Chapter 17: The Rich Woman

Aside from the air conditioning, the artificial intelligence voice system, and features similar to smart glasses, the surprises the battle armor brought to Su Shiyi far exceeded her expectations.

Although the palm cannon couldn’t fire real shells, it could shoot small marbles, with twenty in each hand. Sunday specifically reminded her not to aim them at people, as it could cause accidental injuries.

Su Shiyi nodded repeatedly to indicate she understood, and quickly came up with an idea. This floor was so big, she would transform it into an immersive gaming room, with walls made from special materials. She’d wear the battle armor and play AR monster-hunting games—this was going to be super fun!

Oh right, she could ask Kevin if he could negotiate the image rights for a certain purple sweet potato character. She wanted to make the marbles into gem-shaped objects and playfully smash them on its head every day, posting it online for everyone to enjoy.

In the movie, the Mark 50 was a suit of armor capable of transforming into various weapons based on combat needs. In reality, however, firearms were impossible, and cold weapon regulation was strict. The armor Su Shiyi wore could only use a mechanism to pull out two differently shaped shields from each hand.

Wait, that wasn’t “just” anything—it was incredibly awesome!

Su Shiyi had a blast repeatedly pulling out and stowing the shields, over and over again. Even the boring process of doing it was enough to make her grin and have fun, recording video after video. But the most exciting feature was the magnetic levitation function that allowed her to float.

Hmm… although the floating height was only ten centimeters, it was still real “flight,” and she could change directions with voice and screen controls—super cool!

Su Shiyi wanted to share these moments of joy, so she sent these scattered videos to Lucy, asking her to edit them into something presentable. She wanted to post them on Weibo and other platforms too.

Actually, since her sudden wealth, she’d been pretty restrained. She only posted photos of her castle, luxury cars, designer bags, and clothes to share with her roommates, not openly flaunting it. But this time, she couldn’t wait to let the whole world know—she, Su Shiyi, had a battle armor!

However, she specifically told Lucy that she wanted to cut out the part where Sunday recorded her name as “Iron Woman”—that was a bit too embarrassing, and she didn’t want others to know.

—

Several days passed in this calm and luxurious life. The battle armor videos Su Shiyi posted online attracted massive attention, topping the hot searches on multiple platforms, and giving her public account a little boost.

The superhero fan community wasn’t lacking in wealthy individuals. Everyone knew Disney was extremely strict about copyright. Playing at home was fine, but posting it online? Wasn’t she afraid of being sued?

Su Shiyi posted her licensing permit, and then everyone started mocking her. Other rich fans also looked into how to get their hands on one, and once they heard the price, they fell silent.

Damn, so there’s actually a huge class divide even among the wealthy…

No wonder they were willing to negotiate—she gave so much!

Su Shiyi was a good girl who liked to share her happiness with others. After her battle armor video went viral, she filmed her room’s collection wall, and the internet went wild. People were no longer shocked by her wealth—they didn’t realize these were just appetizers.

Her collection room was filled with treasures, and it landed her on the hot search several more times. Just the size of it was enough to leave people speechless, not to mention the items inside. Besides making superhero fans scream, there were clothes, bags, shoes, blind boxes, cups, cameras, and countless other items.

#The crowd eating lemons has grown!

#Every day I’m shocked. Why is she so rich?

#Roughly calculating, to afford everything she’s showing in each second of her video, I’d have to work non-stop from the Qin Dynasty…

Some sharp-eyed netizens noticed that her collection items were all quite new. This means that the things that left them jaw-dropped were not accumulated over many years—they were most likely recent acquisitions.

In other words, what she has here might not be everything—what she played with before might still be somewhere else…

Among all the envious comments, everyone was curious about what kind of family could afford such terrifying expenses.

Su Shiyi had no intention of hiding her identity, so it didn’t take long for someone to uncover that the newly rich woman with such broad interests was actually Gu Family’s adopted daughter!

In this fictional world, when mentioning the Gu family, it was automatically assumed to refer to the richest Gu family—they were simply too famous. The Gu family’s businesses spanned the globe, covering various industries. Their companies either captured the largest portion of the market or were irreplaceable monopolies.

To say that the Gu family was as rich as a country was not an exaggeration in the slightest—it was a very realistic description. Such a thing could never happen in the real world, but this was a Mary Sue world, after all.

In order to give the female lead the best pampered life, all logic could be bent.

As for why Su Shiyi’s identity changed from the former wife’s daughter to Gu Lang’s adopted daughter, that was still Gu Lang’s own decision.

Gu Pan was not his biological daughter, she was a child brought into the family by Li Shuman, and this was well-known online, as everyone loved to gossip about the richest family. The “true and false daughters” scandal was not a good reputation, and putting Li Shuman in an awkward position would not help his image either.

