Almost everyone rushed to leave their phone numbers with Chen Wanli.
Compliments poured in from every direction, and Chen Wanli grew rather annoyed.
Fortunately, Tang Yanran called just at that moment, giving Chen Wanli a chance to slip away.
Shu Yiyan personally escorted Chen Wanli downstairs, holding a packaged tea gift box. "This catty of tea costs 340,000. Director Shen's generous gift is no small matter!"
Chen Wanli took the gift box and rolled his eyes. "So I'm supposed to thank you?"
"Of course you should thank me! To show your gratitude, you ought to treat me to dinner!" Shu Yiyan said with a beaming smile.
"Hmph!" Chen Wanli put on an unhappy face, grabbed the tea, and walked off!
Shu Yiyan wasn't angry at all; she leaned against the doorway with a smile at the corners of her mouth, watching Chen Wanli leave.
Several waiters at the entrance were dumbfounded!
It was the first time they had ever seen a man give Shu Yiyan the cold shoulder, and even more astonishingly, the first time they had seen Shu Yiyan invite a man to dinner only to be rejected!
...
At the entrance of the teahouse, Tang Yanran watched as Shu Yiyan personally escorted Chen Wanli out, the two of them chatting and laughing together, and for some inexplicable reason, she felt a surge of displeasure.
"Is the gathering over already?" Chen Wanli asked with a smile when he saw Tang Yanran standing there alone.
Seeing the tea gift box in Chen Wanli's hand, Tang Yanran's expression darkened even further.
Even the cheapest tea in this teahouse cost tens of thousands.
Since Chen Wanli hadn't brought any money, it could only mean Shu Yiyan had given it to him.
"Over already? I'd say you just didn't want to leave, right?" For some inexplicable reason, a wave of jealousy and unprovoked anger rose in Tang Yanran's chest.
"..."
When they returned home, Tang Dapeng and Zhang Yuehong were watching TV in the living room.
Tang Yanran stomped back to her room in a huff.
Chen Wanli cast an awkward glance at the elderly couple and handed the tea to Tang Dapeng. "Dad, some people gave me this tea. They say it's quite good, so keep it for yourself!"
Zhang Yuehong glanced sideways at the tea packaging. "Does Yanran's property even reach the point where you get to borrow flowers to present to Buddha?"
"Someone gave it to me!" Chen Wanli was speechless.
"You? How many people do you even know who would bring you fine tea every day?" Zhang Yuehong rolled her eyes. Remembering how her cousin had taken away the previous batch of good tea, she felt another pang of suffocating heartache.
Tang Dapeng took the tea and immediately pushed Chen Wanli toward Tang Yanran's bedroom.
"Dad, I'd better sleep in my own room!" Chen Wanli said awkwardly.
"If you sleep in your room, how are you going to make a grandson for me to hold?" Tang Dapeng said, shoving Chen Wanli straight into the bedroom.
As soon as Chen Wanli left, Zhang Yuehong snatched up the tea gift box and inspected it thoroughly. "This doesn't look like anything special!"
Despite her words, she couldn't wait to take the tea box out and place it on the very top shelf!
That shelf was reserved entirely for Tang Dapeng's good tea—the kind used to entertain distinguished guests...
...
...
...
Chapter 22: Don't Let Yourself Be Stirred Up by Others
Early the next morning, Tang Yanran was at home on her day off, still huffing and refusing to speak to Chen Wanli.
Chen Wanli went into the living room to say goodbye to Tang Dapeng before heading out. "Dad, I plan to visit my uncle's place this afternoon. There are a few keepsakes of my parents' that I'd like to bring back."
"Mm, now that your health is recovered, it's about time you went! Yanran is your wife, so taking Yanran along with you is only proper etiquette," Tang Dapeng nodded and said.
Chen Wanli hesitated for a moment, but seeing that Tang Yanran did not object, he agreed.
Tang Dapeng carefully selected a few items from the gifts Huang Shuyue had sent and told the two of them to take them along.
The pair went downstairs in silence, their faces stiff, looking every bit like a young married couple having a quarrel.
