Chapter 275 - Putting Away All the Documents, Fang JunRong Planned to Meet up with Jiang WenYu (1)

As much as he was filled with regrets, he could not turn back time. Tong Jiaming had no choice but to continue down the path that he had started. As much as the path looked grim, he still wanted to carve his own path. He could no longer bank on the bystanders*. He just needed to make sure that his fans were still on his side and that would have to do. Even though he had lost a portion of his fans, but a portion had also stayed and adamantly believed that the video was doctored. They whined about how their brother* was so pitiful that he was ganged up on by the whole world.

Sitting in front of his computer, he was wrecking his brain trying to come up with what he could write to get the most sympathy out of his fans. Perhaps he could start from his childhood.

His assistant sat next to him and was scrolling through his cellphone with his head lowered. Occasionally, he would look up and at Tong Jiaming cautiously.

Tong Jiaming was no stranger to drumming up sympathy. He wrote a thousand characters on her childhood memories. Then, looking at his file, he wondered whether it was too wordy, whether his fans would get impatient, and whether he should chop it down some.

"Oh, no! Jiaming!"

Hot dang!

Tong Jiaming's hand shook and all the characters that he had selected had been deleted!*

He stared at his assistant viciously. His vicious look was very different than his docile look in front of his fans. His assistant was started and, stuttering, said, "I, I just saw a new article that was negative about you."

The veins in Tong Jiaming's forehead throbbed. He took over the cellphone while suppressing his anger. There was an article already loaded on the screen. The characters, as though having life of its own, bounced into his eyes.

Let us revisit the crazy maneuver of Tong Jiaming and Begonia Entertainment.

The title alone was enough to bring cold sweat to Tong Jiaming's forehead. His lips moved silently. He forced himself to finish reading the article and, the more he read, the more he sweated.

"... this author had been eating the melon in the field called The Star of the Future along with the other gossipers in the past few days and almost die from overeating. I was just like everybody else at the beginning and felt bad for Tong Jiaming who had his victory snatched away from him from the behind-the-scene operation. I even went as far as creating a new account and bashed Ren DongZhi once. I hope that Ren DongZhi's fan would forgive me now that I have come around. Dogeza.JPG"

"Just like many of you, I realized that I have been fooled after I've watched the video and the interpretation by the lip-reading expert. I was very unhappy that I have been used so I have decided to create this post to summarize what had happened in the last couple of days."

"While I am at it, I have discovered something else interesting. While searching under Tong Jiaming and Ren DongZhi's names, I noticed that before 10:30 PM on the 8th, that was before the competition's result was released and nobody knew who the winner was, the articles prepared by Tong Jiaming and Begonia Entertainment had already been released. Such efficiency!"

"Shocker. The strong candidate Dong JunMing lost because of this reason?"

"The winner had been pre-determined? That's unacceptable!"

"Tong Jiaming, Prince of the Stage, shut his competitors up with his raw talent."

"You can search for these titles yourself and a pleasant surprise will await you! Naturally, it wouldn't matter if you don't find them. Just in case they would pay to have them removed, I've already grabbed the screen shots."

"It was obvious that these for-profit accounts had been arranged even before the outcome of the competition had been determined."

"They've prepared two different versions depending on the outcome. If Tong Jiaming had won, the plan was to have him walked all over the other competitors, became the brightest star, and debut like an emperor. If he was to lose, then there were behind-the-scene operations. He was to stoke the sympathy of his fans so they would stand up and fight for him and bash the evil Ren DongZhi."

"Planned as they might had, they didn't count on pig teammates. They've accepted their money but did not do their due diligent. They didn't pay enough attention and posted all of the articles."

"I thank these for-profit accounts for providing us entertainments."

"... For the sake of all the melons that Tong Jiaming had contributed to us, I'd give him a kind reminder – Choose wisely when you pick someone to work with and don't pick these for-profit accounts that couldn't even get the timing down and straight up copy-pasted everything. If you are going to spend money anyway, might as well go for a better service. When push comes to shove, I can refer a few for-profit accounts to you. Don't worry, I won't even ask for a referral fee given all the melons that you had provided."

___

Notes:

1. Bystanders – someone who's neither fan nor anti-fan

2. Brother (ge-ge) – what fans referred their male idol

Chapter 276 - Putting Away All the Documents, Fang JunRong Planned to Meet up with Jiang WenYu (2)

Underneath the article were laughter and comments from fellow melon-eaters. The air was filled with happiness.

[Oh darn! I found it! Begonia must not have paid them enough. Begonia, why you so stingy? SMH.JPG]

[This melon is making me sick. I can't even look at the term "angel" in the future.]

[I am going from fan to anti-fan. Hoho. I am going to assume that all the time I had spent following him had been eaten by dogs.]

[You can't accuse our little angel so. Obviously these for-profit accounts travelled back in time, which would explain how they've already had their articles written up and ready to go. Doghead.JPG]

Tong Jiaming was pulling his hair out, his eyes about to crack under pressure.

This article was the last straw that broke Tong Jiaming's back. His hands fell down next to him and his looked distressed. He knew full well now that his reputation had been ruined. Was negative publicity his own option from now on?

He wanted to call up Gao Lin but, no matter how many times he called, he would always get the busy signal.

He looked at loss and had lost all confidence in his own future.

