Chapter 364 - 319: Pushing for Marriage
Chapter 364: Chapter 319: Pushing for Marriage
During the subsequent conversation, they also learned that Miss Ai was unmarried, had no partner, and wasn’t in a hurry to get married. She said that if she didn’t meet the right person, she’d be fine not getting married for her entire life; it was no big deal...
For some reason, as Tang Qingshan watched Miss Ai, wearing an apron and moving about his kitchen, it didn’t feel strange or awkward at all. Although it was their first meeting, they could talk as casually and easily as old acquaintances, and in his heart, he made a decision.
And Miss Ai was amusing. Just moments before, she had been saying it didn’t matter if she never married, but after dinner, when Grandma Tang asked if she would consider dating her son, she looked Tang Qingshan up and down as if seeing him for the first time. Then, she blushed and gave a series of quick nods.
One meal, two hours together, some simple conversation, and the relationship was settled. Grandma Tang was overjoyed; a great task was finally accomplished! Tang Qingshan also thought he could finally breathe a sigh of relief and escape the constant nagging. Who would have known that Grandma Tang would double down, still hounding him with daily phone calls? This round was to urge him to call and write to Miss Ai to deepen their relationship, insisting they had to hold the wedding banquet by the end of the year!
Every time Tang Qingshan answered his mother’s call with a pained expression, a quote from Tang Manman would pop into his head: ’This is enough to drive a person crazy!’
Miss Ai was in Beijing, and every Sunday she would visit the Tang Mansion to see the two elders. Xiao Man and Hao Hao had both met her, and the siblings secretly exchanged their first impressions. Hao Hao thought this fair-skinned, round-faced girl was a bit silly, but in a way that wasn’t annoying. Xiao Man, on the other hand, thought Miss Ai was quite nice. You could tell from her eyes that she was a kind person. However, she also seemed like a flower raised in a greenhouse—delicate, innocent, and fragile, unable to withstand the storms of life. Marrying Dad Tang was absolutely a good choice for her, because Dad Tang would never hurt her.
Then Grandma Tang told them: Miss Ai was thirty years old. She had been accepted into Kyoto University at fifteen, but had to drop out at sixteen due to political issues involving her parents. All alone, she went to a remote village to be a "sent-down youth," and worked as an elementary and middle school teacher for seven years. Two years ago, she started publishing articles in newspapers and magazines, and she now worked for the city’s Writers’ Association as a well-known young author!
The two siblings’ jaws dropped in unison. ’We completely misjudged her!’ Miss Ai had such an extraordinary past, yet she presented herself as such a gentle, fragile figure. A classic "innocent flower" indeed!
The whole family was unanimously looking forward to Tang Qingshan and Miss Ai’s wedding, but they had subconsciously overlooked Tang Qingyun and Wu Xiaowen. The couple had been living apart for nearly a year; Tang Qingyun had never come back, and Wu Xiaowen had never gone to visit him. Yet no one asked and no one seemed to care: how was this couple doing?
Tang Qingyun actually called the Tang Mansion often. When Xiao Man was home on weekends, Grandpa and Grandma Tang would answer his calls and, as he wished, would call Xiao Man over to say a few words. But she never heard them mention Wu Xiaowen.
Of course, just because Xiao Man herself didn’t care didn’t mean others weren’t paying attention. Perhaps the adults discussed it when she wasn’t around, for all she knew.
As for Xiao Man, she had completely washed her hands of Wu Xiaowen and couldn’t care less about her affairs. The only reason she would even bother to exchange a word or two with Wu Xiaowen was for Hao Hao’s sake, since he still saw the woman as his mother, and she didn’t want to make things too awkward for him.
When Tang Qingyun and Wu Xiaowen brought Tang Yaxuan back to Beijing and moved directly into the Tang Mansion, the tough defenses Xiao Man thought she had built around her heart were pierced. If her grandparents hadn’t decided to kick the three of them out that very night, the one leaving the Tang Mansion would have been Xiao Man.
In both her past life and this one, Xiao Man and Tang Yaxuan were mortal enemies. And since Wu Xiaowen chose to keep Tang Yaxuan by her side and raise her, even helping Tang Yaxuan to hurt and trample all over her just like in the past life, Xiao Man had no reason not to sever this family tie.