So, he informed Gu Chen and officially made Su Shiyi a member of the Gu family, moving her household registration there. As for why she didn’t change her surname to Gu—

What’s it to you? Gu Lang said there was no need for explanation. There was no need to explain so much to the public. The fact that she was recorded as an adopted daughter in the Gu family’s genealogy was even more prestigious than Gu Pan’s status, and it was a form of comfort to Su Shiyi. Even if one day he and Li Shuman divorced, Gu Pan would no longer be her child, but Su Shiyi would still be.

When Su Shiyi found out, she was shocked. She had always thought that Gu Chen was the biggest benefactor in her life, but she didn’t expect that her father, Gu Lang, could rank even higher!

Even if he didn’t have any other intentions and was probably thinking of this as hush money, would Su Shiyi care? Was she the kind of person who needed to make everything clear? No, she wasn’t.

No wonder he was the world’s richest man—such a big vision!

Although Su Shiyi had never met him in person and had only seen him in photos, it had to be said that Gu Lang was really handsome, even more so than the male lead, Gu Chen.

Of course, the above is Su Shiyi’s personal subjective opinion, based on her ranking of looks according to ^[1]“Thigh power” (大腿程度) in this context is internet slang that refers to someone’s level of influence, backing, or support. It comes from the idea of “hugging a big … Continue readingthigh power.

After this gossip was uncovered, nothing much changed at school because it had already circulated once before. But online, it only became more heated. Netizens spontaneously created many versions of the story, filling in the details the Gu family hadn’t revealed. The twisted, dramatic nature of it was so over-the-top that Su Shiyi felt it was a real shame. Why didn’t the author take this to Lujiang Literature City and write a novel about it?

She had already finished reading several novels on Lujiang, and some even had the ability to make authors publish their drafts in full, so she could binge-read them all at once. Her favorite, Empress, was written by Miemie-chan, who delivered on her promise of ten thousand words a day.

Currently, the plot had developed to the point where the protagonist had decided to fight for the throne. She began to cultivate her own power, played the “pretend weak, strike hard” game in front of her father and brothers, and learned the ways of ruling from her mother. Although there were struggles, she was continuously improving.

Originally, everything seemed to be heading in a good direction. Then one day, the emperor told her that he wanted the young legitimate son of the Duke of An to marry her, and added, “This proposal was initiated by him.”

She knew her opinion didn’t matter to the emperor. On the surface, she didn’t say much, but behind the scenes, she deliberately made things difficult for the legitimate son, being arrogantly dismissive of him. She had hoped he would back off, but to her surprise, he was remarkably patient and never fought back, always greeting her with a gentle smile.

This made the protagonist furious, because the Duke of An was a trusted confidant the emperor had raised, and he was powerful enough to challenge the empress. From the protagonist’s perspective, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say that the two families were arch-enemies.

The female lead invited this highly praised son of the Duke of An to meet her outside the palace, where she frankly told him that she wasn’t interested in him and that forcing a marriage would only create resentment. She urged him to find someone else, as a way to repay him for a great favor.

Her cold words, however, were met with his sincere confession of love. He looked back at the past, saying that he had been infatuated with her since childhood, and that his eyes could only see her. The heroine was slightly moved, and then they encountered assassins. He was severely injured while protecting her.

This bond touched the heroine’s heart. In addition, her maid also spoke highly of this young man, so she felt that she was gradually falling for him.

The still somewhat naive little princess was dreaming of achieving success in both career and love. When she spoke of this matter to her mother, her face flushed with a shy glow. She said that perhaps having the son of the Duke of State as her husband wasn’t a bad thing, and she could still find an opportunity to turn him against the Duke’s family, to control their secrets…

Before she could finish speaking, her mother slapped her hard across the face, scolding her for being extremely foolish, not realizing that this was a carefully set trap for her. In her past life, her mother was a modern-day management elite who thought her daughter was too useless to be deceived by such a simple “hero saves the beauty” scenario.

The furious empress dealt with all the maids who had spoken favorably of the Duke’s son, and an intense conflict broke out between the mother and daughter. What Su Shiyi didn’t expect was that the arguments in the comment section were even bigger and more exaggerated than the conflict between the heroine and her mother.

Some people agreed with the empress, saying that the actions of the Duke’s son were too deliberate, and his identity was such that, combined with the empress being a woman yet still able to threaten the emperor’s position, it was very reasonable for the emperor to want to control his daughter. Others supported the heroine, claiming that the Duke’s son was definitely the male lead, and the heroine’s thoughts were completely valid. They criticized the empress as being too extreme, accusing her of projecting her own resentment onto the heroine.

