Chapter 1 — The Wedding That Became a Goodbye

Right on her wedding day, the bride broadcasted a video of the groom's infidelity onto the grand screens. Lin Zhan wore a pristine, custom-designed white wedding gown, holding a remote control as she stood gracefully on the banquet hall stage, smiling as brightly as if she were about to accept a prestigious award. The massive screens slowly illuminated, and everyone in attendance fully expected to watch a romantic montage chronicling the sweet love journey of the bride and groom. To their utter astonishment, the scene transitioned, revealing instead the harsh footage of a hotel hallway's security camera. The timestamp in the top right corner displayed the exact moment: 10:23 PM last night. The groom, Lu Huaihuai, dressed in a plush bathrobe, wrapped his arm around the waist of a woman similarly clad in a bath towel as they strolled down the corridor, their body language intimately entangled. The woman rested her head against his shoulder, and Lu Huaihuai leaned down to press a kiss into her hair before retrieving a room key card to unlock the suite immediately adjacent to the bridal honeymoon suite. The camera recording was entirely silent, yet every single person present could vividly imagine how suggestive the sound of that closing door must have been. The entire banquet hall fell dead silent for a agonizing three seconds. Then, total chaos erupted.

What… what is the meaning of this? The master of ceremonies nearly dropped his microphone in sheer panic.

Lu Huaihuai, who had been seated at the primary VIP table, jolted violently and shot to his feet, his complexion shifting through a palette of panic and fury as he instinctively glared at Lin Zhan on the stage. At that exact moment, Lin Zhan was glancing down at her phone, looking entirely unfazed by the scandal unfolding behind her. She even took a momentary pause to reply to a text message.

Lin Zhan! Have you lost your mind?! Lu Huaihuai practically sprinted up the steps of the stage, his hand lunging forward to snatch the remote control away from her. Lin Zhan nimbly sidestepped, the hem of her gown sweeping gracefully across the wooden planks like a drifting cloud.

Do not be so hasty, there is still more to come, she remarked leisurely, pressing the next button without a care in the world.

The image on the screen shifted to a screen recording of a smartphone interface, displaying a WeChat chat window. A contact saved under the affectionate alias "Darling" had messaged: She is sleeping in the honeymoon suite tonight, I have already booked the room right next door, come over to my place at 3 AM? The recipient responded with an embarrassed blushing-face emoji. The chat history scrolled endlessly upward, filled with explicit, shameless endearments and frequent hotel location pins spanning an unbroken duration of eight months. The expressions plastered across the faces of the wedding guests were nothing short of theatrical masterpieces. Lin Zhan’s parents sat at the main table; her mother was trembling with suppressed rage while her father firmly grasped her hand, his face drained of all color. Lu Huaihuai's parents fared no better, as his mother jolted upright and demanded of the person beside her, What is the meaning of this? Who is that woman? The answer was provided almost instantaneously, for Lin Zhan had just triggered the third video file. On the screen, a woman draped in nothing more than a hotel bedsheet burst out of Lu Huaihuai’s room and charged straight into the honeymoon suite. That was supposed to be the very room where the bride would spend her wedding night —— yet Lin Zhan had not set foot in that room last night, having long since transferred to a different floor of the hotel. The hallway surveillance captured footage of the intruder lingering inside the bridal suite for a full half-hour before strolling out leisurely, casually pocketing a gift box left atop the shoe cabinet by the doorway.

That gift box, Lin Zhan spoke directly into the microphone, her tone as indifferent as a weather reporter reading the morning forecast, contained a jade necklace left to me by my grandmother. Its market value is roughly eight hundred thousand yuan.

A collective gasp rippled through the hall. The look on Lu Huaihuai's face could no longer be described with mere words like "unpleasant"; it was the utter devastation of a man having his carefully constructed mask stripped away in broad daylight. He lunged forward to power down the projector, but Lin Zhan had clearly anticipated this contingency. The equipment had been locked down tight, and no matter how many times he hammered the power button, the screen remained stubbornly active.

Do not waste your energy, Lin Zhan stated smoothly, I hired a team of seasoned professionals for this.

In the corner of the stage, a young man clad in a black hoodie raised a hand, flashing a thumbs-up. A lanyard bearing the words "Technical Support" hung around his neck, and while an unsuspecting observer might have mistaken him for a member of the official wedding crew, the unabashed excitement gleaming in his eyes completely betrayed him.

Just what do you hope to accomplish? Lu Huaihuai lowered his voice, but the high-end microphone picked up every syllable, broadcasting it crystal clear across the vast hall.

Lin Zhan tilted her head slightly. What do I hope to accomplish? I simply wanted everyone here to witness how you, Lu Huaihuai, spent your very wedding day sneaking around and rolling in bed with the bridesmaid. Bridesmaid. The word dropped into the crowd like a heavy explosive charge. Indeed, the woman in the bathrobe, the woman wrapped in a bedsheet who had stormed the bridal suite, was at this very second seated in the second row of guest chairs, adorned in a champagne-colored bridesmaid gown with flawless makeup, though her expression had frozen into absolute rigidity —— she was Lin Zhan's college roommate and dearest friend of eight years, Su Wanyi. Every pair of eyes in the hall snapped in unison toward Su Wanyi. The two other bridesmaids seated beside her instinctively recoiled, shuffling their chairs away as if she carried a highly contagious pathogen. Su Wanyi’s lips trembled, her eye rims turning crimson as she weaponized the persona of a victim and stood up. Zhuanzhuan, you must listen to my explanation, things are not how you imagine…

Then how are they? Lin Zhan rested her hands on the podium, her posture entirely relaxed. Are you going to claim you brought him a pillow? Or were the two of you discussing the profound meaning of human existence in that room for eight straight hours?

Someone in the audience failed to stifle a snort of laughter. Su Wanyi’s tears appeared on command, her acting skills currently rivaling her peak performances back in the university drama club. It was Huaihuai… he drank too much, I merely went over to look after him, the two of us truly did nothing improper…

Nothing improper while wearing bathrobes? Lin Zhan arched an eyebrow. Su Wanyi, the security camera captured you slithering out of his room at 3 AM. Did you spend eight hours looking after him, or did you look after eight rounds?

A sharp intake of breath echoed through the hall; someone quietly pulled out their phone to record the spectacle, while another person began un-wrapping a wedding candy from the table to pop into their mouth —— with drama of this magnitude, one needed a touch of sugar just to stay grounded. Lu Huaihuai drew a deep, shuddering breath, desperately attempting to wrestle back some semblance of control over the situation. He straightened his tie and marched right up to Lin Zhan. Zhuanzhuan, I was in the wrong on this, but we cannot call off the wedding. We cannot smear the reputations of both families like this. Let us just finish conducting the ceremony, and afterward, you can punish me however you see fit. Lin Zhan stared at him as though he were a creature from another planet. Did you genuinely believe I was standing up here to negotiate with you?

You can demand any compensation you want — houses, vehicles, financial assets…

Forgate it, Lin Zhan cut him off coldly, I am lacking none of the things you just listed.

This was indisputable fact. Lin Zhan’s father, Lin Jianguo, stood as the largest supplier of residential construction materials in the entire province, boasting a net worth easily soaring into the tens of billions. While the Lu family was certainly well-off through their import-export ventures, they remained a tier below the Lin household. That profound disparity was precisely why the Lu family had been so aggressively pushing for this marriage from the very start.

Then what on earth do you want? Lu Huaihuai finally snapped, his voice curdling with genuine rage.