Shen Tang and Gu Huaian’s marriage

Shen Tang and Gu Huaian’s marriage is the novel’s defining relationship arc: it begins as an arrangement governed by money, appearances, and limited obligations, then gradually becomes a real domestic and romantic bond. The marriage repeatedly places private feeling behind a public performance, until reconciliation and intimacy finally make the performance unnecessary.

Contractual Beginning

The marriage is initially presented to Shen Tang as a practical escape from her unstable life. The marriage agreement requires little conventional marital labor: she need only appear occasionally at family dinners and maintain the image of a loving couple. In exchange, she receives five million per month, has her living expenses charged to her husband’s card, and is promised a settlement of two hundred million when the two-year agreement ends in divorce. The arrangement therefore treats marriage as both employment and financial insurance, with affection functioning as a role to be displayed rather than a feeling that must be shared.

This contract also gives Shen Tang a reason to reconsider her position in the entertainment industry. Although she is only a Z-list celebrity, her public image is dominated by endless scandals and hostile labels, while her company’s public-relations team pairs her with nearly every male celebrity she has worked with in order to exploit attention around her. Her manager, Wang Brother, argues that even bad publicity is still publicity and reminds her that she once wanted enough money to buy a house and improve her siblings’ living conditions. The marriage thus intersects with her economic survival: it offers security at the same moment that her career depends on enduring humiliation and converting notoriety into income.

Public Performance and Social Pressure

From the outset, the relationship depends on managing audiences. At a formal banquet attended by people seeking cooperation rather than conflict, Shen Tang enters arm in arm with Gu Huaian, and he introduces her to two older guests as his wife. The gesture establishes the marriage as a social fact before it is an emotional one. Their closeness is not merely private behavior; it is a visible credential that helps them pass through family and business spaces without inviting questions about the arrangement.

The same logic appears in Shen Tang’s professional life. During a livestream, black fans flood the room and the audience rises sharply, yet she maintains a constant professional smile as though the abuse in the comments concerns someone else. Her emotional composure becomes labor that can be converted into traffic and, through her company’s revenue split, money. The contrast with the marriage is revealing: in both settings, Shen Tang performs an acceptable emotional surface while privately calculating the cost and benefit of continuing. The couple’s apparent affection and her entertainment-industry persona are therefore parallel forms of impression management, each sustained before an audience with its own expectations.

Companionship Through Ordinary Life

The marriage becomes more substantial through repeated shared activities rather than through the contract’s formal clauses. Games provide one recurring medium for contact. Miao Miao invites Shen Tang to play, and Shen Tang discovers that Gu Huaian is already online and has reached the King rank. He pulls her directly into his room and asks to play together. Their gaming connection places Gu Huaian inside a leisure space where rank, teamwork, and informal speech replace the rigid etiquette of family gatherings.

Gaming also exposes the conflicts that surround Shen Tang’s public identity. In one match she is repeatedly pressured in the bottom lane while other teammates fail to help, and after the score reaches 0–3 she asks the jungler to gank. Instead of receiving assistance, she is answered with a sexually insulting accusation that her rank must have been obtained by spreading her legs. In another match, the team includes two girls who specialize in mage and support roles and a boy with several jungler heroes; he begins scolding almost immediately. These episodes show why Gu Huaian’s presence matters to her beyond romance: the game is a social arena in which partnership can offer either protection or another form of gendered hostility. His willingness to play alongside her helps shift their relationship from formal cooperation toward shared routine.

The farming variety show supplies another domestic test. After Shen Tang’s food is finally cooked, the guests devour it without preserving even a pretense for the camera, and Ao Ziping is moved to tears. The scene turns food into evidence of care and competence. Shen Tang’s contribution is no longer simply an act performed to satisfy a contractual image; it becomes something that affects the people around her directly, creating a form of communal intimacy that resembles family life.

Family Recognition and Reconciliation

As the relationship develops, Gu Huaian’s family begins to treat Shen Tang as a lasting daughter-in-law rather than a temporary contractual spouse. Gu Qingan has let the agreement slip, leaving the family worried that Gu Huaian will fail to find a wife and remain lonely. This knowledge makes the household’s concern both awkward and sincere: the family understands that the marriage did not begin conventionally, but still wants it to become durable.

At the old Gu residence, Old Madam Gu asks when Shen Tang and Gu Huaian plan to hold their wedding. Shen Tang admits uncertainty because transmigration caused her to marry directly, bypassing the romantic ritual of walking down the aisle with a beloved. The missing wedding becomes a symbol of the marriage’s unusual origin: legal or social union came first, while the ceremony that normally confirms romantic commitment remains unfinished. Old Madam Gu nevertheless tells Shen Tang that she liked her from their first meeting and hopes that she and Huaian will remain together. She also asks whether they have considered having children, showing that the family has begun to imagine the couple within a conventional future rather than a two-year exit plan.

The older generation’s pressure is affectionate but unmistakable. Old Master Gu repeatedly asks when the wedding will take place, even while pretending not to care for Shen Tang. When he suggests that Gu Huaian may not have won her back, Gu Huaian answers that they have reconciled. His reply transforms the relationship from a matter of family speculation into an openly asserted fact. The exchange between father and son, each pressing the other’s weak spot, gives the reconciliation a distinctly familial form: love is acknowledged through teasing, challenge, and demands for a concrete future.

From Contract to Intimacy

The decisive change occurs after Shen Tang and Gu Huaian break through the last barrier between them. They become so inseparable that the people around them can barely tolerate watching their closeness. The final stage is not simply that they remain married; it is that the emotional terms of the marriage have changed. What began as a paid performance becomes an attachment visible even to outsiders.

The removal of mind-reading’s restrictions further alters their behavior. Shen Tang becomes bolder and no longer retreats from making a move as she once did. The disappearance of that restraint matters because it lets physical and emotional intimacy develop without the earlier fear of exposure or misinterpretation. Their marriage therefore ends in a state opposite to its beginning: the agreement once limited contact and prescribed appearances, while the reunited couple now seeks closeness freely. The prospect of a wedding remains part of the family’s questions, but the relationship’s substance no longer depends on whether that ceremony has occurred. Marriage has moved from contract, through performance and family recognition, into mutual romantic commitment.