Soon, Ji Mingshu also received a new message from Cen Sen.
The first two points are his usual tactics of using the previous screenshots to create a winning hand.
Cen Sen: [So you were trying to act cute and charming. I'll be more careful next time.]
Cen Sen: [But you're already twenty-five, so don't give me that childish impression anymore. I have no interest in child molestation.]
The third item is a link to the good news from Junyi Group's official WeChat account.
Clicking through, the entire article boasts about the group's brilliant achievements in the hotel industry, and at the end, it casually cheers on the employees and showers the leaders with compliments.
Of course, when Ji Mingshu said it, the meaning automatically became, "Don't worry, Junyi won't go bankrupt even after your grandson gets married."
Ji Mingshu replied with a "smiling" emoji, found Cen Sen's WeChat profile picture, and smoothly blocked and deleted him as a friend.
After blocking each other, Ji Mingshu and Cen Sen did not meet for a week.
Cen Sen has a two-week hotel inspection schedule, flying around domestically and internationally, with at least three meetings a day to ensure he can keep up with the projects he's working on.
Ji Mingshu, however, couldn't resist Jiang Chun's persistent pleading and agreed to supervise her transformation into a little country bumpkin.
Ji Mingshu didn't really understand why she had taken on the job that the male protagonist in the novel had to do, but since she had taken it on, she was determined to do her job conscientiously and strictly complete the task, leaving no chance for even the slightest bit of rusticity to escape death.
"How come there are still 58 kilograms left?" Strict Teacher Ji stared at the scale and questioned.
Jiang Chun looked completely innocent. "I don't know either. I didn't drink any milk tea, and I didn't eat any barbecue."
Ji Mingshu walked around the ugly house that she hadn't had time to renovate yet, then accurately pulled out three boxes of instant noodles from the corner. "What's this? Was it a free gift with the fruit?"
Jiang Chun was remarkably composed. She took the instant noodles from her and then stood back on the scale.
"Look, my weight hasn't changed, so I won't get fat."
Ji Mingshu glanced at the unchanged 58 on the scale, choked for three seconds, and for a moment actually felt that what she said made a lot of sense.
Fortunately, quick-thinking Teacher Ji soon realized the flaw: "You eat instant noodles dry? If they don't digest, can you just excrete them directly?"
Jiang Chun: "..."
They couldn't get around it.
Teacher Ji continued her lecture, "You keep saying on WeChat Moments and Weibo that you're going to lose weight, but with such a bad attitude, what's the point of losing weight? Why don't you save your energy to go back to Shenzhen and sell fish, and instead just scroll through WeChat Moments and see Yan and that green tea girl getting married?"
"I did say I was going to lose weight, I've been saying it every day, haven't I?" Jiang Chun couldn't help but mutter under her breath.
Seeing Ji Mingshu's expression that said, "Say that again and I'll make sure you don't see the sunset tomorrow," she immediately changed her mind, "Okay, I was wrong. I won't eat instant noodles anymore."
"Thirty minutes on the elliptic trampoline, incline eight. Don't even think about slacking off," Teacher Ji coldly commanded.
Recently, Jiang Chun has been using an elliptical trainer every day. Just hearing those three words makes her thighs and calves ache.
But Ji Mingshu was already standing next to the elliptic apparatus, and his death gaze had been precisely locked on.
She took a deep breath and walked over with a look of resignation.
In fact, Jiang Chun's determination to advance and upgrade this time was also to vent her anger.
That night, many people recorded and photographed Ji Mingshu slapping Xiaobaihua. Although Zhang Er checked everyone's electronic devices and deleted all the video data as required by the rules when leaving, some still slipped through the net.
Within two days, the story of the innocent girl being slapped for being a mistress was exposed online.
She's now a minor celebrity with some recognition, so naturally there's a small group of people discussing her online.
