WRA CH13

Chapter 13: The Billing Statement Drives the Wife to Tears

Before leaving on his business trip, Zhou Sicheng made a trip back to the main family residence.

The old patriarch, Zhou Qingyun, was already eighty years old. Though Zhou Sicheng never saw eye-to-eye with him, he still tried to carve out time once a week to share a meal with the old man.

At a long rectangular table, grandfather and grandson sat at opposite ends. Ever since Zhou Sicheng lost both of his parents at the age of twelve, the dining arrangement in the Zhou household had been set this way, never changing.

A few years ago, Zhou Qingyun had kept an ironclad grip on the Zhoufu Group. After his only son passed away, he reclaimed part of the shares belonging to his son and daughter-in-law into his own hands. Once his grandson Zhou Sicheng came of age, grandfather and grandson engaged in a fierce tug-of-war for several years. Finally, four years ago, Zhou Qingyun realized the new generation was an unstoppable force and completely ceded corporate control to his only grandson.

Zhou Qingyun’s health was still fairly robust, and his words remained as cutting as ever: “Miss Tang is the most suitable match for you. If you won’t extend an invitation to her, are you waiting for Cinderella to appear?”

Zhou Sicheng: “Does the food not suit your taste?”

Zhou Qingyun: “My greatest regret was being deceived by your smooth tongue and failing to arrange a political marriage for you before I retired.”

Zhou Sicheng: “If I cook you a bowl of noodles, will you drop this topic?”

Zhou Qingyun: “Cooking is the chef’s job. Your wealth increases by the second; do not squander it on such trivialities.”

Zhou Sicheng picked up a linen napkin, dabbed his mouth, and stood up: “Fine. That will be all for today. I am heading back to the company.”

“Zhou Sicheng!”

The deep furrow between Zhou Qingyun’s brows formed an indelible crease, etched by decades of authoritarian dominance: “I heard you changed your car.”

Zhou Sicheng halted, slipping both hands into his pockets, his gaze resting nowhere in particular. “And?”

Zhou Qingyun’s aged voice grew heavier with daily reproach: “A man’s vehicle must match his status. Never forget how your parents died.”

Zhou Sicheng’s breathing remained steady. Inside his trouser pockets, his hands clenched into tight fists before instantly releasing. “My driving adheres to regulations. I will not cause you to shed old tears a second time.”

Zhou Qingyun: “I have already had that car towed away to be scrapped. I don’t care what car you drive, but it must be bulletproof at the very least.”

Zhou Sicheng gave a slight nod, taking a step forward: “This petty exercise of power is all you have left.”

Zhou Sicheng wouldn’t blame the security at headquarters; his car had simply been parked in the underground garage without special protection, and no ordinary person could anticipate Zhou Qingyun’s unhinged thought process.

The butler hurried after Zhou Sicheng. “Sir, you barely touched your food. Would you like a meal sent to the office?”

Zhou Sicheng: “No need.”

The butler held the car door open for him. “June is approaching, and the old master always has an episode around this time. Please don’t take it to heart.”

Bracing a hand against the roof of the car, Zhou Sicheng straightened up and asked, “Aside from the car, has grandfather caught wind of anything else?”

The butler affirmed with certainty: “No.”

In truth, Zhou Qingyun no longer managed group affairs; the household was filled with Zhou Sicheng’s eyes and ears. Discovering that Zhou Sicheng was driving a BYD had been purely accidental. An old acquaintance visiting Zhou Qingyun yesterday casually mentioned spotting Zhou Sicheng driving on the street, commenting that the young man’s driving style was fierce and aggressive, wondering if he planned to venture into the electric vehicle sector.

Zhou Qingyun immediately connected this to how Zhou Sicheng had favored worthless, cheap things since childhood. Old habits die hard; it likely wasn’t a test drive, but an actual car he had bought to drive.

Using the excuse of seeing his guest off, he ordered his chauffeur to drive into the Zhoufu Group’s underground garage. Sure enough, he spotted the parked BYD and told the driver to crash into it without hesitation.

