Contract Marriage Terms

Contract Marriage Terms are the economic and behavioral rules governing Shen Tang’s marriage to Gu Huaian. Their decisive significance is that they initially transform marriage from an emotional fate into a clearly priced arrangement: Shen Tang is paid to perform the appearance of intimacy, while the agreement promises her financial independence without requiring her to surrender her career or personal life.

Core Obligations and Compensation

The agreement requires Shen Tang to act as Gu Huaian’s contracted wife, but it sharply limits the duties attached to that role. She does not have to perform ordinary wifely responsibilities or devote herself to domestic service. Her principal obligations are to attend family gatherings from time to time and maintain the public impression that the couple is loving and harmonious.

In exchange, Shen Tang receives five million yuan every month, with her living expenses charged to her husband’s card. The agreement also specifies that the marriage will last for two years. When that term expires and the couple divorces, she is to receive a settlement of two hundred million yuan. The scale and clarity of the payment structure make the arrangement resemble a lucrative professional contract more than a conventional marriage.

Shen Tang’s Response to the Arrangement

Shen Tang learns the terms after unfamiliar memories reveal that she has entered the book as Gu Huaian’s contractual wife. A marriage agreement is already lying on the table, making the rules tangible rather than merely verbal. As she absorbs the monthly payment, expense coverage, and final settlement, she covers her mouth, her heart pounds, and her hands tremble at the prospect of such an unexpected windfall.

The terms immediately alter her priorities. Although she is still a Z-list celebrity, her entertainment career is burdened by relentless rumors and degrading labels, while her company’s public-relations team pairs her indiscriminately with male celebrities to exploit attention. Shen Tang has been turned into a scandal magnet whom people in the industry avoid, and she is prepared to retire. The contract therefore appears to offer an escape from an unstable career: rather than continuing to struggle for success, she can fulfill a limited social role and leave the marriage with enough money to change her circumstances.

Performance, Public Image, and Hidden Labor

The agreement’s apparent simplicity depends on Shen Tang’s ability to perform affection convincingly. At family gatherings, her relationship with Gu Huaian is not treated as a private matter alone. Old Madam Gu and Old Master Gu’s attitude toward her determines how the other members of the Gu Family receive her, and Old Madam Gu personally introduces her to important elders. The contract’s requirement to appear loving thus becomes a mechanism for entering and navigating the family hierarchy.

The same logic extends beyond family life into Shen Tang’s entertainment work. During an agricultural livestream, black fans flood the room and sharply increase its popularity, yet Shen Tang maintains a constant professional smile as though the insults in the comments are directed at someone else. Her outward composure protects the commercial performance and allows her to profit from the company’s revenue split after the stream. The contract’s emotional labor is therefore part of a wider pattern in which Shen Tang converts a controlled public image—loving wife, composed celebrity, or helpful host—into money and social leverage.

Boundaries and Development

The original terms establish distance as much as intimacy. The marriage is designed to be convincing enough for family and public purposes while remaining limited in private obligation, and the fixed two-year endpoint prevents the arrangement from being understood as permanent. Shen Tang initially welcomes precisely this separation between appearance and feeling: the marriage promises money, protection from immediate financial insecurity, and no requirement that she repeat the emotional mistake associated with the book’s original plot, in which she falls in love with Gu Huaian and ultimately gains nothing.

As the story develops, however, the contract becomes less able to contain the relationship it created. Shen Tang and Gu Huaian continue to interact outside formal family performances, including through games. When Shen Tang logs into King of Glory after several days away, she discovers that Gu Huaian is already online and has reached the King rank; before she creates a room, he pulls her into his. Their relationship consequently acquires forms of companionship that are not demanded by the written agreement. The rules remain the starting point, but their repeated contact exposes the difference between contractual performance and an attachment that increasingly exceeds the contract.

Narrative Function

Contract Marriage Terms give the novel its central reversal of the marriage-before-love premise. Shen Tang enters the arrangement expecting to receive money for a manageable performance and to avoid the doomed pursuit described by the original story. The two-year term and two-hundred-million-yuan settlement provide a countdown and a promised exit, while the family-gathering clause supplies recurring situations in which the couple must stage intimacy before observers.

The rules also connect private feeling to social exchange. Shen Tang’s value is repeatedly measured through what she can perform, endure, and convert into attention or income, whether she is maintaining a smile under online abuse, appearing affectionate before the Gu Family, or using public visibility to generate commercial returns. The agreement initially seems to give her control because its obligations and rewards are explicit. Its deeper importance is that it creates the conditions under which a relationship organized as a transaction can gradually challenge its own boundaries, leaving the meaning of marriage suspended between a paid role and a developing emotional reality.