svetikya Chapter 41 A Woman's Bottom Line
Chapter 41 A Woman's Bottom Line
She was fighting to prevent the country from being ruined, while he was protecting his reputation and family's glory. No one remembers why they got together in the first place; they only remember how they drove each other to the brink of despair.
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When Yu Li returned home, her usually dark house was brightly lit.
In the living room, Zhang Zhishan sat upright like a Buddha, with steam rising from the tea tray in front of him. A pot of Biluochun tea was so fragrant that it could repel mosquitoes, and imported high-end dried fruits were piled up next to him. The presentation was even more exquisite than that of a club or hotel.
His phone screen was lit up, and on the other end was his mother-in-law's familiar face.
"Look, Lily's back too! Talk about the devil!" Zhang Zhishan forced a fake smile and waved to Yu Li. "Mom was just saying you're working too hard and she wanted me to advise you to take a break."
Yu Li's lips curved into a precise, millimeter-long smile. She changed into slippers and glanced at her phone to check the time: 10:30.
My mother-in-law usually goes to bed at 9:30 without fail, but today she's been waiting for me? It's obvious that Zhang Zhishan arranged this on purpose.
She strolled over slowly, swaying her hips. "Mom, it's so late, aren't you going to sleep yet? Your body can't take it, go to sleep quickly."
"I've been waiting for you!" On the screen, the old lady's brows furrowed, her face full of dissatisfaction. "What's a woman doing, spending all her time at the company? Keep things under control at home, and pay more attention to Zihau too!"
Zhang Zhishan handed her a cup of tea, but Yu Li didn't even blink. She went straight to the wine cabinet, poured herself a glass of Romanée-Conti, and the crystal glass clinked against the bottle with a "clink," a crisp sound that carried a hint of provocation.
"He eats well, sleeps soundly, and his grades are good. Your son says the Zhang family is well-off, so he can do whatever he wants without worrying about squandering the family fortune."
The ruby-like liquid clung to the glass, casting a bewitching red hue. She swirled the glass, then sat back down in front of the phone, using the glass to obscure half her face.
The old lady's nagging escalated instantly: "It's not like we're starving, why are you forcing him to do this? While he's still healthy, hurry up and have another baby girl with Zhishan! A boy and a girl, that'll make a perfect family, so I, this old woman, can see my little granddaughter before I kick the bucket."
"With such a large family fortune, you only had one child. You've failed miserably as a woman."
"How can your body handle drinking and staying up all night every day?"
"I'm going back to the old house next week for a couple of days to recuperate. Isn't it enough that the man is there to support the business? Why are you, a woman, so strong-willed? Isn't there enough money in the house for you to spend?"
……
Yu Li listened half-heartedly, the sweet taste of red wine sliding down her throat being her only stubbornness at that moment.
She can secure hundreds of millions in funding on her own, and she can also engage in heated debates at industry summits, crushing her peers with her accurate judgment and sharp eloquence, leaving her opponents speechless.
She is a decisive and capable businesswoman in the business world, but when she comes home, she has to sit here like a three-year-old and listen to the philosophy of "how to be a good Mrs. Zhang" on mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.
Her elegance and respect were always taken by the old woman as compromise and easy to manipulate. Whenever this happened, she wanted to abandon her dignity and learn from the shrew on the street, to speak more fiercely, preferably to curse loudly, so that the old woman would shut up.
It's ridiculous! It's ridiculous to the extreme!
Only when the old lady got tired of talking to herself did Yu Li put down her wine glass. Her voice was not loud, but it carried an undeniable authority: "Mom, your birthday coincides with the company's financing signing ceremony. If the company does well, your son will also prosper. How about we move the birthday banquet to another day? Or we can go back a few days later. You love Zhishan the most, you'll agree."
The old lady was shocked. "What are you saying? You want me to reschedule my birthday banquet? Zhang Zhishan, is she even speaking human language?!"
Zhang Zhishan was startled. He quickly grabbed the phone, said something perfunctory to the screen like "Mom, you should rest early, don't get sick from being angry," and then quickly cut off the video call.
The world instantly became quiet, leaving only the pot of overly-prepared Biluochun tea slowly steaming.
Zhang Zhishan poured a cup of tea, forcefully took the wine glass from Yu Li's hand, and said in an unquestionable tone, "I've already booked the plane tickets. The second and third sons will also be going back. As the eldest sister-in-law, you have to go back to show up for Mom's 80th birthday." This wasn't a discussion; it was an announcement.
