Su Chenglan took the microphone offered by the engagement ceremony's host and smiled. "I'm very grateful to be able to attend this banquet today, but I owe everyone an apology, because I'm afraid today's engagement ceremony won't be going ahead."
As soon as she said this, the previously dark screen behind her lit up, displaying the investigation report on Hou Yuanwu.
"I actually hesitated for a long time over whether to announce this publicly. After all, being deceived so thoroughly by a scumbag is truly embarrassing. But after thinking it over, I realized that if I kept quiet to save his face, other women might be deceived in the future, and people might also spin stories about the Su Family despising the poor and favoring the rich."
"Hou Yuanwu has always concealed from me that he already had a wife and two children back home. While dating me, he also kept in touch with his white moonlight, Lu Shilan. In the more than two weeks since he returned to the country, he has repeatedly gone to pester her."
"I think a man like this should be exposed publicly, so everyone can curse him."
Hearing Su Chenglan's words onstage, Hou Yuanwu turned deathly pale, cold sweat soaking his entire back. He struggled and shouted.
"No! Don't just listen to her side of the story. The Su Family clearly looked down on me. They didn't want a poor boy like me marrying their eldest daughter, but they were worried about damaging their reputation. That's why they staged all this."
Su Chenglan's expression remained unchanged as she turned toward the two women who had now come onstage.
"Is that so? Then why don't we ask your wife back home, Ms. Zhang Xiuxiu, and Ms. Lu Shilan?"
Lu Shilan went first, calmly recounting how Hou Yuanwu had tried to seduce her over the past few years.
"Mr. Hou and I were university classmates. We dated for three months, but broke up because of my family's opposition. Afterward, he went abroad to study, though he still sent me messages from time to time asking how I was. But I was already married by then, so I ignored them. Recently, Hou Yuanwu returned to the country. My husband and I were also having marital problems and facing divorce. After Hou Yuanwu found out, he asked me out several times, telling me he was still single and had been waiting for me all along."
"Fortunately, Miss Su told me the truth in time, before I fell completely into his trap."
Compared with Lu Shilan's clear, orderly account, Zhang Xiuxiu was much more nervous. She even spoke with a heavy rural accent, but her words carried the most genuine hatred.
"I'm the Hou Family's adopted daughter. They also raised me to be Hou Yuanwu's wife. I know a lot of people today would think that's very feudal, but back then, I was truly grateful to the Hou Family and willing to devote my whole life to them."
"I knew that, with my circumstances, I was no longer good enough for Hou Yuanwu once he got into university, so I once suggested that I could just be a real older sister to Yuanwu from then on. But he refused, saying it was his responsibility to marry me. I didn't refuse. After all, the Hou Family had raised me, and I simply couldn't refuse anything they asked of me."
"People in our village all marry young. Yuanwu hadn't reached the legal marriage age back then, so we only invited a few tables of people we knew well for a wedding feast. Afterward, I gave birth to two children, while Yuanwu stayed away pursuing his studies."
"I always thought Yuanwu had a place in his heart for me, for me and our children. Otherwise, why would he agree to marry me and have children with me? But when Miss Su showed me what he'd been doing away from home all these years, I finally realized I'd been deceived through and through!"
"I may not have had as much schooling as everyone here, and I was even taught to regard my husband as heaven, but I know what he did was wrong. I'm standing up here because I don't want more girls to be deceived."
"I also want to thank Miss Su. If it weren't for her, he might have deceived me for the rest of my life."
Once the two women finished speaking, a stir immediately swept through the venue.
Even though they already knew Hou Yuanwu was a scumbag, they had still underestimated how rotten he was.
"This Hou Yuanwu really is scum. He actually deceived so many women."
"And he was the one who went after almost every one of them..."
"What a rotten cucumber..."
Watching the two women, Su Chenglan felt both shaken and relieved.
At first, she had thought Hou Yuanwu had joined forces with the others to deceive her. Only when she met the two women did she learn that the bastard had been deceiving all sides.
Lu Shilan was relatively composed. After all, Hou Yuanwu had merely taken advantage of her troubled relationship with her husband to pester her. She hadn't even agreed to his renewed pursuit.
Once everything came to light, she had cursed Hou Yuanwu until he was drenched in a shower of abuse and said she was willing to cooperate with Su Chenglan to hammer him with the evidence.
As for Zhang Xiuxiu's response, Su Chenglan couldn't help feeling some admiration.
Unlike Hou Yuanwu, who had practically no feelings for Zhang Xiuxiu at all, Zhang Xiuxiu had truly poured her heart and soul into him, treating him as her husband. When Su Chenglan laid the truth before her, the blow was enormous.
Su Chenglan had thought a woman like Zhang Xiuxiu would most likely shrink back, perhaps even beg her not to go after her husband.
Yet unexpectedly, after a day of thought, Zhang Xiuxiu had agreed as well. Her only request was that Su Chenglan bring her and her two children to the big city and help her find a job. She wanted to support herself and her children on her own.
Naturally, Su Chenglan wouldn't refuse. She even planned to fund the two children's schooling.
Meanwhile, hearing the two women's accusations, Hou Yuanwu had frozen on the spot. How could those women join forces to curse him? Had they gone mad?
Held in place, he stared at the stage with a savage expression, muttering, "They're all lying. It's not like that. It's not like that!"
The reporters naturally wouldn't miss such a spectacular drama. With so many reporters contacted by Su Chenglan as well, news about Hou Yuanwu soon spread across the entire internet.
The reporters who had been invited naturally had professional ethics. They blurred out the children and the victims, but gave Hou Yuanwu plenty of screen time, exposing every bit of his ugly behavior.