After venting her anger, Cheng Yao finally calmed down enough to think things through. She and Qian Heng faced such a massive disagreement, yet neither of them had confirmed and communicated about it at the very start of their relationship—both of them bore some blame for that. Qian Heng, self-satisfied as ever, assumed that since Cheng Yao had agreed to date him, she’d naturally accepted his stance on marriage and children. Cheng Yao, meanwhile, had instinctively assumed that since Qian Heng had been the one pursuing her, he must have already accepted her own values on the matter.
Now, faced with this fundamental conflict, Cheng Yao felt utterly lost.
Fortunately, reality didn’t leave her much time to dwell on it—she had a more immediate problem to deal with.
She was still on Liang Yiran’s team, and Liang Yiran had already made her hostility toward her plain as day. Going straight to Qian Heng to complain about it now? Cheng Yao had zero interest in that. She had no intention of using her status as his girlfriend to influence him as a partner at Junheng—it wasn’t professional, and it had absolutely nothing to do with being an independent woman.
Besides, even if she did complain, there wasn’t much to actually say. That Liang Yiran had benched her? In any workplace, not letting someone jump straight into core matters before understanding their abilities—starting them off with supportive work instead—was hardly wrong for a boss to do. And Liang Yiran played the surface act well enough: in front of everyone at Junheng, she was the picture of a fair-minded superior looking out for Qian Heng’s girlfriend, warm and gentle with the rest of the staff too, while being sharp and accomplished when it counted, and good-looking on top of it—she’d quickly become well-liked around the firm. If it ever came to a direct confrontation, the comparison would hardly favor Cheng Yao, the young associate dating the boss, over Liang Yiran’s credibility.
“In the workplace, who doesn’t run into some rough waters? Who hasn’t dealt with a jerk or two? Cheng Yao, don’t panic—just fight.”
Qin Qin’s words of encouragement still echoed in her ears. Cheng Yao clenched her fists, feeling her fighting spirit return.
And perhaps it was her determined attitude at work that finally got through to Liang Yiran’s conscience, because on a new workday, she finally assigned Cheng Yao a case.
“It’s a divorce case, not a huge amount at stake—around five million. Cheng Yao, you’ll be in charge, get your feet wet.” Liang Yiran handed over the materials in a thoroughly businesslike manner, with no trace of personal hostility. She glanced at Cheng Yao. “The reason I had you doing support work before was partly to get a read on your character and abilities, partly to temper you a bit, and partly for your own good—if you’d come straight into my team and immediately been handed a major independent case, I worried people wouldn’t respect that, and privately everyone would assume I was giving you special treatment because of your relationship with Qian Heng.” Liang Yiran’s tone was perfectly composed. “This is a small case, but everything starts small.”
It sounded so airtight that even Cheng Yao began to wonder if she’d just been overly sensitive and had misjudged Liang Yiran.
But once she took the case file back to her desk and opened it, whatever self-reflection had been building quickly stalled out.
The case was exactly as small in stakes and as simple on its face as Liang Yiran had said—neither party was particularly wealthy or prominent—but “simple” was nowhere near the right word. If anything, it was quite complicated.
The couple had only been married three years, but had lived together for over a decade before that. The property that needed dividing was all over the place—the inventory alone ran to more than a dozen pages printed on A4 paper, with countless loose threads to track down.
After more than a decade of shared life, everything had long since become intertwined, every trace of it carrying some trace of the other person. Dividing it all now was a genuine tangle, and as the representing attorney, even the smallest slip could lead to a costly mistake.
Still, faced with this landmine Liang Yiran had planted for her, Cheng Yao didn’t flinch. Qian Heng had gone abroad again for that international marriage case, so she threw herself fully into the case at hand.
For this case, Cheng Yao pushed herself to the limit. She wanted Liang Yiran to see what she was capable of—wanted to prove she wasn’t some clinging vine leeching off Qian Heng.
Cheng Yao represented the wife, Wu Jie, a woman in her fifties. To put together the property inventory, Cheng Yao met with her several times and quickly discovered she was an extremely difficult person to deal with—petty to the last cent, shrewd and calculating, always angling for a small advantage, and almost pathologically fixated on dividing her ex-husband’s property down to the last fen.
