After Rising to Power with a Ball the Sickly Beauty Gave Up - Reviews

Can we just take a moment to appreciate how well-written the dialogue is in this chapter? Because I'm genuinely impressed. Each character has such a distinct voice that I can basically tell who's speaking just by reading the lines without looking at the names. Ning Yichu's dialogue is absolutely vicious and I love it. "I'm not the one who's been cuckolded and raised an illegitimate child for fifty-three years" — this man does NOT hold back. And then there's the exchange with He Rulin where he casually drops "You're an illegitimate child of an illegitimate child, it's normal for a legitimate child not to want to discuss seniority with you." That's not just a comeback, that's a surgical strike. He's basically dismantling He Rulin's entire identity in one sentence. He Rulin himself has such a deliciously annoying voice. "I wonder how little Chu found out. By the way, Shixia listens to you so obediently, is it because you have some leverage over him?" This guy is literally trying to stir the pot while the house is on fire. And the fact that Ning Yichu just smiles and delivers that line about illegitimate children? Perfect. He Grandfather's voice is pathetic in the best narrative way. He goes from deflection to self-pity to this weird performance of remorse, and it's clear he's not actually sorry — he's just trying to manage the damage. The line "All these years, if I had any ulterior motives towards you, with your abilities, you would've discovered it long ago, right?" is so transparently manipulative that I almost laughed out loud. And He Shixia! The way his dialogue shifts from cold warnings to quietly asking "Do you want to eat a little more?" while his partner is dismantling the entire family? That contrast tells us SO much about their relationship without any exposition.

Let me break down the stakes in this batch because they're layered in a way that's really satisfying. On the surface: He Shixia wants to give Ning Yichu his shares. The He family doesn't want that. Ning Yichu doesn't care. But underneath all of that, there are SO many conflicts happening simultaneously. Ning Yichu's internal conflict is the most painful one. He says he doesn't want love, family, friendship anymore. He says He Shixia "deserved it too" for not accepting his kindness in the past life. But then he also says "I'm suspicious by nature, so I'd probably be doubting while falling for you" about He Shixia's past-life behavior. He's aware of his own capacity to be manipulated even while trying not to be. That's real conflict—not just "I hate you" but "I know I could still fall for you and that terrifies me." He Shixia's conflict is equally complex. He wants to give everything to Ning Yichu, but he also knows the family will fight him. He offers to let Ning Yichu tarnish his reputation in creative ways—"as long as it's not cheating or committing crimes, I can cooperate." He's willing to be the villain if it makes Ning Yichu happy. But is this genuine redemption or just another form of self-sacrifice that will eventually resent him? The He family's conflict is greed masked as concern. He Rulin openly admits he wants the shares. He Ruxue is the only one who sounds almost reasonable—she knows her limits. He Grandmother and He Grandfather are terrified the family name will change to Ning. And He Ruyue's theory that this is all a performance is both the funniest and most dangerous observation in the room. The stakes keep rising because everyone wants something different. Ning Yichu wants survival. He Shixia wants redemption. The family wants control. And none of these goals are compatible.

I need a minute. I genuinely need a minute after reading Grandmother's confession scene. Let's talk about He Ying — He Grandmother — because this woman is absolutely devastating in the best way. She's been the matriarch, the rock, the one who held the He family together through everything. And the revelation that her entire life, her entire identity as a wife and mother, was built on a lie? The text says she was "so angry that her mind went blank, almost unable to speak." That's not just shock — that's the ground being ripped out from under your entire existence. But what broke me was the detail about her first child. She gave birth, she fainted from the difficulty, and when she woke up, her baby was gone. And Grandfather told her the baby died, but actually — he'd already swapped it with an illegitimate child. She mourned a child who was alive, and raised a child who wasn't hers, for over five decades. FIFTY-THREE YEARS, people. That's not a secret, that's a life sentence she was forced to serve. And then there's Dingbang. Oh, Dingbang. The text describes him as "even more desperate," realizing that Grandmother won't consider their fifty-plus years of mother-son relationship because he's not actually her son. He called her mom his whole life. He thought he belonged. And now? He's literally being told he's expendable. The most heartbreaking detail though? Grandfather's excuse: "Telling you both things at once would be like killing you." Bro, you ALREADY killed her by living a lie for fifty-three years. This isn't protection, this is cowardice dressed up as mercy. And through all of this, Ning Yichu just sits there eating porridge, watching the drama unfold. The contrast between his calm and everyone else's devastation is... something else entirely.

