You're my wife, don't doubt it!

He could have simply spent 50 yuan to buy a phone card during the day, but he couldn't wait even one night and insisted on coming to borrow it now.

What time is it? Coming to my door so late at night just for something like this...

Yu Luying handed the phone card to Xiao Yao, turned around and closed the door, preparing to deal with Yu Lihua's complaints and questions.

Annoying, annoying, annoying, annoying, annoying...

Meanwhile, Xiao Yao ran home with the SIM card, inserted the card into his old phone, and it turned on smoothly.

He immediately sent a text message to his own number: "I borrowed your silly sister's phone. Call this number if you need anything."

The text message disappeared without a trace. Xiao Yaoming knew that Shen Jie couldn't just take out that phone now, but he was still restless.

Shen Jie's resounding words "cut ties completely" on the phone kept echoing in Xiao Yao's ears.

It's really crazy...

Xiao Yao was very clear about what this meant.

Does she understand what this means?

……

Xiao Yao also knew that this was probably not a good idea.

Moreover, he knew he wasn't ready yet.

He really wanted to talk to someone, but who could he talk to?

Yu Lihua was certainly not on the list, and it seemed inappropriate to consult with Yu Luying as well.

Should I look for Yu Bo...? What if he keeps pressing me about my relationship with Shen Jie?

As for their own parents, they couldn't even figure out their own family situation.

Should we discuss it with Shen Tianyun or Shen Jie in the future? It seems we can already imagine their reactions without even asking.

……

The phone suddenly beeped, and Shen Jie replied with a two-word text message: "OK".

Xiao Yao quickly started typing: "What are your plans after you get out this time?"

After typing this, Xiao Yao sighed inwardly—if Shen Jie answered "I'll do whatever you say" after asking this question, how should he respond?

Is it a confident boast, saying, "As long as I, Xiao, have a sip of soup, you'll have a bite of ribs to eat"? Or is it self-deception, saying, "Things will work themselves out"?

So he pressed the keypad on his phone again and deleted the text message.

Xiao Yao typed again: "Your father's style may indeed be a bit rough, but he is, after all, your biological father. As children, we should be considerate of our parents..."

Before he could finish typing, Xiao Yao had already laughed self-deprecatingly.

He's not the one suffering; the way he says these things is exactly the same as those con artists who scheme to take advantage of others' wealth.

Xiao Yao patted his face and deleted those words again.

After much hesitation, he typed the following message: "If you escape again this time, will your father let you go, and will he let us go?"

Then, I selected "send".

Xiao Yao hoped that she had only said those things in anger, and that if her attitude softened now, he could mediate the situation.

Shen Jie's reply came quickly: "I will no longer use his money, nor will I acknowledge him as my father. If he has the guts, let him drown me in the Yellow River."

Xiao Yao's heart sank when he saw this message.

As I was pondering how to reply, Shen Jie sent message after message.

"You don't need to worry about me. There are ways to live even when you don't have money."

“I don’t plan to go abroad anymore, and I won’t go to No. 7 Girls’ High School anymore. I’ll go to St. Francis to be with you.”

"After graduating from high school, I'll find a job. Anyway, I'm not cut out for studying."

"When the time comes, I'll learn from my future self, see what future trends are, and try to gain a first-mover advantage so I can support you to go to a foreign university. After you graduate, come back and make something of yourself, then buy out my dad's crappy company and make him step aside!"

Xiao Yao could sense Shen Jie's growing excitement from reading her words, and when he saw her say that she would start working after graduating from high school and would also support his studies abroad, his eyes were already filled with tears.

...Are you fucking sick and feverish, and your mind isn't clear?

Shen Jie never thought of taking on the burden of her future life; she even considered taking on the burden for herself.

But classmate, that's not how it works!

Xiao Yao raised his hand to wipe away the tears in his eyes, picked up his phone again, and typed: "No, you dare!"

Shen Jie: "?"

“Who agreed to you going to work right after graduating from high school? Do you think my wife is that unambitious? Even if you come to St. Francis to study, even if you don’t go abroad for the time being, you can still get a junior college degree in China,” Xiao Yao thought for a moment, then deleted “junior college” and replaced it with “second-tier college” and then with “bachelor’s degree”: “Getting a bachelor’s degree in China is definitely not a problem!”