“Little Attorney Cheng, that old TV in the garage that’s been broken for over a year—you forgot to put it on the list! Even scrapped, it could still fetch a few hundred yuan selling it off. Why should that old bastard get to keep it cheap? It has to be divided!”
“And those flowers on the balcony too, you need to list those. A few of those orchid pots were bought at the international orchid expo—expensive stuff! If he wants the orchids, he has to pay me cash for their value!”
…
Cheng Yao originally couldn’t understand it—they’d lived together this long, the husband hadn’t even cheated, so why was he pushing for divorce? But after meeting her own client, everything became clear.
The woman was far too calculating—petty and always looking for an angle to squeeze out some small advantage. Living with someone like that had to be exhausting. During their years of cohabitation, not being the legal wife, Wu Jie had probably held herself back somewhat; once married, she’d likely let herself run wild. Cheng Yao found herself, in a strange way, understanding why the husband had filed for divorce.
They’d met three times at the coffee shop downstairs, and knowing Cheng Yao was paying, Wu Jie hadn’t held back one bit—ordering food to eat in, plus a drink to go, and a pile of snacks besides, chatting away with Cheng Yao while polishing off a sandwich, some cookies, and a pudding. Watching this, Cheng Yao had no doubt the woman had come deliberately on an empty stomach…
“Little Attorney Cheng, your legal fees are a bit steep, aren’t they? Can’t you cut me a break? You know my situation—once I’m divorced from that dead old bastard, the biggest asset I’ll have left is a small apartment, and not much cash after that. I’ll probably struggle even to support myself in old age. You young lawyers rake in the money just by talking—can’t you give me a discount on the fee?”
“Auntie Wu, our billing follows the dual system of government guidance and market rates. Different cases fall within a set range—it’s not inflated, but it does at least need to cover our costs as lawyers. What I’m charging you is already the lowest rate for divorce cases under Municipality A’s fee schedule.” Cheng Yao smiled. “It might look like all a lawyer does is talk, but you’d notice—you wouldn’t just hire anyone off the street to do this talking for you. It takes professional accumulation to do it well. And honestly, if I charged you an especially low rate, that’s exactly what you should be worried about, because an unusually low price usually means the professional service and standard of skill on offer are below normal. Lower costs, weaker ability—that’s why the fee is low. And in the end, you’re the one who’d lose out.”
Wu Jie tried to haggle over the fee several times more, alternating between complaints and flattery, but Cheng Yao kept turning her down, firm but polite.
This was Cheng Yao’s first time dealing with such a difficult client, and it took an enormous amount of time and energy to manage Wu Jie. Fortunately, in the end, the full property inventory was sorted out, the response brief was finalized, and even the hard-to-please Wu Jie had been placated. All that was left was to wait for the hearing in a few days.
Cheng Yao’s morale was soaring, thanks to how smoothly the Wu Jie case was progressing—but watching all this unfold, Liang Yiran grew more and more irritated. She admitted to herself that she’d had ulterior motives when she took the case. A five-million-yuan case with a difficult, penny-pinching client and a hopelessly tangled property list—for a firm like Junheng that never lacked for cases, these three factors alone should have been enough reason to pass on it. Yet Liang Yiran had taken it on, and then handed it to Cheng Yao.
She’d done it on purpose. She wanted to watch Cheng Yao crumble under a client this petty and difficult, wanted to watch her make mistakes sorting through such a chaotic property list, wanted to watch her feel the sting of disappointment and frustration over a case worth a mere five million…
She’d waited, coldly, for Cheng Yao to slip up and step on a landmine, so she could back her into a humiliating corner.
But none of it happened. None of it at all. Cheng Yao hadn’t complained, hadn’t gone to anyone to report her, hadn’t done anything of the sort—she’d simply accepted the case assignment like a diligent employee with no grudges to speak of, working conscientiously, steadily, and giving it everything she had.
Standing in front of Cheng Yao’s desk, Liang Yiran picked up the response brief and the list of evidentiary materials Cheng Yao had prepared for the Wu Jie case, and the more she read, the worse she felt.
