Is it too late for me to backtrack and say my family lives in some dirt-poor village?
Fat chance.
Words once spoken are like food handed to a fox—you can never take them back.
And the food handed to the fox? That was the separate lunch portion Ye Zhibai and Chi Yuliang had pulled from the kitchen at the dining table and given to Guang Yu so she could eat it alone in her room.
Everyone else at the big table, Guang Yu on her own (squatting on the floor, happily munching away).
Perfectly reasonable.
Who knew if a single portion would even fill Guang Yu up, though.
Well, truth be told, Ye Zhibai wasn’t worried about whether she’d had enough. If she was still hungry, she could just go without.
Ye Zhibai was just using these random thoughts to distract herself from her attention gradually stiffening up.
If she timed it right, it had been a full ten seconds of dead silence since she’d blurted out that she lived on Yanzhi Road—the moment the lively atmosphere had frozen solid.
Not long, but long enough for Little Zhibai’s quietly passionate heart to suffer a massive earthquake.
Why isn’t anyone saying anything?!
If you all keep quiet much longer, I might as well go eat with Guang Yu!
Silence like this could only mean one of two things, aside from having nothing to say.
It meant there was plenty to say… but no one dared.
Li Mowei and Fang Wenyuan’s silence stemmed from the latter.
The higher the education, the better you understood that disaster comes from loose lips.
Both of them were racking their brains for the most tactful way to broach the topic.
They’d thought the guest visiting their home was just a cute little white rabbit.
Who knew she was a big white rabbit in disguise!
Someone had to break the stalemate eventually.
And on this table, only one person could do it.
Any sound at all would be like a balm to everyone’s hearts!
“Pfft… Little Bai, how come you clammed up right after telling us where you live?”
“Because… Uncle and Auntie Fang didn’t ask anything else…?”
“Silly girl~ That’s because you scared them half to death!”
“!””!”
Thump, thump!
That wasn’t just the sound of the Li couple smacking their knees under the table in perfect sync.
It was also the sound of their heartbeats nearly flatlining!
Yuliang…?!
You called her a “silly girl”?!
Do you even know who your friend really is?
Living on Yanzhi Road, with those looks and aura.
They’d pretty much figured it out: she was most likely the eldest miss of Qihai City’s richest family.
But that wasn’t even the worst of it.
The real killer was that the company where Li Mowei worked was forty percent owned by Ye Group!
In other words, the young lady across from them was basically half his boss?
Half? She was more like some untouchable higher-dimensional being he could only look up at.
Hosting the eldest miss of Ye Group and not taking her to a private room at a restaurant was already a hospitality fail.
How could they make it up to her?
!
And yet Yuliang was reaching out to ruffle the young lady’s cheek!!
Now they were throwing arms around each other!!
Chi Yuliang: What else am I supposed to do? Little Bai looks super tense right now. You’re all just traumatizing each other—mutual scaring, got it?
Ye Zhibai: Eek!! Sister Liang, your mom and dad’s faces look so scary! Are they about to kick me out?! Or was I too full of myself after all—not living in a dirt-poor village, so now they’re gonna string me up from a lamppost?!
Seeing her parents’ faces drain of color along with Little Bai’s.
The only one still in her right mind, Chi Yuliang, finally set down her chopsticks.
She stood up, extending her palm toward Ye Zhibai beside her in the gentlest, most tension-easing tone she could muster, a wry smile on her face.
“Mom, Dad, about Little Bai’s identity… I hadn’t planned to tell you. But as you can see, I don’t have much choice now. Yeah… Little Bai probably doesn’t like introducing herself, so I’ll do it for her. Ye Zhibai, the Ye Family’s eldest daughter, the apple of Ye Group’s eye in Qihai City. From what I know, Little Bai’s super popular in her family too~ You all think she’s cute today, right?”
The trio with faces gone pale turned utterly ashen.
Ye Family’s eldest miss… and the firstborn daughter at that.
We’re done for.
Sister Liang! Sister Liang! Don’t go off on a second round of hype—you haven’t noticed? Uncle Li’s hand isn’t even holding chopsticks anymore; it’s shaking like he’s rattling bamboo clappers!
Li Mowei, facing a career promotion crisis at his company, was at a total loss for words.
His family status had built up his mental resilience.
But every successful man has a powerhouse woman behind him!
With her husband checked out, Fang Wenyuan couldn’t just stay quiet.
