As the first and primary wife of the womanizer, Shi Yu runs a business so large that it is not only well-known across the country, but also earns a reputation on the global stage, bringing in extremely substantial assets. Mu Yue has been invited to the Shi family's residence, an old manor whose size is no smaller than Mu Yue's own Yujiang Garden.
The Shi family runs a family-owned enterprise, and as described in the original story, it is the kind of old-fashioned large clan rife with internal strife. The conflicts are particularly targeted at Shi Yu. As a young woman who has taken charge of the entire group, she has to deal with one problem after another every other day.
The older generation has all passed away, leaving only the Shi siblings' grandmother. The Shi family grandmother barely understands business operations, and all she cares about is her beloved grandson, as well as the fact that her granddaughter is already in her late twenties yet still has not settled down with a partner. None of the uncles, aunts, cousins or other extended family members are easy to get along with. When the male lead shows up at the Shi family estate, the classic trope of female infighting to climb into his bed unfolds: the Shi cousins try to seduce him, which leads the female lead to misunderstand and grow disgusted with him, before the plot evolves into her being jealous over the situation.
With severe internal strife plaguing the family and hostile forces lurking outside waiting for a chance to strike, this plot design allows the male lead to rescue the female lead out of dire straits. In a perfectly logical yet effortless way, he ends up taking half of Shi Yu's assets and gaining the authority to co-manage the entire group.
But what if the male lead never shows up at all, and Shi Yu solves all these problems on her own?
Mu Yue never believes that someone as capable as Shi Yu, who climbed to the top management position at such a young age, would lack the ability to fight back and have to wait for someone else to come to her rescue. As for those family leeches, Shi Yu has never said a word to suggest she has no intention of dealing with them.
The moment the male lead steps onto the scene, all the glorious moments of success become his. It is just as infuriating as spending ages grinding a boss down to its last sliver of health, only to have a random player swoop in, steal the final kill, take all the experience points and loot, and then turn around and claim, "You would have been killed by that boss if it weren't for me."
The Shi family's invitation leaves it entirely up to Mu Yue to set the time for the visit, and she can go whenever her schedule allows, since the dinner is meant as a thank-you feast for her.
Mu Yue simply decides to pay the visit after her final exams wrap up. University A starts its winter break really early, on the 16th, and the holiday lasts all the way until March 1st — far more generous than the brutal schedule high school students have to put up with.
Mu Yue already has plans for the winter vacation, and she has no intention of lazing around at home the entire time. Her winter break plans consist of two parts: having fun to her heart's content, and earning system points.
When it comes to having fun, the top activity Mu Yue wants to try is skiing. Her top student system even lets her earn some study points through it, since she does not know how to ski yet — once she masters the skill, she gets the points. The points are not a huge amount, but since she can earn them while enjoying herself, why not?
She also wants to check out the ice and snow festival, the traditional lantern fair, and experience ice fishing and dog sledding. Back when she was working her old job, she did get to travel sometimes, but almost all those trips were company team-building events. She barely had any chance to travel for fun on her own. She had a decent salary back then, but her workload was overwhelming, so by the end of the year, she hardly had any time to go out and explore the world freely.
And those team-building trips were never fun at all, filled to the brim with awkward social obligations, idiotic bosses, and unbearable colleagues. That is probably one of the reasons why Mu Yue loves to travel around the moment she is on break now.
As for earning points, the best target is still the womanizer. She already made a good sum from the underground casino incident, but her biggest haul was in D City, and the ripple effects of that gain are still benefiting her to this day. Right now, the male lead's injuries have almost healed, which means he is ready to stir up trouble again.
Next up was the counterattack points. As the year-end was drawing near, all kinds of galas and invitation-only events were popping up more and more frequently. The overbearing CEO and all the characters tied to him mostly showed up at these high-profile gatherings, while the female lead Wen Xue would appear at award ceremonies or anniversary celebrations of some sort.
But during the first year right after the white moonlight came back, the female lead was suppressed for a stretch. A flood of smear stories about her broke out online, she was viciously roasted by the public, and she even nearly got hounded off the internet entirely.
The reason behind that suppression was simple enough: the real person the male lead had always pined for was back, so the female lead, this stand-in, was no longer needed to get in the way. The agency she had signed with belonged to the male lead's best friend in the first place, so of course the friend would follow whatever attitude the male lead took. What's more, in the eyes of these privileged elites, Wen Xue was nothing more than a toy that they could pick up, play with, and cast aside whenever they felt like it.
