Marrying the Ugly Woman of a Rich and Powerful Family - Chapter 3
Shen Qingyuan now had absolutely no beautiful illusions left about Cang Yan. She came to the bathroom.
In the mirror, her hair was a mess, her clothes were disheveled, looking like a little wife who had just been abused.
Shen Qingyuan returned to the bedroom, rummaging through the drawers and cabinets, trying to find some ointment. However, there was nothing here, only the three-piece set Cang Yan had used was still there: the pointer, the ropes, the candle…
Shen Qingyuan silently took out her phone and began to search. Her phone had been confiscated earlier, but fortunately, Yin Ruyun had given it back to her later. On a certain search engine, she could directly search for terms related to Cang Yan.
Cang Yan, 28 years old, height 1.62 meters, weight 42 kilograms, is the sole heir of the Cang Group. Her current position is Vice General Manager of the Group.
Because of her inherent frailty, pale skin, and ugly appearance, she is the publicly acknowledged ugliest woman in the world. Coupled with her bad temper, there was a final summary: “Uglier than Zhong Wuyan, temper comparable to a tigress.”
Shen Qingyuan: “…”
This is the ugliest woman?
What does the most beautiful woman look like then?
Shen Qingyuan went onto Weibo again and found that Cang Yan was already trending: #UgliestWomanFinallyMarried#, #CangYanDidNotAttendTheWedding#, #CangYan’sWife#.
She clicked into the third one, which contained a video of her getting out of the car. In the video, her appearance was quite composed, and her wheat-colored skin looked healthy. However, the comments section was unbearable.
“Cang Yan is so ugly, this one must be in it for the money.”
“I’m gagging. For money, people really dare to marry anyone.”
“Cang Yan has no shame, an old cow grazing on young grass.”
“Like pot, like lid. This Shen Qingyuan is also quite ugly.”
“That old woman Cang Yan even has a partner, and I’m still single.”
This last comment surprisingly got many likes. Shen Qingyuan was furious looking at these insulting comments. Why are you single? Don’t you have any idea?
Shen Qingyuan continued to scroll and even found a derived trending topic: #BeautyAndMoneyWhichWouldYouChoose#.
Shen Qingyuan clicked in and found that people were seriously discussing whether they would choose to be a rich person as ugly as Cang Yan or a beautiful poor person.
Shen Qingyuan: “…”
Although… Cang Yan clearly has both beauty and money.
She genuinely suspected there was a problem with the aesthetics of this world. Just then, there was a trending topic about a fashion weekly. Shen Qingyuan clicked into it, and the results were all dark-skinned, muscular Barbies.
This darkness wasn’t a deep tan, but a glossy black, which should be the effect of some cosmetic. In short, they looked like rows of glistening roasted chicken legs.
A flash of inspiration hit her, and she understood the aesthetics here.
There were two master bedrooms on the second floor. When Cang Yan returned to her own bedroom, she was already covered in sweat.
She was inherently frail and too thin. Shen Qingyuan had struggled violently just now. Although she was sitting on her, it still took a lot of effort to restrain her.
Cang Yan took off her jacket, revealing her slender figure, and removed the shoulder pads. Because she was thin, and the suit was the formal wear she often wore, and for the sake of presence, she deliberately padded her shoulders.
Cang Yan sat in the rocking chair, looking at the chaotic comments on the trending topics. Her expression remained blank. What else could these netizens attack her with besides calling her ugly?
Her high education, the wealth she created.
They always chose to be selectively blind to these.
Suddenly, with a “clatter,” her phone was heavily smashed against the hard wall, shattering into pieces.
Cang Yan closed her eyes. What appeared in her mind was surprisingly Shen Qingyuan’s surprised expression when she saw her. She said she was beautiful.
She said it as if it were true.
Cang Yan opened her eyes, regretting not dripping a few more drops of wax on Shen Qingyuan’s back. Who told her to deliberately mock her? She would rather Shen Qingyuan call her ugly than hypocritically say she was beautiful.