Only when they reached the car downstairs did Chen Wanli speak. "You forgot to send your car in for repairs; it's still in the hospital garage. But someone gave me a car today, so let's drive that for now."
"Someone gave you a car? Was it that woman surnamed Shu?" Tang Yanran wondered aloud, a suspicion suddenly popping into her head.
"???" Chen Wanli gave Tang Yanran a strange look and pressed the car lock button.
Seeing a brand-new Rolls-Royce, Tang Yanran froze.
"Did the Song Family give you this?"
With such deep pockets, only the Song Family could be responsible.
"Mmm."
"Didn't I tell you not to get entangled with the Song Family anymore?" Tang Yanran knitted her delicate brows.
"Song Jiaojiao's illness isn't difficult to treat. Depression is not considered an incurable disease in traditional Chinese medicine!" Chen Wanli said calmly.
Tang Yanran felt a wave of agitation rising inside her, and she snapped impatiently, "You are merely a dropout from an engineering college, you haven't studied medicine, let alone have any clinical experience!"
"What makes you think you can cure illnesses and save lives just by casually reading a few medical books?"
"Do you know who the Song Family are? They are tycoon magnates whose faces even the mayor has to respect. When you offended Fifth Master Huang, Mom and Dad could beg for mercy and spend money to find our cousin."
"If you offend the Song Family, it will be a catastrophe, and no one will be able to save you!"
Chen Wanli frowned. "In your eyes, am I really such an unreliable man?"
A self-deprecating curve formed at the corners of Tang Yanran's mouth. "How do you expect me to view you? When I met you, you were already mentally ill."
"After you recovered, the first thing you did was beat up Li Tianyang, and then you provoked Fifth Master Huang. I admit you did it to protect me and my family, but the method you chose was the most unreliable one—using violence to counter violence. Eventually, you'll cross someone you can't handle."
"You've seen the actual outcome; the future troubles are endless, and Mom and Dad had to swallow their pride and beg people!"
"And now you're performing a tightrope walk over a cliff with the Song Family. Tell me, how am I supposed to view this? How can I view it any other way?"
The two of them got into the car, and the atmosphere inside became extremely heavy.
Looking at Chen Wanli's gloomy face and remembering that his illness had only just recovered, Tang Yanran hesitated for a long moment before she said with an iron expression:
"If you feel my words were too harsh, I can apologize to you!"
"I was thinking of you and our family, and my emotions got the better of me for a moment!"
Chen Wanli sighed. "Neither of us has had the chance to truly understand each other. I can forgive you for misunderstanding me, or even for not believing in me!"
"But I hope we can try to understand each other..."
At this point, Chen Wanli paused before adding, "Of course, the choice is yours."
Tang Yanran understood what Chen Wanli meant. If their marriage was going to continue, they had to understand and accept each other.
If not, they would only drift apart in the future.
Was this Chen Wanli's true thought? If so, this man had more backbone than she had imagined.
Tang Yanran pressed her lips together, subconsciously wanting to avoid the topic. "Do you understand your second uncle?"
"I have some impressions!" Chen Wanli thought for a moment and said.
His memories of his father's younger brother were quite numerous; the two families had been doubly related by marriage, as his father had married his mother Wu Yuan, while his uncle had married his mother Wu Yuan's biological sister, Wu Min.
The two families had always maintained a good relationship until he was in elementary school, when his father had a fight with his second uncle for some unknown reason.
Out of anger on his father's part, the relationship between the two families had cooled somewhat.
His father had evaluated his second uncle's family more than once as being devoid of human feeling and driven solely by greed!
Chen Wanli knew that Tang Yanran bringing this up now was meant to remind him that the inheritance falling into his second uncle's hands would be very difficult to get back.
"I just want to retrieve a few old things belonging to my parents to keep as a memory! As for the rest, we'll see!"
This time, Tang Yanran agreed, saying, "It's best if that's how you think about it."
...
After Chen Wanli and Tang Yanran knocked on the door of his second uncle Chen Yaoyang's home, it was his second aunt Wu Min who opened the door.
