After the Marriage Alliance, President Xi Took It Seriously

Let me just sit with the sheer amount of conflict packed into these two chapters because my heart can't handle it all at once. On the surface, this is a scandal plot — a man and a woman wake up together, the world finds out, chaos ensues. But the author keeps peeling back layers like an onion made of knives. Wen Yining was drugged. By her own mother. For a marriage arrangement. That's not just betrayal, that's a fundamental violation of trust that recontextualizes her entire relationship with her family. Xi Yu's conflict is equally layered. Externally, he's facing a twelve-billion-dollar market crash and shareholders breathing down his neck. Internally, he's convinced he's been manipulated by a calculating woman — which triggers his deepest wound about not being loved for himself. The Old Master knows this and weaponizes it by asking the one question Xi Yu can't answer. And the stakes keep rising. It's not enough that they're trapped together — now the family patriarch is demanding marriage, the stock market is punishing the company, and both protagonists are operating on incomplete information. Wen Yining doesn't know if she can trust anyone. Xi Yu doesn't know if he's been played. The reader knows MORE than both of them combined, which creates this agonizing dramatic irony where we're screaming at the page. The suspense isn't just "what happened last night" — it's "who can these two people even trust anymore?"

So the pacing in these chapters is honestly masterful and I need to unpack why. Chapter 9 opens with Xi Yu already spiraling internally—restlessness, the wedding date set for two weeks later, the whole mutual benefit framing. Then we cut to Wen Yining at a bar with Tangtang, and suddenly we're in this completely different emotional register. Heartbreak, wine, three years of a relationship ending because of class and family pressure. It's raw and messy and human, which makes Xi Yu's cold calculation feel even sharper by contrast. But then—Chapter 10—and the author does this thing where we follow Xi Yu to a bar he hates, meeting friends he's about to lose touch with, and just when we think we're settled into that scene, his gaze lands on Wen Yining. Across the room. With another man. The chapter essentially stops there and I was NOT READY. What I love is how the author uses these perspective shifts to build tension. We know Xi Yu is watching her. She doesn't know he's there. The dramatic irony is doing heavy lifting here. And the transition from the Tangtang/Zhao Mingyuan breakup scene into Xi Yu's bar scene isn't random—it's thematically linked. Two people at bars, two relationships falling apart or hanging by a thread, and Xi Yu is the observer who thinks he's above all of it. Spoiler: he's not.

Okay, I need to talk about Xi Yu for a second because this man is BROKEN and I am not okay. The passage about him growing up learning to need no one? That hit me like a truck. "He turned himself into a wall, impenetrable and unyielding." I literally had to pause and just stare at the screen. This is a man who was essentially abandoned by his father, raised by a grandfather who didn't know how to love him because he himself was a product of an arranged marriage. The generational trauma here is REAL. And then The Old Master says the most devastating thing: "I just don't want you to be alone anymore." That's it. That's the whole emotional core of Xi Yu's character right there. He's been building this fortress his entire life and one sentence from his grandfather cracks it. I was not prepared for this level of emotional damage in a romance novel. Then there's Wen Yining and her internal conflict. She's sitting there thinking "Please don't let Xi Yu take responsibility for her" while simultaneously feeling guilty because SHE WAS PART OF THE SCHEME. The guilt is eating her alive and she can't even explain it because the truth would make her look worse. And Xi Yu? He thinks she's a gold-digger who drugged him. The miscommunication here is SO thick you could cut it with a knife. But what got me was the scene where The Old Master asks Wen Yining if she'd marry Xi Yu. The silence in that room, the sandalwood smoke, the wind through the gauze curtains — and her internal panic. She's thinking "Was she crazy?" while maintaining this perfectly composed exterior. The emotional whiplash between these characters is everything.

Okay so let me just start by saying the opening scene of Xi Yu staring at that marriage agreement is absolutely brilliant character work. The way he fixates on her signature—rounded, smooth, no hesitation, no ink blots, no crossed-out marks—it's like the author is using this tiny detail to tell us everything about both of them. She signed like someone who's been trained for this exact moment, and he noticed every single thing about how she did it. That's obsession disguised as analysis. And then there's this line that wrecked me: "A woman who only cared about profit was easiest to deal with." He tells himself this so many times across these chapters. But the more he says it, the more I'm convinced he's trying to convince himself, not her. Because if she truly was just after money, why is he still thinking about that signature hours later? Why does he need to ask his assistant whether she had any other reaction besides smiling and saying thank you? The Tangtang subplot is doing something really interesting here too. Zhao Mingyuan gripping Wen Yining's wrist—same physical gesture, completely different energy. One is desperate and pleading, the other is... well, Xi Yu's reaction to seeing it is priceless. He tells his friends it has nothing to do with him while literally watching the entire thing without moving. The man is a walking contradiction and I love it.

The pacing in these chapters is absolutely ruthless and I am here for it. Let me break down how the author does this because it's genuinely impressive. We start slow—really slow. Xi Yu at the table, listening, sipping whiskey, nodding along to Lu Shaoqian's Sydney plans. It's almost boring on purpose. You think you're in a quiet character drama. Then we cut to the bar and the pace immediately accelerates. Zhao Mingyuan won't let go. Wen Yining tries to reason. The floral shirt guy appears. Punch thrown. Glass shattered. Wen Yining on the ground bleeding. Crowd closing in. Panic. The transition from stillness to chaos happens in roughly three paragraphs and it's jarring in the best way. What's clever is how the author uses the crowd scene to slow things down again—but not in a boring way. It slows down because Wen Yining's panic attack makes everything feel hyper-detailed and stretched out. The fluorescent light. The blood on her calf. The suffocating heat. Each sensory detail is a brake pedal, but we're still moving forward toward that cliffhanger. And then—just when you think it's going to resolve—the crowd parts and we cut to black. The structure here is basically a wave. Build up, crash down, build up again, and leave you hanging. I went from "oh this is a chill scene" to "why is everyone recording this" to "she can't breathe" to "WHO IS IT" in the span of a few pages. That's control.

I need to talk about the bar scene because the author absolutely cooked here. You have Xi Yu—who detests these places, who just wants to be alone—showing up in a black shirt buttoned to the top, creases sharp, looking completely out of place in this world of smoke and alcohol and perfume. And then he looks up and sees her. The way the scene is written is so cinematic. Warm yellow light, her white knit sweater, hair cascading over her shoulders, the bespectacled man leaning in too close. I could literally see this as a film. The author doesn't over-describe the bar itself—just enough to ground us: members-only, Lu Shaoqian's recommendation, the innermost row of booths—but the moment Xi Yu's gaze lands on Wen Yining, everything else falls away and it's just that one image. Earlier, in his office, there's this beautiful contrast too. Floor-to-ceiling window, city skyline, skyscrapers, streams of traffic—all operating as usual. The world keeps turning while he's sitting there completely undone by a signature on a piece of paper. That juxtaposition between the vast indifferent city and his very small, very specific obsession is chef's kiss.