Chapter 141 Whose Joy Is It, Really?

That completely disrupted Ms. Dong’s calculations.

Initially, she had been laughing so hard she was practically quivering with delight.

However, Rang Weidong did not laugh. “Do you know how I felt at that moment?”

He raised a hand to gesture. “When the editor-in-chief first told me he had some issues regarding personal conduct, my estimation of him instantly plummeted. Previously, I deeply respected him for speaking out fearlessly and insisting on publishing his own reports and commentaries. I even felt immensely proud when he entrusted me with looking after his family if anything happened. But for a man like that to mess around with women—holy crap, his entire persona collapsed.”

Dong Xueying didn’t bother questioning why his vocabulary was so colorful; she was simply stunned. “What, is that really such a big deal?”

Rang Weidong nodded. “If I hadn’t later learned about all those other mitigating reasons, I genuinely would have despised him from the bottom of my heart. We could still cooperate on projects or interact professionally, but I would never trust him again. If a man can’t even be loyal to his own wife, how can you expect him to be loyal to his friends or business partners? It just means the temptation wasn’t big enough yet; at the very least, it shows his personal moral boundaries are low.”

Dong Xueying probed indirectly, “Do you think a man’s behavior in these matters is really that important?”

Rang Weidong took it as an absolute given. “Extremely important! Let me tell you about my recent trip to the Xishan Factory. They treated me exceptionally well there, officially issuing an appointment letter for me as the deputy factory director in charge of sales and even reporting it to the Fifth Ministry of Machine Building. Well, you should have seen the scene. On the first night, the children of the leading cadres—especially the young women—were called over for a meeting to discuss whether I needed an assistant or anything of the sort. You know what that implied, right?”

Dong Xueying’s mouth twisted into an inverted bracket. “Things like that happen a lot when you’re away from home?”

Rang Weidong answered without missing a beat. “A whole lot! The next day, every halfway decent-looking young woman in the factory showed up with breakfast. Holy crap, what do they take me for? Is this supposed to be some kind of loyalty test for cadres? If I dared to have improper conduct, how do you think the entire factory would look at me? Besides, don’t those girls have their own relationships or backup options? Plenty of young guys treated me like an enemy, practically itching to destroy me on the basketball court!”

Dong Xueying finally caught his drift. “You mean you truly won’t ever make a mistake when it comes to women?”

Rang Weidong said with absolute confidence, “Never. I am a man of unwavering loyalty; once I have food in my bowl, I don’t go staring into the pot. Just wait and see.”

Dong Xueying was utterly astonished. After all, whenever they rode in the car together, he always carried the baby and carefully made sure she sat in the second row so the infant wouldn’t be exposed to the risks of the front passenger seat.

Unable to help herself, she leaned forward to study his expression. “You, you…”

Rang Weidong remained completely clueless. “What about me?”

Dong Xueying barely managed to squeeze out the words, “Are you being serious?”

Rang Weidong let out a confused sound. “What’s serious and what isn’t?”

The young wife simply hugged the baby, sat back down, and fell silent.

No matter how much he prompted her afterward, she wouldn’t speak. “Stop messing around, let me think.”

Then she began feeding the baby, her chest feeling tight.

Rang Weidong concluded that women were truly impossible to figure out!

And there was still another woman waiting at home.

When they got out of the car, he still ended up carrying the baby because the infant had already fallen asleep and was quite heavy to lug all the way upstairs.

Dong Xueying walked ahead, lost in deep thought.

The moment they opened the door, Phoenix Fledgling bounced over and poked her head out. “Did the brother-in-law come back? Oh-oh, did you run into *you-know-who* in Chengdu? Did you bring me a gift? You said you were going to buy some kind of VCR, how did the talks with the factory go, did you chew them out thoroughly or what…”

A rapid-fire barrage of questions followed.

Then she grabbed her older sister to complain. “You guys already ate? You should have told me earlier! I was waiting here for you to come back, thinking that since brother-in-law is back, you’d definitely invite me to celebrate. Instead, you went off on another two-person date? You took Little Butterfly and left me behind?”

Only then did Dong Xueying snap out of her daze. “Oh, oh, oh. I’ll go cook some noodles for you. Today was terribly busy, Weidong brought back a whole bunch of people—several cars full of administrative staff—and we just finished seeing them off to the railway station for Chengdu.”

The physical powerhouse calculatedly chimed in, “I’ll do it, I’ll cook! Little comrade, take the niece away. Sister has been busy running around arranging things all day, she should go rest early. My noodle-making skills are passable.”

The sisters both burst into giggles.

