Chapter 2

"Manman, it is all Grandfather's fault. Grandfather failed to look after this home, which is why your father and stepmother were able to do such a disgraceful thing."

"Do not blame yourself. This is all fate; perhaps I simply have no affinity with that person."

Shen Man wore a graceful smile, her voice soft, gentle, and incredibly pleasant to the ear.

Despite being dressed simply and wearing no hair accessories or jewelry, just sitting there, she was a sight to behold, her posture elegant, making one unable to resist looking at her a few more times.

Elder Lu was filled with the joy and delight of having recovered his granddaughter, while Zhang Xuemei, looking at the porcelain-like girl with her snow-white skin and jade-like features, had her thoughts drift back fifteen years.

At that time, her husband had just sacrificed his life, and she had come to the Lu family in a state of utter wretchedness, clutching her daughter.

The then-Mrs. Lu was spotless, perfect to the point of not seeming real, looking down at her from beside the second-floor railing.

That compassionate gaze made the other woman seem like a cloud in the sky, high and unreachable, extraordinarily holy.

And she, she was like mud in a gutter, lowly to the point of being dust.

At that moment, the seeds of resentment were buried in her heart; she thought, *I will replace her... *

Indeed, she had now become the mistress of the Lu family!

But her womb was uncooperative; she could not give birth to a son, even a daughter with the Lu family bloodline would have been fine!

"Manman, how about this: you stay at the Military Region compound, and Grandfather will find you a new place to belong.

Or go to the Sea Island to join your own brother, and choose a military officer husband you like from the troops."

Privately, Elder Lu wanted his granddaughter to choose to stay at the compound so they would be close, and they could see each other often. With him as her backing, who in her future husband's family would dare to bully her?

But then he thought, his son and Zhang Xuemei lived here at the compound; if he had to see them every day, it would be disgusting!

The more he thought, the angrier he became, and he found Zhang Xuemei very unpleasant to look at. Flies don't bite seamless eggs; neither of the couple was any good!

"Then I will have to think about it carefully."

Shen Man gave a shy smile, her peripheral vision catching a flash of ferocity on her stepmother's face, and she laughed from the bottom of her heart.

*Boom, shakalaka*, dancing on her stepmother's heart.

"Tap, tap, tap~"

On the second-floor staircase, the sound of leather shoes descending could be heard.

Lu Mingyuan walked over with a dark face, carrying a small leather bag in his right hand and two small booklets in his left, without saying a word.

"In the bag is the dowry I prepared for Manman. Over these years, my salary, aside from supporting the family and social obligations, was saved into two bankbooks—one for Manman's dowry, and one for Xiu Bai to use when he starts a family later."

As he spoke, he placed the bag on the coffee table and presented the bankbooks with both hands for his father to inspect.

Elder Lu took out his reading glasses from his pocket and put them on, actually inspecting them meticulously.

His son's salary for the last ten years was at Level 12, which was 197 yuan a month; ten years would be over 23,000 yuan.

For the seven or eight years before that, it was Level 15 and Level 18; even if not ten thousand, it was at least seven or eight thousand.

Estimating, it was about right; these two bankbooks each contained 11,000 yuan.

After looking, he handed the bankbooks to his granddaughter.

The resentment toward his son in his heart lessened by a fraction; at least he knew who was close and who was distant, leaving most of the money to his own biological children.

If he had left the money to his stepdaughter with no blood relation, he would have been the first to object!

Zhang Xuemei looked shocked, staring in disbelief at the man she had shared a bed with for fifteen years.

In their fifteen years as a couple, she had thought that bankbook with five or six thousand was the largest denomination in the house.

She never expected that he had been hiding this from her and had opened two more bankbooks!

How much money was actually in them?

When her daughter got married, if she hadn't secretly taken out two thousand yuan, that dowry would have been a joke!

For a moment, she was filled with grief and indignation.

She felt it was not worth the fifteen years of forbearance and playing the submissive wife!

"Thank you, Dad, then I will accept it."

Shen Man took the bankbooks her grandfather handed her, saw the numbers on them, and thought that while her scumbag father was blind, his heart wasn't completely gone.

He had saved a sum of money for her and her older brother, and it hadn't been transferred away by her stepmother.

Even so, she couldn't bring herself to feel close to her scumbag father.

If it weren't for the original body's biological mother, who had given the scumbag father sterilization medicine at the time of their divorce, if the scumbag father and stepmother had had a child of their own, neither she nor her brother would have received their grandfather's complete favoritism.

Not to mention the compensation on the two bankbooks.

Yes, she had even managed to squeeze into the niche genre of transmigrating into a book.

Before transmigrating, she was a medical expert who had just returned from abroad, specializing in cardiopulmonary and gynecological departments, and had been the "other people's child" from childhood to adulthood.

Aside from a blank slate in love, she was outstanding in every other aspect.

Seeing that she was approaching thirty and still hadn't found a partner, her parents and friends were all putting in effort to select excellent young men and arrange blind dates for her.

And she, during a blind date, was watching a drama of a "main wife" tearing apart a "mistress" at the mall's glass railing; she was so engrossed that when she leaned over to see what happened next, she accidentally fell from the sixth floor and died.

She thought she was a goner, but unexpectedly, when she opened her eyes, she had been reborn into the original body.

The original body's biological mother had died of illness, leaving the original body to live alone.

At first, she was terrified because the original body's name and background were exactly the same as a period novel she had read!

The novel, *Military Marriage in the Seventies: After the Substitute Marriage, I Became the Apple of My Military Husband's Eye*, featured Shen Man as the vicious supporting female character!

Her parents divorced when she was young, and she left the Military Region compound with her mother, returning to her mother's hometown in Suzhou.

At fifteen, her mother died of illness, and after three years of mourning, she followed her mother's last wish to go to the Capital Military Region compound to join her biological father and fulfill a marriage contract.

After arriving at the compound, she fell in love at first sight with her betrothed and insisted on marrying him.

But at that time, her betrothed was already in love with her stepmother's daughter, her stepsister!

Through all her antics, the whole family grew to despise her, and even her own brother and grandfather were extremely disappointed.

Her fiancé's family firmly refused to have such a daughter-in-law, and in the end, the family let her stepsister marry her fiancé under the guise of a substitute marriage.

As for her, she became notorious in the compound, and no respectable family was willing to let their sons marry this disaster.

In the end, she became an old maid in her thirties, and when the male and female leads brought their children home to visit, she tried to push her little nephew down the stairs; after being discovered, she refused to change her ways and was kicked out of the house...

Finally, she wandered for half her life and died miserably on a snowy night.

Throughout the whole thing, the supporting female character went crazy, went mad, and served as a foil to the female lead's happy life.

At the time, she thought this vicious supporting character with the same name had played a good hand of cards into a complete mess, which was a pity.

If she had the supporting character's beauty and background, she wouldn't even care about a mere fiancé; she would have the capital and confidence to be arrogant and domineering!