Chapter 105: Director Wang’s Wife’s Decision
Sheng Wanyan anxiously scanned the dark corridor, terrified that a neighbor might come downstairs and catch them in the act.
“Someone might see us,” she whispered, planting her palms firmly against his chest to push him back. Beneath her hands, his muscles felt as solid as iron, causing her heart to give a sudden, unbidden flutter.
She found herself fighting a ridiculous urge to reach out and squeeze his arm. What on earth am I doing? she thought.
“Don’t worry, I have excellent hearing,” Gu Tingxiao mumbled against her neck, leaning his weight into her like an oversized, spoiled child. Wanyan felt completely helpless. Who would have thought a formidable, battle-hardened officer could be so stubbornly clingy the second he had a few drinks?
Gu Tingxiao held her for a long, quiet moment before finally releasing her with a look of deep contentment.
“Wanyan, I’m going to wire home first thing tomorrow morning,” he said softly, his hands resting gently on her waist. “We’ll get engaged as quickly as possible. Don’t worry about the future. I promise to treat you flawlessly and listen to you in everything.”
Looking at his earnest expression, Wanyan smiled and nodded. She wasn’t fundamentally opposed to marriage. As long as a man was genuinely devoted to her, nothing else truly mattered. There was a vast, staggering difference between a partner who carried you in his heart and one who didn’t; that distinction alone determined whether a woman would live a comfortable, peaceful life or a miserable one. She certainly didn’t lack money, material wealth, or personal capability. She simply wanted a companion who truly understood her.
And though she possessed a highly modern, independent mind, she sincerely hoped that once she took the plunge, she would never have to face a divorce.
“Then you had better keep that promise and treat me well,” she warned, looking him dead in the eye. “If you ever treat me poorly, I will divorce you without a second thought, marriage contract or not.”
She deliberately handed him this warning in advance. A man always needed to maintain a healthy sense of crisis; otherwise, over the course of time, his heart was bound to wander. She knew all too well that no matter how exceptional or virtuous a wife was at home, men were inherently susceptible to the allure of novelty outside. Human nature naturally craved new experiences, which she could understand—but whether a person possessed the iron discipline to respect their baseline moral boundaries when tempted was an entirely different matter.
Gu Tingxiao’s grip tightened around her waist at her blunt words. My little girl truly is cold-blooded, he thought, a sudden chill running down his spine. He couldn’t quite decide if her hyper-rational transparency was a blessing or a curse, but it undeniably triggered a massive wave of insecurity in his chest. He would absolutely never give her the slightest opportunity to leave his side; he would weave himself so deeply into her existence that she would stay with him for the rest of her days.
“In your dreams,” he growled playfully. The girl possessed a fiercely stubborn temperament, leaving him with no choice but to completely spoil her until she couldn’t imagine being with anyone else.
Gu Tingxiao’s expression softened into intense gravity, his dark eyes fixed on her with a faint, silent look of pleading grievance. Wanyan pursed her lips, hastily turning her head away to avoid his gaze. Don’t look at me like that, she thought frantically. Every time he makes those puppy-dog eyes, I feel like I’m the one maliciously bullying him.
Seeing her turn flustered and defensive, Gu Tingxiao felt a mixture of amusement and deep affection. This little girl truly held his entire soul under her thumb.
“You need to head back to the guesthouse now,” Wanyan urged, pushing against his chest again. She wanted him to turn around and sleep off the alcohol before he managed to successfully seduce an unmarried girl in the middle of the courtyard under the cover of night.
“Alright. Wait for me after your shift tomorrow,” he murmured, stepping back reluctantly. “Go on up.”
Even though they were inside the secure boundary of the residential tube-building, his protective instincts were so intense that he refused to leave until he personally witnessed her reach safety.
“Then I’m heading up first.”
“Mhm.”
“Get some proper rest tonight.”
Gu Tingxiao nodded, a warm, lingering smile gracing his eyes. Wanyan turned and quickly climbed the concrete stairs without looking back. Watching her brisk, unhesitating retreat, Gu Tingxiao privately sighed. What an incredibly heartless woman, he thought, a wave of dramatic grievance washing over him because she hadn’t granted him a single sentimental backward glance.
The moment Wanyan walked through the apartment door, she found her mother meticulously organizing the massive mountain of gifts Gu Tingxiao had brought over. The sheer volume of premium provisions was staggering.
The youth had delivered exactly three pounds of sweet bakery pastries, three pounds of dried melon seeds, three pounds of wild walnuts, five large tins of premium malted milk, five pounds of fresh pork, three heavy slabs of ribs, three whole wild pheasants, five pounds of brown sugar, and twenty fresh eggs.
With a display of material devotion this immense, Mother Sheng could confidently guarantee that not a single son-in-law in the history of their entire residential building had ever matched him. In fact, she doubted there were more than a handful of courtships across the entire city of Chengdu that could boast this level of opulence. In this era, if a prospective groom managed to bring a simple two-kilogram cut of meat to his in-laws’ threshold, it was considered a legendary achievement that the family would brag about to the entire neighborhood for months.
