Chapter 16

Xiao Deng had never felt that he wanted to be a chivalrous hero.

He looked at the unreasonable Chen elders in front of him, sighed deeply, and then took out a cell phone from his pocket. "Why don't you two take a look at this first?"

He showed them a screenshot of a trending topic on Weibo: #ChenLiChenghuaCheungLiCheatsMistressPregnant#, accompanied by a photo of Chen Li and a heavily pregnant Lin Ying at a high-end restaurant.

Chen's mother's lips began to tremble.

Thanks to her youngest son, who is a severe internet addict, she knew that her son and daughter-in-law had been having a fight these past few days, and that there had been a lot of news about it online. However, she didn't really understand the concept of the whole internet knowing about it. She just thought that being on the news was embarrassing, but only those people online would see it, and that people around her might not pay attention to it, so it wouldn't affect her family's life.

Anyway, my son is abroad now, and maybe our whole family can go abroad in the future, so we don't care what others think.

But now, even a junior property management staff member in the community can pull out screenshots at any time to mock her.

Chen's mother collapsed at the doorway, crying to the neighbors who had come to watch, "It's like killing someone's spirit! How dare she do such a terrible thing!"

“My son was just confused for a moment, and she made such a big fuss about it. Isn’t she trying to ruin him?”

"What family would dare to marry such a vicious woman?"

"If my son doesn't get a divorce, who knows what kind of trouble she'll cause him in the future!"

Li Chi'an has a good personality, is beautiful, loves to cook and bake, and always shares her delicious meals with her neighbors, maintaining excellent relationships with them.

It seems that the Chen family elders are no good either. They raised a son who cheated on his wife and lacked professional ethics, and they even blame their daughter-in-law.

Among the onlookers, a thin woman, who was the neighbor, laughed angrily, "Every cause has its effect, Auntie. It was his own son who ruined his future, not your daughter-in-law."

"Slander! It's all slander!" Chen's mother glared angrily at the woman next door. "You're spreading rumors, I'm going to have my son sue you for defamation."

An elderly woman, who often listened to operas and read books at home and had a full head of white hair but a very old demeanor, looked at Chen's mother and shook her head, saying, "Like father, like son."

After muttering that sentence, she turned around, slammed the door shut, and went home to continue listening to the opera.

The doorbell rang much louder than usual, showing how much the elders of the Chen family disapproved of the disturbance.

Seeing the indifference of those around her to her cries, Chen's mother gradually quieted down, then turned to tear at the property management staff member, Xiao Deng, saying, "You bring that shameless woman here! I want to ask her face to face if she's been eaten by a dog. When she was with us, how did we ever mistreat her? Did we starve her or deprive her of water? Now that my son can't live with her anymore, she's doing this to her. She has no regard for our past relationship at all, and you're all helping her harm people."

Xiao Deng was speechless.

So, your own wife annoys you and blocks you, but when you can't find her, you cling to us.

What?!

Like a dog skin plaster?

He took a deep breath and put on a fake smile. "Mrs. Chen, this is the property management office, not the neighborhood committee or the police station. If you need anything, please go out of the main gate of the community, turn right, then right, then right again for 400 meters to the right, and then forward for 700 meters to the front to the police station. You can go to either of these places whenever you want."

Chen's mother glared at him, her mouth spitting out a string of foul language, "Why would I go to the neighborhood committee or the police station? I'm going to wait here for that bitch to come back."

yue~

Xiao Deng felt deeply that his ears were dirty.

Chen Li's mother isn't old, but she has a foul mouth.

That was such an unpleasant thing to say.

Seeing Xiao Deng's pale face, Chen's father gave him a few deep looks, then grabbed his wife who was about to argue and sighed softly, "They must have planned to stay away for the next few days. Let's go back first."

With a long face, Chen's mother looked around and saw that the neighbors who had gone out to watch the commotion had all gone home and closed their doors tightly. She pounded on Li Chi'an's door before glaring at Xiao Deng and said, "Let's go find her somewhere else."

Xiao Deng spread his hands.

He thought gleefully, "Go ahead and look. Miss Li clearly planned this all along. It would be strange if you could find her now."

Chen Li hung up the phone as soon as he heard his mother start making a scene like a shrew.

He considered himself a highly educated intellectual, and even he found Chen's mother's crude words grating.