Thinking about how Wen Xue couldn't land good resources and had no one willing to invest in her projects, Mu Yue's eyes suddenly lit up. Oh right, when it came to spending big money, the entertainment industry was a fantastic place to put funds to use, wasn't it? Just think, every film or TV drama being produced these days claims to have a budget of hundreds of millions, right?
What's more, Mu Yue didn't have to worry at all about whether she would lose money on the investment. Wen Xue was the female lead, after all, so she had her own protagonist's halo working for her. Not to mention that Wen Xue was no empty-headed pretty face—she had real, solid talent. Mu Yue would not only not lose her investment, she might very well make a huge profit off of it. She didn't lack money to spend, but if the investment really did turn a profit, that would still make her happy, wouldn't it?
She could jot this idea down somewhere, and bring it up to Wen Xue when the time was right.
Back on campus during the final exam period, Mu Yue herself didn't run into any more ridiculous trouble. Everyone was too busy cramming for exams and praying to the koi fish for good grades to have time to stir up drama. But the whole Fang Baiwei incident had already reached a conclusion.
Yes, it was all settled. Following the advice Mu Yue had given her, Fang Baiwei had kept detailed records of every harassing call she received, as well as every message that called her out by name and leaked her private personal information to the public. Then she took all that evidence straight to the police station to file a report. This kind of case was ridiculously easy to investigate—all mobile phone numbers were registered under real names, and even some people who panicked and tried to cancel their numbers after the fact couldn't react fast enough. After all, who would have expected that Fang Baiwei, whom no one had taken seriously just a few days prior, would go straight to the police as her first move?
Shouldn't she have complained to people around her first? It was just such a tiny little thing, was it really worth calling the cops over?
Just as Mu Yue had predicted, all those people wanted nothing more than to sweep this under the rug. But with a top-tier lawyer on her side, whether this incident would get brushed off as a trivial matter or escalate into something far bigger was no longer up to them to decide.
And the mastermind behind this whole mess turned out to be that scumbag from the original story, who was in the same department as Fang Baiwei. His excuse was that he had only been trying to pursue Fang, but had gone about it the wrong way, and that he had only meant to scare her a little bit so that he could step in later to solve the problem and earn points with her.
Plenty of people with more than a few screws loose started spouting off lines like "he just used the wrong method, he actually likes Fang, it's not like he meant any real harm, you're all classmates, there's no need to make such a huge ugly scene out of this".
There were loads of comments along those lines floating around the campus forum. Mu Yue didn't bother wasting words arguing with them, and just directly tagged the law department of University A, asking the law department's students and professors what their take on the whole situation was.
As soon as she made that tag, the law students jumped in to do a live breakdown, walking everyone through exactly what legal issues that unknown male student had violated in the course of this whole incident.
All those idiotic remarks vanished into thin air. Using affection as a pretext to commit illegal acts — could that ever be something a decent person would do? What kind of decent person would chase someone like that? It was practically the same as threatening someone with kidnapping.
Once this trivial matter was sorted out, Fang Baiwei was back to her usual self. The final exams were no trouble for her, and Mu Yue didn't let her idle away her time. She signed Fang Baiwei up for self-defense classes over the winter break, and arranged for her to stay at her place. But Fang Baiwei was too embarrassed to take the guest room, so she chose the staff dormitory instead, and kept a detailed record of every single expense she incurred.
Mu Yue let her do as she pleased. People with a strong moral bottom line would never feel at ease accepting unearned favors, so it was only right to let her do whatever made her feel most comfortable. Though Mu Yue never expected anything in return, if someone she helped turned out to be completely ungrateful, she would be upset after all — nobody would want to go out of their way to help a total ingrate.
Day by day passed, and Mu Yue got through her exams smoothly. The top student in her year had already marked her papers for her, and she did really well in every single subject. There was zero chance of her failing any course. But the corresponding study points would only be credited to her after the official scores were released.
The winter vacation arrived right on schedule.
That very day, Mu Yue packed up all her personal belongings in the dorm, and had a get-together meal with her dorm mates. This time, her roommates treated her. They couldn't afford a super fancy place, so they picked a well-reviewed private restaurant with a 300-yuan per person average cost. A 300-yuan per person meal was actually a small luxury for average college students, but Mu Yue didn't spoil their fun — besides, the wood-fired chicken and soft-shelled turtle dishes that restaurant served were absolutely delicious.
On the first day of winter vacation, Mu Yue was brimming with excitement as she started planning her next moves.
School's out, time to get down to business!
Where should I head to first? Keep the appointment with the Shi family, go to some banquet or salon, or drop a bombshell of New Year's gossip on the womanizer first?