"Why are you here?" Wu Min was slightly plump but had a good disposition, and the shock in her large, striking eyes could not be concealed. She turned her head and hurriedly called out to Chen Yaoyang.
"My illness is cured, so I brought Yanran along to visit you and Second Uncle!" Chen Wanli said.
As they spoke, Chen Yaoyang also came to the door. A flash of panic crossed his eyes, but he quickly concealed it.
"Ah, it's Wanli. Come on in!"
"Your illness is cured? That's a good thing! Your big brother and sister-in-law can finally rest in peace down below!"
"Is this your wife? She's very pretty; you kid still have good fortune ahead."
With a string of polite pleasantries, Chen Wanli simply listened without saying a word.
As Chen Yaoyang spoke, his peripheral vision glanced at Tang Yanran. "It was all a mess back then, and your father-in-law said you already had a prior engagement to be married with the Tang Family, so he came and took you away, and I didn't know what to say!"
Chen Wanli looked at Chen Yaoyang with a half-smile. "Second Uncle didn't even come to witness my wedding!"
Chen Yaoyang's expression immediately became somewhat awkward. Strictly speaking, since his older brother had passed away, he, as the uncle, was Chen Wanli's closest elder, and helping to manage the wedding should have been his bounden duty.
Wu Min cut in, "Those were your parents, and he was your father's own older brother, and my biological older sister. The incident happened so suddenly back then that both of us fell gravely ill. We truly didn't manage to look after you..."
The couple went back and forth, circling around ordinary domestic talk, dragging it out from the elders and juniors of the Tang Family all the way to when Chen Wanli planned to have children.
Not a single one of them voluntarily brought up the matter of Chen Wanli's parents' inheritance.
Anyone unaware of the inside story would have mistaken them for caring close uncles and aunts checking in on their nephew's living conditions.
Chen Wanli shook his head in disappointment; his father's judgment of people had been quite accurate after all—he shouldn't have held even a sliver of expectation for these two people.
"Back then, my parents passed away suddenly, and I was ill. Their funeral arrangements were all handled by Second Uncle and Second Aunt. I should say thank you."
Chen Wanli took the initiative to break open the topic.
"I have another purpose in coming today: I want to take back some of my parents' keepsakes to leave as a memento!"
Chen Yaoyang exchanged a glance with his wife Wu Min, and he leaned forward slightly. "Take things? What things could possibly be left!"
"Hmm?" Chen Wanli narrowed his eyes.
"You were young at the time and didn't know about a lot of things. Your mother's company owed quite a few external debts."
"So basically, everything in your house was sold off to pay them, and even then, it wasn't enough to clear the debt. I even had to chip in over 300,000 out of my own pocket!"
Chen Yaoyang said with an air of absolute certainty.
"Oh! So Second Uncle means that my family's 130-square-meter apartment was sold, and all my mother's collections were sold as well?"
"That's right. If you don't believe me, you can contact the creditors and ask them yourself!" Chen Yaoyang said.
Chen Wanli rubbed his nose, his voice dropping much lower. "What I want to get back is the set of tea utensils my father frequently used, and the ambergris necklace my mother wore for over a decade!"
"Neither of those things is worth much money; they're just keepsakes! So were those two things sold off too?"
Wu Min's voice suddenly turned sharp. "Wanli, what do you mean by that? Is it as if we took everything of value?"
Chen Yaoyang nodded along. "Don't let yourself be stirred up by outsiders. We're family; would I try to scam you? Harm you? Take your family's money?"
"All the things in the house back then were bundled together and sold off to clear the debts!"
A trace of sympathy for Chen Wanli rose in Tang Yanran's heart. Although Tang Dapeng hadn't been in a position to help Chen Wanli fight for his family's estate back then, he had still conducted some investigations.
The Chen family's apartment was over 130 square meters; although it was an older building, the location was good, and it had been paid for in full.
And while Chen Wanli's mother's company wasn't large, it had been running quite well. Not only did it have no external debts, but it didn't even have bank loans. Some of her collectibles were exceptionally valuable.