For some reason, the innocent girl played the victim with Yan, and Yan, as if under a spell, flew into a rage for her sake, issuing a statement saying that his relationship with the innocent girl was legitimate. He even went to the Jiang family for her sake and warned Jiang Chun not to make any more moves.
Jiang Chun was so angry she almost fainted. She wished she could hire an online army to buy trending topics and ruin their reputation so they would both have to eat shit!
But Jiang's father was very shrewd and patient. He peacefully dissolved the engagement and stopped Jiang Chun from causing any more trouble, saying that there would be plenty of ways to make Yan regret it later.
Unlike her father, Jiang Chun is an impatient person who wants Yan to join the "Scumbags Go Die" group right now.
So he shamelessly pestered Ji Mingshu to help supervise, holding his breath and wanting to make a grand turnaround and crush that little green tea in every way, and then find a rich and handsome man like Cen Sen to make Yan regret his actions from red to green and then from green to white, kneeling down and calling him daddy!
Mr. Jiang wholeheartedly supported her desire to find a rich, handsome, and successful man to dominate Yan.
She is three months younger than Ji Mingshu. In recent years, her family has become rich and has no shortage of money, so naturally no one asked her to find a proper job to earn money to support the family.
Mr. Jiang's only expectation for her was that she marry into a prestigious family in a grand and dignified manner. At the time, she was head over heels in love with Yan, which displeased Mr. Jiang. Now that she has come to her senses, Mr. Jiang is very pleased and has immediately arranged a family gathering for her, similar to a blind date, for next Friday.
Jiang's father had also learned about the boyfriend that Jiang Chun had found for her. Ji Mingshu had already shown Jiang Chun his photo, and he was quite handsome, refined, and cultured.
After a week of grueling training, Jiang Chun, when quiet, began to resemble a socialite.
While picking out clothes for her to wear to the dinner party, Ji Mingshu lectured her, "The Tang family are all highly educated. Don't talk nonsense when you meet them. If you can't speak properly, just shut up."
Jiang Chun nodded like a gosling pecking at rice.
On Friday, she wore the outfit chosen by Ji Mingshu to greet the rich and handsome man.
Ji Mingshu went to bed early on Friday night and forgot to ask Jiang Chun how her blind date went. Early Saturday morning, she received a barrage of calls from Gu Kaiyang asking to borrow a dress.
Gu Kaiyang's magazine invited a screen couple to shoot a double cover, but the dress prepared for the female star suddenly malfunctioned and couldn't be worn. Now they are in a hurry to find a matching dress to complete the shoot.
The dress is a new autumn/winter style this year. Ji Mingshu happens to have one, but she only wore it once and didn't like it much. It has long been relegated to the back of the closet to gather dust. Now that Gu Kaiyang has mentioned it, she naturally agrees without hesitation.
Gu Kaiyang originally planned to send his assistant to her house to pick it up, but since she had nothing else to do, she said she would deliver it herself.
On his way to deliver clothes to Gu Kaiyang, Ji Mingshu finally remembered Jiang Chun's blind date and made a phone call to ask about it.
Jiang Chun answered the phone quite quickly, but her voice sounded listless, and her dejection seemed to creep onto Ji Mingshu's end through the signal.
Ji Mingshu: "What's wrong? Did you have a bad start?"
"It probably won't be very favorable. I don't know what I did wrong, but whenever that guy looked at me, he always had this... half-smile that made me a little creeped out."
Jiang Chun hadn't gotten out of bed yet, so she lay on the bed and recounted the blind date to Ji Mingshu.
She recalled things in great detail, even specifying what lipstick she used in the morning, what dishes she ate for lunch, and how many bowls of rice she served.
Ji Mingshu impatiently interrupted her, telling her to get to the point.
She paused for a moment, then jumped to the main point about the time they spent alone together.
“He asked me what kind of painter I liked. How would I know what painters I liked? I only heard you say that your husband had photographed a few of Bada Shanren’s paintings. I said that I quite liked Bada Shanren and that their paintings were very special. I dare not say anything more than that.”