Wu Xiaowen, however, didn’t see it that way. Once Xiao Man came to Beijing and enrolled in the Medical College, she would "visit" at least once a week, sometimes bringing Wu Yu Xuan and Lin Aizhen with her. She would speak to Xiao Man’s classmates and roommates in her capacity as a mother. This tactic of creating a preconceived notion to mislead everyone didn’t fool Xiao Man. She simply refused to meet with them, leaving them waiting in vain every time they came to her dorm. Finally, she just told her roommates, ’Those relatives are scammers. You’ll only get taken advantage of if you deal with them!’
So her roommates stopped interacting with the Wu Family. But they had a countermove: they went directly to a certain leader at the school, who was said to be a former classmate of Wu Yu Xuan, and had Xiao Man called to the reception office during class time to meet them!
Xiao Man thought a school leader needed to see her about something, so she didn’t use her Divine Sense. When she went in and saw the three members of the Wu family, she nearly collapsed from anger. She didn’t speak to them. Instead, right in front of that school leader, she swore an oath: If Wu Xiaowen ever found so much as a shadow of her at school again, then she wasn’t Tang Manman.
But Wu Xiaowen had a stubborn streak of her own. Seeing her parents lose face in front of their old classmate, not to mention being dejected after being snubbed by their own granddaughter, she grew furious and became even more determined not to let Xiao Man go. She came looking for her whenever she had a free moment. However, she finally understood: Xiao Man wasn’t just kidding around. No matter how much effort she put in, she truly couldn’t find even a shadow of Xiao Man.
Of course, Xiao Man didn’t believe for a second that Wu Xiaowen was visiting her so frequently because she missed her biological daughter. The woman had no feelings for Xiao Man at all. This relentless pestering was simply because Wu Yu Xuan wanted that jade carving.
Hao Hao, as Wu Xiaowen’s son and a grandson of the Wu Family, had no choice but to relay a message from his maternal grandparents. They said they were willing to buy it back with money—one hundred and fifty thousand, not a penny less.
Xiao Man didn’t agree, nor did she want to give it up. The jade carving was truly beautiful and fascinating. It depicted the instant a summer breeze gently brushed past, making the flowers and leaves seem to sway. On a branch beneath the leaves perched two cicadas with spotted wings. Grandpa Tang had taught Xiao Man to look closely: one was buzzing loudly, while the other lay still in wait. The tiny scene perfectly captured the leisurely mood of summer. Moreover, Xiao Man had taken it into the Treasure Pearl Space to be nourished, making it appear even more clear, lustrous, and spiritually imbued. She kept it on a small table in her room to admire.
She had already earned back that one hundred and fifty thousand yuan. The "dog bowls" and "scrap metal and old furniture" she had collected in the countryside had fetched a hundred thousand for the first batch she sold in G City, which she split evenly with Guan Ailan and Mo Linghui.
The dozen or so "heavyweight" pieces she had put in her space were quite valuable, and she had brought them all to Beijing. Two bronze ware items were taken by Grandpa Tang for his collection room. Four rare wood carvings were damaged to varying degrees and were sent to professionals for restoration. As for the rest—the ordinary gold, silver, and copper items, and the Jade Porcelain—Grandpa Tang advised Xiao Man to keep them for now, saying the family didn’t lack money. But after Xiao Man absorbed the Spiritual Energy from them, she felt the objects were no longer useful. She insisted on selling them all for cash. She still needed to find and buy more items containing Spiritual Energy, like jade, so naturally, the more money she had on hand, the better. The Tang family’s wealth was an inheritance accumulated by their ancestors; it was their foundation, meant to be passed down through generations. She couldn’t possibly use a large amount of it.
Grandpa Tang, of course, was endlessly doting and supportive of his little money-grubbing granddaughter. He gave her a rough appraisal of the items and let her go off to brave the antique markets on her own. He knew his granddaughter’s Combat Power; basically, no one would be able to bully her out there.
Except for that bizarrely heavy lump of "Xuan Iron," after Xiao Man sold off all those antiques, her personal passbook showed a deposit of six hundred thousand.
This was just the antiques market of the 80s. If it were ten or twenty years later, the prices would certainly have multiplied several times over. But Xiao Man felt that ten or twenty years from now, she probably wouldn’t be lamenting over such a small amount of money.