For a new lawyer with such limited work experience, what Cheng Yao had produced was genuinely excellent. Even though the Wu Jie case wasn’t difficult, the format of the response brief, the thoroughness of the evidence list, even the neatness of how the materials were organized—all of it revealed real diligence and professionalism. Cheng Yao had gotten nearly every detail right. She’d laid out Wu Jie’s and her husband’s premarital and marital joint property with a clarity that even made Liang Yiran feel a twinge of shame.
Before, when she’d been biased against Cheng Yao, she’d thought of her as some scheming young woman riding Qian Heng’s coattails with no real ability, someone who didn’t deserve him at all. But now that she knew Cheng Yao genuinely had the skill to impress Qian Heng, instead of easing up, Liang Yiran’s resentment only grew more suffocating.
She knew this wasn’t professional—work should stay work, personal feelings should stay personal—she shouldn’t let her emotions bleed into how she treated Cheng Yao at the office. But she couldn’t help it. And what Liang Yiran realized was that this hostility, as time passed, only kept growing thicker, as if there were a malicious black cat curled up inside her chest, ready to pounce at any moment—and looking at the Wu Jie case materials had pushed that resentment to its peak.
And then that morning, after her regular call with Qian Heng about firm business, he had once again, very carefully and sincerely, thanked her.
“Thank you for looking after Cheng Yao for me.”
Qian Heng, a man whose vocabulary had never once included the words “thank you,” had lately been thanking her over and over—because of Cheng Yao.
At that moment, Liang Yiran completely lost her grip on reason. Cheng Yao could not simply handle this case flawlessly. She could not be allowed to earn everyone’s approval so easily off the back of this case. She absolutely could not be allowed to go on smoothly staying together with Qian Heng…
In that moment, her reason was entirely swallowed by twisted jealousy and resentment. She carefully looked through the evidence for the Wu Jie case, and once she was sure no one was around, after a long internal struggle, Liang Yiran—quick as lightning—slipped a single sheet of paper out of the original evidence file…
It didn’t matter how badly Cheng Yao botched this case, she told herself; as long as she herself stepped in to save it at the last minute, the client would still get the favorable outcome they were used to. The process might get bumpy, but it wouldn’t hurt the client’s interests, nor change the final result.
Qian Heng’s new international marriage case turned out to be even more complicated than expected. He’d already been in Los Angeles for nearly a week, and it had been a week since he’d last seen Cheng Yao. The two of them could only stay in touch by video call now.
Even with a massive disagreement about the future looming between them, feelings never obeyed reason—the moment she heard Qian Heng’s voice, Cheng Yao’s heart still leapt with excitement.
She’d never been to Los Angeles, and she kept eagerly asking him about it. Qian Heng’s tone was gentle; despite the time difference meaning it was already the middle of the night on the West Coast, and despite having worked overtime for several nights straight, he was endlessly patient, telling her all about it.
“I finally had a bit of free time around dusk, so I went to Venice Beach. The ocean was beautiful, the sky was so blue—it’s one of California’s famous beaches.” He paused, and after a moment, Cheng Yao heard his low, pleasant voice again.
“But I still think it’s not as nice as the beaches in City B.”
Cheng Yao, browsing pictures of Venice Beach online, protested. “No way, Venice Beach is way prettier! Just tell the truth, I won’t get jealous or feel weird about it!”
Qian Heng’s voice stayed calm and easy, his head dipping slightly on screen. “Because you weren’t there at Venice Beach.”
Cheng Yao froze for a second, then couldn’t help breaking into a silly grin.
Qian Heng chatted with her about a few other things, and naturally the topic turned to work. “How’s it going with Liang Yiran’s team—anything you’re not used to? Anything you need me to step in and smooth over?”
Swallowing her grievances, Cheng Yao said, as naturally as she could, “No, nothing.” She had no desire to talk about work and deftly steered the conversation elsewhere.
“This case is a bit complicated—originally I still needed ten more days before I could come home.” Qian Heng’s eyes softened. “But I’ll cut into my rest time. I’ll be back in a week.”
Cheng Yao felt a little embarrassed. “Don’t push yourself too hard, don’t overwork—ten days is fine, it’s not like I can’t wait three more days.”
“I’m the one who can’t wait.”
…
After hanging up, Cheng Yao’s ears were still burning.