The two factions argued in the comment section, creating dozens or even hundreds of discussion threads. They refused to give way to each other, but at certain points, they were unusually united—

If anyone suggested that the heroine give up the throne and develop a love story with the passionate Duke’s son, they would be immediately attacked by the group.

“We want the Empress! We want the Empress! The heroine focusing on her career is the best, the men can stay behind, and the big heroine is the best!”

Although Su Shiyi was a useless, lazy person, she loved reading passionate, big heroine stories. Following tradition, she sent 100 deep-water torpedoes to Miemie-chan, without revealing which side she supported.

Because she sent so many torpedoes, she was worried that her stance might create pressure on the author and affect the book’s creation.

Ah, the troubles of rich people, they can’t even freely express their opinions. What a pity.

After thinking about it carefully, she felt that both outcomes would be acceptable. Either the heroine would recognize reality, get a harsh lesson, and take the ruthless path of cutting off all emotions, or she could evolve from the innocent girl to a more complex person, capturing the loyal little wolf dog and making him devoted to her. Both options sounded enticing!

She had been following the book “Empress” for several days straight and was liking it more and more. With Xu Wenwen’s suggestion, she thought she could buy the film adaptation rights and choose her favorite actors to portray the characters.

Hmm… Although the book wasn’t even halfway done yet, and the author hadn’t revealed who the official male lead was, the parts written so far had already shown the author’s skill. As long as the author didn’t slack off or add filler, Su Shiyi felt there wouldn’t be any major problems.

She handed the matter over to Kevin and told him that there was no upper limit for the bid, whether it was hundreds of thousands or millions, it didn’t matter, but they had to secure the rights. Kevin quickly responded, telling her that the film rights had already been taken by another company, and that the price for the rights sold by Lujiang Literature City was one and a half million.

“Miss Shiyi, would you like to buy the rights from this company?”

Su Shiyi felt it was a shame, she had thought of it too late. She asked Kevin which company it was, and he told her it was Yunhua Film and Television. Xu Wenwen had said that this company was decent and had some impressive works.

“Forget it. Since they decided to buy it before the book was finished, they must want to produce it well. Compared to an amateur like me, maybe they’ll be able to make it more popular and let more people recognize this great book?”

She only wanted to make the film to satisfy her own desires and wouldn’t consider the ratings, but from the author’s perspective, they would probably want to gain more recognition.

Su Shiyi thought this at the time, but she didn’t expect that the film industry’s obsession with traffic and popularity would be so extreme. When she saw the heavily altered TV drama plot one day in the future, she almost had a heart attack, and she and the equally devastated author could only cry together.

But that’s a story for another time.

Right now, Su Shiyi is busy with variety show matters. The production team of All-Star Mock College Entrance Exam Championship, under the influence of Chao Nengli, completed the formation of the team at rocket speed and launched its official Weibo account. Following Kevin’s suggestion, the name of this variety show was officially set as Return to Senior Year.

Hmm, it instantly felt more cinematic, enough to fool some unsuspecting bystanders into thinking it was some kind of artsy documentary. But once you look at it, it’s just a show where celebrities get involved in some fun activities…

Wait, I misspoke. This is an educational and popular science program!

As Su Shiyi predicted, after the announcement of the guests for Return to Senior Year, the comments section became a battleground for idol fanbases, each trying to control the narrative. They all claimed their idols were real academic elites, hoping to revisit their senior year of high school with the audience and experience the charm of top-tier education.

But when looking at the comments in chronological order, real netizens gave their honest reactions. People said the show had potential, but didn’t really care about the idol group with high academic backgrounds. The other four members of the comparison group received unanimous question marks.

“Are the others here for comedy?”

“Probably for the show’s effect. It feels like the directors have a lot of malice toward these celebrities.”

“Let them experience it. That way, some of these celebrities who always talk about how they only sleep a few hours a day might realize they aren’t as hard-working as they think.”

“Seriously, why didn’t the ones who like to create ‘academic elite’ personas participate?”

“Tsk, judging by the production team’s approach, this is real senior year and real study. Do those people dare to show up and embarrass themselves?”

“I have a strong feeling this will become a huge hit this year.”

“Same here! I’m very optimistic about it. I’m already looking forward to it even though it hasn’t aired yet. Will there be any guest appearances? I recommend xxx!”

“??? Aren’t you an anti-fan of xxx? What’s going on here?”

The discussion about the program quickly veered off track, as fans began to “recommend” the most suitable celebrities. This created a trending topic the production team didn’t even anticipate…

Fans and anti-fans of various celebrities fought fiercely. “You suggest my idol? I’ll suggest your idol too!” As the scope of recommendations grew, the discussion ended up involving a large portion of the domestic entertainment industry. According to a bored netizen’s list, over a hundred celebrities got caught up in the debate.