"Didn't you hear what I just said?" Yu Li put down the lukewarm teacup, her smile widening. "I can go back, you can give up the lower-tier market and focus on the high-end luxury line with me. I can postpone the signing date by a few days, and I guarantee to make my mother's 80th birthday a grand affair, making all the old ladies envious and unable to sleep."
Her demands were made casually, clearly a transaction of interests. Zhang Zhishan's carefully cultivated restraint finally crumbled. "Yu Li, are you fucking crazy? Don't push your luck! And what was your attitude towards Mom just now? Postponing Mom's birthday banquet? Is that something you can just change the date of?! The three-day banquet has already been prepared, and you think you can just change it like that? Yu Li, I'm warning you, if you dare not attend the birthday banquet, don't blame me for turning on you!"
Yu Li picked up her empty wine glass and quietly looked at Zhang Zhishan, wondering if she had lost her mind back then and married someone of equal social standing, someone whose mother-in-law had long since passed away.
She was fed up with this tactic of using a knife to suppress someone when she couldn't win a fight, and she didn't want to endure it for even a second longer.
"Is your mother's birthday more important, or the livelihoods of thousands of employees at Tianyi Group and the survival of their families? Are none of these as important as the grandeur of your mother's birthday banquet?"
Yu Li also stood up, meeting his fiery gaze without flinching. "Zhang Zhishan, you're a businessman, a boss. Every decision you make involves real money and lives. You'll be attending my signing ceremony and banquet too. So, you'll accompany me to the signing ceremony and the banquet, and the next morning I'll fly back to the old house with you to kowtow and wish my mother a happy birthday." This was her biggest concession.
Zhang Zhishan slammed his hand hard on the tea tray, making the cups and saucers bounce. "Is money all you care about? You don't even care about basic decency?! That's your mother-in-law's birthday celebration, and it's my mother's 80th birthday. If I don't attend, what will people think of me?"
"So, for the sake of your mother's dignity, we're sacrificing the future of Tianyi Group? It's just a birthday banquet; will delaying it by a day cause any loss? At worst, we'll have a seven-day feast, but you must attend the signing ceremony with me!"
"Have you thought about this?! It's Mom's birthday, what will outsiders think if we don't show up?! People will say we've grown up and become arrogant, that we don't even care about our roots anymore. Who would dare to do business with such cold-blooded and ruthless people?!" Zhang Zhishan didn't expect her to be so difficult.
Yu Li, as if she had heard the funniest joke of the year, was filled with impatience from head to toe. "Zhang Zhishan, you can't beat me in business, so you resort to this kind of talk to intimidate me? I'm so tired of hearing it." She grabbed her handbag, not wanting to stay a second longer, and just wanting to go upstairs to sleep. "Anyway, I'm not going to change the date. You may not care about fate, but I do."
"You come back here!" Zhang Zhishan lunged forward, grabbing her arm tightly with his large hand. "In all these years, what haven't I done for you? I've supported whatever you wanted to do, but this is non-negotiable. If you dare not go, don't blame me for turning on you. I'm saying this one last time!"
"Turning your back on me?" Yu Li forcefully shook off his hand, rubbing her aching wrist. "Didn't you already rush to file for divorce? How far can things go?" A venomous sneer curled at the corner of her lips. "That new house in Repulse Bay, Hong Kong, all set up for your mistress? When are you planning to take a second wife? Too bad, your taste in women has remained rotten for decades, still so despicable, only liking those surgically enhanced faces."
Zhang Zhishan's face stiffened, as if he had been publicly stripped naked. "You actually investigated me? I know, you deliberately scheduled the signing for the same day as my mother's birthday banquet, just to disgust me and get revenge on me for filing for divorce, wasn't that right?"
Yu Li was amused by his train of thought. "Zhang Zhishan, how old are you this year? Still so childish! Do you think I'm you? All you can do is use these despicable tricks to disgust people?"
"You don't use enough tactics?! To win, you even try to poach my personal assistant, whom I hired myself. The moment one of my projects shows any promise, you want to throw ice water on it; you can't stand to see me succeed and happy. I really don't understand, what did I do wrong that makes you always want to destroy me!"
