Chapter 147: They Can Be Replaced, Can’t They?

Chapter 147: They Can Be Replaced, Can’t They?

Li Maoren’s reaction was violent.

In truth he still did not believe Wu Chen. Wu Chen had told him a story, and whether the story was true remained to be verified. But with something of this magnitude, for the moment he had no choice but to treat it as though it might be.

And Wu Chen had made his intention perfectly plain. He said He Shiqin was a witness. He said she hated Ding Ruilong. He said he had contacted her.

Obviously, he was going after Ding Ruilong.

From where Li Maoren stood, he absolutely could not permit it.

The Li and Ding families had formed their alliance years ago and were already working together across many fields.

Li Ruobing’s refusal four years earlier had not meant the two families shelved all cooperation until she finally married Ding Ruilong. Wait years? Of course not.

The marriage of Li Ruobing to Ding Ruilong was one of the most important components of the alliance, one of the guarantees of long-term cooperation. It was not the whole of it.

Put plainly, it was a stronger bond of shared interests.

Seen in that light, the feelings between husband and wife scarcely entered the calculation.

Arranged marriages between great families were seldom happy. If the couple could remain harmonious and treat one another with respect, that was already considered a fine result. Li Maoren’s own marriage had been arranged—the bond joining the Li and Sun families.

He and his wife got on reasonably well, though he kept mistresses quietly.

And that counted among the better outcomes.

Plenty of great-family children married for an alliance, produced a child, and then went their separate ways. They could do as they liked, with whomever they liked. In public they still played the devoted pair, the very model of a marriage.

In private neither interfered with the other. Both took lovers and lived exactly as wildly as they pleased.

It was no great matter.

The quality of an alliance marriage had never determined how firmly two families were bound.

What determined that was the legal framework of jointly held marital property, and the fact that any children would carry the blood of both houses.

Which was why the Li family was set on forcing Li Ruobing to marry Ding Ruilong. They knew perfectly well how she resisted it. They knew that even if she did marry him, the two of them would never get along.

That was not the issue.

Feelings did not matter.

What mattered was that once Li Ruobing and Ding Ruilong were legally married, the two great families would transfer part of their family assets into the couple’s names, then throw their weight behind those assets together and build them up. The assets would belong to husband and wife—and to both families at once.

That was the firmest bond of shared interests there was.

And there were the children.

Once a child existed carrying the blood of both houses, and that child grew up to become one of the family’s decision-makers, the child would personally embody the two families’ common interest. Which meant, from the other direction, the child was a guarantee that the two families would not lightly break with each other.

Li Ruotai was the perfect illustration.

His paternal grandfather was the Li family’s Old Master. His maternal grandfather was the Sun family’s Old Master.

And not only him.

The same was true of Li Ruobing.

Which was why the Sun family had brought its weight to bear on the forced marriage, pressing Li Ruobing’s mother until the woman who had always shielded her daughter turned around and began pressing her too.

Because once Li Ruobing married into the Ding family and bore a child, the implications for the Ding, Li, and Sun families would be enormous. Interests and bloodlines alike, all threaded together.

“Why so agitated?” Wu Chen asked calmly, looking up at Li Maoren standing over him. He smiled. “You should understand by now what I intend to do.”

“You dare move against Ding Ruilong?” Li Maoren…