She pinched his thigh hard under the table, snapping him out of his eye-rolling faint while forcing a smile across the table.
“Y-Yuliang, why didn’t you say so earlier? If we’d known, we could’ve gone to a restaurant! This… how about I go stew another chicken?”
“Y-Yeah… yeah, yeah!” Li Mowei finally came back to his senses. He immediately raised his glass of orange juice. “President Ye… no, Zhibai! The food on the table’s nothing special today, so tea in place of wine—here’s to you! I’ll drink first!”
“……”
Uncle… leaving aside that your “tea toast” isn’t tea or wine.
Even if it were, you don’t need to toast a junior like me, you know?
No need…?
Right.
“Ah, sorry, boss! I didn’t mean to break the plate… Fine, deduct it from this month’s pay… Huh? Why so much extra? It’s not some limited edition…! No… I want to keep working here. Okay, thanks, boss… I’ll be more careful next time.”
Hadn’t Ye Zhibai learned that lesson back when she was working those jobs?
Unreasonable paycheck deductions—you wanted to rage, to quit on the spot, but you had to smile through the absurdity.
That was the rationality in reality’s twisted unfairness.
Sigh… no need to call it mercenary. The adult world was just that tough.
So many drinks downed against your will.
So many words forced out insincerely.
Otherwise, you couldn’t give the people you cared about a better life—a willing kind of helplessness.
Li Mowei was just protecting his family, after all?
But…
Just as Ye Zhibai felt a pang of bitterness, sensing this lunch might turn oppressively heavy.
Chi Yuliang’s warm, gentle voice whispered right in her ear, barely audible.
“Little Bai, believe in yourself. You can do this.”
“Huh?”
“The one who rang the bell has to untie it, you know. Big sis can only help you this far—the rest is up to you. Don’t worry. If it’s you, sis knows it’ll be fine.”
Ye Zhibai stared blankly at the woman beside her.
Chi Yuliang, who had leaned in to whisper and was now sitting back up straight, winked her right eye and gave a soft, affectionate smile.
Her Little Bai was excellent in every way.
But the most outstanding trait of all?
The warmth of her heart.
Chi Yuliang knew exactly how thoroughly Little Bai had melted her own heart.
So, no problem at all.
Sister Liang…
Yeah, I still don’t get what exactly you mean by “no problem.”
And right now, the problems are huge.
But I have to say something!
I wanna keep coming over for free meals!
Can’t just eat once and never show my face again!
Ye Zhibai’s expression hardened with resolve (at least in her mind; outwardly, her face was still dead-fish blank).
A flame ignited in her heart, urging her on. With a sudden whoosh, she shot up from her chair, standing ramrod straight!
So quick!
Li Mowei and Fang Wenyuan jumped to their feet right after her!
“……”
Ye Zhibai shrank back, nearly plopping down again in fright.
But right now, she was totally in the zone—no backing down!
In the tense standoff, only Chi Yuliang remained seated, calmly sipping her orange juice.
She wasn’t worried in the slightest.
Ye Zhibai swallowed quietly.
Countless words brewed in her mind—proof that she wasn’t scary, that they could all get along just fine.
Under the Li couple’s anxious stares.
Little Zhibai finally spoke.
“Auntie Fang.”
“Y-Yes…? Zhibai… no, Miss Ye, what is it…?”
Ye Zhibai’s eyes gleamed with an intimidating chill, her status amplifying the pressure until the air felt suffocating.
Even Ye Zhibai herself nearly choked on it as she parted her cherry lips.
Her tone was so cool.
But coolness was all it had going for it.
And it was utterly unexpected.
“Auntie Fang… do you have any steamed buns?”
“…?”
Ye Zhibai’s blood pressure flatlined.
That’s not what she meant to say at all!!
But she just couldn’t resist—after standing up, her gaze tilted forty-five degrees down to that bottle of Lao Gan Ma chili sauce sitting on the table’s edge.
To be precise, she’d been eyeing it since they walked in: the Lao Gan Ma she hadn’t tasted since reincarnating into this body, yet its flavor still blazed vividly in her memories.
Lao Gan Ma without steamed buns to dip in it had no soul!
No— what the heck am I even saying?!
Under pressure, she blurted out the one thing her heart craved most!
If she could have one do-over to rephrase.
Ye Zhibai’s peripheral vision drifted back to that shining bottle of Lao Gan Ma.
So…
Do you have any steamed buns?