Where Qian Heng was concerned, she had a kind of self-destructive helplessness, like drinking poison to quench her thirst. She knew full well they disagreed on the future, knew this fundamental clash of life philosophies would eventually blow up between them, knew some conflicts didn’t just vanish if you avoided thinking about them, knew that as time went on she and he would inevitably clash over marriage and the future, knew that the wisest thing to do right now would be to keep some distance, give each other space to cool down and think it over, to figure out whether this conflict could still be reconciled, whether she could compromise and accept his stance on marriage and children—but she still couldn’t help herself, couldn’t stop wanting to be close to this man.
That was probably love. Knowing the danger, and indulging in it anyway.
Fortunately, life wasn’t only about love—there was other work to fight for too.
On Tuesday afternoon, the hearing for Wu Jie’s divorce property division case was finally underway. But Cheng Yao, who’d thought victory was practically secured, was suddenly blindsided.
Before the marriage, Wu Jie’s husband had borrowed 100,000 yuan from her for renovations, and the ever-calculating Wu Jie had naturally made him sign an IOU. Since this debt predated the marriage, even though the two later married, in the divorce Wu Jie’s demand that her husband repay this premarital loan was entirely legitimate.
Originally, with the original IOU plus the bank transfer records, proving this fact would have been completely straightforward. But now, going through the response materials one final time right before the hearing, Cheng Yao discovered that the critical original IOU had simply vanished!
“That’s impossible—this document never left the firm. I looked through it this morning and it was all there. How could it just be gone?”
Cheng Yao and Tan Ying anxiously searched under the desk, in the drawers, through the files on the desktop, even digging through the trash can, but there was still no sign of the IOU.
Cheng Yao went to pull the security footage at the firm’s entrance—no suspicious person had entered the firm all morning. So where had the IOU gone?
With little more than an hour before the hearing, Cheng Yao was completely blindsided by this sudden crisis.
Although in the response filing Cheng Yao had already provided two copies of the IOU to both the plaintiff and the court, without the original, the other side could simply claim the copy was unverifiable and therefore not authentic, and could argue the bank transfer wasn’t a loan at all but some other kind of money exchange—in which case this premarital loan might not receive legal support.
But as if fate were working against her, right up until the hearing, Cheng Yao still hadn’t found the original IOU.
Walking toward the family court, Cheng Yao’s heart swung between burning and freezing. This was the first time she’d faced something like this, and beyond simply not knowing what to do, she felt panic, unease, and shame, with all sorts of thoughts flashing through her mind.
However the IOU had disappeared, it was gone, and dwelling on that now was pointless—the first priority was figuring out how to handle it.
When Wu Jie had handed over the original IOU, she hadn’t asked Cheng Yao to sign any written document confirming the handover of evidence. So even if Wu Jie later claimed she’d given it to her, without proof, Cheng Yao could technically claim she’d never received it and wash her hands of responsibility.
Knowing how calculating Wu Jie was, if she found out the evidence had vanished, she would absolutely not let it go easily. Cheng Yao could easily imagine the scene if she admitted to losing it.
In a moment of crisis, people naturally lean toward self-protection. Except…
Except Cheng Yao didn’t want to be the kind of person who protected herself at her client’s expense. Even knowing she’d have to face an ugly aftermath, one she might not even be able to control, she decided to be honest with Wu Jie and admit her mistake.
At Junheng, security was always tight, and everyone had to sign in and out, so people habitually left case files out on their desks—partly because the drawers were already packed with materials from various cases and there was no room left, and partly because for cases actively being worked on, keeping them on the desk made them easier to find. So Cheng Yao, like everyone else, had left the Wu Jie case materials out on her desk.
Cheng Yao still had no idea how the IOU had disappeared. She hadn’t seemingly done anything wrong—but thinking it over carefully, it really was her own oversight. If she’d locked the case materials away whenever she left her desk, this never would have happened. That everyone else left materials on their desks too clearly wasn’t an excuse to escape blame—just because everyone did something didn’t mean it was right. In the legal profession, there was no such thing as being too careful, too meticulous.
Painful as it was, this too was another lesson practice had taught her.
As the hearing approached, Wu Jie naturally couldn’t accept this, and hurled at Cheng Yao just about every crude term in a market-auntie’s vocabulary. Cheng Yao, for her part, offered nothing but sincere apologies and didn’t argue back once.