It was early October, and the weather was gradually turning cooler.
Shen Qingyuan was lazily lying in the fully automatic bathtub. The warm water enveloped her body, feeling like she was wrapped in soft clouds. If it weren’t for the burning pain on her back, she could have soaked all night.
Shen Qingyuan stepped her long legs out of the bathtub, rinsed the foam off her body with the showerhead, and stood in front of the full-length mirror, once again scrutinizing her new body.
Healthy, toned, wheat-colored skin, not an ounce of excess fat anywhere. A crystal water droplet flowed from her collarbone to her ankle, a journey that required navigating waves and undulations.
This was undoubtedly a perfect body. The places that should have flesh lacked nothing, and the places that shouldn’t have flesh were just right. The prerequisite was, if one could ignore the skin tone and the bland facial features. Actually, skin tone was not the most important thing; the fatal flaw was the facial features.
Shen Qingyuan now wished she could have a “head transplant” to give herself a satisfactory head.
After remembering the strange aesthetics of this world, she was again grateful that she was still an ordinary person in this world, with an ordinary appearance, ordinary skin tone, and an ordinary figure.
She wouldn’t receive compliments, but she wouldn’t receive abuse either.
After all, according to the aesthetics of this world, she would have to be darker and more muscular to be considered a beauty.
This was the conclusion she had drawn after scrolling through all the fashion Weibo accounts.
The aesthetics of this world were very rough.
If the mainstream aesthetics of her original world were “pale, young, and thin,” then the aesthetics of this world were the relative “dark, young, and muscular.”
The only thing that hadn’t changed was that both worlds held strong opinions about age. Cang Yan was only 28 this year, yet she was already being called an old woman.
Shen Qingyuan didn’t know if this was related to the netizens considering Cang Yan ugly, but as an outsider with completely different aesthetics, she suddenly found it very laughable.
When aesthetic trends are reversed, people begin to pursue the opposite kind of beauty, seemingly forgetting how to be themselves. Shouldn’t being healthy be the best?
Just like in her original world, people went to extreme lengths to become thin, and in this world, they went to great lengths to become muscular, regardless of the consequences.
Weight loss and muscle gain, if excessive, are definitely harmful to the body.
When she opened a fashion show video and two muscular men and women popped up, Shen Qingyuan was truly shocked.
Along with the pursuit of extreme beauty came people’s malice toward “ugliness.”
Although she was also a conventional person, even a “face-con” (obsessed with good looks), this didn’t mean she would judge or maliciously attack others’ appearances.
Shen Qingyuan thought of the keyboard warriors’ abuse of Cang Yan, and then she thought of the wax that Cang Yan had dripped on her back.
Shen Qingyuan slowly shifted her body, turning sideways to the mirror, twisting her head to look at the person in the mirror, and reaching her right hand over her shoulder, trying to pick off the wax oil on her back in a nearly twisted posture.
When the solidified block of wax oil was peeled off her skin, it felt like a layer of skin was being peeled off. Shen Qingyuan gritted her teeth, occasionally letting out a hiss.
She hadn’t dared to touch that area while taking a bath.
Logically, erotic candles have a low melting point and shouldn’t hurt this much. It must have been because the posture Cang Yan used was wrong, too close to her back, which led to the scalded area being red and swollen, and even after removing the wax oil, it still showed a tendency to blister.
Shen Qingyuan was afraid of infection. She dried her body and found a silk robe in the dazzling wardrobe. It was cool to the touch. She prepared to put it on and go downstairs to find medicine.
As soon as she went out, she heard a “bang.”
It sounded like something had been smashed.
Although there were two master bedrooms upstairs, they were not far apart, separated by a shared walk-in closet, so the sound was particularly clear.
Cai Yi, the housekeeper who lived downstairs, was used to it. Seeing Shen Qingyuan’s shocked expression, she explained, “Miss is in a bad mood and smashed her phone again. This should be the second one today.”
Shen Qingyuan was nearly dumbfounded.