The dialogue in this chapter is absolutely stellar and Ning Yichu is the MVP of sharp-tongued one-liners. Let me just collect some highlights because I need to memorialize them. 'I made a mess, so it's only right for you, my legal spouse, to clean it up, right?'—this is delivered with such casual confidence that it's almost insulting how well it works. Then: 'Why can't it be that he just lost his mind?' when someone suggests Ning Yichu drugged He Shixia. The man is turning accusations back on his accusers like a verbal judo master. And then the line that started it all: 'Both of us have no blood relation to the He family, so why can you speak, but I can't?' This is the kind of dialogue that makes you laugh out loud because it's so perfectly timed and so devastatingly accurate. He Grandfather's voice is also great—'You should be checked into a mental hospital!' is such a classic angry elder response, and He Grandmother's 'Explain yourself' is delivered with the cold authority of someone who has run this family for decades and isn't about to lose control. The servant dialogue is a nice touch too—'such high-society gossip was not something they could afford to indulge in up close'—it grounds the scene in reality. And He Ruzhu's loofah soup joke? 'Sixth Brother, your wife seems a bit fiery. Maybe the kitchen should make him some loofah soup...' The fact that this joke lands as poorly as it does is comedy writing at its finest. Every character has a distinct voice, and the banter flows naturally. The author clearly understands that dialogue isn't just about what characters say—it's about what they reveal about themselves in the process of speaking.

I need to talk about He Shixia because honestly, this guy is a walking contradiction and I love it. On one hand, he's the 'Love Saint' who apparently did all this planning to expose the He family's secrets. On the other hand, when he finds Ning Yichu on that swing, he immediately starts pouring out his childhood regret like he's been sitting on this for years. And the way he phrases it — 'I regret standing by and watching' — bro, you watched an eight-year-old kid cut swing ropes in the dark with a head injury and you just... stood there? In the shadows? Like some weird guardian angel who forgot to actually be helpful? But here's the thing that got me: He Shixia found Ning Yichu's elementary school diary. His DIARY. After Ning Yichu died in their previous life, He Shixia went to the Ning family, searched through his old belongings, and found a political science textbook that had been used as a diary because the real one got burned. That level of obsession is either deeply romantic or deeply unsettling. I'm still deciding which. Ning Yichu's reaction to all this is perfection. He doesn't melt. He doesn't get soft. He literally slaps He Shixia's hand away when he tries to catch him jumping off the swing and says 'I still have things at the Ning family that I need to get.' This man has been through hell and his immediate response is 'actually, I should go collect my stuff.' The emotional walls are immaculate.

This one scene. Just one scene. Ning Yichu on that swing, He Shixia finding him, and the whole thing unravels. I read it three times. The swing itself — it's described as 'the most ordinary kind of swing, with two hemp ropes tied to a tree branch, connecting to a not-too-big wooden board half a meter off the ground.' Half a meter. That's it. That's the entire setting for what becomes the most emotionally charged moment in these chapters. No grand ballroom, no dramatic rainstorm, just a dusty old swing in a garden that nobody uses anymore but nobody dismantled either. It's perfect because it's exactly the kind of thing Ning Yichu would connect with — ordinary, slightly forgotten, barely holding together but still functional. And then He Shixia says: 'When I was fourteen, I went with my family to a Ning family banquet. I saw you in the Ning family's back garden. That was the first time I saw you; you should have been about eight years old then.' The first time he saw Ning Yichu. He remembers being eight. He remembers the bandages on Ning Yichu's head, the way he was crying while cutting the ropes, not very efficiently. He saw a sick, injured child trying to enact tiny revenge because no one else would give him justice, and he watched from the shadows instead of helping. And now, years later, he's standing there wanting to take that child home and raise him properly. Ning Yichu's response? 'Yeah, I cracked my head open, couldn't even get up, but driven by revenge, an eight-year-old kid managed to sneak out of his bedroom, steal a utility knife from someone else's room, and without being caught, went to the back garden to cut the ropes. Is that impressive or scary?' He's daring He Shixia to call him pitiful. He's saying: I was already dangerous, I was already vengeful, don't you dare soften this into a sad story.