"No, that's not right. You don't need to transfer schools. I'll find a way to support you to study abroad. I won't let you work. As long as I, Xiao, have a bowl of soup, you'll have a piece of pork rib to eat!"

"What's wrong? Xiao Yao, don't you want to be my classmate? Don't you want to enjoy a sweet campus romance?"

"I miss it so much," Xiao Yao replied.

"I'm not going abroad anymore, so I can stay by your side all the time. Aren't you happy?"

"I'm so happy, incredibly happy," Xiao Yao replied.

"I'm not going to be a rich young lady anymore, so you won't have to marry into the family anymore, and Tianyun can take the surname Xiao."

"...It doesn't matter how you handle that kind of thing."

"Are you objecting because you think I'll become poor?"

The last message was followed by an emoji made up of punctuation marks, seemingly in a half-joking tone.

“How could that be?” Xiao Yao also used punctuation marks to spell out an emoji: “Even if I were begging for food, my main motivation would still be your beauty. That’s my primary motivation, okay?”

"Then I'm relieved, haha," Shen Jie said.

"Hahahahaha."

"Hahahahaha."

The two ends of the text message were filled with a cheerful atmosphere.

“Speaking of which,” Xiao Yao typed these four words and sent them out without thinking, only to realize that this wasn’t QQ, and each message cost one cent.

He quickly typed another message, mainly to tell Shen Jie that he had almost exhausted all his methods and wanted to discuss with her what to do next to help her escape.

Shen Jie replied that she had also done some research and that it was feasible to escape into the hall through the mirror and then use the "slide" to go downstairs, but she did not know what the situation would be like after going downstairs, nor did she know where she could get out, so she had not acted rashly.

Xiao Yao told her that he had already walked around the hall and revealed all his findings and some speculations.

The two exchanged information thoroughly, and before they knew it, it was past midnight.

They eventually came up with a new approach.

The idea is simple: Shen Jie goes down the "slide," Xiao Yao goes down to the next floor to meet her, and then the two of them use a "return scroll" to escape.

"Why did you bring a phone but not a ticket back to the city when you came?" Shen Jie texted, but she was clearly not blaming Xiao Yao.

"The key is the sacred amulet and the scriptures. You still have the sacred amulet, right? I'll send you the scriptures via my phone, and you can just memorize them, right?"

"Okay, okay, send it to me quickly."

"Also, your stepmother is acting very mysteriously. What is her stance on this matter?"

“She has always been very nice to me, but I feel like I don’t understand her.”

"Let me say a few more words of nonsense. Your stepmother will give your father a son and you a younger brother next year."

"So what? It has nothing to do with me anymore."

"Listen to me." Xiao Yao wiped the sweat from his forehead and told Shen Jie, in as concise a way as possible, about his encounter with her stepmother at the headquarters of Miwei Group, and the water his stepmother had placed outside Shen Jie's bedroom door earlier that day.

"So what? Does it mean my stepmother is a good person?" Shen Jie asked Xiao Yao.

"Think about it again?" Xiao Yao replied with these four words.

“I don’t want to think about it,” Shen Jie said.

"If you really break ties with your father, it might play right into your stepmother's hands," Xiao Yao concluded directly.

“…” Shen Jie sent a series of periods.

"Let's not talk about that now. Do you know which floor you can go down the slide from where you are? Otherwise, it will be difficult for us to meet up," Xiao Yao said.

"I can't be sure about that," Shen Jie said.

"If you start to run away, what will the hall do? Will anyone arrest you?" Xiao Yao asked.

"I can't be sure about that, but whoever causes trouble, I'll kill them and be done with it!" Shen Jie added an angry emoticon at the end of the text message.

Xiao Yao almost burst out laughing.

Shen Jie remained as optimistic and impulsive as ever, unwavering once she made up her mind. Xiao Yao, thinking that she would still be like this decades later, smiled wryly, holding his phone.

After some thought, he added a patch to the plan: to deploy as many people as possible into the hall and pre-position them on different floors, like a safety net to catch Shen Jie as she slid down.

"Won't this put everyone in danger?" Shen Jie replied after waiting for a while.

Sure enough, what she cared about most was the safety of others, Xiao Yao thought.

The boy picked up his phone and replied, "This hall has its own rules. As long as we don't cause trouble, we shouldn't encounter any danger. Besides, our leveling up wasn't for nothing. At worst, we can return to town, so there's no need to worry."