Gu Group

Gu Group is the central corporate power associated with Gu Huaian and the material infrastructure behind many of the novel’s major reversals. It is not merely a wealthy employer or family business: its legal department, security resources, technological capacity, medical connections, and command over commercial opportunities repeatedly transform private problems into matters that can be solved through institutional action. Through Gu Group, the narrative makes corporate power visible in everyday life, from a marriage agreement and delivered breakfast to lawyer letters, a tracking ring, emergency surgery, and pressure on a rival company.

Nature and Scale

Gu Group is presented as a premier enterprise located in the heart of the city, occupying an entire building. Shen Tang is startled when she visits because the family’s wealth, previously encountered only as a vague fact in novels, becomes an imposing physical reality. The company’s scale gives Gu Huaian access to specialized departments and personnel rather than requiring him to manage every problem personally. Its professional legal department can be mobilized against defamatory online posts, its bodyguard Xiao Yu can be dispatched to a dangerous film set, and its corporate hospital can prepare for emergency treatment. The organization therefore functions as an extension of Gu Huaian’s authority, but also as a network of expertise that exceeds his immediate presence.

The company is closely tied to the Gu family’s wider social and economic position. Gu Huaian can appear at a formal banquet as a representative of that family and introduce Shen Tang as his wife, turning a private contractual arrangement into a public corporate-family performance. The banquet is populated by people seeking cooperation, and the couple’s entrance attracts attention precisely because Gu Huaian’s status gives their relationship institutional visibility. Gu Group’s influence thus operates both through formal business dealings and through the prestige attached to the Gu name.

Legal Power and Reputation Management

The Gu Group legal department becomes one of the most direct instruments of protection available to Shen Tang. When online rumors and malicious hot searches target her, Gu Huaian offers the company’s lawyers to sue the people responsible. Shen Tang initially treats the offer with some disbelief, but Assistant Cen makes clear that Gu Huaian personally urged the legal team to set aside other work and concentrate on her case. The intervention reveals that Shen Tang occupies an exceptional position in Gu Huaian’s eyes, while also showing how quickly corporate resources can enter an intimate dispute.

The result is concrete rather than symbolic. Major online accounts that had spread the allegations, along with especially abusive commenters, receive lawyer letters requiring them either to apologize and delete their posts or face litigation. Shen Tang then adopts the company’s reputation as a deterrent, warning that the legal department of Gu Corporation does not show mercy. Her public stance is deliberately bold: she does not need to prove that every threat will be carried out if the company’s known power is already enough to intimidate opponents. Gu Group therefore changes the economics of scandal. Shen Tang’s earlier public image is built from endless rumors, company-generated pairings, and the attention economy of the entertainment industry, but the company’s lawyers give her a counterforce that can make defamation legally costly.

This protection is especially significant because Shen Tang’s own employer has previously exploited her notoriety. As a Z-list celebrity, she is repeatedly paired with male celebrities to generate publicity, and the resulting scandal makes her an object of avoidance throughout the entertainment industry. Her manager argues that bad publicity is still publicity and reminds her that attention can help her earn money for a home and improve her siblings’ living conditions. Gu Group does not erase this system of commodified visibility, but it gives Shen Tang a powerful means of resisting its most damaging effects. Her professional smile during a hostile livestream similarly illustrates the contrast: she performs composure for the audience while relying on the possibility of legal retaliation outside the frame.

Protection, Technology, and Care

Gu Group’s resources also protect Shen Tang physically. After a suspicious incident involving makeup at a film set, Gu Huaian immediately sends Xiao Yu, whom Shen Tang presents to others as her new assistant. The company’s intervention turns a general atmosphere of danger into an organized security arrangement. Later, when Shen Tang is stranded and the group’s phones have been confiscated, she touches a ring developed by Gu Corporation that contains a built-in tracker. The device, given to her by Gu Huaian only the previous night, allows her to trust that she can be located even when ordinary communication has been cut off.

