Chapter 8: Guangming

After reading for a while, Shang Ying felt her chest aching, so she knocked on the study door and righteously told Shang Heng that she needed to request time off from school.

"Where does it hurt?"

Sitting in his chair, Shang Heng put down his documents and looked up at Shang Ying, who was complaining without looking sick at all, feeling his anger flare up again.

In order to keep a close eye on Shang Ying's studies, he had brought home all the work he could process remotely. Every day, he had to check her homework completion and even force her to memorize the periodic table of elements.

Shang Ying said very seriously, "I don't feel good anywhere."

"Feeling bad everywhere means you're dead."

"Then I might be dead."

Shang Heng: "..."

He laughed out of sheer anger, pulling out a clothes hanger from a drawer. "Look at whether I'll beat you today or not! Spouting unlucky words all day long! Is this how I taught you?!"

Shang Ying darted around the study.

"I just don't feel well! I don't want to go to school! I want to rest! This is authoritarianism!"

"Feeling comfortable is reserved for dead people! You little brat, stop right there! Don't run around, there's a cloisonné vase placed over there!"

"Am I stupid? Standing still so you can hit me?!"

Shang Ying was running too fast. Her back carelessly bumped into something. She let out a muffled groan of pain, followed by a loud clatter. A sharp crash sounded throughout the room.

The cloisonné vase sitting on the desk shattered on the ground, completely destroyed. Shattered just as completely was Shang Heng's heart.

Hearing the commotion, Shang Yi immediately opened the study door and walked in. His first glance went to Shang Ying, his second glance went to his old man standing frozen on the spot, and then to the colorful ceramic shards on the floor.

Rushing over upon hearing the sound was also Ning Wanyuan. Seeing the broken porcelain on the floor, her heart instantly leapt to her throat, her hand covering her mouth as she barely suppressed a gasp.

Shang Ying silently took a step back, tentatively calling out "Dad" in an attempt to awaken Shang Heng's fatherly love. However, touching his icy glance, she shuddered.

She chuckled awkwardly, attempting to salvage the situation.

"This can be taken to a professional to fix, right? I'll pay for it. Don't worry, Boss Shang, I'll definitely get it restored for you."

Shang Heng suffered an intense ache in his heart, unable to speak for a moment, the hanger in his hand trembling slightly.

Seeing this scene, Shang Yi quietly left the study, and Ning Wanyuan left as well. This time she couldn't even be bothered to add fuel to the fire, as Shang Ying was definitely not escaping a beating.

Soon, earth-shattering cries and wails echoed from the study. Aunt Zhao stood at the door, worried out of her mind. She had raised Shang Ying with her own hands, virtually like her own daughter, and hearing those cries pained her deeply.

In contrast, the butler was far more calm. He comforted Aunt Zhao, "It's fine, solving this with just one beating means the Eldest Miss is actually lucky."

If it were any of the young masters, they probably would have been thrown out by the master on the spot to fend for themselves.

The cloisonné vase in the study was exceptionally rare and precious, bought by Shang Heng at a private auction in the Capital for several hundred million. Price wasn't even the main point. What mattered was that Shang Heng liked it immensely, so he placed it in the study to admire every single day.

Now, several hundred million had turned into a pile of floor debris. When work got frustrating in the future, he wouldn't even have this ornament to distract himself, so of course he had to give the Eldest Miss a severe lesson to vent his frustration.

It wasn't until midnight that Shang Ying's cries finally subsided. Given the intensity of the battle, it was expected to continue longer. If the Shang family didn't live in a private manor, the neighbors would have filed complaints long ago.

Shang Yi put on his earplugs, attentively working on competition problems, occasionally taking them off to listen before putting them back on to continue.

‘She's still getting beaten.’

Shang Ying successfully secured her leave of absence.

However, she couldn't bring herself to feel happy.

Last night, Shang Heng had thrashed her for over three hours, making her kneel on the floor to sincerely apologize to that pile of shattered debris. If her tone sounded even slightly insincere, the hanger would land straight on her butt.