All in all, the estate wasn't huge, but it was certainly worth at least four or five million.
It was nothing like what Chen Yaoyang and his wife were claiming.
"So, even these two inexpensive items left as memories—Second Uncle is unwilling to give them to me either?"
Chen Wanli suddenly raised his head, the sharp light in his eyes piercing toward Chen Yaoyang like a knife.
Stared at by this gaze that seemed ready to devour people, Chen Yaoyang felt a surge of guilty panic. "What kind of talk is that?"
With that, he looked at Tang Yanran, his tone carrying a questioning edge. "Did your family instigate my nephew to come here?"
"???" Tang Yanran was left utterly speechless.
"I knew your Tang Family harbored malicious intentions when you took my nephew in back then. Turns out it was all for money!" Wu Min said in a thin, mean tone.
The disappointment in Chen Wanli's heart accumulated into anger. "The Tang Family has only shown me great kindness! When you couldn't be bothered with me, the Tang Family married their daughter to me. Now, hearing you speak of the Tang Family this way, I am very displeased!"
"Wanli, don't be fooled by others! Do you think the Tang Family would marry their daughter to a mentally ill person for no reason? Could they have no ulterior motive? They just want to usurp your family's property and turn us father and son against each other!"
"In your eyes, am I a fool? Forget it, take a look at this!" Chen Wanli opened the files in his mobile cloud drive and flung them directly at Chen Yaoyang.
Chen Yaoyang glanced at them, and his face changed drastically. "You—how do you have this?"
...
...
...
Chapter 23: A Complete Break
Wu Min stretched her neck to take a look, and her expression immediately soured as well.
Chen Wanli took back his phone and said in a deep voice, "Second Uncle doesn't understand our family at all. Ever since I was in high school, my parents didn't just tell me everything about our family and company's finances, savings, and insurance—they even sent me a digital copy of the accounts!"
"So, do you still want to repeat those words you just said?"
By the end, Chen Wanli's voice completely lacked the gentle warmth it had when he first entered the door; it was filled only with the bone-chilling cold of the depth of winter.
Before Chen Yaoyang and his wife could speak, the bedroom door was abruptly pulled open.
"Mom, Dad, why are you wasting so much breath on him?"
Chen Yaoyang's son, Chen Huanrui, stormed aggressively into the living room, a look of unbridled arrogance and disdain for Chen Wanli etched across his face.
"Let me tell you, you won't get a single cent! The reason is simple: your dad was just a kept man, and all the money in the house was earned by my aunt."
Chen Wanli sprang up from the sofa in an instant, strode forward a few paces, and grabbed Chen Huanrui by the collar.
"Do you know what you're saying?" Anger surged in Chen Wanli's eyes; insulting his father was something he could never tolerate.
Chen Huanrui was Chen Wanli's cousin, of a similar age, and they had attended the same elementary and middle schools as children.
Regardless of the relationship between the adults, the bond between the two cousins had been quite good.
Yet at this moment, Chen Huanrui's face showed only coldness and contempt.
Chen Yaoyang and Wu Min exchanged a glance and simply chose not to stop their son.
With tacit approval, Chen Huanrui pressed on with even greater fervor:
"What? Can't handle the truth? Your dad was just a minor civil servant who hadn't gotten a single promotion in decades—he was a piece of trash. What makes you think he deserved a fully paid-for apartment?"
"What gave him the right to drink fine tea? What gave him the right to leave behind a massive insurance policy? It was all earned by being a kept man!"
Chen Huanrui sneered mockingly.
Roused to fury, Chen Wanli slapped Chen Huanrui across the face.
Blood spilled from the corner of Chen Huanrui's mouth, and a ferocious look flashed across his face. "And you're just a bastard your dad had with some wild woman! My aunt was blind to marry your dad and spent twenty years raising the two of you!"
"You're just a bastard, and you still want to claim her inheritance?"
Chen Wanli froze for a few seconds. He wasn't his parents' biological son?
No, this had to be a malicious fabrication purely for the sake of money.