Mother Sheng meticulously stored the treasures away, immediately allocating a full tin of malted milk to each member of the household for daily rejuvenation. Wanyan also retrieved the White Rabbit creamy candies and canned fruits Gu Tingxiao had packed in his canvas bag, distributing them to the elders. Having a constant stream of high-grade sweets was excellent for boosting the grandparents’ energy, and Grandma Sheng particularly loved dissolving the rich milk candies into mugs of hot water for a sweet afternoon beverage.
The following morning, Wanyan punched her timecard at the cotton mill, only to be instantly grabbed by a breathless Wu Jiaxiu and dragged toward the central courtyard to witness a massive public spectacle.
A squad of uniformed public security officers had officially descended upon the factory grounds. They had formally served the administration with a warrant detailing that Logistics Director Wang Chaofan was being stripped of his title and immediately remanded to a high-security labor camp for mandatory reform.
Director Wang’s wife and their three young daughters had converged on the central plaza, weeping hysterically and causing a massive scene while a crowd of hundreds of workers gathered in a wide ring to watch the drama unfold.
“My husband has been arrested and cast into a labor camp!” the wife shrieked, her hair disheveled as tears tracked through the dust on her cheeks. “What on earth am I supposed to do now? How is a lone mother supposed to feed three daughters?!”
The lead public security officer looked down at the weeping woman with a cold, professional expression. They had thoroughly reviewed the family’s state files. The wife’s biological parents were currently active convicts serving sentences at a state farm, and now that her spouse had been processed for a similar felony, standard administrative protocol dictated the immediate relocation of the dependent unit.
“Comrade Wang Chaofan’s wife, please return to your residential quarters immediately to pack your baseline household belongings,” the officer commanded strictly. “You and your dependents are scheduled to accompany Comrade Wang to the frontier farm.”
Hearing the decree, Director Wang’s wife felt a wave of absolute despair hit her chest. For years, she had relied on her husband’s lucrative administrative salary to secretly ship a few kilograms of coarse grains to her exiled parents at their labor camp every month, enduring his brutal beatings and relentless verbal abuse in silence just to keep her family alive. But now that she had been stripped of her civilian status and branded a convict’s dependent, her source of income was gone. What would become of her aging parents now?
“Mom! Please, don’t make us go there!” the eldest daughter wailed, clutching her sleeve.
“Mom, you have to divorce Dad right now! He’s a cruel man who always hurts us anyway!” the second girl cried.
“Mom… do we truly have no father anymore?” the youngest sobbed, burying her face in her mother’s apron.
Listening to the desperate pleas of her three daughters, the wife’s resolve began to violently fracture. She had originally stayed with the man solely because his powerful institutional position allowed her a backroom channel to keep her parents from starving. But with the household completely ruined, what layout of the future remained for her children? If she dragged them to the harsh winter fields of a frontier labor camp, how could her daughters ever hope to secure respectable marriages or decent lives?
Now that Wang Chaofan had permanently fallen from grace, what was the correct path forward for a wife in her position?
Paralyzed by the sheer weight of the crisis, the woman collapsed flat onto the concrete courtyard, staring into space as her daughters huddled around her crying. Was a formal divorce and a complete severing of legal ties the answer? But if she executed a legal separation, how could an unemployed woman with a compromised political background hope to feed three growing mouths in the city?
She looked around the crowd, her eyes pleading for a savior, but she found only stone-cold silence. Who could possibly step forward to rescue them? What was she supposed to do?
The surrounding laborers felt a faint prick of sympathy witnessing the miserable plight of the four helpless women, yet with Wang Chaofan branded an enemy of state discipline, not a single worker possessed the courage to offer a hand. In the rigid consciousness of the 1970s, anyone processed for labor reform was considered a dangerous pariah; associating with their family was an easy way to ruin your own career.
The onlookers whispered among themselves, entirely baffled by the director’s sudden downfall. He had possessed an incredibly bright, lucrative trajectory in the municipal sector; no one could comprehend why he had chosen to engage in whatever criminal folly had triggered the central authorities. Had he simply possessed too much free time and security, tempting him to court disaster? It was one thing if he suffered the consequences of his actions alone, but dragging a blameless wife and three innocent daughters into the mud was a profound sin.
Director Wang’s wife wept silently on the pavement, her mind desperately cycling through her limited options before she finally reached a grim, practical decision. She would accompany Wang Chaofan to the frontier farm.
Deep down, she recognized that she lacked the capacity to raise three daughters alone in the urban sector. Where could an uneducated, blacklisted woman go? The mere fact that her biological parents were already labor camp inmates was an insurmountable political stain that would prevent her from ever securing a state job or residential coupons on her own. Without money or a home, she and her children would starve in the city streets unless she managed to immediately remarry.
But what respectable citizen would ever willingly wed the discarded daughter of a convict and the ex-wife of a corrupt director?
By maintaining her marital status and following her husband to the penal colony, she would at least have access to a designated communal labor allocation to secure basic grain rations for the children. As long as she and her husband broke their backs working the soil, the three girls would have a guaranteed roof over their heads and bowls of porridge to survive. Furthermore, she knew the elite Wang clan back in the capital wouldn’t completely abandon their own blood forever; given their formidable status, the family patriarchs would eventually pull strings to ease her husband’s conditions, and that structural support would inevitably filter down to shield her daughters.
