Wu Mangmang didn’t know what Ning Zheng was implying with his words and instinctively retorted, “A University is also a good school.”

Ning Zheng smiled slightly, “I never said A University wasn’t good. But that major you chose could work as a hobby too.”

In reality, Wu Mangmang had never treated her work as merely a hobby.

During these years of working, aside from taking leave to receive treatment at Wu Yong’s place, Wu Mangmang had been conscientiously going to work at all other times, until she met Lu Sui and many unexpected changes occurred.

“By the way, what made you think of studying at A University? There are schools with excellent programs in your field right here in the city.” Ning Zheng looked into Wu Mangmang’s eyes as he spoke.

Wu Mangmang didn’t avoid Ning Zheng’s gaze. She understood his implication, “Oh, so now that Mr. Ning feels clear-headed himself, he thinks everyone else is muddled and confused?”

Ning Zheng shrugged, “You seem a bit like someone whose secret thoughts have been exposed and is now embarrassed and angry.”

This comment nearly choked Wu Mangmang to death.

Wu Mangmang was indeed somewhat embarrassed and angry, because she had long since lost clarity about her original motivation for choosing to study at A University.

“Too lazy to deal with you.” Wu Mangmang turned her head away.

Ning Zheng looked at Wu Mangmang’s face, which was obviously flushed red from anger, and now even the corners of her eyes were tinged with light red.

As they say about beautiful women, they’re charming whether angry or happy, captivating no matter how you look at them.

“How boring. Ever since you’ve been with Lu Sui, how did you become as dull as him too?” Ning Zheng said teasingly.

Ning Zheng’s words directly hit Wu Mangmang’s sore spot. Actually, she too felt quite boring, with absolutely no fun to be found in life.

“Yes, which person could be as interesting as you, your brother, and Shen Yuanzi, right?” Wu Mangmang had been struck where it hurt, causing her to retaliate ungracefully.

“Why are you eating?” Lu Sui walked over, raising his hand to check the time – it was already past eight in the evening.

Wu Mangmang immediately put down the food in her hands. Upon hearing Lu Sui’s words, she realized she had actually broken her rule of not eating after eight o’clock. This was all because Ning Zheng had confused her with anger.

“Oh, I was a bit hungry just now.” Wu Mangmang said evasively.

Lu Sui glanced at Wu Mangmang, then looked at Ning Zheng, before saying to Wu Mangmang, “Aunt is looking for you.”

Wu Mangmang said “Oh” and hurried off to attend to the Empress Dowager Lu Jianan.

“Let’s go. Don’t you want to collaborate with Lan Yue?” Lu Sui said, looking at Ning Zheng.

With Lu Sui acting as intermediary, Lan Yue and Ning Zheng had quite a pleasant conversation.

Tonight’s female lead, Shen Yuanzi, slowly walked to Wu Mangmang’s side and smiled, “Ning Zheng is trying to persuade Lan Yue to help him promote his products. But Lan Yue is indeed well-maintained – she’s forty years old but still looks like she has a baby face. If she’s willing to help Ning Zheng, it would be very convincing.”

Wu Mangmang lowered her eyelids, unsure what Shen Yuanzi was trying to accomplish.

“Actually, Lan Yue has some history with Ning Zheng. Without Lu Sui mediating between them, she would never help Ning Zheng. But she definitely won’t help Ning Zheng unconditionally.” Shen Yuanzi paused, playing with the wine glass in her hand, glancing sideways at Wu Mangmang with a raised eyebrow, “This depends on how Lu Sui persuades her, don’t you think?”

Wu Mangmang smiled back at Shen Yuanzi, thinking to herself that this attempt at sowing discord was rather crude. Did she want her to sabotage the collaboration between Lan Yue and Ning Zheng?

Wu Mangmang looked up at Lu Sui and Lan Yue. Lan Yue was naturally beautiful and gracious, radiant and eye-catching, but if Lu Sui truly wanted to be with Lan Yue, there wouldn’t be any place for Wu Mangmang in the picture.

Wu Mangmang saw very clearly that Lu Sui was the type of person who never allowed accidents in his life. Everything was under control, and he knew exactly what he wanted and what he didn’t want. Lan Yue definitely didn’t have a chance.

“Lu Sui is very persuasive,” Wu Mangmang said, following Shen Yuanzi’s lead.

Shen Yuanzi thought Wu Mangmang hadn’t understood her hint, but when she looked into Wu Mangmang’s eyes, she realized she was the one who had embarrassed herself. She responded with a cold smile – such an arrogant and underestimating woman wouldn’t even know how she died when the time came.

Wu Mangmang glanced at Shen Yuanzi’s departing figure and felt somewhat regretful. Back at the grassland villa, she had even given Shen Yuanzi a thumbs up. She really hadn’t expected her to bring herself to this point now.