To beat her so severely over a mere cloisonné vase. If worse came to worst, she could just compensate him for another one!

Lying prone on the bed, Shang Ying pulled out her phone and checked her bank app. What?! As the Eldest Miss of a prestigious family, she only had a meager twenty thousand yuan in her bank account! This was practically child abuse!

In her excitement, her butt twitched slightly, sending a wave of pain that made her gasp, causing her to lie back down obediently.

Twenty thousand yuan wasn't even enough to buy a fraction of that cloisonné vase, though it was about enough to buy a pile of broken shards.

Since she was the one who broke it, she definitely had to pay for it. Otherwise, she wouldn't be able to stand tall in front of Shang Heng in the future, she could already imagine the scene:

She doesn't do her homework: Shang Heng mentions the cloisonné vase.

She talks back: Shang Heng mentions the cloisonné vase.

She acts like a rogue: Shang Heng mentions the cloisonné vase.

How was this any different from the Tight-Fillet Spell on Sun Wukong's head? [1]

But where was she supposed to get so much money...?

Two minutes later, enduring the pain, Shang Ying pulled her laptop onto the bed. With practiced skill, she typed a string of code, entered a website, targeted several points, and quickly located a specific place.

Yes, she happened to possess a bit of cybersecurity skills. When she had free time, she'd scale the firewall to take orders. Breaking laws... ahem, just kidding, she was a law-abiding citizen, without a doubt!

However, she didn't plan to rely on this skill to make money right now. Orders worth five or eight hundred million were rare and tedious, and she was too lazy to take them. She needed to find a simpler way to make a fortune.

And that was… a gambling den.

The Capital's night was the prelude to prosperity, a golden pulse running from east to west through the city. Towering landmark buildings flashed with white light.

Beneath the glow, twisting and turning, the presentable and the unpresentable coexisted under the prosperity. The place marked on the computer screen was the largest hidden underground casino in the Capital, gathering wealthy people and plenty of profligate second-generations, so money circulated extremely fast.

Wearing a mask and a hat, clad in an oversized t-shirt, Shang Ying looked entirely out of place in this neon-lit, lavish district, yet she forced her way in.

The place she was heading to was called "Guangming. Quite an interesting choice of name.

Entering through the main door, one had to navigate several turns to reach the actual entrance. Two bouncers stood there, blocking Shang Ying. Wearing sunglasses, their expressions were unreadable, but subtle shifts in their lips let Shang Ying know they viewed her as a suspicious person.

Guangming operated on a membership system. To enter, one needed an invitation, and the pattern of this invitation changed daily. If Shang Ying didn't have some real technical skills, she wouldn't have been able to pull it off.

She displayed the digital invitation on her phone while taking off her mask. The bouncer took it, inspected it thoroughly for a long while, and finally lowered his blocking hand.

The elevator reached the first floor and slowly opened. Shang Ying was about to step inside when her footsteps paused, because there were actually other people inside.

‘Isn't this the first floor?’

Shang Ying instinctively looked up at the floor indicator on the elevator, it indeed read "1." She wasn't blind. Strange, the map didn't indicate a basement level here.

The three people inside the elevator caught sight of the young girl outside, and their laughing conversation came to a sudden halt.

How did a minor end up here?

——

[1] Sun Wukong’s Tight-Fillet Spell - Tight-Fillet Spell or Ring-Tightening Mantra (紧箍咒 / Jǐngū Zhòu). Taught to the monk Tang Sanzang by the Bodhisattva Guanyin, this sacred chant serves as a control mechanism to subdue the unruly Monkey King and ensure his obedience during their journey to Retrieve the Western Scriptures. Whenever Tang Sanzang recites the mantra, the golden headband constricts around Sun Wukong’s head, causing intolerable, debilitating agony that brings him to his knees regardless of his immense magical power or shape-shifting abilities. Sun Wukong is completely incapable of removing the band himself, and it remains bound to him throughout their arduous quest, only dissolving permanently once he achieves true enlightenment and attains Buddhahood as the Victorious Fighting Buddha.