Tang, we were originally planning to investigate this properly, but then you suddenly got into the car accident, so…”
“Forget it.” President Tang let out a long sigh, threw off the blanket, and sat up. “Come pick me up. We’ll head back to the company first.”
Jian Wei was sitting in the car.
Jian Wei was sitting primly and properly in the car.
Eighteen minutes after leaving the hospital, she stole her third glance at Tang Ning.
Her boss was lounging in the back seat like some big-shot patriarch. The gauze on her head still hadn’t been removed; a small patch of bangs had been shaved off during surgery, leaving the rest of her long hair spilling over her shoulders. Her face carried a sickly pallor, yet she was still so stunning it was hard to look away.
Tang Ning was glued to her phone, furiously scrolling through posts, hunting down the netizens who were passionately cursing her out.
Five whole years had passed, but internet friends were still as fiery as ever—if something big happened, they’d jump in and start flaming first, ask questions never.
From all this, Tang Ning had pieced together roughly what position her company held.
Back in the early days, old Mr. Tang had ridden the real-estate boom to build Tang Corporation. Twenty years later, the group spanned multiple industries, but real estate remained the core. After Tang Ning married Jiang Linye, he took over the most critical projects, and only then did they start expanding into hotels and smart medical & elderly care.
The company Tang Ning founded later was also under the Tang umbrella. In recent years, China’s pet economy had exploded, and TJ had become one of the leading players in smart pet devices. Beyond hardware, they also dipped into offline pet services, film & TV, and gaming—profits were obscenely high.
In other words, she was now a ruthless, cold-blooded capitalist.
—The kind who’d ditch Dior without blinking, loyal only to money, not people.
Jian Wei had no idea her boss was so thrilled because she was reading people trash-talk her. After hesitating for ages, she ventured: “President Tang, should we have the driver take you home first?”
Capitalist Tang Ning didn’t even lift her head: “No need.”
“Um… don’t you need to let President Jiang know?”
“He already knows I’m discharged.”
Sob. Boss really was ice-cold as expected.
Jian Wei had worked beside Tang Ning for three years and always felt that, despite her gorgeous looks, her boss’s inner self was basically a gender-swapped Uncle Scrooge McDuck.
She even suspected there was a massive gold vault hidden in President Tang’s mansion—whenever she was in a bad mood, she’d dive in and swim laps: butterfly, backstroke, freestyle through oceans of cash…
The phone suddenly rang.
Jian Wei snatched it up instantly. Jiang Linye’s voice came through, cool but edged with anger: “Jian Wei.”
“President Jiang, I’m here!”
He stood in the empty hospital room, head buzzing: “Where’s Tang Ning?”
“Tang…” Looks like President Jiang really didn’t know. Jian Wei spoke carefully: “President Tang has been discharged.”
Jiang Linye took a deep breath: “Put her on the phone.”
He couldn’t reach her directly.
Tang Ning had blocked him.
Jian Wei didn’t dare ask questions. She cautiously turned: “Pres—”
The car descended from the elevated highway. In the distance, Tang Ning spotted the huge “TJ” logo on top of a towering building. In her memory, five years ago the Third Ring Road hadn’t had this many skyscrapers, but the CBD had always been insanely expensive per square meter.
In her lifetime, she actually owned this much prime real estate in the CBD.
“Wow—”
Early autumn wind whipped through, cool and brisk. The sky overhead was an unbelievable blue.
She rolled down the window and let out the most country-bumpkin, wide-eyed exclamation:
“Is this entire building mine?!”
Jian Wei tried to call her: “President Tang…”
But she was way too excited. Her long hair flew wildly in the wind; she couldn’t hear a thing:
“I’m basically a rich woman now!”
“I really want to keep Jiang Linye as my sugar baby!”
The words traveled through the airwaves.
Jiang Linye froze for a split second.
Across an incalculable distance of electromagnetic waves, he heard her bright, lively voice. It was like that girl from their first meeting—the one who blushed at everything, who turned fluffy and soft the moment sunlight hit her.
For one brief instant, he didn’t even feel angry that “he’d rushed back during lunch break out of worry, only to find she’d already sneaked away.”
But that was only for one second.
The very next second.
He heard her again—this time in a super dreamy, thrilled tone—shouting happily and loudly:
“Then I can make him come clean the toilets of the entire fucking office building!!!”