"Don't you know?" Yu Li's pent-up resentment finally burst forth. "Ten years ago, you wouldn't listen to me and insisted on taking a risky gamble that cost you everything. I had to sacrifice my pride and dignity to spend a night with my father's old friend to save the day! But after that, you actually pushed me away in bed with disgust. From that moment on, it was over between us!"
"I'm not a gigolo! I can't do this every day! Since then, what haven't I done to you? And you're still going to fight me to the death over this? Are you fucking crazy?!" Zhang Zhishan said like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
"You've been spending money outside until you're exhausted and you're already powerless, haven't you? I had a miscarriage and was staying at home, but some sluts still came knocking on your door. All the resources of my family have been emptied out for you, and now you're like this, how can you face me?!" Yu Li completely tore away the veil of pretense that the two of them had kept hidden from each other.
"So you've become chaste?!" Zhang Zhishan retorted fiercely. "How many scandals have you had? From puppy dogs to old dogs to stray dogs, don't think I don't know. I'm just saving face for you, afraid you'll be too ashamed to show your face!"
Yu Li sneered, getting straight to the point: "You're not considering the bigger picture; you're afraid of a falling out, afraid it will affect your shares in Tianyi, afraid it will shake your glittering throne!"
"So you're betting against me not because of fate, but just to get me out of the game?"
"We can't just stand by and watch the empire we've built with all our heart and soul be used to feed those vixens, can we? And what about your brothers and sisters back home, and those poor relatives you barely have any connection with? Which one of them wouldn't want a piece of the pie? Let me tell you, as long as I'm alive, no one with the surname Zhang will ever step into the realm of destiny, not a chance!"
"Yu Li, I'll fuck your grandma!"
"Besides swearing and throwing tantrums, what else can you do?"
"loose the temper?"
Zhang Zhishan glanced at the ostentatious Hermès Birkin bag that Yu Li had placed on the table, then grabbed the opened bottle of Romanée-Conti next to it and poured the scarlet liquid onto the shiny bag with a "splash".
"That wasn't a temper tantrum, this is a real temper tantrum! I've been wanting to get rid of you piece of junk for ages!"
Yu Li watched helplessly as the red wine gushed down, seeping into the expensive leather like blood. Her reason snapped, and she could no longer feign composure!
"Zhang Zhishan, are you crazy?!" she screamed and lunged at him, but Zhang Zhishan pushed her away with such force that she almost fell over!
"You think that's all?" He turned around, grabbed a whole barrel of red wine, and went to Yu Li's dressing room. The deep red wine, like an angry waterfall, splashed wildly onto the neatly hung Hermès and Chanel haute couture... The air was instantly filled with a cloying, sour smell of wine mixed with the smell of leather and fabric, making people's heads ache.
Yu Li never expected him to go this far. "A grown man, acting like a shrew? Is Zhang Zhishan even a man?!"
She could no longer feign rationality; her last shred of dignity was completely discarded. "You think I don't know these things?" She opened the temperature-controlled cabinet where she kept her treasured cigars, picked up a box of top-quality Cohiba, and smashed it on the ground without even looking at it!
The sharp heels clicked and clacked as they crushed the expensive tobacco leaves, leaving a mess on the ground.
A moment of madness opened the invisible door in Yu Li's heart. As if she hadn't had enough, she took out the high-end tea that Zhang Zhishan had locked away deep in the cabinet like a treasure, and took it all to the balcony, pouring it directly into the cat litter box. She also threw down bottles of Moutai liquor that she had treasured upstairs, playing with them like bowling balls.
The doll was too scared to come out, and was also choked by the smell and stayed far away.
Seeing Yu Li going crazy, Zhang Zhishan also went crazy, and Yu Li deliberately destroyed Zhang Zhishan's favorite things!
The entire luxurious villa was ransacked by two hysterical people, turning it into a post-war ruin, so dilapidated it was unbearable to look at.
Only when they were completely exhausted did the two of them collapse, panting, on the stained carpet, glaring at each other fiercely.
"Yu Li, let me tell you, the fortune I, Zhang Zhishan, have worked my whole life to build, you think you can kick me out? No way! And you're not getting away with it!"
Yu Li's chest heaved violently, her hands trembling. She ripped the sparkling diamond ring off her ring finger and slammed it into Zhang Zhishan's face. "If you don't want a dignified breakup, I'll play along to the end! I have evidence of all your private assets, your nominee companies, and the women you're keeping on the side! If we really get a divorce, you'll leave with nothing, not a single penny!"