The driver refused. But Zhou Qingyun was an eighty-year-old with a valid driver’s license; terrified the old man might suffer a medical emergency, the driver had no choice but to scrape against the BYD’s front fascia.

With extensive scratches across the front end, for a man of President Zhou’s stature, there was naturally no need to send it back to the factory—it was sent straight to the scrapyard.

Zhou Qingyun could only cause Zhou Sicheng momentary annoyance. As soon as he left, Secretary Gao would immediately arrange an identical new car to take its place.

Zhou Sicheng instructed the butler to check the old man’s blood pressure, then bent down and slipped into the back of a Bentley.

Lately, he had been driving himself to and from work every day, forming a minor habit over the past seven days.

Since he hadn’t driven Xiang Zhen this morning, he had no car for his evening commute.

“Head back to Jiang Pavilion.”

The chauffeur drove Zhou Sicheng to Jiang Pavilion. This detached villa with an expansive private garden was Zhou Sicheng’s usual residence.

Zhou Sicheng hadn’t visited in a while. The sunflowers planted in front of the gate during spring had unfurled their tender, bright-yellow petals like the delicate fingers of an infant.

These sunflower seeds were brought back from the Greater Khingan Mountains by his mother, Zheng Ai, during an expedition years ago.

She had stumbled upon a cluster of wild sunflowers deep within a dense hazelnut grove. Admiring their fierce, stubborn vitality, and noticing that a flower disc happened to have ripened seeds, she plucked a few and gifted them to her son upon returning home.

She had mentioned another chubby, stout sunflower seedling that probably hadn’t received enough sunlight. It barely reached knee-height, still clinging tightly to two leaves even in deep autumn. An annual sunflower could never survive the dead of winter. She had wanted to dig it up and bring it to a greenhouse, but her professional ethics as a wildlife scholar held her back from disturbing a single blade of grass.

Zhou Sicheng had been five years old that year.

Unable to resist the pressures of marriage and family expectations, the wildlife scholar Zheng Ai decided to yield to Zhou Qingyun’s wishes. She shifted her priorities to build the business empire alongside her husband, Zhou Qian; that had been her very last trip into the mountains.

That same year, Zhou Qian renamed the company “Zhou Er Fu Shi” (Cycle of Renewal). Zheng Ai taught her son how to cultivate sunflowers, telling him that all things move in cycles—what is planted will be reaped, and what is lost will return in another form.

You must become the sunlight itself, and the seeds will sprout.

Zhou Sicheng grew seven generations of sunflowers until Zhou Qian and Zheng Ai died in an accident. In a fit of fury, Zhou Qingyun told him that nothing held meaning except money.

It had happened on Zhou Sicheng’s twelfth birthday. The Zhou couple was attending a conference in Europe and called their son, asking whether he wanted an island with perpetual spring or the world’s largest transforming robot.

Zhou Sicheng wanted neither. Under his grandfather’s disapproving gaze, he told his parents: I want you to come home and celebrate my birthday with me.

Zhou Qian and Zheng Ai conferred and decided to surprise their son.

Instead of waiting for the commercial flight the next day, they chartered a private jet. The plane crashed on the runway.

Zhou Qingyun lost his only son, and Zhou Sicheng became the sole lightning rod for all his grief and fury, subjecting his grandson to relentless, high-pressure conditioning.

From age twelve onward, Zhou Sicheng was only permitted to do things that possessed “value.”

Anything that cheapened his image, lacked monetary worth, or compromised his status was strictly forbidden.

Because Zhou Sicheng had yearned for love, he lost the only two loved ones who truly cared for him.

Because Zhou Sicheng disliked money, money became the only thing left in his life. No one had legs long enough to climb over mountains of gold and cross vast lands just to love him for who he was.

Zhou Qingyun had said: “You are a detestable child. Because of your foolishness, no one will ever love you again. From now on, anyone in this world who claims to love you will only come for your money.”

