Chapter 41: The Pregnancy Game

“You may, but between Xu Yuan and me, you can only choose one. I trust the principal is someone who understands the situation clearly.”

Cold sweat beaded densely on the principal’s forehead. By rights, he should have hesitated, but in the end, he chose Mr. Fu’s side.

The truth was, the woman before him was far more formidable than Xu Yuan.

She had won first place in the arts festival and received thirty thousand yuan in scholarship money. In recent days, prize money had practically been flowing into her hands.

She entered the cafeteria, swiped her card, and began to order food. She hadn’t even picked up her chopsticks when there was a loud bang. A woman limped over and dumped the entire contents of her tray onto her head.

Leftover food and greasy soup ran down her back. Her hair was soaked in a foul stench. Zhong Huayan was furious—she didn’t even need to open her eyes to know who the hell had done it.

Xu Yuan stood there in her school uniform, her leg apparently injured, her eyes swollen, but she still carried herself with arrogance and cursed loudly.

“Li Yanyan, you kept woman! How dare you lay a finger on me? If Fu Yanyan hadn’t been with you before, I would have killed you, you bitch!”

Was Xu Yuan insane now? She was charging around like a madwoman.

Zhong Huayan’s voice was lazy and mocking as she let out a cold laugh. “Xu Yuan, look around. Who’s still willing to help you?”

Xu Yuan glanced about. Every pair of eyes around her brimmed with contempt. No one stepped forward to aid her; instead, their gazes became daggers pointed straight at her.

In this school, she had lost all credibility. Not even the teachers or the principal would take her side now.

She looked around in a daze, surrounded by loud, unrestrained chatter.

“Oh look, isn’t that the Xu family’s precious daughter? Didn’t she just lose the competition the other day? How does she still have the nerve to show up?”

“Keep your voice down, or she’ll dump food on your face next!”

“This is hilarious! Losers pay the price! Look, she’s limping—serves her right!”

These voices crashed down on her like a mountain, leaving her breathless.

Everyone had thought Xu Yuan would be proud for life, but today, she had become a target for all.

Because of her arrogance and self-importance, no one had ever truly wanted to be her friend. They only curried favor and restrained themselves out of fear.

Now that the tide had turned and everyone was talking, who would be afraid to say more? When a wall falls, everyone piles on. The videos on the forum had already shown the school who truly ruled this little society.

At the instant Xu Yuan realized this, she snapped.

“You cowardly, despicable weaklings! This is all because of you, Li Yanyan! Go to hell! Die!”

The more she raged, the more people pulled out phones to capture photos and videos of the spectacle.

Zhong Huayan glanced at the mess of leftovers covering her, muttering under her breath, “What an idiot.”

Then she marched forward, grabbed her own tray, and hurled the food right back.

As she kept smashing the food, she suddenly felt a loss of control...

A memory flashed through her mind: that diary entry, the one detailing with shocking clarity how Xu Yuan had bullied Li Yanyan. The most common trick had been dumping leftovers on her head, followed by a group beating, and secretly tearing up her pocket money.

In this elite private school among the four famous universities of the capital, the chaos at Capital Residence Pavilion University was unmatched.

Zhong Huayan used all her strength—she didn’t want to hear the outside noise. She grabbed Xu Yuan’s hair and began slapping her.

“Was this how you bullied me before? Now you deserve to feel what it’s like to be humiliated in front of everyone!”

She dumped all the drinks and whatever else was on the table onto Xu Yuan.

She didn’t stop because she was tired.

Rather, she paused when she looked down and saw the woman crying, her hair disheveled, face swollen from the blows, her entire body smeared in leftovers.

Xu Yuan clutched her face with her hands and simply gave up resisting. She sobbed in the crowd, shaking from head to toe.

Zhong Huayan sensed that Xu Yuan was on the verge of collapse. She couldn’t say why she felt this way.

“Xu Yuan, do you feel no guilt at all? I never wanted to do this to you, but you just wouldn’t change.”

With that, she left.

As soon as she stepped out of the cafeteria, fretting about where to find a new uniform, she saw a young man approaching, the vice-president’s badge gleaming on his chest.

“I saw everything just now. Here’s a new set of clothes—go change. There aren’t many people in the dorm right now, and there’s hot water for a shower.”

“Oh? Your sister is in there crying, and you come to care about me? Is that appropriate?”

Up close, the young man looked rather youthful, but his phoenix-shaped eyes carried a unique air.

Xu Yaochuan was bold and wildly carefree.

Xu Chuyin, by contrast, had a fresh, aloof melancholy.

Both had phoenix eyes, and their features were similar, but their temperaments were worlds apart.

“Don’t mind her. She never learns her lesson.”

“She hurt her own leg?”

“She brought it on herself. She ran off abroad, and when my brother told my father, she was beaten raw the moment she came home.”

Zhong Huayan winced instinctively, but thought Xu Yuan deserved it.

“Your father seems sensible—how did he raise children with such personalities?”

“My grandfather is ruthless. My father is cautious and prefers to avoid an ugly fight with Fu Yanyan.”

Xu Chuyin said all this as if trying to probe what exactly was going on between Fu Yanyan and her.

He couldn’t understand why he cared so much about the answer.

She didn’t reply. Instead, she kept her distance, thanked him, and took the new uniform from his hand.

Watching her retreating figure, Xu Chuyin felt dissatisfied. He had never received an answer. He knew, too, that he didn’t deserve her forgiveness.

Darkness clouded his eyes as he pondered...

He remembered last night. Rain had poured without end as his brother pushed open the door.

The two of them drank tea in silence.

After spending the night with the girl he’d brought home, Xu Yaochuan lit a cigarette, his eyes hazy with amusement as he looked at him.

He didn’t like seeing his brother smile like that—whenever he did, it meant some mischief was brewing.

The Xu family valued male heirs, but his brother, playful and reckless, had no interest in inheriting the position.

His brother spoke. “Let’s play a game.”

He would never refuse his brother’s games. That was the unspoken rivalry between the two siblings.

His brother said, “Let’s bet on who can get Li Yanyan pregnant first. The winner takes it all.”

He was stunned at first, hesitating only because the Fu family stood in the way. Ruining a relationship over a game was not ideal.

His brother seemed to see straight through him.

“Afraid of the Fu family? The Xu family has been at war with them for ages. He deliberately set up a low-price acquisition and snapped up our subsidiary—he wants to drive us out of the country and have the whole pie to himself!”

His brother was livid, and the woman by his side was doomed to suffer for it.

After finishing, panting, he asked, “So are you in or not?”

Games like betting on who could get a woman pregnant first were common among the rich heirs of the capital. Usually, the prize was just a million yuan—a mere diversion, no different from playing cards.

But when it came to someone like Li Yanyan, the stakes became far more alluring.

The reward: the chairmanship of the Xu Group, in the future.

Xu Yaochuan didn’t care for the position.

Nor did he.

But this was a game both brothers wanted to play.