Cang Yan has such a fiery temper? She thought of the wax dripping incident and felt it was within reason.
Cang Yan’s temper was indeed this volatile.
She had been blind to compare Cang Yan to the Fairy Sister from Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils at first.
Perhaps to complement Cang Yan’s skin, or because everyone in Cang Yan’s family was relatively pale, Cai Yi was also fair and plump, looking very kind.
Shen Qingyuan was not really twenty years old, so she quickly put away her surprised expression and asked, “Aunt Cai, does the house have medicine for burns?”
Cai Yi was the one who led her to the bedroom when she arrived, so the two were somewhat familiar.
Cai Yi asked, “Are you hurt? I’ll go look for you.”
Cai Yi was very kind-hearted. Shen Qingyuan took the ointment and started chatting with her, saying, “I just arrived. If there’s anything I’m not doing right, please remind me, Aunt Cai.”
“It’s just you and Miss living here. Although Miss has a bad temper, she doesn’t lose it for no reason. I’m just here to cook and clean. You two just got married, you’ll work things out slowly,” Cai Yi said very cautiously.
Shen Qingyuan wanted to say that the burn on her back was caused by Cang Yan’s erratic temper, and if they ‘worked things out slowly,’ her skin would be ground away.
All she could do now was try to avoid Cang Yan, this great Buddha. God knows what she would drip on her back next.
Shen Qingyuan quickly took the ointment and went upstairs.
Cang Yan was standing at the stairwell at some point, wearing a set of linen-colored cotton pajamas. Her hair was scattered over her shoulders. Without the suit’s padding, her arms and legs were thin, looking extremely frail. Her slightly upturned eye corners revealed an arrogant pride.
Shen Qingyuan shook the ointment in her hand, indicating that she was only there to find medicine. To figure out the aesthetics of this world, she had been scrolling through Weibo until nightfall, and now she just wanted to sleep.
Cang Yan looked at her coldly, as if she hadn’t seen it, and said in an unfriendly tone, “It’s late at night, don’t come out and make noise.”
“Oh,” Shen Qingyuan thought to herself that with the door closed, the soundproofing was so good that nothing could be heard. Knowing that Cang Yan was deliberately picking a fight, she promised, “I will delete all those fan fictions.”
Although she didn’t know where the fan fiction was.
Nor did she know how many more pits the original owner had dug for her.
Cang Yan raised her chin dismissively, her jawline taut in a firm arc. She walked past Shen Qingyuan and went downstairs to use the landline to call her assistant to deliver a few more phones. They had to be the best configuration and durable against drops.
Shen Qingyuan: “…” It’s good to be rich.
She went back to her room to apply the medicine and sleep.
The soft, large bed made her feel like she was floating on a cloud. Shen Qingyuan dreamed that she was giving a report at an academic conference.
She had found a completely new method to find the optimal value for non-convex composite optimization problems, without a bunch of assumptions, without introducing inexact concepts, and with higher iteration efficiency. However, at the moment she was about to elaborate on the detailed process of the method, Shen Qingyuan was called awake.
“Miss Shen, Miss Shen.”
This was the research direction she had nearly worn out in her previous life. Knowing that the result would not be rigorous without so many assumptions and conditions, Shen Qingyuan still wanted to know how it was done.
She wanted to continue sleeping, to continue that dream.
She pulled the quilt over her head: “I still need to sleep.”
And fell back into her dream.
“Wake up, you have class today,” Cai Yi’s voice persistently came through.
Shen Qingyuan: “!!!”
Aren’t I taking wedding leave?
Class the day after the wedding?
Although she was used to waking up at 6:30 AM in her previous life, whether she had class or not, rushing to school before 8 AM, this body obviously loved to sleep in. Besides, the weather was turning cold, and she couldn’t bear to leave the blanket. She wanted to continue dreaming.
“It’s seven o’clock, Miss Shen, you’ll be late if you don’t get up.”
