Hou Yuanwu even had a child bride back in his hometown! His parents had bought her, and she was two years older than him. From the time she was only a few years old, she had helped with the housework and looked after Hou Yuanwu. After finishing middle school, she had dropped out and stayed home to help at his family's little shop.
Having gotten into a good university and seen the wider world, Hou Yuanwu naturally looked down on his village child bride, who had only a middle school education, and refused to marry her.
Of course, modern society advocated freedom in love, so his unwillingness was perfectly normal. But while he refused to marry her, he had slept with her, and she had borne him a son and a daughter, who were being raised back in his hometown.
In the novel, although Lin Xiwen had opposed it in every possible way, Su Chenglan had still secretly registered her marriage to Hou Yuanwu and quickly gotten pregnant.
Seeing that the raw rice had already been cooked, Lin Xiwen could only hold her nose and arrange a position for Hou Yuanwu at the Su Group that barely counted as senior management.
For an inexperienced graduate like Hou Yuanwu, such a position was already quite good. Yet Hou Yuanwu was not satisfied. Instead, he believed the Su Family looked down on him. Otherwise, why wouldn't they make him a vice president?
Nursing a grudge, he began stealing the Su Group's confidential information and selling it to its competitors. During one such sale, he also made contact with Xie Haoyu.
Afterward, Hou Yuanwu earned a great deal of money by selling confidential information, giving him the seed capital to start his own business. Meanwhile, the already tottering Su Group lost even more business through his repeated betrayals.
When the Su Group finally collapsed, Hou Yuanwu not only abandoned Su Chenglan when she was five months pregnant to pursue his white moonlight, but also kicked her while she was down when she miscarried, humiliating her in every way possible. He declared that his time with the Su Family had been the humiliation of his life, and that he had merely been sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall.
Already battered by one blow after another, Su Chenglan could no longer endure these further blows and finally jumped to her death.
Hou Yuanwu, however, successfully started his own business by clinging to Xie Haoyu's thigh, married his white moonlight, became a CEO, and reached the pinnacle of life.
After reading all these plot developments, Ye Jin felt deeply sickened.
[Holy shit, I'm going to puke! This is the first time I've ever seen a man this disgusting! He's even more disgusting than those lawless domineering CEO male leads from before!]
At that moment, Su Chenglan was shyly introducing Hou Yuanwu to Lin Xiwen.
"Mom, all the men who used to hang around me were there because I was the Su Family's second daughter. Only Yuanwu loves me for me. Do you know? He even risked his own life to save me before."
"Mom, you're definitely not one of those parents on TV who despise the poor and favor the rich, right? You'll definitely support your daughter finding true love, won't you? Besides, although Yuanwu's family isn't well-off, he's hardworking and ambitious. Given time, he definitely won't be any worse than those second-generation rich kids."
Yet no sooner had she finished than she heard Ye Jin's scathing comments. However, because Ye Jin had not named any names, she merely assumed Ye Jin was reading some novel that shattered all sense of right and wrong.
She was rather surprised that this eldest sister-in-law, whom she remembered as exceptionally gentle and refined, would say something so crude, but her good upbringing prevented her from meddling in someone else's affairs.
Hou Yuanwu also gazed at Su Chenglan with deep affection before turning to Lin Xiwen. "Auntie, don't worry. I'll definitely treat Xiaolan well. Please believe me!"
Lin Xiwen had always been sensitive. Her instincts told her that Hou Yuanwu was not as innocent as her daughter described him, and after hearing Ye Jin's comments, her alarm bells rang even louder.
Even though Ye Jin had not mentioned a name in her comments, she had a premonition that Ye Jin was talking about Hou Yuanwu.
Ye Jin did not disappoint her. Soon, more scathing comments came one after another.
[Hou Yuanwu, hardworking and ambitious? What a joke. He spent all his energy hooking rich girls. He was making moves on several rich girls at once before finally landing a big fish like you.]
[As for the future, not only will he latch onto the Su Group to suck its blood and sell its secrets, he'll even think the Su Family is tormenting him, hate them, and plot to slap them in the face.]
Su Chenglan could no longer ignore Ye Jin's comments, especially since she was insulting the man she loved!
She immediately turned toward Ye Jin, intending to refute her, but she could not make a sound, and her face flushed scarlet.
How could Lin Xiwen fail to see what had happened to Su Chenglan?
She must have heard Ye Jin's inner voice too. But her daughter, still immersed in love, did not believe Ye Jin's words and had tried to argue, only to find herself unable to speak, just as Lin Xiwen once had.
Lin Xiwen did not intend to push Su Chenglan too hard. She had been a young girl once herself. In this situation, the harder she pushed, the more rebellious her daughter would become, developing a determination to stand against the whole world.
She said gently, "Chenglan, this is our first time meeting Mr. Hou, and we don't know each other at all. Why don't we leave the marriage discussion until we've had some time to get to know one another?"
Yet at that moment, Su Chenglan felt that Lin Xiwen had believed Ye Jin's "slander" and looked down on Hou Yuanwu.
She immediately cried out, "Mom, how can you not trust my judgment? Yuanwu's feelings for me are sincere. He's nothing like other men with their sweet talk. I'm even his first love! Before this, he'd never even held a girl's hand..."
At the same time, Hou Yuanwu beside her also put on an affectionate expression. "Lan'er, there's no need to tell Auntie so much. The gap between us is too great. It's only natural for Auntie to have concerns. I'll prove to them through my own hard work that I'm worthy of you."
With that, the two actually gazed deeply into each other's eyes, as though everyone else were villains trying to tear two lovers apart.
This time, Ye Jin truly could not take it anymore and unleashed a furious barrage of comments.
[Aaaah, how does Hou Yuanwu have the nerve to say this is his first love?! Back in university, he chased his white moonlight around every day like a simp. Even when his white moonlight scorned him for being poor, his devotion never wavered. He swore he'd make something of himself and come back to marry his white moonlight.]
[And that claim about never having held a girl's hand is even more ridiculous. Have you forgotten the child bride back home who looked after you for most of your life, warmed your bed, and even bore you two children? Don't tell me those two kids of yours were produced through asexual reproduction?]