As Chen's father dragged her out of the residential compound, Chen's mother was still nagging, "It's her own bad temper that made my son unable to live with her. What does it have to do with my son? Now that they're divorced, she's blaming everything on my son..."

“I think she’s vicious; she can’t stand to see my son living a good life with Xiaolin.”

Once they reached a secluded corner, Chen's father, his face ashen, dialed his son's number again. "Can't you just come back and sort things out?"

On the other end of the phone, Chen Li was lying on a massage chair in Lin Ying's apartment, with an ice towel on his forehead. Underneath the ice towel, a red and swollen area could be seen. This was from another time when Lin Ying got angry and threw the cup she was holding onto his forehead.

He has barely slept for three days.

Receiving a call from my father only added to my worries.

"Stop talking nonsense. If I could handle it, wouldn't I have done it?"

“There must be a powerful figure behind Li Chi’an in this matter. It’s not that simple. You guys keep an eye on her for me. Contact me immediately when you see her. Don’t worry about anything else.”

"Besides, I can't leave here right now, Yingying is about to give birth..."

"How dare you say that!" Mr. Chen roared in anger. "The whole internet is condemning you for abandoning your wife and children. How are we, an old couple, supposed to hold our heads high?"

Chen Li was so angry that his vision blurred. "It's just a divorce, isn't he still my son?"

"You make it sound so easy. It's just a divorce. How come there are so many divorces in the world, but you're making such a fuss?" Mr. Chen was furious.

He only found out about his son's affair and the fact that the other woman was pregnant when Chen Li personally brought Lin Ying to see him before Chen Li went abroad.

He liked Lin Ying's family background, but that didn't mean he didn't feel bad for his daughter-in-law, Chi An.

He still had some sense of shame, but he never kept his word when it came to family matters.

In front of the Lin family, he couldn't embarrass his son, so he could only treat Lin Ying as his son said. But in his heart, he was also somewhat displeased with his son. Now, because of his son's actions, he was being criticized and gossiped about everywhere. He was both angry at his daughter-in-law for being heartless and angry at his son for not handling these matters well, allowing people to make a big fuss and disturbing the peace of the whole family.

"You should find Chi'an right away, apologize if you need to, get a divorce if you need to, clean things up and live a good life. Stop making trouble every single day."

"I understand, Dad. Yingying isn't feeling well, I'll hang up now."

Hearing the dial tone on the phone, Mr. Chen looked down at the road with a worried expression, hoping that his son could resolve the matter quickly. Otherwise, he would not be at ease until there was a result and he could not go to work.

...

Widespread anxiety about fairness and indignation at privilege prompted netizens to launch a fierce attack on Chen Li and Lin Ying, like a group of vengeful warriors.

After Chen Li and Lin Ying were punished, many media professionals and independent media personalities went to the offices of Hong Kong China Gas and Lin Ying to conduct undercover investigations in order to obtain firsthand information.

“He was always busy dating before, and he didn’t pay any attention to anyone.”

The young women on the front lines had long been fed up with Chen Li and Lin Ying's bossy attitude. Seeing the building collapse, they felt incredibly comfortable, and their whispers spread like wildfire throughout the courtyard.

There were also girls like Wanling who had been scolded by Chen Li, who angrily complained, "He's so irresponsible."

People deliberately lingered near the nurses' station, letting their whispers reach more people's ears.

"Miss Lin, we all know that you've had several boyfriends before."

"Hehe, you guys shouldn't ask anymore, isn't it all online?"

Seeing that there was no hope of finding Li Chi'an, Chen Li had no choice but to go around asking people to explain everything, but his explanations seemed so pale and powerless in the face of the facts.

Lin Ying's workplace began investigating her financial affairs, and the pressure on the Lin family increased.

Lin Ying sat in her Manhattan mansion, her face pale and her eyes filled with immense fear.

"It's all your wife's fault!" she cried, tearing at Chen Li, her hair disheveled and tears welling in her eyes. "Now we've lost our jobs, and the baby in my belly is like this."

The baby is already seven or eight months old, and we can't even administer a scalping treatment anymore.

But once born, it becomes a disgrace to the entire internet.

Originally, her parents were quite looking forward to the birth of this child, but now their reputation and work have been greatly affected by her and Chen Li's affair.

It can be said that most of the resources accumulated from the grandfather's generation were destroyed due to Li Chi'an's revenge.