Let me just say this: the author knows how to paint a scene without trying too hard. The garden description is so specific and so understated at the same time. 'The tree was lush with branches and leaves, and only a few rays of sunlight penetrated through, casting a near-circular shadow in the vibrant garden.' That near-circular shadow — it's like a spotlight on Ning Yichu without the author ever saying 'he was the center of attention.' And He Shixia's perspective of him: 'He Shixia looked at his thin figure and skin so pale it was almost transparent, feeling as if he were seeing a fragile butterfly about to take flight. The butterfly fluttered among the flowers, seemingly ready to fall from exhaustion at any moment.' This is such a loaded metaphor because Ning Yichu is absolutely NOT fragile. He's been cutting rope with a utility knife while injured since he was eight. He outsmarted the entire Ning family. But from the outside, from He Shixia's view, he looks like he could break. And that's the tragedy of it — Ning Yichu has spent his whole life looking like something that needs protecting when he's actually the most dangerous person in the room. The swing maintenance detail is also brilliant worldbuilding — 'No one in the He family had played on it for a long time, but no one had thought to dismantle it either. So when the servants tidied the garden, they occasionally maintained the swing, preventing it from falling into disrepair and breaking when someone sat on it.' Nobody played on it, but nobody got rid of it either. It just... waited. Like so many things in Ning Yichu's life. It was maintained by strangers, kept functional by people who didn't know who would eventually use it. That's honestly kind of beautiful in a melancholy way.

Okay, let me just say this: the way this chapter unravels is absolutely masterful. You start with Ning Yichu dropping that bomb about Dingbang being the illegitimate child, and then the layers just keep peeling back like an onion that makes you cry. First you learn Dingbang isn't Grandmother's biological son, then you find out the REAL biological son died at birth, and THEN you discover Grandfather literally swapped a dead baby for an illegitimate one and let the whole family live a lie for FIFTY-THREE YEARS. My jaw was on the floor. What I love about the plot structure here is how Ning Yichu orchestrates everything. He doesn't just blurt things out randomly — he lets Grandfather CONFESS, he lets the truth come out through Grandfather's own mouth. That's smart storytelling. The revelation about the dead baby being replaced is the kind of twist that recontextualizes EVERYTHING that came before. Every warm family moment, every display of Grandmother's authority, every sense of family identity — it was all built on a foundation of lies. And the pacing? Chef's kiss. You've got the immediate shock of the illegitimacy reveal, then the emotional devastation of the swapped baby, then Grandfather's pathetic attempt to play the victim, and then Ning Yichu's absolutely ruthless commentary: "I'm not the one who's been cuckolded and raised an illegitimate child for fifty-three years." That line alone is worth the price of admission. The only thing I'm slightly worried about is whether the author can sustain this level of dramatic tension going forward. When you blow up the entire family structure in one chapter, what's left to build on? But honestly, I'm here for it.

Okay so let me just say—this rebirth premise could have been so lazy. You know the type: protagonist dies, wakes up, suddenly knows everything, fixes everything, happy ending. But this? This is different. Ning Yichu literally came back and his first instinct isn't to win He Shixia over—it's to push him away. Hard. The plot structure here is honestly clever because it's playing with audience expectations. In the past life, Ning Yichu was desperate for love, tried everything to hold onto He Shixia, and it destroyed him. Now in this life, he's seen the truth—he died alone, wronged for a lifetime, and his plea for help was twisted into something unscrupulous. So his arc isn't about redemption or winning love. It's about choosing survival. "Once you've died, you don't want to think about all those things anymore. Family, love, friendship, none of it is more important than me being alive." And the He family subplot? Genius. While Ning Yichu is upstairs recovering, the whole family is downstairs scheming about shares. He Rulin with his wine glass and disgusting comments about "the child in his belly"—what a piece of work. But the real plot tension isn't just will-Ning-Yichu-and-He-Shixia-get-back-together. It's whether He Shixia can actually change or if he's just performing redemption. When Ning Yichu says "I also don't believe that someone who has also died once would think I'm more important than their own life"—that's the core question of the entire story. Also the share transfer plot is such a good external pressure cooker. The He family can't just sit still. They're watching, waiting, and He Ruyue's theory that He Shixia is just putting on a show is both funny and terrifying because... what if she's right?

