The remaining nine players all found their respective marriage partners one after another.
But aside from Gu Yuan, the other nine aberrations treated their partners terribly.
Their attitudes were cold, and they didn't see them as wives at all, but rather as tools.
Tools that were temporarily useful, but could be casually discarded after use.
After all, most aberrations were exceptionally indifferent to emotions.
If not for the match-making system's promise to raise their dungeon levels, they would never have accepted the invitation in the first place.
Raising their favorability was, to say the least, incredibly difficult.
Receiving meticulous care in daily life was out of the question.
Want to eat?
The "better" aberrations might have some leftovers or bloody, raw meat in their homes.
And that was considered good.
Some aberrations had nothing at all in their homes.
If players wanted to fill their stomachs, they could only rely on the emergency rations they brought with them.
As for sleeping?
That was even simpler.
These aberrations hadn't prepared any rooms at all.
The vast majority of players could only sleep on the sofa.
Some aberrations' homes didn't even have a sofa, forcing players to squat in a corner.
In the less sanitary places, the floors were crawling with cockroaches and rats, a sight that would make anyone break down.
They couldn't sleep at all at night, all while enduring the terror welling up from within.
They couldn't eat or sleep well, their nerves stretched taut.
They had no idea what the future held.
All they could do was pray silently, fantasizing about the day they would successfully win over their marriage partners, unlock the dungeons, and return to the real world, famous and successful.
This was the situation for those nine players on their first day of marriage.
It was also completely within the expectations of the audience.
At this stage, the marriage partners' favorability was still too low.
They could only rely on subsequent missions to see if they could raise it.
The viewers from the Sun Country and the Great Cold Country were cringing so hard their balls ached as they watched.
[What? He's making Miss Sumi sleep in the bathroom? That bastard!]
[Countless people pursue her in the real world, and this Piao Dagen doesn't cherish her at all!]
[He even took the one hundred Ghost Coins! That damned aberration!]
[Yamada Aiko must remember the honor of our empire! Just endure the Kappa!]
[He's the Water God! If you ignore his looks, he's very powerful!]
[If she can give birth to the son of the Water God, Miss Aiko will have performed a great service!]
[That's right, Mr. Yugong's dungeon is the B-rank Ghost Lake. An entire great lake is his territory.]
If not for Yun Zhenyue, the people of the two countries might have been able to console themselves.
But the scene over on Gu Yuan's side made the viewers from both countries explode with jealousy!
Even viewers from around the world had never seen a scene like this!
Yun Zhenyue looked as if she had simply returned home.
She was doing laundry, cooking, and tidying up the house.
And Gu Yuan?
He was happy to just lie back and do nothing.
In any case, he had gained a beautiful, frugal, and capable wife whom he also knew. He had totally scored!
He wasn't like those other, ordinary aberrations.
He had no interest in making things difficult for people.
This was what amazed the worldwide audience the most.
Gu Yuan didn't put on any airs like an aberration at all.
He was just lounging on the sofa, playing the Switch that Yun Zhenyue had brought.
He gave Yun Zhenyue a great deal of autonomy.
The two of them were really like a newlywed couple.
Yun Zhenyue ate a meal of four dishes and a soup, and she even got to sleep next to Gu Yuan.
He was handsome and easy-going.
On a world-renowned forum for discussing aberration marriages, Gu Yuan had already been voted the most handsome aberration of all time!
Many girls around the world had put up his poster in their rooms.
'How could such a good aberration exist?'
'It's like she pulled an SSR!'
The Dragon Country viewers were overjoyed.
[I would be so happy if Gu Yuan were my husband, I'd do it even if they paid me a million!]
[Stop dreaming, sis. Just go pleasure yourself.]
[I've watched all the aberration marriages, and I've seriously never seen a scene like this.]
[Looking at it this way, there's totally hope of winning over Gu Yuan!]
[Yeah, could it be that our Dragon Country will become the first nation to successfully conquer an aberration?]
[Now we just have to hope his dungeon is a powerful one.]
...
Meanwhile.
In the Sun Country, at the National Defense Ghost Match-making Strategic Affairs Office.
The director, Yamamoto Kentaro, stared with a grim face at the two starkly different scenes on the large screen.
Why should Yamada Aiko, in whom the empire had placed such high hopes, be humiliated?
Even after she gave the empire's most precious Ghost Artifact, the Red Lotus Folding Fan, to her marriage partner, she didn't receive any favorable treatment in return.
And yet this Dragon Country person named Yun Zhenyue, who just brought a few home appliances, was receiving such preferential treatment from her partner?
The two scenes, in their extreme contrast, completely broke the composure of the sixty-something Yamamoto Kentaro.
"Damn those Dragon Country people!"
"They must have gotten their hands on some special intelligence!"
"Have you still not found any information on this Dragon Country aberration named Gu Yuan?"
A subordinate, trembling, swallowed hard and said nervously, "Reporting, Director!"
"We've conducted a thorough investigation. Not just our country, but no country has any data on him."
He paused for a moment.
"But Director, if you think about it."
"I believe the reason there's no data on him is mainly because he's too weak to have any intelligence value."
"Those weak aberrations are as common and widespread as street rats."
"The fact that he lives on the third floor also indirectly proves this point."
"Even if they succeed in winning him over, Dragon Country will only receive a meager benefit."
"But we're different..."
Hearing this, the expression on Yamamoto Kentaro's face softened slightly.
'There's indeed some truth to that.'
'What's the use of a good personality?'
'He's just an insignificant nobody, nothing to be concerned about.'
If they could win over that Kappa, it would surely allow the empire to rise to the top of the world.
He wasn't the only one who thought this way.
Viewers from the Sun Country and other nations shared this opinion.
Public opinion began to slander Gu Yuan.
[What's the use of being handsome? An aberration living on the third floor, heh~]
[Our country wouldn't deign to 'conquer' such a weak existence!]
[Any aberration from the fourth floor could kill him easily!]
[You can be happy now, but you'll be crying later.]
[Right! Aberration marriage isn't some ordinary blind date. Treating the player well doesn't mean you've won.]
[A weak aberration will definitely give trashy gifts, to say nothing of the dungeon.]
...
Seeing this, the expressions of the Dragon Country viewers gradually turned ugly.
They wanted to refute the claims, but they couldn't think of any reason to.
Aberration marriage wasn't won by seeing whose aberration partner treated them better.
Instead, it was about the gift-giving that came next, as well as the dungeon-unlocking phase.
If the marriage partner was weak, and the gifts were all a pile of junk, and even the dungeon was the worst of the worst, then it was all completely useless.
At the Dragon Country Ghost Match-making Scientific Research Headquarters.
Wang Xiuwen had also thought of this.
He let out a deep sigh, a hint of helplessness in his eyes.
'It can't be helped.'
'We had no information on Gu Yuan beforehand.'
'On top of that, Yun Zhenyue hasn't taken the initiative to contact her superiors.'
'Otherwise, we absolutely would not have let her choose so easily.'
'Gu Yuan being nice to her now is truly useless.'
'It all depends on what gifts he can offer later, and the dungeon that will be unlocked after a successful conquest.'
Wang Xiuwen's mind raced, but in the end, he just shook his head.
"Forget it."
"As long as she can come back alive."
"Nothing else matters."