Chapter 31: Taking Revenge on a Romantic Rival

Chapter 31: Taking Revenge on a Romantic Rival

The Zhuo Group was a major financial conglomerate in every sense of the word. Its portfolio included investments in as many as a hundred nationally known companies. Zhuo Weidong, son of the head of the Zhuo Group, was a famous playboy. Admirers clustered around him like stars circling the moon, and for a time he was wildly popular.

As a super-rich second-generation heir, he had beautiful women throwing themselves at him in droves. Online gossip about him never stopped.

What no one expected was that after picking and choosing through all his options, Zhuo Weidong set his sights on Du Xinlang. Whenever he had nothing better to do, he sent people over with flowers. At all kinds of gatherings, he declared Du Xinlang his fatal weakness.

I didn’t know whether wealth, once it reached a certain level, inflated a person’s confidence to the point where he thought he could do whatever he wanted. If so, Zhuo Weidong was the perfect example.

Du Xinlang despised Zhuo Weidong from the bottom of her heart—not entirely because he lived in dissipation and made money lying down. The key problem was that he simply did not look good: short, fat, and especially self-assured.

A rich girl like Du Xinlang was never ordinary to begin with. Zhuo Weidong’s little tricks for conquering women didn’t work on her at all.

I felt he posed no threat to me whatsoever, so I never took him seriously. The Du family, for business reasons, couldn’t easily offend him either, so they merely declined politely each time.

The Du family’s forbearance made Zhuo Weidong think there was an opening. He launched wave after wave of attacks: custom-edition luxury cars, expensive gifts of every kind, whatever he could think of to send. He even had people tail me, probably hoping to find some way to break us up.

I had always ignored Zhuo Weidong’s behavior.

Before long, though, rumors appeared online claiming that I, as a Great Dharma Master, had secretly married six women and fathered seven illegitimate children. There were even pictures—proof, supposedly.

The monks at Tansong Temple were furious. I stopped them.

Let him talk. Words don’t kill.

The Buddhist Association even formed a special investigation team. The result, of course, was nothing. I didn’t take the matter seriously either.

But then the rumors targeting me, the Du family, and Lin Liangming intensified, and I couldn’t help getting angry.

The rumors said I had planted a gu in Du Changfeng to scheme for the Du family’s fortune and had taken control of him. Shortly after Du Changfeng was hospitalized last time, the police had arrested me. Du Xinlang, desperate to save her father, had no choice but to submit to me—hence the whole hospital scene of saving Du Changfeng.

And Lin Liangming was supposedly my real secret lover and criminal accomplice, who had already secretly borne me two children.

The Zhuo Group was a nationally famous investment conglomerate. With its backing, the rumors had considerable reach and impact.

Facing the Zhuo Group’s slander, I had originally grounded myself in the virtue of the Dharma and held to the four non-attachments: do not contend, do not hate, do not spread, do not cling.

The truth would remain. I would prove my innocence through action.

But there was one thing I couldn’t stop worrying about.

Lin Liangming was still an unmarried young woman. I didn’t want her lifelong good name destroyed because of me.

Lin Liangming was an orphan from the western Sichuan earthquake. She shared a fellow-hometown bond with Xuanhong—though Xuanhong didn’t really have a hometown, his genes and memories defined him that way.

When the Du Group’s disaster-relief team entered the deep mountains for rescue work, they discovered her and fully funded her education all the way through her doctorate. Because of that, Lin Liangming had always been grateful to the Du Group and worked with care and diligence.

When Xuanhong first joined the company…