Chapter 265 - 263: A Strange Invitation

Chapter 265: Chapter 263: A Strange Invitation

[Aren’t men like that rare? I feel like I’ve barely met any in real life.]

"Truly ambitious men are already rare. But there’s a variation: men who will do whatever it takes to make money, earning more and more each year. To us sisters, that also counts as ambitious."

"To put it bluntly, what we sisters want is for a man’s income to keep growing."

"If his income stays the same, even if it’s 20,000 a month, that won’t be enough once our spending habits catch up!"

[Got it. Complaining he’s not ambitious enough is just complaining he doesn’t make enough money.]

[So a woman’s ambition is just to find a richer man?]

[Sigh, it used to be that having a stable job made you a good man. It’s so fucking hard to be a man these days.]

[Brother Zhang, Brother Zhang, my girlfriend is a dancer, and I feel a little weird about her job. She says I’m too old-fashioned. How do I solve this?]

"To my friend, [Yellow Earth Plateau Bald Qiang], this one is definitely your problem."

"It’s not like she started dancing after she met you. You can’t just expect her to quit because you two are dating, can you?"

"If everyone was like you, what would all the guys watch when they’re scrolling through TikTok?"

"Okay, I was just kidding. But seriously, if you want to get married, you either need to support your girlfriend financially so she can quit her career, or you need to adjust your own mindset."

"I’d recommend the former. With the latter, the risks for you in that department are too high."

Zhang Zhe raised his hands over his head and mimed putting on a hat.

’It’s not that I have anything against dancers,’ he thought. ’But when a guy asks a question like this, he’s probably already seen something that made him uncomfortable.’

’Sometimes, your worst fears come true.’

"Alright, ladies, that’s all for today’s stream. Your host needs to sign off and recharge."

"New viewers, feel free to hit that follow button..."

Looking at the more than 4,000 viewers in his stream, Zhang Zhe was a little reluctant to sign off.

But continuing to stream wasn’t a great idea. When you get tired, your mind gets fuzzy. If he were to misspeak, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

After ending the stream, Zhang Zhe first updated Xia Yi on how it went. Joy, after all, doubles when shared.

The two of them chatted for a while before he packed up and headed home.

On his way home, Zhang Zhe suddenly received a strange message from a female account he had saved under the contact name [NGO].

[Teacher Zhang, are you free next week?]

’Who is this?’

’A 20-year-old girl?’

Zhang Zhe was a man of integrity. Ever since he’d gotten older, he didn’t have young women like this on his WeChat anymore.

Fortunately, the other person was sensible and continued the conversation on her own:

[I spoke with you before about giving a lecture at our school.]

[The funding has been approved.]

[I was wondering if you might be available?]

"Ohh," Zhang Zhe remembered now. It was that female exchange student.

Back when she was in his stream, the girl had thought he was a villain bent on destroying women’s hopes for marriage. She wanted to invite him to her university to help straighten out the young women there.

In fact, he had her to thank, in part, for meeting Old Bai and the others.

In reality, Zhang Zhe only ever talked about the realities of the marriage market.

But he couldn’t help it if many young women had wishes that were completely detached from reality.

So, didn’t that just make him the villain who shattered their hopes?

Zhang Zhe remembered clearly that the system had prompted him about this. This girl seemed to have some foreign NGO behind her.

The kind of people who spend money to promote radical feminism in the country.

’Should I take this gig?’

Zhang Zhe hesitated for only a second before figuring out how to refuse.

He replied directly:

"The source of this money is questionable. I don’t dare take it. I’m afraid I’ll get invited for a ’cup of tea.’"

"They’re cracking down on your sort right now."

Her reply came quickly:

[???]

[Teacher Zhang, I think you’ve misunderstood.]

[The funding for this lecture was approved by our school’s Women’s Association. The money will be transferred to your account after the lecture, and you’ll just have to file the taxes for it.]

"Isn’t it funding you got from a foreign NGO?"

[Oh, so that’s what you meant.]

[You’ve misunderstood. This funding was allocated by the school. It has nothing to do with any other organizations.]

Zhang Zhe looked at her reply and mulled over her words.

’So the girl is admitting that her own background is shady,’ he thought.

’But the money is clean.’

’From the way she’s talking, it sounds like she’s using the money from the foreign organization for other things. Zhang Zhe isn’t even important enough to get a cut of her primary operational funds.’

With that... Zhang Zhe felt relieved.

He asked her directly how much they were offering. Without wasting any time, she sent him a screenshot of the approval process.

The budget for the lecturers at this event was 20,000.

However, they had invited four lecturers in total, and Zhang Zhe was just one of them, so he would only get five thousand.

It was a multi-speaker lecture series.

Still, an appearance fee of 5,000 for a day’s work wasn’t low, especially for a "minor internet celebrity" like Zhang Zhe.

Zhang Zhe hesitated for a moment, then decided to take the gig and take a trip to a university campus.

Besides a matchmaking event for kindergarten teachers, it was probably the place with the highest concentration of unmarried women.

...

The next morning, Zhang Zhe called the university student to go over the details. He then went to her school, the Qing City College of Arts and Sciences, to sign the contract in person.

The lecture was scheduled to start at 5 p.m. on Tuesday.

He was the fourth of the four lecturers.

The themes for the first three speakers were "Youth," "Love," and "Career." When it was his turn, the topic would naturally be "Marriage."

The female teacher in charge of signing the contract with him, who looked exactly like Fu Shou’Er, briefly mentioned the requirements.

She hoped he would "help the students understand the objective principles of adult relationships and marriage, establish a correct outlook on love and marriage, and ensure they neither fear marriage nor grow desperate to marry, thereby forming a proper understanding of it..."

After listening to the teacher drone on, Zhang Zhe, on some strange impulse, asked her a question:

"Ma’am, are you married?"

In response, he received a glare and no direct answer.

After he left, the student who had brought him to the school told him the story: the teacher was sort of married, but she had been the victim of a marriage scam. After she had a child, her husband returned to Africa.

’They have a teacher like *that* in charge of the female students’ affairs?’

’This school is really something else.’

Zhang Zhe had to try with all his might not to laugh out loud.

...

「Soon, it was time for the Tuesday lecture.」

Xia Yi took the day off specifically to help him. First, she went with Zhang Zhe to get a makeover that made him look scholarly and profound, and then she came with him to the school for the event.

They told everyone she was his assistant, which made Zhang Zhe seem more like a real internet celebrity.

At 4:30 p.m., the organizers told Zhang Zhe to head backstage and wait for the previous speaker to finish.

Xia Yi couldn’t sit still, so she went out to take a peek.

The information she came back with was:

"It’s fine, Zhang Zhe. There aren’t many people in the audience, only about a thousand."

"The seats aren’t even full."

"It’s the student Q&A session right now. It doesn’t look like anyone is too interested in this lecture, so it should go smoothly."