Seething with rage, Chen Wanli raised his hand and struck Chen Huanrui across the face several more times.
Panicked, Chen Yaoyang and Wu Min hurried forward to shield their son.
In his towering fury, with nothing else in his mind, Chen Wanli turned around and slapped Chen Yaoyang down with two blows.
Chen Yaoyang flew into a blazing rage, his eyes turning bloodshot as he pointed at Chen Wanli like he was looking at a mortal enemy. "You beast, you even dare to hit me?"
Hugging her son with a heart-wrenching expression, Wu Min shrieked, "Which word of my son's was wrong? You're just the spawn of your dad and some wild woman outside! My sister married your dad and took care of you two for half her life!"
"Yet your dad only had eyes for you, this good-for-nothing failure. After marrying my sister, he refused to have any more children, leaving my sister to die without an offspring! Back then, your second uncle merely mentioned at a gathering that you weren't my sister's biological child and advised them to have another, and your dad physically attacked him!"
"He even threatened us all, saying that anyone who dared to speak of this in front of you would have to fight him to the death! Fight to the death? Ha, now that he's died so obscurely, I suppose he doesn't need to fight anymore. The two of you father and son sucked my sister dry—what right do you have to claim her estate?"
"So what if our family took the money? I'm telling you, keep dreaming if you think you'll get any of it! You won't get back a single cent!"
"How dare you resort to violence in my home? I'm calling the police right now and making sure you rot in prison!"
After Wu Min shrieked hysterically through a tirade, Chen Wanli stood trembling all over, his mind blank, rooted to the spot for a long moment without moving.
Tang Yanran hurried forward to grab Chen Wanli's hand. His palms, usually dry and warm, were now cold and damp.
"Chen Wanli!" Tang Yanran shouted, digging her nails hard into the Hegu pressure point in the webbing of his thumb.
After a long moment, Chen Wanli finally regained his senses, his expression growing even colder, like the ice of the deepest winter:
"Chen Yaoyang, when I was five years old, you lost money in business and begged my father to help you. My mother refused to lend you the money. It was my father who used his salary card as collateral for a loan and lent it to you!"
"And you, Wu Min! You wanted a job transfer, but you were too stingy to spend money to pull strings! You begged my father day after day, and it was my father—the piece of trash in your mouths—who spent money to find a friend and get your transfer arranged!"
"And you—even though my father's relationship with your family soured later on, he always cherished you as his nephew!"
"After my father died and I fell ill, your family was the one waiting to prey on a broken household! And now, for the sake of a little money, you spew insults and humiliate the deceased."
"Even if I am not my mother's biological son, wasn't my father your blood relative? Didn't he treat you right? Does that give you the right to burn all your bridges, sell off everything in the house for dirt cheap, and leave not a single memento for me, his son?"
"I didn't care about the money in the first place; I only came to take two keepsakes to remember them by. But since your family has chosen to leave no room for reconciliation, I, Chen Wanli, am not the kind of man to swallow my broken teeth and blood together."
By this point, Chen Wanli's eyes were completely bloodshot as he bit out each word clearly: "Today, I, Chen Wanli, am making a complete and irreconcilable break with your family!"
"On the anniversary of my parents' death, cough up every single cent and possession you stole from my family! Go to my father's grave and kowtow in apology!"
"Otherwise, I will make your entire family wish you were dead!"
Chen Huanrui sneered, "Are you out of your chuunibyou mind? You're going to make my family wish they were dead?"
"My dad is now the owner of the largest chain hotel in Nanbin City! Soon, my dad will be the hotel king of Jiangnan, you know?"
"My mother is the deputy director of the Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security!"
"As for my current venture, the collectible company I founded has even received investment from the veteran collector, Old Master Zhou! In the future, my collection company will be an existence on par with Tianyuan Pavilion."
"And you? You're just a mental patient who didn't even graduate from college."
"You're just like your old man—a kept man living off a woman! With just what you've got, you dare talk big?"
"Believe it or not, with just one phone call from me right now, I can cut off your free ride and send you straight to a prison cell!"