Cai Yi’s voice was like a death knell. Shen Qingyuan reluctantly turned over. Her back made intimate contact with the bed surface. Excruciating pain shot from the wax-burned area, and all sleepiness instantly vanished.
Shen Qingyuan got up with an irritable mood, crawling out of bed like a walking corpse to wash up. The clothes in the wardrobe were all her size. They must have been moved in before the wedding. She randomly found a shirt and jeans to put on.
Downstairs, Cang Yan was nestled on the sofa as if boneless, watching the morning news on TV.
Shen Qingyuan said weakly, “Good morning.”
Although Cang Yan had abused her and dripped wax on her yesterday, forcing her to sleep on her stomach, Cang Yan was pleasing to the eye, making it hard not to want to greet her.
Cang Yan acted as if she hadn’t heard, lazily raising her eyelids, moving her gaze from the TV to her phone.
Shen Qingyuan, with her sharp eyes, noticed that she had indeed changed her phone.
Yesterday, when Cang Yan’s music woke her up, the phone was pure black. Today, it had turned a gradient blue.
Shen Qingyuan didn’t want to offer a warm face to a cold shoulder. As a teacher, she hated students being late the most.
She hurried to the door, only to realize that she didn’t know the way, and didn’t even know which school it was.
Cang Yan watched Shen Qingyuan come downstairs half-asleep and then rush out the door. She was very satisfied. Unexpectedly, Shen Qingyuan returned, and she was puzzled.
“You’re not that dramatic, are you? Do you still want me to take you to school? We have a contractual marriage. Don’t be so sincere. I don’t have that much time to waste with you,” Cang Yan put down her phone and said in an unfriendly tone.
You’re the dramatic one.
Shen Qingyuan took out her phone and logged into “Penguin” (likely a reference to QQ, an instant messaging app). Fortunately, most apps could be logged in directly with a fingerprint, so she didn’t need to remember the passwords.
The original owner’s grouping method was very juvenile. The groups column was full of various martial arts sects: Shaolin, Kongtong, Wudang…
The most active one was a dorm group—A University Nun’s Quarters 419.
Shen Qingyuan: “…”
Her mouth twitched. She scrolled through the chat history. There were only four people in the dorm group. The chat history was dominated by meme stickers and requests to bring food.
Shen Qingyuan tried to imitate the original owner’s temper and sent a message. Because her group nickname was “Mistress Miejue” (Extermination Mistress, a character from Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre), the message sent was:
Mistress Miejue: [Do you have the class schedule?]
The class schedule usually contains information about which classroom the class is in. As long as she had the class schedule, she would know where to go.
One minute later.
Little Nun #1: [Image]
Shen Qingyuan clicked on the class schedule. After reading it, she glared fiercely at Cang Yan. Today was Monday. She had no classes all morning. It was clearly Cang Yan who didn’t want her to sleep well and deliberately had Cai Yi wake her up.
Cang Yan saw Shen Qingyuan’s face constantly changing but not answering her question, and her mood became increasingly worse.
Since she had no class, Shen Qingyuan was no longer in a hurry.
She walked up to Cang Yan and said, “I know it’s a contractual marriage, but can I ask why you wanted to marry me? What do you want from me?”
According to the aesthetics here, she wasn’t good-looking.
Cang Yan, being so rich, should marry someone darker and stronger, so marrying her was very strange.
Cang Yan’s eyes were practically seeping ice. She was already shorter than Shen Qingyuan, and now they were one standing and one sitting. Cang Yan disliked people talking to her so condescendingly.
She reached out, grabbed Shen Qingyuan’s tie on her chest, pulled her down to bend over, and then said, “What do I want from you? I want you for your youth, your healthy body, and your abundant vitality.”
Shen Qingyuan stumbled forward from the pull, nearly losing her footing, and almost bumped into Cang Yan’s arms.
Cang Yan had a faint, clean fragrance, like the smell of a balloon flower. Shen Qingyuan sniffed uncomfortably.
Why did those words sound so familiar?
“Oh, you’re just lusting after my body.”