CH 15

If he wanted money, he could have sold these photos directly to Jiang Lun instead of coming to Xi Nian.

At present, except for the mixed praise and criticism一Xi Nias had nothing else to his name. 

Xi Nian didn’t speak, his eyes were dark and complex as if there was a past that others would never see. Lu Xingzhe only felt the other party’s grip on his hand loosen and tightened, almost about to crush his wrist bone.

They seemed to have started in the same way in their previous lives. Xi Nian was greedy for the shortcut brought by Lu Xingzhe. Once there was the first time, there would be the second and third time. In the end, it was like two strands of threads tightly knotted together, neither could be untied and nor could be thrown away. 

Xi Nian really wanted to get ahead, but in his opinion, if he again got entangled with Lu Xingzhe, the ending would definitely be similar to his previous life.

It was okay to hit the south wall once1, so there was no need to do it the second time.

Maybe it was for the future, maybe it was because of the thorn in his heart, or perhaps because of some inexplicable things, Xi Nian slowly let go of Lu Xingzhe’s hand. His heart, scorching with greed, suddenly cooled down and it only took a few moments before and after.

“Excuse me,” Under Lu Xingzhe’s gaze, Xi Nian took a step back, as if he had stepped out of a deep quagmire, and said, “I don’t think I can afford to pay the price for your business. It would be better to sell the photos to someone else.” 

While talking to a wise man one did not need to be too thorough. When Liu Xingzhe heard the words, he understood Xi Nian’s meaning almost instantly. His body stiffened slightly, and he slowly straightened his back. He habitually wanted to curl his lips, but when he pulled the corners of his mouth he couldn’t succeed so he simply gave up.

Lu Xingzhe asked: “Because I’m a paparazzi who can’t see the light2?”

The tone was casual, even calm.

This was just one of the reasons, but Xi Nian didn’t want to explain. He didn’t say anything, and it seemed that he acquiesced.

Lu Xingzhe was imperceptibly silent for a moment: “Okay, I understand.”

No idea what exactly he understood.

Lu Xingzhe leaned over and retrieved his camera bag from the sofa. After a moment, when he looked up again, he smiled at Xi Nian. He was used to being frivolous and flirtatious, but now gave people a feeling of a forced smile: “Hey,”

Lu Xingzhe said, “This business cannot be done with benevolence and righteousness. Jiang Lun has set his sights on you, so take care of yourself.”

Without waiting for Xi Nian to answer, he turned and left, clean and neat. The door was closed with a light bang, and the room fell silent. Only the shadows of trees swayed outside the window, and occasionally a cool breeze blew in, causing the curtains to fluctuate.

Xi Nian watched him leave and stood in place for a long time without moving until his legs were a bit numb, and finally settling down on the sofa. He glanced over the coffee table and through the corner of his eyes he caught a glimpse of the envelope—the envelope with photos lying quietly on top, and was not taken away by Lu Xingzhe.

“…”

Maybe he forgot.

Xi Nian withdrew his gaze, no longer did his heart feel any pleasure in picking up such a material of exposure. He laid down on the sofa, covering his eyelids with the back of his hand, blocking the somewhat harsh light from the ceiling, and remained motionless for a while.

Human emotions are too complex, and the system occasionally observed them closely. It quietly landed on the armrest of the sofa, but before it could analyse anything, a deep voice with a hint of warning rang in its ear: “Stay away from me.”

Hearing the words, the system fluttered its wings, and subconsciously flew to the coffee table, a little dazed.

Xi Nian opened his eyes to look at it, and sat up slightly: “What are you doing out here, you want to shock me?”

System:【How did you know?】

Xi Nian: “…”

The system was just joking with him: 【Under the premise of not violating morality and law, the system has no right to interfere with the host’s feelings and the right to choose a spouse.】

Xi Nian lay back again: “Even if you don’t do electric shock, I won’t agree.”

He was not stupid, he was ruined by Lu Xingzhe’s backbiting in his previous life. So, how can he possibly make progress in this life if he intended to go in the same direction? But, this Jiang Lun’s matter was indeed a bit tricky.

The popularity within the entertainment industry has always been time-sensitive. Xi Nian only gained a wave of fans yesterday due to his outstanding performance in the preliminary round of the Star Movement Association. The next day, Su Ge’s management team took action and began to publish frequent articles. In addition to the newly acquired high luxury endorsement, there were also several latest pictures of the gymnasium where Su Ge was interacting with fans in the rain—while boasting his strength and doting on fans. Therefore, along with Su Ge’s huge fan traffic, Xi Nian’s hot search was directly pushed to third place.

Lu Xingzhe came out of the bathroom after taking a shower in the middle of the night. Upon logging into Weibo, the entire screen was filled with Su Ge’s fluttering red3 popular posts.