Clearly, they didn’t think he was making a dirty joke, but rather understood the purpose behind this preservation of energy.

Dong Xueying mimicked a face-scraping gesture at him. “Shame on you! I’m not taking the baby; I have to work tomorrow, and I wake up several times a night. If I yawn at work and get caught, it’s a nightmare. Hurry up and cook, I’m waiting for your noodles. You really have no conscience—as soon as you got together with my sister, do you think I’m just surplus to requirements?”

Rang Weidong genuinely didn’t feel like half of his sister-in-law belonged to him. “Not surplus at all! Look, we even rented a place right outside your workplace, isn’t that thoughtful enough? Oh, we’re out of scallions—I’ll buy some vegetables tomorrow and stock the fridge.”

Both sisters sat together at the small dining table in the kitchen, watching the man busy by the gas stove, occasionally exchanging playful grimaces.

Yet their inner thoughts were worlds apart.

The older sister was dying to reach out and pinch this foolish girl!

Still, she apologized out loud, “I’ve been busy with factory matters these past few days, so I haven’t been cooking much. We’ve just been grabbing casual bites downstairs, and Xiaoqing had to work overtime this Sunday, too.”

The new corporate beast complained, “Of course I have to show initiative since I just started working. Besides, you’re busy anyway, and with brother-in-law away, what would I do all alone at home? Next week I’ll go check out the factory, too. Haha, let me tell you, today I handed over a few packs of sanitary napkins to our leadership, and their attitude changed instantly! Brother-in-law, this product of yours is an absolute winner!”

Mid-sentence, she noticed something protruding near Rang Weidong’s hip and reached out to touch it. *Oh my, why is there a gun?!*

She checked the other side—there was one there, too!

“What, what is this? So cool! Just like the guerrilla captains in the movies!” Screen depictions were quite limited in those days.

Rang Weidong had no choice but to give her a brief rundown of the current firearm management situation. “I have to carry them on me. This one’s fine, small and exquisite, but that bigger one will be locked away in the guesthouse safe another day.”

Dong Xueying had already been shocked by this during the day.

Now she steered the conversation back to work. “Judging by what you were telling Manager Han earlier, are you planning to distribute these sanitary napkins to supply and marketing cooperatives nationwide? I never even dared to imagine that. Every single county and township across the country must have a supply and marketing cooperative, right? And a general cooperative above them?”

While boiling water, Rang Weidong rapidly prepped other ingredients. Years of cooking instant noodles had habituated him to adding whatever extras he could find—cooked meats, leftovers, prepped veggies—anything at all, or failing that, cracking an egg.

Now equipped with fully functional fingers, he moved even more fluidly. “Yeah, I only found out about the General Cooperative managing things nationwide when I attended the seminar in Pingjing. Let’s put it this way: across the country’s two or three thousand counties and cities, there are probably thirty to fifty thousand supply and marketing cooperatives. That averages out to over ten cooperatives per county, reaching down to every township and village. Right, it’s roughly that number.”

By now, this had become his instinctive train of thought. “So how much would each cooperative take? Ten packs? A hundred packs? Would ordinary peasant women be willing to spend eighty cents or a yuan to buy a pack for personal use? Most still couldn’t afford it. But at least the product would be out there. Therefore, my suggestion for this period is to sell and stockpile simultaneously—save up about a thousand packs every day. Who knows? If the General Supply and Marketing Cooperative agrees, boom—they might drop a demand for three to five hundred thousand or even a million packs!”

Dong Xueying drew a sharp breath. “A million packs?! I heard from Little Shen that these large clients all demand payment on credit afterward, and the costs alone would run into the hundreds of thousands. Can we afford that?”

Rang Weidong agreed. “That’s why I said we should scrape it together frugally, trying to get them to pay at least a portion upfront while the rest can be settled later. We can’t let ourselves be killed off just because we’re willing to make a contribution, right? In the past, I used to guard against the Xishan Factory, but now I’m trying to utilize Xishan’s manpower for production and transportation, temporarily steering them clear of sales. We’ll have to see if the profits from cameras can help plug the financial hole left by the sanitary napkins first.”

Dong Xueying sighed. “In the past, whenever Old You and the others pulled off their ventures, my heart would leap into my throat. Turns out our own family is operating the exact same way now?”

Rang Weidong insisted there was a fundamental difference. “Alright, alright, the wife is always right. I will reflect and improve.”

Phoenix Fledgling, who had been listening anxiously on the sidelines, was abruptly stuffed with a mouthful of dog food. Though she didn't know the slang term, her physiological reaction was identical: nausea and revulsion. “Ugh! What is going on!”

