Gu Yun'an

Gu Yun'an, better known to Shen Tang through the gaming names Miao Miao and Meow Meow, occupies a deceptively light place in the story. She first appears as a girl who messages Shen Tang to play King of Glory, but the gaming persona gradually opens onto a more complicated identity: she is Gu Huaian’s younger sister, a future sister-in-law to Shen Tang, and a young woman caught between imagined romance and the painful consequences of her hesitation. Her arc turns an apparently recreational connection into one of the novel’s most important social channels, linking Shen Tang’s online life to the Gu family and exposing how private uncertainty can become an ethical crisis for another person.## Identity and IntroductionGu Yun'an’s first sustained connection with Shen Tang is mediated by play. Miao Miao sends Shen Tang a message asking her to join a game, and Shen Tang responds by opening King of Glory and waiting for her to finish a match. When Miao Miao brings her into the room, another player named Cool Tyrannosaurus Rex is present, establishing the game as a space where identities are initially represented by usernames rather than family names or public status. That indirectness allows intimacy to develop before the full significance of their connection is known. Gu Yun'an is not introduced through a formal family announcement; she enters through repeated invitations, shared matches, and the relaxed familiarity of a gaming companion.Elsewhere, Shen Tang discovers that Gu Huaian is already online and has reached the King rank. Gu Huaian immediately pulls her into his room without waiting for her to create one, turning the game into another point of contact between Shen Tang and the Gu family. Gu Yun'an’s place within this network is therefore double-sided. To Shen Tang, she is Miao Miao, a familiar teammate whose messages interrupt ordinary days; in the family structure, she is Gu Huaian’s younger sister, someone whose future relationship with Shen Tang will make their existing friendship more consequential. Shen Tang explicitly considers her a future sister-in-law and worries that Gu Yun'an might later regret her choices or feel awkward with Shen Tang.## Gaming Friendship and Social FunctionThe game gives Gu Yun'an and Shen Tang a language of companionship, but it also exposes the pressures and assumptions that surround them. In one match, Shen Tang is left alone in the bottom lane while the opposing marksman and support repeatedly harass her, and the enemy mid-laner and jungler attack her several times. With the score at zero to three, she asks the jungler to come and gank the bottom lane. Instead of helping, the player named Hao insults her rank and sexualizes her deaths, implying that she must have used sexual access to be carried into the game. This exchange shows why the game matters beyond entertainment: its ranked structure, team roles, chat, and verbal abuse create a compact arena in which gendered contempt and status judgments become immediately visible.Gu Yun'an’s friendship with Shen Tang develops against that hostile background. After Shen Tang has not played for several days, Gu Yun'an messages her again, and Shen Tang initially hesitates because she remembers how foolishly she was used by others in the past. She nevertheless proposes another game, and the two quickly win several rounds together. The easy victories restore the playful side of their bond, but Shen Tang then opens voice chat and asks about Gu Yun'an’s brother and his goddess. The question shifts the conversation from game performance to emotional disclosure. Gu Yun'an answers hesitantly that the woman she admired does not seem to be what she had imagined, revealing that the romantic ideal she had built up is beginning to collapse.Shen Tang understands that Gu Yun'an and the woman she calls Lian Sister have entered an internal conflict without Shen Tang deliberately interfering. Her near-laughter captures the comic surface of the situation, but she does not treat Gu Yun'an’s confusion as harmless gossip. Because Gu Yun'an may become her sister-in-law and because their gaming friendship has lasted long enough to create mutual trust, Shen Tang does not want her to make a decision she will later regret. The game thus functions as both refuge and diagnostic instrument: it brings the two friends together, then gives Shen Tang access to an emotional problem that Gu Yun'an cannot comfortably address elsewhere.## Lian Sister and the Crisis of ResponsibilityGu Yun'an’s uncertainty becomes serious when Lian Sister sends her a message expressing intense pain. Gu Yun'an does not see it immediately because the do-not-disturb setting is active while she is gaming. After opening the message, she learns that Lian Sister has done something foolish. Lian Sister is rushed to the hospital in time and survives, but the near-fatal consequence transforms Gu Yun'an’s indecision into self-accusation. Gu Yun'an believes the crisis happened because she had refused to agree for too long, making her hesitation feel not merely romantic or private but causally responsible for another person’s suffering.When Gu Yun'an reaches the hospital, she does not enter the ward at once. She stands outside hesitantly, looking through the window at Lian Sister’s face, pale and without color. The