She wanted to offer a few words of advice, but her relationship with Shen Yuanzi wasn’t that close, and Ms. Shen looked down on her kind of nouveau riche upstart. She might even think Wu Mangmang had ulterior motives.

So Wu Mangmang obediently followed Lu Jianan around socializing, benefiting greatly from it. However, wearing high heels for too long was truly painful, and she urgently needed someone to rescue her.

Somehow, Wu Mangmang found herself thinking again of her first love, whom she hadn’t thought about much over the years but had frequently remembered this year.

She remembered how he had carried her up the mountain when she was wearing three-inch heels. He was really a poor guy, but his stamina was truly excellent.

Perhaps she had drunk a bit too much champagne, or perhaps she was distracted by reminiscing about the past. When Wu Mangmang was following Lu Sui downstairs, the thin heel of her high heels accidentally got caught in the elevator gap, causing Wu Mangmang to stumble forward rather awkwardly. Fortunately, Lu Sui reacted quickly, sparing Wu Mangmang from the embarrassing situation of falling flat on her face.

Even so, the next day, a video of Wu Mangmang, as Lu Sui’s girlfriend, “tripping in the elevator” went viral online, reaching five hundred thousand views in just half a day.

The video was coincidentally captured by a hotel guest with their phone and uploaded to a famous video website for everyone’s amusement.

The Lu family’s reaction was prompt that day – by afternoon, the video had been withdrawn by the person who filmed it and disappeared from the internet.

Actually, tripping is really quite normal, but when it happens to celebrities or socialites, it becomes unacceptable and provides ordinary people with something to laugh about.

Even celebrities having their shoulder straps slip during conversations get reported by the media with big headlines, let alone Wu Mangmang actually tripping.

Though the video was withdrawn, some people still managed to save it on their computers and edited it into various parody clips for their own entertainment.

Because of this incident, Lu Jianan didn’t give Wu Mangmang a pleasant face for a full week and temporarily suspended her social activities.

Misfortunes never come singly. After Wu Mangmang’s fall, she caught a cold, and this time she coughed particularly severely. At night, her whole body felt hot, but her forehead was cold. After getting an X-ray, they discovered she had pneumonia and needed IV drips at home.

But being sick was being sick – Wu Mangmang actually enjoyed the freedom it brought. She could finally focus on doing quests and upgrading her game equipment. She had dropped out of the top twenty on the equipment rankings.

Wu Mangmang actually played games secretly. Lu Sui disliked her gaming very much. He believed that wasting precious time in virtual worlds was a waste of life and was particularly harmful to the eyes.

For Wu Mangmang, she simply couldn’t help being addicted to the virtual world. She found it safe and comforting, and when playing games, she could forget all unpleasant things completely.

This was an unbridgeable gap between them.

Since Lu Sui hadn’t come upstairs to check on her for an hour, Wu Mangmang found it somewhat strange, so she tiptoed downstairs, planning to go disturb him in his study.

However, there was no one in the study. Instead, she heard a rather loud female voice coming from the side parlor for receiving guests. Wu Mangmang listened carefully and heard her own name coming from Lu Jianan’s mouth.

“You just keep indulging her. She can’t even walk properly. I really don’t know what’s going on in her head all day long.” Lu Jianan sounded somewhat exasperated.

“Don’t be angry, Aunt. Just teach her more.” Lu Sui comforted Lu Jianan.

“How else should I teach her? I’ve never worried so much in my life. Even teaching pigs would be successful by now. She’s simply hopeless. If your mother were still here, Wu Mangmang would never dream of entering the Lu family.”

Wu Mangmang held her breath and puffed her cheeks to the size of a pig’s face. She knew she was hopeless, yet Lu Sui still lied to her with a straight face, saying that Lu Jianan liked her.

“Mangmang is very smart. She’s just young. Please bear with her a bit more, Aunt.” Lu Sui said.

“What do you mean young? She simply doesn’t put her heart into it.” Lu Jianan rubbed her temples with a headache. “I think her graduate studies are completely unnecessary. It’s useless anyway, and it’s not even in this city. If she really wants to improve herself, it would be better to send her abroad for two years of study. Her educational background really doesn’t look good.”

Actually, the undergraduate school Wu Mangmang attended was also first-rate domestically. Of course, it couldn’t compare to Yale, Harvard, or MIT.

When people around her started sentences with “When I was at Yale…” Wu Mangmang did feel somewhat embarrassed.

Eavesdropping isn’t a good habit, especially when others are speaking ill of you. Wu Mangmang turned around and tiptoed back to her room, reopening her game and spending three thousand yuan to get herself a new outfit that had just been released.

Currently, she was the only person on the entire server wearing this costume. Wherever she went, she attracted countless attention and shouts of “Goddess, please date me.”

These people didn’t care about her educational background.

At nine o’clock, Lu Sui came upstairs on time. Wu Mangmang truly felt sorry for herself. Because she was sick and couldn’t engage in intimate activities, she still had to sleep at nine o’clock, even earlier than Wu Dandan.