Zhou Qingyun wanted Zhou Sicheng to become a money-printing machine for the Zhoufu Group.

Yet the true meaning of Zhou Er Fu Shi was never that.

“Uncle Zhang, how are the seeds I gave you last time?”

Zhou Sicheng crouched by the edge of the flower bed, reaching out to gently graze a sunflower leaf.

Uncle Zhang had taken over gardening duties from Zhou Sicheng since he was twelve. In his eyes, this batch of flowers represented the late Madam Zheng Ai’s legacy, requiring meticulous care.

“They’re all planted here,” Uncle Zhang pointed to a ring of blue-and-white porcelain pots lining the flower bed. “One seed per pot. Once they grow a bit taller, they’ll be transplanted into the garden.”

“The weather is warm now, so sunflowers grow remarkably fast. They can be transplanted in just a few days.”

Uncle Zhang hadn’t expected President Zhou to take an interest in gardening again. Zhou Sicheng had abandoned it long ago, limiting himself to a passing glance whenever he left the house.

Or rather, whenever he clashed with Zhou Qingyun, he would stare at them for a long time. It seemed his mood had soured once again.

“Grow remarkably fast?” The corner of Zhou Sicheng’s lips curved slightly, then dropped. “Won’t they invade the bed in a week’s time?”

He couldn’t imagine how cramped the rental unit would become by the time he returned from his business trip.

Later on, he would refer Uncle Zhang for a gig: collecting potted sunflowers door-to-door at two hundred yuan a pot, just to see whether Xiang Zhen loved money or sunflowers more.

Leaving behind a remark, Zhou Sicheng said, “Save some space. I still have more to plant.”

With that, he went upstairs to the study and pulled down an aged notebook from the bookshelf. On it, the words Flower Observation Notes were penned in black ink.

Looking closely at the childish handwriting, one could see the early traces of the sweeping, flamboyant signature President Zhou would later use.

This was the planting journal he kept as a child. Zheng Ai had drawn the gridlines for him, and he had recorded the sunflowers’ growth with colored crayons.

Zhou Sicheng lifted a pen, wanting to write something in the margins.

Forget it.

He didn’t feel like writing.

The person in this family who loved sunflowers the most wasn’t him, nor was it Zheng Ai anymore.

It was his wife.

[Xiang Zhen: Hubby, what time do you get off work tonight?]

[Zhou Sicheng: Home at eight sharp.]

Throughout the entire day, Xiang Zhen’s trust in his husband remained at 100%.

The Sun God was the embodiment of light; he believed Zhou Sicheng would never engage in shady deeds.

Still, he had to inspect his husband’s phone—he couldn’t let Xiao Kui Bao misunderstand.

At 7:50 PM, Xiang Zhen was already lingering downstairs waiting for Zhou Sicheng.

Tipped off by Shi Ting, Zhou Sicheng got out of the car two hundred meters away from the complex and walked the rest of the way home.

“Hubby! You’re back!”

“Mn.” Zhou Sicheng wasn’t accustomed to being called hubby out in public. He reached out and pinched Xiang Zhen’s earlobe. “Keep a low profile.”

Xiang Zhen looped his hand through Zhou Sicheng’s arm. After walking a few steps, he suddenly sensed something was amiss: “Hubby, where is our car? You didn’t drive home?”

Zhou Sicheng hadn’t driven the identical new car parked in the underground garage. He felt it wasn’t the first car that belonged to him and Xiang Zhen, and he didn’t want to lie to him. “It got hit. Sent it in for repairs.”

Xiang Zhen’s face drained of color. He looked Zhou Sicheng up and down: “Hubby, are you alright? Are you hurt? Was it this morning? I should have gone to work with you.”

Xiang Zhen was racked with guilt. Zhou Sicheng was truly a careless genius; if he hadn’t suddenly swapped shifts, Zhou Sicheng wouldn’t have gotten into an accident.

It was all his fault for not trusting his husband.