[QAQ Su Su is too fond of fans! He signed autographs for fans after such heavy rain. I’m worried that he will catch a cold!]

[He actually won Oulin’s endorsement in the Asia-Pacific region, he’s the only one among male stars, so let’s ask who else is there!]

[Su Su’s character is super nice, he is so gentle when he smiles. He signed my autograph that day and kept reminding fans to go back early and pay attention to safety.]

[Given my family’s Su Su face alone, he would go on hot search in minutes! Okay? Unlike some male stars, they may not be on it even once in ten or eight years!]

The situation was rampant, but that was all. Lu Xingzhe lit a cigarette, his wet black hair still dripping with water, and a strand fell on his forehead, leaving his skin a colourless pallor. His lip colour was a bit pale, and he slowly exhaled smoke, blurring the surrounding scenery.

The phone buzzed on the table for a long time, Lu Xingzhe finished smoking his cigarette before answering: “What’s the matter?”

Jiang Lun’s uneasy voice sounded from the other end: “Why didn’t you answer the phone for so long, did you find anything about the work you took?”

He was referring to Xi Nian’s black material.

Lu Xingzhe squinted his eyes, and rolled the long-burned-out cigarette butt on the ashtray again and again: “I didn’t get any photo and I won’t take this business.”

Jiang Lun didn’t seem to believe it, and his tone was a bit puzzled: “Are you sure you didn’t get it?”

Lu Xingzhe made up a excuse casually: “There was a car accident a few days ago and my leg was broken.”

After he finished speaking, Lu Xingzhe didn’t bother to continue dealing with the old fox, so he hung up the phone and threw the phone back on the table with a bang. There was a small black USB flash drive next to the phone, Lu Xingzhe looked at it for a while, his eyes remained fixed and silent.

The identity of paparazzi not only had a bad reputation, but also could never be seen in the light, nor could be seen in front of the public. 

He had known this reality for a long time.

Lu Xingzhe has many small accounts online that he had been using to expose information. After sitting quietly for a long time, he finally opened Weibo and logged in to one of the most popular accounts and the one with the largest number of fans, the Big V account. Then, he plugged his USB drive into his computer and imported videos that he had already edited.

It was late at night, and it was the time when the night owls were most active. When the star-chasing girls were voting for their idols—a video was spreading silently and rapidly.

The person who posted the video was a Weibo-certified celebrity in the entertainment circle. Although his identity information was unknown to the outside world, all of the leading stars’ scandals leaked through his hands were Thor’s Hammer4, so they were quite credible.

When a group of netizens found out that he had updated his post, they first ran to Weibo following the entertainment spirit of eating melons, however, after seeing the content clearly, the melon was directly swallowed5. 

This video did not even exceed two minutes, and the two protagonists in it were familiar to everyone, namely Xi Nian, who had been in the limelight recently, and Su Ge, a traffic idol.6

Both of them were in the lounge and the content of the conversation…to be precise, it was Su Ge’s unilateral voice, which everyone could hear clearly.

——Congratulations, first place.

Su Ge walked to the water dispenser and took a glass of water.

——Are you very proud?

Xi Nian ignored him and was about to leave with his bag on his back, but the other person stopped him.

——What time do you plan to leave? Don’t you want to stay to watch the next game?

Su Ge in the video and the appearance in front of the media camera were completely different, also combined with the cold tone and thorny sentences, netizens could not help but be surprised. But, before they even had time to express their emotions, they saw Su Ge in the video move to a side, pretended to fall, and grabbed Xi Nian’s arm—as well as poured all the water in the glass on him.

Melons eating Netizen:?

Some people didn’t realize what was going on just by watching the video, but as the number of views skyrocketed, many people gradually discovered the clues.

[Fuck7!!!If I’m not mistaken! Su Ge poured boiling water! Boiling water!]

[Yes, yes, he just used the red water valve when collecting water from the Water dispenser!!!]

[This cup of water will fucking scald the skin, I already feel the pain for Xi Nian, Wuwuwu]

[Too fucking poisonous, isn’t it? Su Ge has always followed the character of the good-natured little brother, but I didn’t expect him to be such a person in private. How did Xi Nian offend him?]

[Looking at the upper right corner of the video, there is a date and time display, which is the time when Su Ge was eliminated by Xi Nian in the ‘Star Movement Association’. Do you still have to ask, it must be because he harboured resentment and wanted revenge.]

Perhaps it was because Su Ge’s marketing persona was too successful and the sudden exposure of this incident made people feel a sense of deceive and unbelieve. However, this was not the end. The blogger who posted the video followed closely and compared Su Ge’s hand closeups during matches with his Weibo injury pictures, which proved that the injury was fake.

