Chapter 21: The Engagement Ceremony

Translator: jonathanhus Editor: alteringviews

Without any unforeseen accidents, the marriage engagement ceremony between Song Shi Cheng and Chen Xiao Yan had been successfully arranged. The location of the ceremony was, of course, held inside a grand conservatory room inside Lin Xiao Hall, where the main characters of the story would show off their wealth and charismatic personality.

After the host gave his introduction, it was about time where the parents of the bride and groom present their congratulatory speech on stage.

“Lady Song, would you like to say something on stage?” Chen Guo Tao smiled as he turned to Ji Ling.

“Why thank you for the offer, Mr. Chen! Oh my, I don’t even have a script on me! Don’t you think you will do better than me at presenting on stage?” Ji Ling rejected with a slightly rigid smile.

It was almost impossible to tell that just a few days ago, these same two people were having and argument so bad that they almost flipped the table at each other. Now that Ji Ling and Chen Guo Tao were sitting next to each other at the very front seat, they knew they had to act like they were just two old friends who knew each other for a couple decades.

As experienced as they were in the world of the upper class, Ji Ling and Chen Guo Tao had already mastered the art of faking friendliness under all circumstances.

Ji Ling didn’t like the idea of acting friendly towards Chen Guo Tao, but what other choice did she have? To save the Song family from its current miserable state, she had befriend the Chen Family even if they once posed as Song family’s biggest enemy.

If Song Shi Cheng didn’t want to marry Chen Xiao Yan in the first place, Chen Guo Tao had no power to marry Chen Xiao Yan off against her own will in the first place. However, unlike what everyone had expected, Song Shi Cheng was suddenly willing to marry Chen Xiao Yan. Of course he didn’t what to do it, but who would’ve thought that a dandy boy like him would compromise himself for the sake of the Song family?

Li Jing didn’t want to send her son into a marriage that wasn’t going to work, but Song Shi Cheng had already made up his mind. All the high boards of the Fenghua group were pressuring her to accept the marriage, too.

Despite knowing that there was not other choice left for the Song family, Ji Ling couldn’t help but to feel rather uncomfortable while sitting by her table. She could almost sense the entire crowd directing their attention towards her, all the while throwing looks of pity and surprise as their eyes were onto her.

It was only right for her to feel that way. Anyone would be weirded out if the Fenghua group’s first son was to marry the bastard daughter of the Chen Family. And now that the marriage was imminent, Ji Ling had no choice but to face criticisms both from the upper-class circle and even from the entire country.

The worse part was that, even after being in such a disgrace, Ji Ling had to smile in front of all the quest like everything was fine for her.

Since Ji Ling insisted to not do the opening speech for the engagement ceremony, Chen Guo Tao ended up representing both the Chen and the Song family on stage.

Obviously, Chen Guo Tao had nothing genuine to say in front of the guest. He basically made up some flowery lies on the spot, saying how happy both families were to make this marriage happen. After that, he just kept bullshitting about how Song Shi Cheng and Chen Xiao Yan were deeply in love with each other this entire time.

The audience was too smart to for such superficiality. Instead, most of their attention was onto the two stars of the event.

On one hand, Song Shi Cheng wasn’t listening at all like most of the crowd. He was yawning almost the entire time. It wasn’t just because how boring the ceremony was, though. Song Shi Cheng was feeling tired mostly from having read all the character profiles he asked from Ye Wen Cheng.

Props to Ye Wen Cheng, by the way. It only took him one night to hand over a stack full of profile information Song Shi Cheng had requested. It also only took Chen Shi Cheng one night to read it, too. He stuffed in all the information he could just the night before the engagement ceremony.

Age, personality, social connections and even job resumes. Song Shi Cheng was starting to think that Ye Wen Cheng had his own private investigators. Wait, what if he actually had access to the national security database or something?

Not only was Ye Wen Cheng efficient at his job, he was also quite a thoughtful one. To remind Song Shi Cheng to not play around all the time, Ye Wen Cheng even made a special file of all the closer relatives Song Shi Cheng had so he could help bringing the Song family closer together.

On the other spectrum of the crowd’s attention, Chen Xiao Yan was much quieter than Song Shi Cheng had been. Instead of giving off occasional yawns like her finance was, Chen Xiao Xiao Yan wasn’t showing any sort of expressions nor gestures.

Or rather, she was just sitting there like she had turned into a lifeless puppet, whose only sign of living was the fact that she was somehow still breathing. Breathing, and nothing else. The only reaction she displayed to her surrounding was the same hollow stare she had this entire ceremony.

