[This chapter is an extra about how Li Xiaoyue and Chen Lin met. Feel free to skip it if you're not interested.]
That year, Chen Lin was fourteen.
Twenty-year-old Li Xiaoyue had just married into Chen Family Village.
She felt none of a newlywed's joy.
Her mother was disabled, and her father had kidney failure. Still in her second year of college, she could barely breathe under the crushing weight of reality. When the creditors came knocking, she was driven into utter despair.
That was when a matchmaker approached her.
Chen Tiande of Chen Family Village had a son, Chen Dazhuang, who had been born with cerebral palsy and was partially paralyzed. He even needed someone to feed him. Chen Tiande had heard from some quack that an evil influence had entered his son's body, and that marrying him off might bring enough good fortune to cure him.
But what woman with even halfway decent prospects would agree to marry a simpleton?
The matchmaker scoured every village for miles around, but no one was interested, no matter how large a bride price she promised.
Then she found Li Xiaoyue, who had nowhere left to turn.
Chen Tiande put up five hundred thousand yuan in one payment.
Two hundred thousand paid off all the Li Family's debts.
The remaining three hundred thousand was meant to pay for the kidney transplant that would save her father's life.
Li Xiaoyue dropped out of college and agreed to the marriage.
Dressed in a red wedding gown with carefully applied makeup, she married into Chen Family Village.
The first time Chen Lin saw her up close was at the wedding banquet. That day, his mother even asked him with a smile, "Xiao Lin, is the bride pretty?"
The fourteen-year-old boy blushed scarlet, lowered his head,