Zhou Sicheng: “Rear-ended. I’m fine. Insurance covers the repair costs, so I don’t have to pay a cent.”

Xiang Zhen: “Don’t drive anymore. Let’s take the bus to work together from now on.”

Bus drivers were seasoned professionals employed by the government; they were far more reliable.

Zhou Sicheng had no desire to squeeze onto a bus: “We’ll talk when I get back. I have to leave on a business trip tomorrow, so I won’t need it anyway.”

At eight o’clock tomorrow morning, Zhou Sicheng would head straight to the airport for the capital. At the government’s invitation, he would represent emerging tech giants alongside state leaders to meet a foreign political and business delegation.

Barring any surprises, Zhou Sicheng would appear on the news.

However, media coverage focused primarily on foreign dignitaries rather than the hosts. Having deliberately kept his personal profile low in the past, cameras wouldn’t focus on him, and Zhou Sicheng had protocols in place to deflect attention.

Barring any surprises, Xiang Zhen—who only watched PAW Patrol—would never watch the news.

Unless Xiang Zhen happened to catch a clip of his silhouette while scrolling through short videos.

Zhou Sicheng decided to restrict Xiang Zhen from short videos for a week until the buzz died down.

“Xiang Zhen, have you noticed that short videos take up most of your energy after work? The time you set aside for me has decreased.”

Humans always loved policing their family’s screen time. Xiang Zhen tucked his phone deeper into his pocket: “I’m not doing it for entertainment. I’m studying.”

A Yao was different from a human; to them, short videos were a rapid stream of fragmented information to understand the human world.

Zhou Sicheng: “If you don’t scroll through short videos for a week, I’ll bring you a gift when I return from my business trip.”

Xiang Zhen eyed him suspiciously. Could Zhou Sicheng have seen him learning from Sister Wang and was trying to cut him off out of guilt?

Many wives in the comments section had complained that their husbands got annoyed the moment they heard Sister Wang’s voice.

Zhou Sicheng met his gaze with steady composure, appearing effortlessly poised and unfathomably deep.

Xiang Zhen pressed his lips together. His husband had offered to get him a gift for the very first time!

Yet deleting the short-video app meant he couldn’t learn from Sister Wang anymore.

Noticing Xiang Zhen’s reluctant expression, the memory of muscular men posturing on the screen flashed through Zhou Sicheng’s mind. He decisively sweetened the pot: “I will hunt down the most delicious cakes across the entire capital for you.”

Saliva pooled in Xiang Zhen’s mouth unconsciously. Zhou Sicheng was the most skilled human at buying cakes he had ever met; he had an eagle eye for spotting gourmet desserts, yet possessed a stern heart when it came to monitoring blood sugar.

“Okay, hubby.”

With a quick tap of his finger, Xiang Zhen obediently uninstalled the app.

Zhou Sicheng rubbed the back of Xiang Zhen’s neck. If he hadn’t listened, Zhou Sicheng would have leveraged private connections to restrict his account recommendations so he could only see cartoons.

Unless pushed to the brink, he preferred not to do that.

He wasn’t afraid of Xiang Zhen discovering his true identity. Learning that he was worth hundreds of billions would only make Xiang Zhen love him more.

However, the timing had to remain entirely under his control—never while they were apart, and certainly not before Xiang Zhen fell completely in love with Zhou Sicheng the ordinary man.

Zhou Sicheng reflected that he hadn’t executed his “playing broke” strategy flawlessly; he had still flaunted his wealth.

The way Xiang Zhen’s eyes sparkled at the credit card, his golden hair trembling with excitement—Zhou Sicheng wouldn’t forget that sight for the rest of his life.

This was the modest utility of wealth.

“I’m going to take a shower.”

At the thought of parting from his newlywed wife for seven days, even this eyesore of a rental apartment looked somewhat endearing.

Because there were critical updates to coordinate tonight, Zhou Sicheng took his phone into the bathroom to keep Xiang Zhen from seeing it.

