MTL - Dali Temple Small Dining Room - Chapter 184 Stir-fried Chestnut and Chestnut Roast Pork (1)

Jian Rushi, born in a rich family, was a college girl. Due to some economic reasons, her family went broke. Her father committed suicide under great pressure, while her mother ran away with someone else, leaving her alone in this world. As she tried to find some comfort from her boyfriend, she found that her boyfriend cheated on her. Feeling devastated, Jian Rushi thought of ending her life. But she wanted to do a crazy thing before that. Suddenly she remembered she was still virgin. So she decided to sleep with a man before she died. She went to a pub one day and saw a pretty man drinking there alone. She mistook him as a money boy and took him home. After they slept, she had no money to pay him. As the compensation, Jian Rushi became the mistress of that man, who turned out to be a golden bachelor. And a series of embarrassing things happened…

- Description from Novelupdates

All Chu Lian had done was to read a book where the female lead had cheated on her wonderful husband. While wondering why, before she knew it, she was waking up in the body of that very same female lead!

Wait, did that mean the handsome husband from the book was hers now? Chu Lian decided to welcome him with open arms!

However, what she got wasn’t the kind husband she had been expecting. Instead, his personality seemed to have been completely flipped! He left her all alone on their wedding night… and just five days into their marriage, her dear husband abandoned his loving wife and left to enlist in the army!

Fine! Be that way! She could pass her days perfectly well somehow, even if she had to do it alone!

Chu Lian put her household in order, charmed the rest of her new family, and did a little business on the side. She even opened up some new trade routes! Her days passed peacefully and leisurely… Until her dear husband got into trouble at the frontline of the war.

Hmph, isn’t he crawling back to me for help in the end? Forget it, I’ll go save him myself!

Angel Johnson was a waitress struggling to make ends meet when an unexpected contract with Tryson Bliss, one of City Y's most powerful and ruthless billionaires, changed everything.Tryson needed a fiancée to appease his demanding family, and Angel, desperate for money and a way out of her humdrum life, agreed to play the part.What began as a calculated arrangement soon evolved into something neither of them expected—an intense and forbidden connection.But when Tryson's family uncovers Angel's true motives, they cast her out with venomous disdain.Humiliated and heartbroken, Angel's last hope is confronting Tryson. But instead of an apology or a chance at redemption, she finds herself shattered when he declares that he has chosen his first love, Riley, the woman he was preparing to marry.Devastated and with only her pride left, Angel walks away, determined to rebuild her life alone.Two months later, Angel is lost in the pulse of the music at a dark, crowded bar, seeking refuge in anonymity.A hand seizes her from behind, and her breath catches as she turns to face the man she can't forget—Tryson.His eyes, once cold and calculating, are now stormy with raw emotion, and he pulls her into his orbit, holding out the contract she once signed. “We haven't finished our work, Angel. The contract says you have a year left to be my fiancée. Don't tell me you're planning on breaching it now.”With no choice but to comply, Angel moves back into the house that once rejected her.But to her surprise, the family she once loathed now welcomes her with unexpected warmth and kindness.As she navigates this unsettling shift, Angel is left to wonder—what has changed, and why?What secrets do they hide that could alter everything she thought she knew about Tryson and his family?And as Angel's heart begins to thaw, she's confronted with the hardest question of all: Can she keep the secrets she's hidden from Tryson?And will Tryson fight for her love a second time, despite everything that has come between them?

After being torn from the only life she knew, 16-year-old Margo is forced into a new home with strangers who call themselves her parents. Haunted by memories of her past and consumed by feelings of isolation, she struggles to adapt to her unfamiliar surroundings. School offers little relief—until she meets Lucien, a mysterious boy who appears just when she needs a friend the most.Gabriel is everything Margo needs: kind, attentive, and always ready to whisk her away from her troubles. Each night, he invites her to secret places—an abandoned playground, a fog-choked garden, a crumbling train station at the edge of town—each more unsettling than the last. Yet with every chilling rendezvous, Margo feels more alive... more seen.But something isn’t right. Gabriel never comes to school during the day. Her adoptive parents never see him. And when they catch her talking to thin air, their concern deepens into fear. They say Gabriel isn't real—that he’s a figment of her imagination. Margo wants to believe them, but Gabriel feels real. More real than anything else in her life.As the nights grow colder and more twisted, Gabriel’s true nature begins to surface. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Time warps in his presence. And the places they visit seem to echo with whispers from another world. Margo is forced to ask herself: Who—or what—is Gabriel? Why does he only want her? And what will happen on the final night he asks her to come with him?As the line between reality and delusion begins to crumble, Margo must make an impossible choice: stay in a world where she feels loved, or return to one that barely feels real.But one thing is certain—some friendships never let go.