This was something she had never considered just a few months ago; if, if...

Reality is cruel; what's done is done, and there are no "what ifs."

Two days ago, Lin Ying was still able to be coaxed by Chen Li and felt that Li Chi'an could not cause any trouble at all.

Now she's not so optimistic.

The barrage of angry phone calls from her parents and relatives caused her to suffer a mental breakdown, and made her realize that her past would have a huge and irreversible negative social impact on her life.

This not only affects her, Chen Li, and the Lin family, but also the entire industry.

The wake-up call sounded by Li Chi'an can be described as an earthquake for the industry.

"Yingying, Yingying, listen to me!" Chen Li, his face flushed, hugged the distraught Lin Ying. His voice echoed in the luxurious living room, "It's all that crazy woman, Li Chi'an! She's the one investigating us! It was all her doing. She wants us to be ruined. The more unfortunate we are, the more we must work together to get through this. Believe me, as long as we get through this, give me a few months, and everything will be alright."

"A crazy woman?" Lin Ying's eyes were filled with horror. "You're the one who found this crazy woman."

"You make her stop right now, stop, you hear me?!"

Li Chi'an will not stop.

Chen Li and Lin Ying underestimated the vengeful nature of his ex-wife, whom he had bullied so badly.

Three days later, Li Chi'an compiled the evidence into a series of in-depth reports, contacted several influential media outlets, and amplified the impact of the situation to a level that was difficult for Chen Li and the Lin family, and even their related interest groups, to control.

She followed them quietly, her body lazily enjoying the holiday, but her mind was like a cheetah lurking in the darkness, ready to tear them apart at any moment.

As a result, the person who hated Chen Li the most later on was neither Li Chi'an nor the mistress Lin Ying.

The ones who truly gritted their teeth were the young masters and ladies, like Lin Ying, who got their jobs through their families.

These young masters and ladies, relying on their family connections, easily entered good companies. As long as they don't make any mistakes, they can steadily climb the ladder and make a name for themselves in the industry sooner or later.

But who could have imagined that Chen Li's mess would expose them all?

In the following week, several more "geniuses" and "academic superstars" were exposed online, and all of them were stripped bare.

If Lin Ying's matter hadn't blown up, how would ordinary people have known about these people's gold-plating assembly line!

So right now, the people who most want to strangle Chen Li are these "instant geniuses".

They could have comfortably stayed at home in their comfortable beds, but now the whole internet knows how they got in. How are they going to pretend to get by from now on?

Following the disciplinary actions taken against Chen Li and Lin Ying by their employers, another investigation report from Xianghai City was released. The report detailed the facts, the handling of the case was resolute, and the measures taken against the parties involved fully met the expectations of netizens.

We are grateful for the government's intervention.

Chen Li and Lin Ying were completely disgraced.

...

Li Chi'an sat in the guesthouse, watching the news report on the incident on TV. He felt no pleasure as he had expected, only a sense of relief.

She was finally going to get rid of this painful marriage and the two men who had betrayed her.

On the day she left the island, Xu Zhuwen and Gao Yinxi came to pick her up in person.

Chen, the youngest child, sat amidst a pile of snacks, watching his favorite cartoon.

Outside the window, the azure sea shimmered, while inside, Li Chi'an and two friends raised their glasses in celebration.

"What are the plans next?" Gao Yinxi asked.

"A fresh start. A divorce, and I'm reclaiming my life. This time, I'm going to live for myself."

Li Chi'an looked out the window at the bright moon hanging high in the sky. The moonlight was pure and flawless, as if it were beckoning to her.

She knew that the undercurrent of revenge was over, but the tide of a new life was just beginning.

...

After signing the last page of the contract, Li Chi'an paused lightly on the paper with his pen, leaving a round ink dot.

She looked up, and sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the solid wood floor. The smile of Jin Jin, the publishing editor, appeared especially genuine in the light.

“It’s a pleasure working with you, Ms. Li.” Jin Jin extended her hand. “This additional printing of 50,000 copies is just the beginning. Our publishing house has decided to make your new book a key promotional project for next year.”

Li Chi'an held that warm hand, his fingertips still feeling the lingering warmth of the contract paper.

Two million.

The number echoed in her mind like a heavy hammer blow to her heart.

She hadn't felt this excited and happy in a long time. Indeed, the joy that real money brings can only be truly experienced when you actually have it in your hands.