Xiang Zhen watched wide-eyed as Zhou Sicheng carried the phone inside. Previously, whenever Zhou Sicheng showered, he left his phone on the bed.

Stop, stop, stop… He had already decided to trust his husband and not snoop through his phone!

Sister Wang had said that you might not be able to handle the fallout of confronting your husband. Sure enough, his husband had already gotten into a car accident.

After Zhou Sicheng showered, the two nestled quietly in bed, each scrolling on their own phones, wrapped in a tender, peaceful atmosphere.

Xiang Zhen rested his head on his husband’s arm. “Can I lean on you all night tonight?”

“Don’t you lean on me every night?” Zhou Sicheng shifted his arm slightly to make Xiang Zhen more comfortable.

Xiang Zhen’s eyes darted around. Not yesterday, and not the day before.

Because he was traveling tomorrow, Zhou Sicheng didn’t go out to work out that night, wanting only to stay quietly by Xiang Zhen’s side.

The next morning, while Zhou Sicheng stepped into the bathroom after waking early, Xiang Zhen immediately messaged Xiao Kui Bao—

“We completely misunderstood my hubby! He didn’t go out last night; he slept at home the entire time, so everything before was just a misunderstanding!”

[Xiao Kui: No! The chain of evidence does not hold! Most men are physically incapable of engaging in sexual intercourse three days in a row.]

Xiang Zhen scratched his cheek. Incapable three days in a row?

[Xiao Kui: Speaking from the bottom of my heart, prolonged sitting directly impairs sexual function. Your husband is a ride-hailing driver who sits for over eight hours a day. Pelvic blood stasis suppresses testosterone secretion, making erectile dysfunction very likely. Let me ask you: does your husband’s car feature ventilated seats?]

Xiang Zhen froze. He knew nothing about Zhou Sicheng’s car; he cared far too little about his husband.

[Xiao Kui: Then that means it doesn’t. Poor localized heat dissipation indirectly leads to a decline in sperm quality.]

Xiang Zhen was stunned. So driving ride-hailing carried such occupational hazards! No wonder they had no sex life.

Xiao Kui Bao was truly knowledgeable.

[Xiao Kui: I can guarantee you that your husband’s stamina is insufficient for three consecutive days. Not going out last night is entirely normal.]

[Xiao Kui: The only way to permanently dispel your doubts is to check his billing statements.]

At that moment, Zhou Sicheng’s phone lay right on the pillow.

Completely persuaded by Xiao Kui Bao, a mysterious force compelled Xiang Zhen to pick up Zhou Sicheng’s phone.

Unlock, enter WeChat.

Payment records: completely clean.

Transaction history: completely clean.

The corners of Xiang Zhen’s mouth had already begun to lift. His husband’s transaction history was cleaner than a washed face; he barely bought anything.

Finally, he tapped open [Balance] – [Balance Details].

5/13 [Smart EV Charging Pile] -75 yuan

Balance: 3,001

5/14 [FamilyMart Breakfast] -18 yuan

Balance: 2,585

5/15 [Convenience Store] -38 yuan

Balance: 1,949

Wait, no!

At first glance, everything looked normal. Zhou Sicheng’s daily life consisted solely of charging his car and feeding himself, but the balance math didn’t add up.

Xiang Zhen snapped a photo and sent it to Xiao Kui Bao.

[Xiao Kui: It’s obvious. Between the 13th and the 14th, 398 yuan vanished into thin air. Between the 14th and the 15th, 598 yuan vanished into thin air. This proves your husband deleted records out of a guilty conscience.]

[Xiang Zhen: The numbers are different! He went to Room 1620 every time, so it wasn’t transferred to 1620!]

[Xiao Kui: Different prices just mean different services.]

Click.

Zhou Sicheng opened the bathroom door, stepping out with dripping wet hair, only to see his wife with brimming, tearful eyes.

Dropping the towel, he pulled Xiang Zhen to his feet: “What happened?”