CH 17.1

Chapter 17 (part 1)

Having admonished Fu Zheng and slapped Gao Yuan's wrist, Ning Wan was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief. She felt that she had made great accomplishments and went to work the next day feeling refreshed and at peace with the world.

Ever since that showdown, Fu Zheng had kept up an excellent attitude toward work. Ning Wan arrived to find him already sitting in the office and when she pushed open the door, she heard him taking a phone consultation. His cool and magnetic voice was deep and pleasant, his analysis clear and logical, and his suggestions simple to implement. No longer was he speaking legal jargon to the residents of the community - he was now able to make them understand his point using language that they could relate to.

It had to be said that though Fu Zheng was a little old to be a newcomer in the field, he was an excellent learner and extremely motivated. He was talented enough to be able to draw a conclusion simply from the surrounding context, serious about his job, and rarest of all, able to be attentive to even a trivial consultation question from a resident.

When he hung up the phone, Ning Wan thumped him on the shoulder enthusiastically. "Fu Zheng, follow me in the future! I don't earn much here at Zhengyuan Law, but I can guarantee you that at least we'll have enough to live on! Anytime I have a bite of meat, you'll at the very least get a bite of soup..."

Alas, before Ning Wan could finish declaring herself as Fu Zheng's older brother, she was interrupted--

"You son of a bitch! You're ten years younger than me, and you're still trying to seduce my old mom out of her money?! I've eaten more salt than you've drank water!"

Shouting coarsely, Guo Jianzhong strode into the office, followed by his elder brother Guo Jianguo. Instead of his neat suit, he wore a simple jersey and sweats. It made a huge difference to his person. Without his careful packaging, he exuded a thug-like aura. Curses dripped from his mouth. What amazed Ning Wan the most was that Guo Jianguo was carrying a man by the scruff of his neck. Whenever he swore, he shook the other like a dead rabbit.

The man he was dragging in so rudely was a slim and elegant-looking young man with glasses. He was no match for Guo Jianguo, a middle-aged man thick about the middle with strong arms. Guo Jianguo threw him to the ground, breaking his glasses. Awkwardly, he wiped the blood on his mouth and stood up. His voice trembled as he asserted, "I've already told you the real facts many times."

Guo Jianguo raised his fist. "You half-dead chicken, you still won't admit it! Am I going to have to beat the truth out of you?!"

Fu Zheng frowned and stood up. "This is a lawyer's office, not a place for fighting."

He had a deep and surprisingly majestic voice. Guo Jianzhong and Guo Jianguo calmed down, but they still stared angrily at the young man like hawks.

"Lawyer Fu, we're not here to fight. We're here to report a fraud. Look at this man! He's trying to fool my mom into marrying him! Just look at him! Mother is 60, how could she possibly be in love with him? He's just a pretty boy! He doesn't even look like a man. He must have sweet-talked her into it!"

Guo Jianguo finished speaking and panted in rage. Beside him, Guo Jianzhong added, "Lawyers, I've been watching this liar for the last few days. This morning, he secretly packed his things and ran to the railway station with his little burden of a daughter1. I figured he must have stolen something from my mother or cheated her of her money, which is why he was running away! So we brought him here to show him to you in person. Let's bring him straight to the police!"

"And as for why he would run," Guo Jianguo snorted coldly, "Why wouldn't he! I already told you that he wasn't even ashamed to be sucking up to my mom. A man not even 30 years old wanting to marry a 60-year-old lady. He must have not really wanted to get married, so he took this occasion to grab what he could get and run!"

The two brothers had been talking over each other for a while now. So it turned out that this weak young man was the swindler who was trying to fool their 60-year-old mother...

Having caught someone red-handed, Guo Jianguo said triumphantly, "My wife is already on the way to fetch my mom. We'll confront her to her face and show her what this man is really like! He told her he would marry her, and then he ran away! My brother's wife is watching his luggage and his little burden. When my mother arrives, we can find out what she's missing at home, and then we can call the police and have them verify that he's the thief! How good can the property of a foreigner be? "

The young man was obviously upset when faced with these accusations. "You're completely wrong! Please," he said anxiously, "Please let me go see Jiao Jiao. She's still young. If she wakes up to find her father gone, she's going to be so scared!"

Guo Jianzhong gave a cold snort. "Let you go? You'll run away with the money as soon as we let you out of our sight! "

The young man hurriedly tried to fix his glasses. "I've already told you that I didn't steal your money!"

"Didn't steal our money? Then why were you running away? You have a stable job here in Rong City, and you were asking around about buying a house! Since you wanted to live here a long time, what were you running for?"

"I was running because I didn't want to get married!"

Having been accused, dragged around by the scruff of his neck, and intimidated, the young man finally lost it. Before, he had always spoken gently, but when he spoke this sentence his voice rose--

"You are all going too far! I may be a foreigner, but does that make me deserving of being looked down upon and insulted? From beginning to end, you haven't listened to a single word I've said! I'm hardly as shameless as you think! Yes, I have a child from a previous marriage, but she's not a burden to me. I haven't given any thought to cheating money out of anyone. I didn't even consider remarriage for the sake of my daughter. I just wanted to earn a little money and live a quiet life!"