Netizen: !!!!

They were shocked to the point of being unable to fully breathe, how could there be such a dog like Su Ge in the world? The fake injury could be done to gain sympathy, understood, but he still had to use boiling water to splash on people. Wasn’t Xi Nian too miserable? Recently, he not only had to be abused by Su Ge’s fans on the internet but also had to participate in competitions with injury, what a human tragedy!

Passers-by were so angry and sympathetic, not to mention Xi Nian’s fans, who almost died on the spot when they saw the news and were eager to draw an 80000-meter-long sword to kill Su Ge and offer sacrifice to heaven.

What a dog, what a dog.

It was so poisonous, so poisonous.

How did Su Ge appear in front of the media with a clear conscience after he burned Xi Nian’s hand? Wasn’t he guilty? Did he not even feel guilty? Xi Nian’s face turned pale after being dumped by hot water, he should just have slapped Su Ge!

The news quickly spread to the entire Internet, including Su Ge’s fans. Unlike the previous aggressive and bullying screen, they fell quiet this time, silently digesting this shocking and disappointing incident.

They watched as Su Ge made his debut…

Step by step, from an unknown trainee to where he was today. At that time, Su Ge was young and far away in South Korea, he was always bullied and isolated. He and his team members took a few minutes of shots on average, so he got only a few seconds of exposure.  

Fans were distressed, but there was nothing they could do.

Later, Su Ge’s popularity exploded, his traffic increased, and more people got to know him. They were both happy and gratified because, in the entertainment industry, only idols with internet traffic could not be bullied.

But it turned out that people change…

The video was like a mountain of hard evidence, and fans could not even help him to explain this and clear his name. The pictures could still be said to have been forcefully edited, but the video couldn’t be fake. Moreover, in recent years, there had been much negative news regarding Su Ge’s behaviour in his privately sphere, and just because there was no solid evidence, fans were unwilling to believe it.

They wanted to protect Su Ge, but they unknowingly became the invisible knives in his hands, hurting too many people regardless of right or wrong. How was this different from the people who bullied Su Ge?

The news ravaged the entire network like a storm.

More rational netizens had started to withdraw from his fan support one after another, and the avatars of several major support stations were also blacked out. As the heat of the incident continued to ferment, it reached the top of the search, during which many fans turned their paths, some turned into black fans or some into anti-fans. However, there were still some people who refused to believe that Su Ge would do such things. Hence, like two poles of the earth, fans were divided and argued endlessly, fighting and cursing erupted everywhere.

Briefly put, Su Ge’s house collapsed.8

[tóu zhuàng nán qiáng]: Head bumping against the south wall, an idiom term, refers to the recognition of death. This phenomenon is used to describe someone’s behavior that is stubborn and refuses to listen to different opinions.

[jiàn bu de guāng dí]: Can not see true light. It is an idiom expression, which refers to doing some bad things, violating morality, violate laws and regulations. Just like how thieves usually go out to commit crimes at night because they are afraid that it will be easy to be discovered if it is too bright. 

[piāo hóng]: Floating red is a stock market term, meaning that stocks are rising. Hence, referring to something that is quickly rising in value/number. In Chinese stock trading or technical analysis, most of them use red to show rises, and green to show falls. If the stocks are all rising, then they are all red. 

[léi shén zhī chuí]: The hammer of Thor, who is the thunder of God (mostly known from MCU’s movies/comic books), and his hammer is known as Mjölnir and the word Mjölnir means “to smash”.

In other words, netizen went with the intention of enjoying someone else’s gossip (eating melon seeds, in short, melon eaters), this is what usually happens as the majority of the population enjoys it when stars are exposed. After seeing the news, due to shock they forgot to even chew the melon and swallowed it.

[liú liàng míng xīng] It refers to a star with many fans and strong appeal, but no especially famous works. Traffic stars usually have a good-looking appearance and high popularity. They occupy Weibo’s hot searches and entertainment headlines all year round and have a high degree of topicality on the Internet. Traffic refers to the data traffic on the Internet, which can be used to measure the popularity of a star. On the Internet in mainland China, a certain star is called a “traffic idol” which often implies that he does not have the strength to match his Internet popularity.

[wò cáo]: Swear word that is used to expressing surprise, expressing surprise, disbelief, and unwillingness to accept. 

[tā fáng liǎo]: It is a term used in fan circles, which means “the house has collapsed” on the surface, and when it is extended to star chasing, it mainly refers to the collapse of the image of idols in the minds of fans. In the eyes of fans, idols are a sacred and beautiful house. If there is some negative news about idols, it means that the “house” of idols has collapsed.