“Teacher Guo’s graduate students who were admitted this year have already arrived at school and started doing experiments as assistants. Last time I talked with him, he’s researching a new technique for restoring gold leaf on Buddha statues. I’d also like to go learn about it first. Is that okay?” Wu Mangmang said to Lu Sui in the darkness.

“Next month I plan to take you to France to stay at a winery for a while. You can go to school after the semester starts – there’s no rush.” Lu Sui’s hand moved up and down, stroking Wu Mangmang’s back.

“Oh.” Wu Mangmang turned around to face away from Lu Sui, indicating that she was a little bit angry.

But Lu Sui behind her had no intention of changing his mind, nor did he coax her as Wu Mangmang had hoped. Everything was decided by him anyway. Wu Mangmang lay in the darkness with her eyes wide open, feeling somewhat bewildered.

Before the France trip could even happen, Wu Mangmang began a cold war with Lu Sui.

Or rather, Wu Mangmang initiated a unilateral cold war. As for Lu Sui, when he was free, he would play with her a bit, and when he was busy, he would set her aside, completely ignoring Wu Mangmang even when she pouted so much that you could hang an oil bottle from her lips.

Mr. Lu clearly understood the principle that women shouldn’t be spoiled too much.

Wu Mangmang simply had no way to deal with Lu Sui. This person was impervious to persuasion. When you threw tantrums and gave him the cold shoulder, he treated you like a child, patting your head and letting you reflect and grow on your own.

As for Lu Jianan, Wu Mangmang’s attitude was even more passive. This was Wu Mangmang’s weakness – she really couldn’t get along with people who didn’t like her.

Although this aunt didn’t like her, Wu Mangmang still had to admit that she was genuinely dedicated to teaching her, so Wu Mangmang wasn’t ungrateful. Plus, considering Lu Sui’s position, Wu Mangmang tolerated her everywhere, treating Lu Jianan’s words as imperial edicts. She was nearly getting hemorrhoids from holding everything in.

But probably because she really wasn’t putting her heart into it, Lu Jianan’s patience with her finally ran out. On this day, Wu Mangmang had just finished her IV drip and was about to go downstairs to stretch her muscles when she saw the furious aunt march directly to Lu Sui’s study.

Wu Mangmang was somewhat surprised. Lu Jianan, like Lu Sui, was always someone who didn’t show emotions on her face, never forgetting the dignity of a socialite. Being so exasperated like today was only the second time – the first time was when Wu Mangmang had eavesdropped.

Wu Mangmang hesitated for a moment, but curiosity ultimately overcame everything. She turned back to get a glass, placed it upside down against Lu Sui’s study door, and pressed her ear against it to eavesdrop.

“Lu Sui, I won’t interfere with whoever you like. But do you really understand Wu Mangmang?” Lu Jianan seemed to have thrown something to Lu Sui for him to see.

“I know all of this, Aunt.” Lu Sui’s voice was very calm.

“Do you know that she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital when she was eighteen?” Lu Jianan raised her voice slightly.

“Mangmang is completely better now. She’s no different from ordinary people.” Lu Sui said calmly.

“What do you mean completely better? She’s still seeing a psychologist.” Lu Jianan said.

“Aunt, in modern society, who doesn’t have some psychological issues? You’ve been with Mangmang for so long – do you think there’s anything abnormal about her?” Lu Sui said coolly.

“Lu Sui, Wu Mangmang absolutely won’t work. I know you – ordinary women don’t interest you, but you don’t need to find someone with mental problems to seek novelty and excitement, do you?” Lu Jianan hit the nail on the head.

“Aunt, I’ve always respected you, but please don’t interfere in this matter. I know my own feelings.” Lu Sui said coldly.

“Lu Sui, if you marry Wu Mangmang, people will investigate her background. Nothing can be hidden then, and your eldest aunt won’t agree either.” Seeing Lu Sui’s very firm attitude, Lu Jianan softened her tone.

“Lu Lin has already broken our hearts enough. Are you going to do the same?”

Wu Mangmang didn’t bother listening to the rest. She put the glass back in its place and returned to her computer. As soon as she logged on, she was pulled into a team by Warm Sun.

“I was so anxious, looking for you for ages. Today’s new dungeon exploration – we’re going for first clear. Can you leave a contact method? Then I’ll know if you’re online when we form teams next time.” Warm Sun said to Wu Mangmang in YY (voice chat software).

Wu Mangmang thought about it and gave Warm Sun her phone number.

New dungeon exploration was truly a test of both physical and mental strength, but Wu Mangmang and Warm Sun worked together very well, and things went relatively smoothly.

Even more smoothly, at nine o’clock in the evening, Lu Sui didn’t come punctually to urge her to sleep, so Wu Mangmang was delighted to continue gaming.