Qi Weiguo’s gaze kept shifting between Li Zhihuan and his mother, Lin Fen.
The “indecent” outfit on Lin Fen was clearly made from the exact same pattern as the one he had seen yesterday.
At that moment, his usually dignified and somewhat rigid mother was happily adjusting the hem of her new clothes.
“Weiguo, you’re up? Come try this! Zhihuan is really skilled—this outfit is so comfortable, soft and airy. It makes doing chores so much easier!”
Lin Fen was clearly extremely satisfied with the new clothes and didn’t notice her son’s increasingly cracked expression at all.
The veins on Qi Weiguo’s temples throbbed violently.
Just yesterday, he had sternly criticized this outfit. And today, his mother was already wearing it.
It made his righteous anger from yesterday feel like a joke.
He stared hard at Li Zhihuan.
Li Zhihuan met his gaze and blinked innocently, as if saying: See? It’s not just me who thinks it’s good.
This was a textbook case of indirect strategy.
Completely open and unguarded manipulation.
She knew he could never criticize his own mother.
By using this method, she had neutralized his “ban” without a single drop of blood spilled.
Qi Weiguo felt a lump in his chest—neither up nor down.
He couldn’t say a word. He could only sit down at the table with a dark expression, pick up a steamed bun, and bite into it viciously, as if it weren’t food but Li Zhihuan’s infuriating smile.
Breakfast passed without taste.
And this incident became a lingering background noise throughout his entire day of training.
He realized he simply could not keep up with Li Zhihuan’s way of thinking.
When you got angry at her, she reasoned with you.
When you gave her orders, she turned around and made your mother her ally.
This woman was like cotton—and also like a needle. You punched at her and got nothing back, but when you pulled your hand away, you found it already bleeding.
By evening, Qi Weiguo returned home carrying exhaustion and suppressed anger.
A strong, domineering aroma immediately rushed into his nose.
Sweet and sour.
Tangy, sweet, with rich meat fragrance—so enticing it made one’s appetite stand at attention.
He stepped inside and saw, right on the table, a plate of glistening, deep-red ribs coated in thick sauce.
Sweet and sour spare ribs.
Each piece was evenly glazed, shining under the light. Sprinkled on top were toasted sesame seeds and chopped green onions.
Just looking at it made your mouth water uncontrollably.
Qi Weiguo, who had long been used to military canteen food, had never seen anything like this.
The dining table remained as silent as ever.
But his chopsticks were very honest, reaching for the ribs again and again.
The ribs were perfectly cooked—tender enough to fall off the bone with a gentle bite, yet still pleasantly chewy. The sauce was divine: sweet, sour, and savory in perfect balance. Paired with rice, it was the kind of dish that made you want to swallow your tongue.
Lin Fen also ate without looking up.
Li Zhihuan quietly ate her own meal, occasionally glancing at the rapidly disappearing ribs, the corners of her lips lifting slightly in an almost imperceptible smile.
She added a note in her personal “Investor Observation Log”:
Target client shows high preference for sweet-and-sour meat dishes. This can be prioritized in future “feeding” strategies.
The plate of ribs was quickly emptied.
When Qi Weiguo put down his chopsticks, he felt full—but strangely, the satisfaction in his stomach had smoothed out the irritation from the entire day.
He looked at Li Zhihuan, who was cleaning up the dishes, and that complicated feeling rose again.
“You get what you eat,” he thought.
So he cleared his throat, attempting a “friendly” conversation.
“Today’s… meal was pretty good.”
He spoke somewhat stiffly.
Li Zhihuan turned around and gave him a standardized smile.
“Thank you for the compliment. It’s part of my job.”
There it was again—job.
The anger that had just been soothed by food threatened to rise again.
Qi Weiguo took a deep breath and changed the topic.
“I heard people in the compound say… you’ve been reading newspapers?”
He tried to show some concern for her intellectual life.
“Yes.”
She nodded.
“Understanding current affairs helps improve household management efficiency.”
Qi Weiguo: “…”
Conversation died again.
He felt like talking to her was like reporting to a political instructor in the military—everything was logical, correct, and utterly formal.
A sense of frustration washed over him again.
Meanwhile, Li Zhihuan remained completely unaware of his inner turmoil.
After finishing the kitchen cleanup, she took out a bound copy of People’s Daily, sat under the lamp, and read with great interest.
Her expression was extremely focused—sometimes relaxed, sometimes slightly furrowed. Occasionally, she even wrote notes in a notebook beside her with a pencil.
Qi Weiguo couldn’t stay in his room.
Using the excuse of getting water, he walked out and secretly observed her.
She was completely immersed in her own world. That level of focus was different from when she cooked or sewed—it was something else entirely.
What exactly was she looking at?
Qi Weiguo felt as if something was scratching at his heart like a restless cat’s paw.
He saw Li Zhihuan draw a heavy line under a report with her pen.
It was a short article about pilot policies in a southern special economic zone.
Then she turned the page and circled a seemingly insignificant news snippet.
“State-owned Red Star Textile Factory introduces new equipment, production capacity increased.”
As she read, she murmured softly to herself, in a voice only she could hear:
“The opportunity is coming… The label of ‘speculation and profiteering’ will soon become outdated. The private economy is the future.”
“The efficiency of state-owned factories is still too low. Even with new equipment, the production and sales chain is too long. It reacts too slowly to market changes… There are opportunities here.”
Under the lamplight, her eyes shone with an astonishing brightness—an expression Qi Weiguo had never seen before. It was a light filled with insight into the future, and something else… something called ambition.
Standing in the shadows, Qi Weiguo listened to her strange, almost otherworldly murmurs.
He could not understand a single word.
But he could feel it clearly—this woman in front of him was drifting further and further away from him.
She was sitting less than five meters away, yet it felt as if there were thousands of mountains and rivers between them.
This complete, heartfelt indifference and sense of separation was more unsettling to Qi Weiguo than any argument they had ever had.
For the first time, he realized… he was actually starting to fear being ignored like this.