The Beautiful, Strong, and Tragic Female Lead is Mine [Transmigration Into a Novel] - Chapter 67

Xiao Wen stood at the door, straightened his clothes and jacket, and then reached out to knock.

Lately, he had been meticulously grooming himself before leaving the house every day. For example, today he wore a white shirt and a casual suit, his hair was slicked back with gel, and his black leather shoes were polished to a shine.

He thought he was incredibly handsome, comparable to a dominant CEO in an idol drama, exuding the charm of a mature man, completely ignoring the fact that his height was only 175cm.

Soon, footsteps sounded inside. Xiang Nan opened the door and said, “You’ve arrived.”

He glanced down at the bag Xiao Wen was holding. “Did you bring what the eldest miss asked for?”

Xiao Wen held up the bag. “Of course, I guarantee the eldest miss will be satisfied. Hurry, let me in.”

Xiang Nan stepped aside, making way for him.

He led Xiao Wen to the living room and had him sit on the sofa. “Please wait a moment, I’ll go upstairs to call the eldest miss and Luo Yang.”

Unlike before, Xiang Nan’s attitude towards him was very polite, and he even poured him a cup of hot tea before heading upstairs.

Xiao Wen leaned back comfortably on the sofa and took a sip of the hot tea. It tasted wonderful. He watched the tea leaves swirling in the cup, a satisfied smile on his face.

His life had been going splendidly lately. Ever since he teamed up with Zhuo Wu, everything was moving in a good direction. See, even the eldest miss, who used to despise him, would now let him into the house and serve him a cup of hot tea.

When Xiao Wen entered, Xie Zhitian and Luo Yang heard the commotion upstairs. Sure enough, not long after, Xiang Nan appeared at the bedroom door and said that Xiao Wen had brought something and wanted to see them.

Xie Zhitian said, “Okay, we’ll be right down.”

After Xiang Nan left, the two girls exchanged glances and smiled at each other knowingly.

A few days ago, they had returned home from Jurisdiction 14. On her way back, Xie Zhitian had…

Luo Yang was first surprised, then a little angry. “No wonder Xiao Wen’s attitude has been off lately, it turns out he has a backer. A servant’s disloyalty is a major taboo; we can’t keep him anymore.”

“Yes, we definitely won’t keep him.”

Xie Zhitian patted her shoulder reassuringly. “But it would be a shame to just send him away. Why don’t we play along and make good use of him?”

Luo Yang immediately understood her intention: “Playing along, you mean having him transmit false information?”

Xie Zhitian smiled and nodded. “Yes. Zhuo Wu wants to know if we’ll join the Queen’s faction, right? We can pretend in front of Xiao Wen that we’re completely uninterested, and that we’re still terrified by our past experiences. We can say we want to avoid all that and just want to eat, drink, and be merry for the rest of our lives.”

Luo Yang’s eyes lit up. “That’s a good idea.”

She then mused, “How exactly should we act?”

Xie Zhitian smiled. “That’s easy.”

A man like Xiao Wen is transparent. As long as they played into his logic, he would easily fall for the bait.

So, over the next few days, Xie Zhitian and Luo Yang deliberately increased the frequency of their appearances in front of Xiao Wen. Xie Zhitian specifically bought a few pieces of unassembled furniture and called Xiao Wen over to help put them together, making him stay at the house for a while.

While Xiao Wen was busy, Xie Zhitian and Luo Yang would sit on the sofa, sipping afternoon tea and chatting idly.

The two of them almost never talked about serious business or jurisdiction missions. When they did, it was always with an attitude of disgust, stating that they were sick of jobs that risked their lives and just wanted to live a peaceful, simple life.

Xie Zhitian also often said she wanted to fall in love and find a suitable husband, but she wasn’t gentle or skilled in homemaking and couldn’t even cook very well, which was a source of worry for her. She wanted to change and improve herself to become a virtuous woman who could be a good wife and mother, capable in both the living room and the kitchen.

