Granny Zhuang had hardly looked pleasant to begin with, and the moment she entered and saw Zhuang Xiaoting, her expression grew even more strained.
The corners of her mouth pulled downward, and she gave a muffled grunt of acknowledgment. She looked as though she had spotted something disagreeable but could not very well make a scene over it.
Zhou Cheng watched this unfold, his brow furrowing deeply.
From his memories, he knew Granny Zhuang disliked her granddaughter Xiaoting-disliked her intensely.
It was not simply because Granny Zhuang favored boys over girls. A large part of the reason actually lay with him.
His father in this life, Zhuang Chaoying, was utterly, blindly filial, habitually sacrificing his own household to please his parents.
Even though his family of five was barely scraping by, he still took a substantial portion of his monthly wages to support his parents.
Before Zhuang Xiaoting was born, Zhuang Chaoying had always handed over a third of his wages.
After Zhuang Xiaoting's birth, there was another mouth to feed, stretching their already tight finances even thinner.
With no other choice, he reduced the money he gave his parents to a quarter of his wages.
Granny Zhuang already disliked granddaughters, and this granddaughter's birth had cost her another seven or eight yuan every month. Naturally, nothing about Zhuang Xiaoting pleased her.
Zhuang Xiaoting knew Granny Zhuang disliked her, too, but she could only pretend she did not.
What nobody knew, however, was that without Zhou Cheng transmigrating here and inserting himself into the picture, the Zhuang family would only have had a son and a daughter: Zhuang Tunan and Zhuang Xiaoting.
It was his addition that had made the family's circumstances more difficult, and his addition that had cost Granny Zhuang money every month.
In the original plot, Granny