Okay so this chapter is basically one massive plot detonation after another and I am HERE for it. Let me just... process what happened. The He family was secretly plotting to use Ning Yichu as a breeding tool and then dump him, right? That was already shady. But then Ning Yichu drops the BOMBSHELL that He Dingbang isn't actually related to the He family at all? And then He Grandfather confesses he swapped his biological son out and raised someone else's kid for FIFTY-THREE YEARS? My jaw was on the floor. And then—AND THEN—Ning Yichu goes and suggests a paternity test like it's nothing, and then throws out the theory that the biological son didn't just 'die unfortunately' but was deliberately left untreated? The man is weaponizing family secrets like they're everyday conversation starters. The plot structure here is so satisfying because every time you think the drama has peaked, Ning Yichu just keeps digging. He's not just surviving this toxic family, he's actively dismantling them from the inside. And He Shixia? He's right there with him, cleaning up spilled porridge like it's the most normal thing in the world while his entire family is having a collective meltdown. The way the author layered these reveals—the breeding plot, the swapped child, the possible murder of the real heir—it all builds so naturally. Each revelation makes the previous one feel even more sinister in retrospect. This is peak family drama storytelling and I need to know what happens next.

Can we just talk about He Shixia for a moment because THIS MAN is fully, completely, irrevocably gone for Ning Yichu and it is the most entertaining character arc I have ever witnessed. Remember when the family was discussing how to get rid of Ning Yichu after he bore their child? And now here he is, picking up a mop and cleaning bird's nest porridge off the floor because his 'legal spouse' asked him to? The contrast is absolutely hilarious. He Shixia went from cold family heir to devoted husband in what seems like record time, and honestly? I respect the commitment. But what's really interesting is how his relationship with the rest of the family has shifted. He's not just defying them—he's actively choosing sides. When He Grandfather threatens Ning Yichu with a cane, He Shixia BLOCKS IT. When He Dingbang yells at Ning Yichu to shut up, He Shixia says 'Uncle!' like he's defending a misbehaving toddler. The power dynamic in this family has completely flipped, and He Shixia is the one holding the cards now. Meanwhile, Ning Yichu is this fascinating character who seems to have zero respect for anyone in the He family except He Shixia, and yet he's also the most dangerous person in the room. He's pregnant, he's sharp-tongued, and he's strategically dismantling fifty years of family lies with the casual demeanor of someone ordering dinner. Their dynamic is equal parts absurd and genuine—I genuinely believe He Shixia cares about him, not just the pregnancy. And that makes me curious about where this goes. Is Ning Yichu playing a longer game, or has he genuinely caught feelings too? Because if he has, the family is about to get wrecked on a whole new level.

The setting in this chapter is so well-chosen and I want to appreciate it. The He family is sitting in an 'enclosed flower room adjacent to the indoor area, having afternoon tea, separated from the main hall by a few open glass doors.' This is such a specific, vivid detail—it tells you everything about this family. They're wealthy enough to have separate dining spaces, they value appearances enough to host in a flower room, and the glass doors mean everything is visible, nothing is truly private. Which is perfect because this chapter is all about secrets being exposed in broad daylight. The dining room scene itself is cinematic. You have the spilled bird's nest porridge shattering on the tile floor, the servants frozen in place, the He family members streaming in from the flower room like extras in a soap opera, and Ning Yichu sitting calmly eating lean meat porridge like he's not the agent of chaos holding the room hostage. The contrast between the elegant setting and the ugly truths being revealed is delicious. The author also does a great job with the physical space—the cane being raised, He Shixia blocking it, He Dingbang throwing himself at He Grandmother's legs. Every beat has clear blocking and staging. Even the servant who brings the porridge at the worst possible moment feels like a deliberate comedic touch, like the universe itself is watching this family implode. The world feels lived-in and real, not just a backdrop for drama. You can picture this house, these rooms, these people. That's good writing.