Shang Yechu felt an itch in her hands, wishing she could take down a chandelier and smash it over Sheng Wenzhi's head. She took two deep breaths to calm herself down: "I thought you would sue me, or complain on social media that I drastically altered your script."
"Why would I sue you?" Sheng Wenzhi said. "I said the 'Rules General Store' is yours, and that's it. I won't go back on my word and take it back."
Shang Yechu sneered: "When you drove hundreds of kilometers overnight to Wencheng, it seems you didn't think that way."
Sheng Wenzhi shook his head: "I was very angry that day, but what angered me was not that you changed the script; it was that after you changed it, you belittled it."
Regardless of what was being circulated about, his subsequent actions made no difference. Shang Yechu said sarcastically, "So, I was judging you, a gentleman, by my own petty standards?"
“I’m no gentleman.” Sheng Wenzhi shook his head again. “I went to find you… that family, not to bring down ‘Happiness Street,’ but to bring down you. As long as I can make you suffer like I do, I’ll feel much better.”
Shang Yechu was about to retort when she suddenly remembered that she had called Sheng Wenzhi out to ask him about his purpose in going to Xingfu Commercial Street. Now she was going off-topic again: "After all this talk, what are you going to do on the pedestrian street?"
Sheng Wenzhi did not answer the question, lost in his own thoughts: "That family did indeed come looking for you. I slept at home for a few days and ignored them."
This is indeed Sheng Wenzhi's style of doing things: starting strong but finishing weak, focusing on the beginning but neglecting the end.
"I don't know what happened after that. I was in a daze during that time, my mind was like a fog. Then, that family suddenly came to my house and asked me for money."
Shang Yechu was startled and exclaimed, "They're still in Hengshi?"
Sheng Wenzhi nodded, then shook his head: "They said it's all because of me. They lost their jobs and had to sell their houses back home. Now they haven't earned a penny and they still owe something. What was your boss's name again? I've forgotten—a large sum of money, and people keep coming up to collect the debt. They want me to take responsibility."
Her eyelids twitched twice, and a bad feeling welled up in Shang Yechu's heart: "You didn't pay back the money for them, did you?"
“That was my plan,” Sheng Wenzhi said, smoothing his hair. “I’m not short of money, so instead of getting entangled with them, I might as well pay them off for them to avoid wasting time. But I didn’t expect them to owe so much; even my royalties would take ten or eight years to pay. In the end, I just let it go. Did your boss lure this family into gambling?”
Shang Yechu finally breathed a sigh of relief. Ji Juntao's methods were always dirty, and this time, in order to completely eliminate future troubles, she even resorted to some underhanded means. She couldn't possibly devise an amount that the Shang family could hope to afford.
Thank goodness, if Sheng Wenzhi dared to pay back that family's money, she would strangle him right here.
“Then they said they had no place to live and wanted to stay at my house,” Sheng Wenzhi said wearily. “I offered to rent them a house outside, but they disagreed; then I offered to buy one, but they said that the new house I bought was to be used as a new house for Shang Jiayu to get married, and that the two of them couldn’t live there and would continue to live at my house.”
Shang Yechu frowned as if she had eaten a sour lemon. Upon hearing Sheng Wenzhi's words, she felt even worse than if she had lost 30 million on her movie: "Fine, fine, fine, fine."
After saying "good" six times, Shang Yechu was speechless and just wanted to kick Sheng Wenzhi off the rooftop.
Sheng Wenzhi, unaware that Shang Yechu's anger was about to reach its peak, continued rambling, "Even if I were rich, I couldn't buy two houses for them all at once, so I had to let them live in my house. I'm responsible for their living expenses, utilities, and money for your brother's shopping. That's not a problem. But they're so noisy, their whole family is extremely noisy, making it hard for me to rest and create. In the end, your mother, (Shang Yechu coldly corrected: "My mother has passed away.") Aunt Ji, even wanted to introduce me to her niece for marriage."
Shang Yechu's eyes were practically popping out of their sockets.
“I refused. Aunt Ji wasn’t very happy about that. I’ve forgotten what happened after that. They made a lot of friends around here, some who did square dancing and so on, and they even practiced on the second floor of my house. Shang Hongxuan smoked and drank, making the house very dirty. Shang Jiayu wandered around and messed up my books and manuscripts. I hired a few more housekeepers to clean up, but one of them started having an affair with Shang Hongxuan. Aunt Ji was furious and cried and made a scene at home. During that time, I felt like I was living in a dream. I didn’t know anything about any of their affairs; I could only hear the noise.”
After succinctly summarizing the entire melodramatic family drama, Sheng Wenzhi tucked her hair behind her ear and said, "I found it very annoying, so I moved out of the house."
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