"Wait a minute," Ji Mingshu thought he had misheard, "You feel you didn't say much?"
"I only said one thing: where is it excessive? Isn't that special? You said something so vague, and you still said something wrong?"
"No, do you think Bada Shanren is one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove or the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou? They're not referring to him; he's one person, not eight! Didn't I tell you to shut up if you don't know?"
Ji Mingshu was almost laughing in exasperation at her.
Jiang Chun was stunned for a moment, "Then why didn't he expose me and even went to the supermarket with me? Did he not know it himself?"
"Don't try to pin the blame on others when you're ignorant!"
When Ji Mingshu became fierce, Jiang Chun chickened out.
After humbly admitting her mistake, she recalled what happened while shopping at the supermarket.
"When we went to the fruit section, he mentioned several fruits I'd never heard of before, saying he really liked them. Then he asked me what fruits I liked. I felt I couldn't lose, so I said I liked pears, especially those strawberries that are really popular right now, but we looked around and couldn't find any..."
...?
Jiang Chun was still rambling on and on.
Ji Mingshu interrupted her expressionlessly with standard British pronunciation: "Strawberry, listen carefully, strawberry, you went to primary school, right? Strawberry, strawberry is strawberry, not pear."
Jiang Chun: "..."
Ji Mingshu: "Please don't say I'm your sister when you go out, thank you."
Sorry to bother you.
Jiang Chun silently hung up the phone.
When Ji Mingshu arrived at the magazine office, she still felt both annoyed and amused.
Because of her relationship with Gu Kaiyang, almost everyone at the magazine knew her, and when they saw her arrive, they all stood up to greet her.
Ji Mingshu's mind was still filled with Jiang Chun's goose-like chatter, so he casually responded and didn't have time to notice the slightly strange expressions on these people's faces.
When she met Gu Kaiyang in the deputy editor's office, she found that Gu Kaiyang was not as busy as she had imagined. Moreover, as soon as he saw her, he immediately stood up from his chair and carefully served her tea and water, looking very cautious.
Ji Mingshu took off his sunglasses and asked curiously, "Weren't you in a hurry to film?"
Gu Kaiyang: "The group issued an emergency notice saying that filming would be canceled."
She casually asked, "Why didn't you take pictures?"
"Um, something happened to the woman, it's just broken in the news..."
Gu Kaiyang's voice was very soft and extremely muffled, giving people a particularly guilty feeling.
Ji Mingshu was puzzled. "What's wrong with you? You're behaving strangely."
Seeing her completely unaware of the situation, Gu Kaiyang was torn and struggled internally.
But thinking that it would only take a short while to finish, I mentally prepared myself, closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, and blurted everything out—
"Okay, I'll tell you, that shameless woman named Zhang Baoshu and your Cen Sen were in the news just twenty minutes ago!"
“The situation hasn’t escalated outside yet. We received the notification in advance. I think you should contact your husband first. There might be some misunderstanding. Please don’t act impulsively!”
Chapter 15
...?
For a few seconds, Ji Mingshu didn't understand what Gu Kaiyang was saying at all.
The name "Zhang Baoshu" only left a brief impression in her mind with the sound of the character "Shu" which is homophonous with her.
"What? Who's with Cen Sen?"
As soon as the question left his mouth, Ji Mingshu remembered that Gu Kaiyang had also used a qualifier—"shameless woman."
She paused for a moment, then silently took out her phone from her bag and opened Weibo.
This matter hasn't even gone viral yet; there's no related news on the homepage. Besides, Zhang Baoshu is at most a fourth or fifth-tier celebrity in terms of seniority. Who would be so bored as to actively care about the love life and private life of such a nobody without spending money to buy trending topics?
Ji Mingshu stared at the search box, unsure of what to search for, and briefly fell into a daze.
When did she begin to realize that she would have to arrange a marriage between her family members? She couldn't remember for a moment.