Song Shi Cheng expected Chen Xiao Yan to be upset, but it still pained him to see her behaving like this.

As the hidden author of this story, it really pained Song Shi Cheng to see Chen Xiao Yen to be in such state of agony. No matter how much apathy she was showing to Song Shi Cheng right now, she was still the same wonderful creation whom the author crafted.

The author wanted Chen Xiao Yan to be happy with her own life, but fate (the system) decide to play a cruel joke on both of them. If the author wanted to avoid being eliminated by the system, he must sacrifice Chen Xiao Yan’s happiness by forcing her to marry Song Shi Cheng.

While Song Shi Cheng was taking a quick look at Chen Xiao Yan, her mother Lin Mei Chu was smiling at him as she sat next to her daughter.

Lin Mei Chu. Song Shi Cheng didn’t like this snobbish woman, but still nodded back in response to her smile. Even after all the hardship she put her own daughter through, Song Shi Cheng supposed that she still wanted to ask him to treat Chen Xiao Yan kindly.

What’s with the silent smile? It’s like she wants to me to act nicely but she’s too scared to ask.

Song Shi Cheng was kind of pissed off at Lin Mei Chu’s timidness towards him, but it also inspired him with a new thought.

According to an old saying, melons don’t get sweet if you keep pulling on them, (Translator’s note: you won’t get a good result if you force things to happen) but to Song Shi Cheng, it didn’t matter to him whether the marriage would turn out happy or not. Again, all he wanted out of this marriage were the luck points.

There were still a few things left that troubled Song Shi Cheng. First of all, Chen Xiao Yan wasn’t acting like she accepted her fate, which meant she might still be thinking about cancelling the marriage. Also, there was always the chance that Ye Tian would come out of now where and take away Chen Xiao Yan. Or even worse, what if he decided to kill Song Shi Cheng on his wedding day?

‘Shit, I don’t want to die as the first guy who got killed during his wedding!’ Song Shi Cheng thought as he was beginning to get goosebumps.

“I guess there’s only one way to be certain,” Song Shi Cheng said to himself, then stood up from his table and walked towards Chen Xiao Yan and Lin Mei Chu.

“Hey you, let’s have a word outside,” Song Shi Cheng said to Chen Xiao Yan, but Chen Xiao Yan wasn’t responding. He eyes twitched for a bit when Song Shi Cheng came, but they quickly reverted to the same dead expression she was having the entire ceremony.

Seeing that Chen Xiao Yan was giving him the cold eye, Song Shi Cheng decided to act a little more insistent.

“Keep ignoring me if you want, but if you are going to have attitude every time you see me, I’ll just tell everyone what I honestly think of you when I get up on the stage. It won’t be good for both of our families when that happens, do you understand?”

“Come on, Xiao Yan. Your fiancé just asked you to spend some time with him,” Chen Xiao Yan’s mother said as she gave off hinting winks at her.

As reluctant as she had been, Chen Xiao Yan thought for a bit and left the table. She wasn’t walking with Song Shi Cheng on her way out, though.

“Mother, I’ll be talking with Xiao Yan outside for moment,” Song Shi Cheng said to Ji Ling before trying to catch up to Chen Xiao Yan.

……

Under the warm, glazing sun, where the grass was lush green and surrounded by an orchid of different dashes of flowers, Chen Xiao Yan slowly strode near a water fountain and sat next to it. She then raised her hand and flipped her silken long hair with it and while doing so, revealed how much of a dazzling beauty she truly was.

Despite being aware of the tension between them, Song Shi Cheng was still stunned by Chen Xiao Yan’s charm as he watched her from a side view.

Even on her bad day, Chen Xiao Yan still possessed a beauty so splendid, so undoubtedly remarkable that no one in this ceremony could have exceeded it.

Whether it was her magenta strap dress, the crescent-shaped earrings dangling hanging from her ears, her light make-up or the crystal high heels she was wearing, Chen Xiao Yan’s whole attire suited her so much even though it was a completely different style from the last time Song Shi Cheng saw her.

Yet, in spite of the beauty she was showing, her eyes were the only part of her that conveyed what she was really thinking.

What a shame. Despite the amount of melancholy our main heroine was displaying, our antagonist here didn’t have the slightest intention to let her free. In fact, what he wanted to do was quite the opposite of giving Chen Xiao Yan her freedom.

And In fact, Song Shi Cheng was thinking about telling Chen Xiao Yan a lie so she will marry him within less than then minutes!