Luo Yang would chime in, saying that although she was good at cooking, she had no other skills. So, she was learning embroidery and sewing in her free time to become a well-rounded woman.

Xiao Wen felt very pleased hearing this. This was what normal conversations between women should be like. It seemed Xie Zhitian and Luo Yang could still be saved; they had finally come to their senses after all this time.

It must be because the things they experienced in Jurisdiction 7 were so terrifying that they realized a woman can’t live without a man, and that marrying a good man is the only way to be happy. Women, after all, just can’t achieve great things.

He had no idea that he was slowly falling into the trap Xie Zhitian had set.

Later, Xie Zhitian and Luo Yang said they wanted to save up for their dowries, so they wanted to buy some valuable items to hoard. However, during the apocalypse, there were very few channels to buy precious items, and many things they liked were priceless and couldn’t be bought. If they could get them, they were willing to pay double the price.

Upon hearing this, Xiao Wen immediately realized this was his chance to prove himself.

His points system had everything. If he used some of his points to get the things Xie Zhitian and Luo Yang wanted and sold them for double the market price, he would make a steady profit.

For Xiao Wen, this was an opportunity to exchange points for a large amount of tokens, as using points and tokens to buy supplies was the same. Furthermore, his ability to get rare items would make Xie Zhitian look up to him, raising his status in her eyes.

Of course, he wouldn’t use all of his points to exchange for tokens. His current panel showed he had over 600 points left, and using half would be more than enough.

But what Xiao Wen didn’t know was that ever since Xie Zhitian got the anti-strategizing system, his points had been slowly frozen, and his actual usable points were now just over 300.

And as soon as those 300-plus points were used up, his retribution would come. He would be sent to a world where women were dominant, becoming a low-class slave who would live a life worse than death.

In private, Xie Zhitian hadn’t mentioned the points system to Luo Yang. Her explanation for buying some impractical and expensive items from Xiao Wen was: you can’t get something for nothing; to make Xiao Wen believe they had truly become love-struck idiots, they had to show some real action.

Luo Yang thought it made a lot of sense. If spending some money could make Xiao Wen fall for it and eliminate the threat they posed in Zhuo Wu’s eyes, she thought it was worth it.

Most of the items Xie Zhitian bought from Xiao Wen were jewelry, which were very suitable as dowry decorations, so the other party didn’t suspect a thing and was being played like a puppet.

Today, what Xie Zhitian had asked Xiao Wen to bring were a pair of pearl earrings and a pearl necklace.

Ever since order was re-established and the economy began to recover, the price of gold and silver jewelry had been rising. Jewelry was a beautiful ornament, a symbol of status, and a proof of love… for a long time, people had held these deeply ingrained beliefs, so there was no shortage of market demand. Many people with disposable income had already started hoarding jewelry for investment.

Xie Zhitian and Luo Yang tied their hair in a soft low bun, put on some gentle-colored loungewear, and then slowly went downstairs together.

When Xiao Wen saw the two of them, he stood up and bowed slightly as a greeting. Then, without waiting for Xie Zhitian to speak, he sat back down on his own.

Ever since Xie Zhitian and Luo Yang started buying various pieces of jewelry from him, their attitude towards him had improved significantly, which had made him a bit conceited lately. Sometimes, he even forgot that he was a servant.

Xiao Wen placed the bag on the coffee table and said with a smile, “Eldest Miss, Miss Luo Yang, here are the things you wanted.”

He took out two boxes, one large and one small, carefully opened them, and pushed them towards the two women. “These are top-grade goods. It took me a lot of effort to get them.”

Xie Zhitian glanced at the jewelry in front of her, the corner of her mouth curling into a slight, satisfied smile.

She picked up the jewelry box with the pearl necklace and examined it carefully. “Not bad, it’s very beautiful.”

Luo Yang also cooperatively picked up the earrings, holding them up to a small mirror to try them on. “It’s definitely a good thing. How much are these two?”

Xiao Wen said, “The necklace is thirty thousand, and the earrings are ten thousand.”