Hey, production team, with your pace of inviting eight guests per season, this list could last you decades!

While there was much chatter online, Su Shiyi, the program’s biggest investor, wasn’t concerned about whether the show would be successful or make money. She just wanted to have fun with it. However, the promotion team certainly had to be diligent.

After the program’s nature and guest list triggered the first round of excitement, they promoted it as “the first domestic live broadcast reality show variety,” successfully taking the already popular program to even greater heights.

The program offered several ways to watch. Viewers could choose from various guests’ individual live streams, including camera angles and viewpoints from the guests’ headgear. For those who didn’t want to sit through a live broadcast, there was a pre-edited recording, which was more like a typical variety show.

Netizens: “What? A live reality show? Let me check out which producer is so stubborn!”

In the era when star power and traffic reign supreme, even though technology could support this kind of broadcast, no production team dared to do it. After all, reality shows have turned into pure showcases, and it’s an unspoken rule that celebrities’ personas are far more important than whether they can sing, dance, or act.

The ever-curious netizens quickly dug into the list and discovered that it was Su Shiyi behind the show, and everything made sense. For those still unfamiliar with the wealthy Su Shiyi, netizens gave a brief introduction of her recent activities and didn’t forget to emphasize that she was adopted by a well-off family.

She had money, time, and wasn’t afraid of offending anyone or losing her investment, so she could do whatever she wanted.

Wow, this feels so refreshing. Another day of envying rich women.

The school-themed segment of Return to Senior Year was scheduled for recording in September. Since it’s already mid-June, the college entrance exams are over, and high school is about to take a break. When school resumes in September, these eight special students will be able to participate directly in mock exams, and the school will arrange a separate classroom for them to study in, so as not to interfere with the real senior-year students preparing for the exams.

The production team chose Zhengshu High School, a prestigious school not only famous in Guangdong Province but also ranked in the top ten nationwide. Known for its emphasis on quality education, the school also achieves remarkable results in the college entrance exams. At first, Zhengshu High School was reluctant to participate, but later Kevin promised to build them a new teaching building.

School leaders: …

It’s the same old story. It’s not that they don’t have principles, but the offer was just too generous!

Zhengshu High School is the location for the campus segment, which is paired with the home segment under the premise of “education should involve both school and family.” However, in reality, under Su Shiyi’s “spend without limits, just have fun” guidance, the variety show director came up with the idea of having the guests take extra lessons, filming material for a teaser series to be gradually released.

The viewers’ attention was gained, the show continued to heat up, but the only ones getting hurt were the guests.

Although this wasn’t mandatory, once they’re already participating in this variety show, and everyone else is taking extra lessons, would you dare not take them? If this was some low-budget variety show, it wouldn’t matter, but this show is a massive hit now!

#Forced into a competition, now it’s my turn.

#Otherwise, after this variety show, I might as well just take the college entrance exam!

Even though the guests were full of complaints, and they all expected it to be tough, no one wanted to back out. Come on, everyone in the industry isn’t stupid.

The show hasn’t even aired yet, and the two influencers who signed up are quickly gaining followers on their platforms, while other streamers who missed out had no place to regret. The four idols’ popularity also skyrocketed, and their resources and treatment within their group were upgraded by at least one tier.

Many of the small idols who had previously turned down the offer were now regretting it badly. Some even shamelessly tried to find someone to help them get on the show, but of course, they were flatly rejected.

The director in charge was feeling quite pleased. In the past, he could only nod submissively and dare not offend the capital behind these idols, but in this program? Hmph.

With such a big backing, who still needs to care about the opinions of those small companies? (Shouting loudly)

—

By mid-June, universities had started their summer break, marking the last summer vacation for Su Shiyi.

While other students were busy with internships, looking for jobs, and sending out resumes, she… had to return to the Gu family in the capital.

Previously, because of academic issues, she could stay in G City, but now that summer break had arrived, she didn’t have that excuse anymore. Su Shiyi had no choice but to end her carefree life there and go back to face the troublesome original plot.

Ahhh, she really didn’t want to!

But she couldn’t refuse. The Gu family wanted to formally introduce her into the elite circle in the capital. The most important thing was that Gu Lang would also stay a few more days in the capital. If Su Shiyi didn’t return home now, it would be very impolite.

Could Su Shiyi really make Daddy Gu Lang (literally) so unhappy? She couldn’t.

Sigh, with no other options, she had to go to the capital and prepare for a boring life full of shopping trips, attending auctions, watching handsome men at high-society gatherings, enjoying private yacht outings, and spending money wherever possible.