"Compared with you, I may be poor, but don't you dare look down on the poor! I, Lu Feng, am not brazen enough to find a 60-year-old lady and cheat her into marriage for the sake of money!"

As if he had exhausted all his energy in that one loud roar, the young man named Lu Feng suddenly collapsed back to his normal self and stood there panting. He looked toward Ning Wan and Fu Zheng, a little embarrassed. "Excuse me, I must apologize for adding to your problems, but I hope you'll help mediate for me. Tell this family to stop taking it out on me and humiliating me. I'm also a victim here!"

"What the hell do you mean by that?"

"Yes, what do you mean, 'you're also a victim'?" The two brothers raged. "You say you didn't fool our mom into marrying you? What, did our mother, a 60-year-old, force you to get married?"

"Yes, your mother forced me."

When Guo Jianguo heard this, he stood stock still for a moment. Then he immediately raised his fist. "You're really asking for it! How dare you insult my mother in front of me?!"

"I'm not insulting her!" Lu Feng insisted anxiously. "I'm telling you, your mother, Aunt Wang, was really trying to force me to get married!"

Let's not even mention the two Guo brothers. Even to Ning Wan's point of view, it was rather unbelievable for a 60-year-old woman to force a 26-year-old boy into marriage. She had not thought of this possibility before, but perhaps in this case the facts might be more far-fetched than fiction--

"It really, truly, isn't me trying to fool Aunt Wang into marriage! It's... it's her threatening me with death if I don't marry her!"

This proclamation of Lu Feng's split the ground like thunder and lightning.

Both Guo Jianguo and Guo Jianzhong's faces flushed red. Struggling to recover from their shock, one of them retorted, "What the fuck are you saying?"

"Yeah! You're a young, strong man! How the hell can you be threatened into marriage by a 60-year-old woman like my mother? You don't have to get married if you don't want to! My mom is 60 so pregnancy is right out, and what else could possibly scare you into running away at night? Don't bullshit us! Can anyone force you into marriage if you don't want to do it?”

Lu Feng paused awkwardly, fumbling for words. "Aunt Wang and I are neighbors. Some of the utilities in her house are a bit old. The drain is blocked, or a bulb is broken... anyway, I've been lending a hand when she needs it, so we've gotten to know each other over time. Work is pretty stressful for me, too, so if I have to work overtime, she sometimes takes care of Jiao Jiao for me. If she needs an errand run, I take care of it for her. I help her sweep and take out the garbage, but I really do just think of her as an elderly neighbor. I... I'm a normal guy! How could I possibly have romantic feelings for someone my mother's age?"

"When Aunt Wang proposed to me, I said no, of course. I thought she was joking. But then she told me that if I wouldn't marry her, she would say... she would accuse me of raping her!" Lu Feng closed his eyes, as if not wanting to even think about it. "She told me she was an old lady with recurrent cancer. She doesn't have long for this world, and she doesn't care about her reputation anymore. Since I'm in and out of her house pretty often, so long as she insists that I raped her, no one will ever believe me..."

"I tried to persuade her. I even got down on my knees and begged her, but she insisted on getting a license. She told me that since we wouldn't have a public wedding, my reputation wouldn't be affected. We would just go to the courthouse and get the license in secret. If I refused, she would tell everyone that I raped her and hang herself at my front door..."

Lu Feng's expression was bleak. "What... What could I do... I moved here for work. I haven't been in Rong City long. I don't have any close friends, or anyone who can help me, and how could I possibly bring something like this up to my colleagues?! Anyway, I told Aunt Wang I would do it just to stabilize her, then I packed up my belongings and Jiao Jiao to flee the city... If you don't believe me, you can search my suitcase. Everything in there belongs to me, I never took a penny from Aunt Wang."

Guo Jianzhong was stunned into silence. He stared at Lu Feng with his mouth open, as if some flaw in his story could be read off his face.

Lu Feng had been so adamant. He had even been willing to allow them to search his luggage. If he was really trying to fool his mom into marriage, he wouldn't have run away, would he...?

"I really didn't have a choice. In fact, I just got a promotion at work. I didn't want to leave at all. This is my absolute last resort. If you don't believe me, you can inquire at my company. There's no need for me to lie about such a thing..."

Guo Jianguo still couldn't accept it in his head. "How is this possible... Why would my mother force you to get married like this... she... she has cancer and isn't doing well, but there's nothing wrong with her head... how can it be..."

Ning Wan flicked a glance at Fu Zheng. Although she didn't speak, she believed that he had picked up on the hint - as she had expected, old Wang Liying was thinking clearly and was not at all a madwoman who couldn't make her own decisions. It had just been an excuse the two brothers had cooked up to make sure she was unable to get married.

But though the old lady seemed fully capable of civil competence, her marriage to Lu Feng didn't sound anything like a May-December romance. Instead, in a somewhat fantastical plot twist, Lu Feng had been coerced...

"Husband! Mom's here! Mom is coming here! "

At just the right time in the drama, Guo Jianguo's wife came bustling in, supporting old Wang Liying.