Xie Zhitian frowned upon hearing this. “That expensive?”

The previous items Xiao Wen brought, although also marked up, weren’t this outrageous. It seemed that their previous willingness to pay had made Xiao Wen take advantage of them and treat them like easy marks.

Xiao Wen’s expression showed a moment of panic, but he quickly returned to normal. “Eldest Miss, these are not ordinary pearls. Look, every pearl is perfectly round, has a high luster, and is flawless, so it’s normal for the price to be a bit high.”

He thought of Xie Zhitian and Luo Yang’s recent actions and thoughts about wanting to get married and his eyes darted around. “Besides, for dowry jewelry, you can’t be stingy, or your future husband’s family will look down on you.”

Over the past few days, Xiao Wen had exchanged several pieces of jewelry in his points system according to Xie Zhitian’s requests, which had consumed a lot. What puzzled him was that his points hadn’t increased at all despite everything he had done for Xie Zhitian.

However, he quickly reasoned that it was probably because he had sold the items to Xie Zhitian and not given them to her for free, which was why his favorability hadn’t increased at all, let alone being able to manipulate her.

But this wasn’t so bad either. Xie Zhitian was a greedy woman who would ask for 500 sesame candies at once. Her appetite was huge, and he might not be able to get close to her even if he gave everything he had. It was better to just hold on tight to Zhuo Wu’s thigh; once he was successful, he could have any woman he wanted.

Before exchanging for the necklace and earrings, Xiao Wen’s points in the system were already low. Although he had scammed a good amount of money from Xie Zhitian, totaling around thirty thousand tokens, he had heard that Zhuo Wu was a very greedy person, and if he really wanted to rely on him, he would need to give him many gifts to please him.

So, Xiao Wen planned to give Zhuo Wu a generous gift to show his loyalty when he delivered the information. For this, he needed a large number of tokens and also needed to save a portion of his points. To save money, the jewelry he exchanged for this time was very cheap, costing only a little over 20 points, as they were fake imitation pearls.

Xie Zhitian heard him mention dowry and raised her eyes. “Only an incompetent man would stare at a woman’s dowry, don’t you think?”

Xiao Wen cursed her as “materialistic” in his heart, but on the surface, he smiled. “The eldest miss is right.”

[Successfully stopped protagonist Xiao Wen’s manipulation attempt. 5 points frozen.]

[Protagonist Xiao Wen’s current usable points: 40.]

Xie Zhitian looked at the notification that popped up on the anti-strategizing system panel, and the corners of her lips curved up slightly.

Last time, she had seen Xiao Wen’s usable points were 70, and now they had become 40. Just now, another 5 points were deducted, which meant that the two pieces of jewelry Xiao Wen had exchanged for were only worth a little over 20 points.

He dared to ask for forty thousand for such cheap goods. It was clear he was getting a little too arrogant lately.

Xiao Wen saw that Xie Zhitian was not making a decision and grew a little anxious. “Eldest Miss, even if it’s not for your husband’s family, it’s worth it to be good to yourself. Precious jewelry like this becomes more valuable the longer you keep it.”

He wasn’t afraid of Xie Zhitian seeking revenge later. Anyway, he would be meeting Zhuo Wu soon, and he planned to defect to him and leave this jurisdiction.

Xie Zhitian looked at the pearl necklace, pondered for a long time, and finally raised her head as if she had made up her mind.

“Alright, I’ll buy them.”

Xiao Wen was overjoyed and said with glee, “The eldest miss has a good eye and knows quality goods.”

“However, I’m a bit short on cash lately.”

Xie Zhitian spoke again, a look of distress on her face. “How about this? I’ll give you something in exchange. This item is very valuable, but not many people can afford it, so it’s not easy to sell right now.”

Upon hearing this, Xiao Wen immediately became interested. He was currently worrying about what to give Zhuo Wu, and if what Xie Zhitian said was true, it would be a perfect solution to his problem.

He immediately said, “Eldest Miss, what is that item?”

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