“That’s the situation. I’m truly sorry the original evidence was lost.” Cheng Yao’s attitude was completely sincere. “Auntie Wu, please don’t be angry yet. First of all, even without the original, I’ll still fight to secure that 100,000 yuan for you. And if it turns out that because I lost the IOU, this 100,000 yuan doesn’t get upheld in court, I will personally compensate you the full amount myself—I will absolutely not let you suffer any loss because of my mistake. Here’s a written commitment I drafted, already signed. Please take a look.”
“I’ve never seen a lawyer like you. Pretty face, empty head. Good-looking but useless—what kind of nonsense is this? Barely dry behind the ears and already out here scamming people for money. What a low bar for becoming a lawyer!”
Wu Jie was furious, her tone thoroughly vicious. “You lost my evidence, and you still expect that dead old bastard to admit to this loan? And you still say ‘I’ll fight for the 100,000 yuan’? Fight for it with what? With that shit-for-brains head of yours?”
Wu Jie kept muttering curses, but Cheng Yao’s written commitment ultimately calmed her down, and under Cheng Yao’s assurances and repeated apologies, she pulled herself together enough to head to court together with her.
Suppressing her own emotions, Cheng Yao wasn’t ready to give up easily despite losing the IOU.
The presiding judge announced courtroom procedure, confirmed the identities of both parties and their representing attorneys, informed them of their rights and introduced the members of the court, and after asking whether either side had grounds to request recusal, formally opened the hearing. To establish the facts, the plaintiff read the complaint aloud, the defendant responded, and then came the stage for presenting and cross-examining evidence.
“Wu Jie’s representative asserts a premarital loan of 100,000 yuan, and a copy of the relevant IOU has already been submitted to the other party. Does the other party or their representative have any objection to this fact?”
Under Cheng Yao’s guidance, Wu Jie kept her composure, and neither of them let on that the original IOU had gone missing. Cheng Yao herself appeared perfectly calm and collected.
This was the moment that would decide everything!
“No objection. We acknowledge this loan.”
As if her prayers had somehow been heard, the opposing counsel for Wu Jie’s husband, unaware that the original IOU had vanished, acknowledged the copy of the IOU that Cheng Yao had submitted during the response filing!
At that, the tension weighing on Cheng Yao’s chest finally lifted.
The judge moved on to the cross-examination stage. “Will the defendant, Wu Jie, please present the original IOU.”
In standard practice, only a copy needed to be submitted with the response filing—the original would then be presented in court, for the judge to verify it against the copy.
Cheng Yao stood up. “I apologize to the court, but our original has been lost.”
And almost at the same moment, exactly as Cheng Yao had anticipated, Wu Jie’s husband and his lawyer put their heads together to confer.
Before long, Wu Jie’s husband stood up and changed his position. “Your Honor, I’d like to clarify—I do not acknowledge this loan. In fact, this debt never existed at all. This IOU was something Wu Jie forced me to sign before we were married, calling it a kind of ‘love guarantee.’ There was never actually any such debt.”
Any lawyer, upon learning the opposing side’s original evidence had been lost, would almost certainly have their client’s first instinct be to deny the authenticity of that evidence—after all, with the original gone, there was no way to verify it, and a copy’s evidentiary weight was always far weaker than the original’s. It could easily be called forged.
And sure enough, Wu Jie’s husband’s lawyer did exactly that.
Unhurried, Cheng Yao presented Wu Jie’s transfer records. “This is proof that my client transferred out 100,000 yuan—clear evidence this debt genuinely existed.”
Wu Jie’s husband’s lawyer naturally objected. “That money was Wu Jie repaying a loan from my client, not lending it out.”
Cheng Yao held her ground. “I’ve fulfilled my burden of proof regarding our loan transfer. Since you’re claiming this 100,000 yuan was a repayment of a loan from your client to mine, I’d ask that you provide evidence of your client having lent out that 100,000 yuan in the first place.”
The other side pressed further. “That 100,000 was given to Wu Jie in cash at the time.”
…
The courtroom debate went back and forth. After the argument over this premarital 100,000 yuan, Cheng Yao and the opposing counsel moved on to debate the division of marital property. In the end, both sides completed their statements, everything was settled, and all that remained was to wait for the judge’s ruling on a later date.