That "Bai Menglu" — the new Madam Xu, Shu Yun — had originally been personally scouted and sent to her husband's bed by Chu Man herself. In her youth, she was the Jing Circle's uniquely peerless White Magnolia Miss. Yet twenty years into her marriage, she watched helplessly as the once-refined and dashing husband she had studied abroad with slowly shed his golden armor to become an ordinary middle-aged man.
Unable to bear this disparity, and constrained by the existence of Xu Yan and the entangled interests of the Xu and Chu families from making a clean break, she decided to scheme and lure her husband into infidelity to achieve her goal. But when Shu Yun, having accepted her money, truly caught Old Master Xu's eye, Chu Man found she could not accept it.
After throwing a hysterical scene at home, the couple each took a step back and decided to send Shu Yun away to restore their old harmony. Yet in her eyes, Old Master Xu—already stripped of his golden armor—now bore an extra crack: the fact that he had once been tempted by Shu Yun. Thus, this superficial peace shattered before long.
Chapter 66