Chapter 210: The Phoenix Man Who Soared Before the Apocalypse – 15

“By the way, Dad, I actually called today because there’s something I need to tell you.” Shen Xiuyan’s tone suddenly turned serious.

“What is it?” Father Shen’s voice instinctively followed suit, becoming solemn as well.

“There’s a new virus going around. It’s really serious and spreads fast. I saw infected people today acting like they’d gone mad, biting anyone they saw. You and Mom need to be careful at home. Lock the doors and don’t go out for now.”

Father Shen slapped his thigh in fright. “Aiyo, that bad? But we’re up in the mountains, we should be safe, right?”

Shen Xiuyan lowered his voice, adding a hint of menace. “You can’t be sure. No one knows how it started. What if something really happens? Just listen to me for now—stay put at home and wait to see how things develop over the next few days.”

That did the trick. Father Shen was thoroughly spooked. “Alright, alright, I’ll listen to you. You went to college, you’re educated, what you say must make sense. I’ll call your sister back home right away and no one’s allowed to wander off.”

“Good. Do we have enough food at home?”

“What’s there not to have? We’ve still got plenty of last year’s grain, enough to last half a year. As for vegetables, I’ll just go pull some from the backyard garden. Haven’t we always lived like this?”

“Alright then.” Having said what he needed to, Shen Xiuyan added, “I’m hanging up now. I’ll contact you later.”

Father Shen said with concern, “Okay, okay. You take care of yourself out there.”

“Got it, Dad. Bye.”

“Alright, bye-bye.”

As soon as he hung up, Shen Xiuyan turned to see Su Mingyue looking at him with a disappointed expression.

She looked so pitiful, like a puppy caught in the rain.

“What’s wrong?” Shen Xiuyan quickly reached out to pat her head.

“What do you think?” Su Mingyue gave him a resentful glance.

Shen Xiuyan was confused.

Su Mingyue let out a soft sigh. “Do your parents even know we’re married? Or do they not even know I exist…”

Shen Xiuyan: “!!!”

What kind of scumbag behavior is this?

He frantically dug through the dusty corners of his memory.

Right, Shen Xiuyan had never told his parents about the marriage, so they still had no idea he was even married…

Shen Xiuyan clenched his fists. Tch. That scumbag deserved to be looked down on.

The original Shen Xiuyan had desperately wanted to distance himself from the family he found so shameful. That family had brought him nothing but painful memories and was, in his eyes, the root of all the scorn he faced. So after graduating, he never intended to contact them again.

And if he didn’t reach out first, they had no way of contacting him.

As long as he cut off communication on his end, then with the mountains so far and the emperor so distant, his parents—tucked away in the remote countryside—would never be able to find him.

He lived quite freely on his own.

As the Su Family’s son-in-law, he had a natural glow of prestige. Before long, he would completely shed his shabby past and officially step into a new world.

Hearing Su Mingyue’s questioning, Shen Xiuyan nearly dropped to his knees in guilt.

He awkwardly rubbed his nose. “They do know someone like you exists…”

Back in college, the original Shen Xiuyan had dated a girl, and his family knew about it. At the time, he still needed money from home for living expenses, so communication was fairly frequent.

His family had even been happy for him—he’d managed to find a city girl as a girlfriend. That was a big deal.

Su Mingyue looked even more aggrieved. “So they knew about the girlfriend, but not the marriage…”

Shen Xiuyan had no defense. This was all the original guy’s fault, and now he had to carry the blame.

Su Mingyue pouted. “When we got married, you said your sister was preparing for high school entrance exams and the whole family had to help her, so it wasn’t convenient for them to come. I didn’t think much of it at the time—your hometown really is remote—but now it seems like that wasn’t the real reason…”

Shen Xiuyan’s emotions were complicated.

The good news was that his sweet but naive wife had actually picked up on something being off. That was a positive sign. Maybe she’d be less likely to get fooled in the future.

The bad news was that he was definitely going to have to take the fall for this.

His brain spun furiously as he scrambled to come up with a reasonable excuse.

If he didn’t give her a satisfying answer, their marriage might really be in trouble.

After a long silence, Shen Xiuyan finally said, “You know what my family’s like. I was afraid that if we invited them to the wedding, it would make your family lose face. After all, the people your family invited were all…”

He didn’t finish the sentence, leaving Su Mingyue’s imagination to fill in the blanks.

And it made sense. High society was full of people who looked down on others. Some might not show it on the surface, but that sense of superiority was ingrained in their bones.

The families they associated with only appeared friendly because they were equals in status. It was a fake kind of friendliness. The moment someone fell even slightly behind, there’d be a crowd ready to laugh at them.

If Shen Xiuyan’s parents had actually shown up, her family would’ve been the ones embarrassed.

She could already imagine what people would say: that she must’ve been blind to marry a poor boy when there were so many rich young masters to choose from.

That her father was incompetent—he might manage a big company on the surface, but he couldn’t even control his own daughter. That in his old age, he had to suffer the misfortune of a disgraceful marriage in the family.

Thinking of this, she fell into a daze, then felt a little guilty.

Shen Xiuyan had borne so much pressure for her, and she hadn’t known any of it.

“I’m sorry. It’s all because of me that you had to endure those judgmental looks.” She held his hand, her mood sinking. “But even if you didn’t want them to come to the wedding, you could’ve at least introduced me to them…”

Shen Xiuyan was speechless. His wife seemed to have gotten smarter… but not completely. Did she actually believe that?

It was like she’d even convinced herself.

Sure enough, this adorably naive wife needed to stay by his side so he could keep an eye on her.

Otherwise, she might really end up getting scammed and even help count the money for the scammer.

But for now, thankfully, he’d dodged a bullet.

At this point, Shen Xiuyan had no choice but to keep bluffing.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to tell them. It’s that I couldn’t. A son getting married is a big deal—how could they not come? No matter how far it was, they’d crawl here if they had to. And if they really showed up, things would’ve gotten very complicated.”

“Mhm, you’re right.”

Su Mingyue felt that Shen Xiuyan had suffered because of her, so she looked at him carefully and said, “But now that we’re already married, you can tell them, right? It’s been two months. They still don’t know they have a daughter-in-law.”

“I told you, they know about you. They’ve always known I had a girlfriend, and that girlfriend was you.” Shen Xiuyan sighed. “I just need to figure out how to tell them about the marriage in a way that won’t hurt their pride. I haven’t figured it out yet—and now the Apocalypse is about to hit.”

That explanation sounded perfectly reasonable, and Su Mingyue believed it again.

— Translator’s Notes —

• mountains so far and the emperor so distant: A Chinese idiom (天高皇帝远) meaning a place is so remote that the central government’s authority doesn’t reach there, implying lawlessness or lack of oversight.

• Aiyo: A common Chinese exclamation expressing surprise, concern, or pain, similar to “Oh no” or “Oh dear.”