Whether prompted by her aunt's exclamation or not, the baby immediately followed suit with an “ugh,” vomiting milk like a miniature fountain.

The spectacle was quite magnificent.

Rang Weidong burst into hearty laughter, hastily finished cooking and draining the noodles, shoved the bowl into his sister-in-law's hands, and scooped up the baby to clean the mess.

Only then did Dong Xueying angrily jab her sister in the head a few times to express her exasperation at her missing every opportunity!

Phoenix Fledgling felt immensely aggrieved. “What did I do? You two finally got together, and now everyone’s picking on me.”

Yet the moment she started eating her noodles, her cheerfulness returned. She carried her bowl and chased after him all the way to the restroom. “Brother-in-law, this is genuinely delicious. Your noodles taste completely different!”

Assaulted by the sour stench of baby spit-up and feeling dizzy, Rang Weidong didn't know whether to laugh or cry. “Do you not have a nose? Go away, go away.”

Dong Xueying couldn’t even muster a convincing look of sorrow. She sat at the table and wailed dramatically, “Why is my life so bitter? Is there any wine in the house? I need to drown my sorrows!” In reality, she was slurping her noodles with loud, enthusiastic *shlurps*.

Seeing this, her sister felt a fresh wave of annoyance. “If you had an ounce of feminine gentleness, you wouldn't look like this!”

Passing by with the baby, a bewildered Rang Weidong chimed in, “Don’t you two usually get along great? Why are you suddenly fighting and scolding each other at the drop of a hat? Is this the legendary phenomenon of dogs seeing each other—absent they pine, present they loath?”

The sisters replied with a synchronized wave of scoffs.

Still, the atmosphere remained joyful, even though the older sister privately believed this happiness rightfully belonged to her younger sibling.

That night in bed, they unusually lacked the mood for intimacy because Little Butterfly was still present. “Little Butterfly is here, let’s not.”

Rang Weidong, who had tucked both pistols under his pillows, also agreed it wasn't appropriate in front of the child, but his linear thinking immediately kicked in: “Then we can hire another nanny from the countryside. The spare room next door is empty anyway.”

Dong Xueying broke into an amused smile. “You think the commotion isn't enough already! Why don’t we bring Little Shen home to live with us? I can tell she really wants to.”

Rang Weidong felt compelled to offer a serious explanation. “Did she spin some wild tales for you? Don't listen to her nonsense. She has a complicated background with two younger brothers; those two kids are in that line of work…”

He made a gesture mimicking two fingers snapping together like handcuffs.

As expected, Dong Xueying was startled. “Ah? No wonder they always looked a bit sneaky down at the docks. Right, occasional petty thieves operate around the docks, and those two definitely had that vibe.”

She possessed plenty of street-smart life experience from her days struggling at the bottom rung.

Rang Weidong further exposed outsiders. “Little Shen used to be involved in honey-trap scams. When I brought Dad to the hospital via the dock, they stole from me and even tried to run a scam, but I caught and exposed them. Later on, during the crackdown, their entire gang scattered like tree-dwelling macaques, leaving just the three of them. Little Shen almost died of pneumonia before Li Erfeng, Gou Dan, and I rescued her at the dock and sent her to the hospital. So don't take their weird ways of thinking to heart—I won't ever mess up.”

Dong Xueying worried aloud, “If you *did* mess up, I’d at least feel like we were even. Go to sleep, go to sleep. I still feel like you and Xiaoqing are a better match, and here I am, already with a child…”

Lacking slick sweet-talk or smooth flattery, Rang Weidong simply resolved, “Tomorrow I’ll go build a crib for Little Butterfly. Sleeping in her own bed won’t get in our way anymore.”

Her mind full of lingering worries, she was nevertheless amused by his single-mindedness. “Come here then, you really are something!”

In truth, she had wanted to all along.

Consequently, the next morning brought another round of exaggerated eye-rolling. “Even that couldn't stop you two from raising a ruckus!”

On their way out, the couple mutually shifted the blame. “I told you to keep it down!”

“Well, I told you we should have rested!”

Dong Xueying felt she practically needed to interrogate herself as to why she was this happy, quickly finding a distraction. “I’m not going to the factory today, you and Little Shen handle things.”

Surprisingly, Rang Weidong completely missed the subtext. “Oh, right. Today I’ll dispatch a fleet of vehicles over there; once the transport company is up and running, we’ll send trucks straight to Guangzhou to fetch goods.”

His chuckling wife nearly beaned him with the baby.

The happiness was real.