physical separation between corridor and ward gives visible form to Gu Yun'an’s moral paralysis: she has come close enough to confront the result of her choices, yet she still cannot cross the threshold without fear. Seeing Lian Sister alive does not relieve her guilt. Instead, Gu Yun'an blames herself more and more, because survival leaves the relationship and its consequences unresolved rather than erasing them.The scene makes Gu Yun'an a rounder figure than her cheerful gaming identity first suggests. Her hesitation is not presented as a simple villainous refusal or as a trivial misunderstanding. It contains attachment, disillusionment, fear, and the knowledge that another person’s emotional state has become entangled with her decision. At the same time, the narrative does not allow her guilt to remain purely internal. The hospital scene gives that guilt a human face, forcing Gu Yun'an to recognize Lian Sister as a person rather than merely as the object of a romantic ideal.## Family Connection and Moral DevelopmentGu Yun'an’s family identity becomes increasingly visible as Shen Tang’s relationship with Gu Huaian develops. At one formal banquet, Shen Tang enters arm in arm with Gu Huaian, and he introduces her to two older guests as his wife. In that setting Gu Yun'an is not simply a distant online acquaintance; she belongs to the family whose public image Shen Tang and Gu Huaian are performing together. The contrast is important. Shen Tang’s marriage agreement requires only occasional family dinners and the appearance of a loving couple in exchange for five million per month, with a two-hundred-million settlement after the two-year term. Gu Yun'an’s relationship with Shen Tang grows inside that carefully managed public arrangement, but their gaming friendship is more spontaneous and emotionally candid than the formal banquet performance.Gu Huaian’s protectiveness toward Shen Tang also affects Gu Yun'an’s position. When Cen Songbai teases Gu Huaian after learning that his wish is to make Shen Tang’s dreams come true and ensure her future safety, Gu Huaian reacts with annoyance. Later, when Gu Yun'an approaches Shen Tang and bows deeply, apologizing softly, Gu Huaian immediately tells her to speak louder. Gu Yun'an repeats the apology aloud. The gesture makes her accountability public: she does not merely feel confused or ashamed in private, but must acknowledge wrongdoing before Shen Tang and under Gu Huaian’s stern scrutiny. Her bow and repeated apology mark a movement from passive guilt toward active responsibility.The apology is also a family scene disguised as a disciplinary one. Gu Huaian’s cold reprimand establishes the seriousness of the matter, while Shen Tang remains the person to whom Gu Yun'an directs the apology. Gu Yun'an therefore stands between two forms of obligation: loyalty to her family and responsibility toward the people affected by her emotional decisions. Her connection with Shen Tang prevents the conflict from being reduced to a romantic subplot, since Shen Tang occupies both the role of trusted friend and emerging member of the Gu family.## Change, Consequences, and Narrative RoleBy the time Gu Yun'an comes downstairs and Shen Tang notices her abnormal complexion, the earlier gaming persona has been visibly displaced by physical distress. Gu Yun'an scans the gathering, meets Shen Tang’s eyes, and walks toward her; Gu Huaian’s face darkens as well. Her altered appearance communicates that the crisis has entered the family’s shared space before she explains anything. The ordinary movement from upstairs to downstairs becomes a public crossing, much like her earlier hesitation outside the hospital ward: Gu Yun'an repeatedly moves toward confrontation only after fear and guilt have made avoidance impossible.In the later apology, Gu Yun'an does not defend herself or shift blame. She approaches Shen Tang timidly, bows deeply, and says that she is sorry. When Gu Huaian demands a louder apology, she repeats it. This is a modest but decisive change in her role. The girl who once appeared chiefly as Miao Miao, a cheerful player seeking another match, is now required to stand behind her choices in the presence of the people closest to her. The narrative does not erase her confusion, but it gives that confusion a consequence and gives her a concrete form of repair: acknowledgment.Gu Yun'an’s significance lies in the way she joins separate narrative systems. Through King of Glory, she connects Shen Tang to an informal circle built on usernames, teamwork, rank, voice chat, and repeated play. Through Gu Huaian, she connects that circle to the Gu family and to Shen Tang’s contract marriage. Through Lian Sister’s hospitalization, she reveals the emotional cost hidden beneath romantic idealization and indecision. Her trajectory is not a grand quest or a public career rise; it is a smaller movement from playful anonymity to familial visibility, from imagined affection to disillusionment, and from guilt that remains inward to an apology spoken aloud. That scale gives her a distinct narrative value: Gu Yun'an demonstrates how the novel’s major transformations are carried not only by dramatic revelations, but also by the ordinary channels through which people play, message, hesitate, suffer, and finally take responsibility.