The tracking ring is an important corporate object because it condenses intimacy and surveillance into the same device. It is a gift from Gu Huaian, but it is also a piece of proprietary technology capable of transmitting her location. The ring embodies the novel’s recurring tension between protection and control: Shen Tang does not understand how it works, yet she trusts Gu Huaian enough to believe in it. Gu Group’s technological capacity is therefore experienced not as an abstract innovation but as a practical lifeline attached to her body.

The company’s support becomes still more decisive after Shen Tang is injured. Gu Huaian contacts a helicopter for pickup and calls the hospital under Gu Group so that surgery can be arranged at a moment’s notice. The response is rapid, coordinated, and institutional: transport, medical preparation, and emergency treatment are connected through the corporate network before the danger can become fatal. Even the wild boar Shen Tang has defeated becomes part of the aftermath, as the people around her only belatedly ask what happened to it after the rescue and medical arrangements are already in motion.

Gu Group’s reach extends into mundane care as well. Assistant Cen delivers breakfast because Gu Huaian ordered him to do so, prompting Shen Tang to wonder whether the supposedly merciless capitalist has only one person available to command. The scene is comic, but it shows how corporate hierarchy spills into domestic life. Employees become messengers and caregivers, while the company’s authority is repurposed to sustain a relationship whose written terms require distance and limited contact.

Commercial Influence and Internal Conflict

Gu Group does not only defend Shen Tang; it also disciplines competitors and family rivals. When Gu Huaian learns that Chenghua Technology is seeking a contract, he orders Assistant Cen to hold off on signing it. Chenghua Technology was created by Gu Jinan while he publicly claimed not to depend on the Gu family, even though he used the family’s resources whenever possible. By delaying the contract, Gu Huaian gives Gu Jinan a warning and imposes a small punishment. He makes clear that a future offense will receive harsher treatment.

This episode demonstrates that Gu Group is a weapon in the struggle between Gu Huaian and Gu Jinan. Access to contracts and corporate resources is not neutral; it can be withheld, redirected, or used to expose the contradiction between independence and inherited privilege. Gu Huaian’s control over the company allows him to answer personal antagonism through commercial pressure, making the boardroom and the family conflict part of the same arena.

The organization’s power also shapes the marriage agreement itself. Shen Tang receives a contract under which she need only appear occasionally at family dinners and maintain the appearance of a loving couple. In exchange, she is promised five million per month, payment of living expenses through her husband’s card, and a two-hundred-million settlement when the two-year agreement ends in divorce. The supplementary rules require her, except in necessity, to remain at least three meters from Party A and prohibit physical contact. Although the agreement is between Shen Tang and Gu Huaian, its plausibility depends on the economic security represented by Gu Group. The company is the unseen foundation that makes a marriage without ordinary marital duties financially irresistible.

Narrative Significance

Gu Group represents the novel’s conversion of personal vulnerability into negotiable institutional power. Shen Tang begins from a precarious position: she is a scandal-ridden actress, the target of online abuse, and someone considering retirement because success seems impossible. Gu Group alters the conditions under which she acts. It can provide money without conventional domestic obligation, lawyers against rumor, security against threats, technology during isolation, medical rescue after injury, and commercial leverage against an adversary.

Yet the company’s usefulness is never entirely separate from performance. Shen Tang must maintain the appearance of a loving couple at family dinners, appear onstage before hostile viewers, and present Xiao Yu as an assistant. Gu Group supplies the props and backstage machinery for these performances, while Shen Tang remains responsible for managing the public image. Its corporate power therefore connects the novel’s major worlds: contract marriage, celebrity scandal, livestream commerce, family ceremony, emergency medicine, and succession conflict. The organization’s decisive narrative function is to make Gu Huaian’s private concern materially effective, turning affection and authority into actions that can be seen, enforced, tracked, paid for, and, when necessary, weaponized.