***

At the same time, Li XinYun and Zhong Yi monitor closely the direction of the public opinions. They finally let out a sigh of relief when they saw that all of them bashed Tong Jiaming and Begonia Entertainment.

Li XinYun mumbled, "I didn't know Mom did that and had just now told us about it." Both her and her sister had been busy with their public relations and hadn't gotten a lot of sleep. She suspected that she would have aged a lot had she not been having the Beautify Pills every day.

Zhong Yi, too, seemed relaxed, "I think Mom wanted us to learn from it and grow."

"I know that." Recalling something, Li XinYun smiled lightly. "I didn't think that Fu Zhe and Dan Rong would both speak out for us. They could totally stay out of it."

Both of them had been picked up by big companies before the competition was over. Words from the grapevines were that they've already had their contracts signed.

Zhong Yi said, "You can tell from this that not everyone was like Tong Jiaming. Only a very small number of them are truly evil."

Yawning, she was just about to go get some rest when she spotted Fang JunRong. "Eh? You are back, Mom?"

Fang JunRong nodded and said, "I went to go pick something up today."

She had sent in Jiang WenYu, Zhang Bi, and Su QinYing's hair samples for testing previously and now the results were out.

Per the test results. Jiang WenYu and Zhang Bi were brothers but the result between Jiang WenYu and Su QinYing was surprising. They were related but they were not mother and son. They were, however, related on their maternal side, likely to be aunt and nephew. Fang JunRong didn't know much about Su QinYing's maiden side so she went over to chat with He JianBing and Sun Mei today to find out more.

Per what she had learned from them, the Su family had been going downhill since Su Yuncang , their previous housemaster, had passed away. After all, Su QinYing's little brother was known to be a bum, almost shooting for what was out of his league. Su Yuncang had a total of three children – a son and twin daughters.

Su QinYing was one of the twin girls and she had a sister, Su QinMei. Rumors had it that Su QinMei was sickly and, not being able to handle the distress, passed away shortly after Father Su did 30 years ago.

Fang JunRong felt that the entire event sounded very suspicious. The timing was so perfect. Father Su happened to pass away the year that Jiang WenYu was born.

She could still remember what He JianBing had told her.

"It was a shame. Su QinYing was very outstanding since she was a child and Su Yuncang doted on her back in the days. He would bring her with him everywhere he went. It almost looked as though he had her in mind as his heir. Su QinYing, after marrying into the Zhang family, had a child, and going through the loss of both is father and sister, had been much less healthy than she was before."

"The Su family would not have fallen so much had it not been that. How pitiful."

Fang JunRong couldn't help but recalled Su QinYing's look. She did not sound like how He JianBing had described her. She looked like a beautiful but fragile lamp that could break with the slightest touch. She sounded more like Su QinMei in He JianBing's description.

Wait a minute...

Fang JunRong's eyes widened and she grabbed onto an idea that had flashed past her mind. It wouldn't really be what she was thinking, would it?

Chapter 277 - Putting Away All the Documents, Fang JunRong Planned to Meet up with Jiang WenYu (3)

And if the current Su QinYing was not the original Su QinYing but Su QinMei who was supposed to be dead, then everything made sense all of a sudden.

Why was it that Su QinYing was so hostile toward Jiang WenYu? Because everything that she owned right now she robbed them from someone else. As such, it made sense that she worried that they would be taken away from her.

Why was it that their clan leader Zhang Kaihuai wanted to put Jiang WenYu down as the oldest boy of his generation and Su QinYing didn't dare to object and even put up a front of how close she was with Jiang WenYu? That was because Jiang WenYu was legitimately the oldest boy of the Zhang's in his generation.

In the previous life, Jiang WenYu for sure had figured this all out, which was why he made the Zhang family his enemies and did whatever within his power to revenge them. He, who loved nothing but researching, had to engage in activities that he detested.

Fang JunRong's face dropped. Her stomach began to roil as though it was being stirred by an invisible hand inside.

Sure enough, a vicious person had no limits.

She let out a long sigh. These were all just her speculations. She needed more proof.

Fang JunRong continued to gather more information from the other two and was finally able to get her hands on the contact information of the sisters' friends from college.

She didn't look into this personally but sent her people to reach out to these friends. She was able to obtain some photos from their college days.

There were less photos of Su QinMei, most of them were photos of her with others. In the photos, there was a sense of melancholy between her brows, very much like what she seen often times on Su QinYing.

She then looked at Su QinYing. She looked exactly like Su QinMei but their temperaments were very different. Her smile was bright and her eyes determinant. She looked like someone who was strong and confident. Her eyes, in particular, resembled that of Jiang WenYu.

The weight on Fang JunRong's shoulder had been released. She had the answer that she was looking for. If she was right, Su QinMei had replaced Su QinYing and married into the Zhang's after her death. She probably had a hand in Jiang WenYu being kidnapped when he was a child. As a young master of a prominent family, even if he wasn't well-liked in the family, there would still be a lot of nannies around him. In light of that, it didn't make sense that he would still be kidnapped.

Putting away the information that she had collected, Fang JunRong planned to go and meet up with Jiang WenYu.

***

Inside the laboratory, Jiang WenYu changed out of his laboratory coat, removed his gloves, and his defined fingers could be seen.

He turned around and said to his assistant. "Finished up those reagents and then you can go."

Chang Xin was an assistant that he had hired just a few days ago. His main responsibility was to help him with mixing reagents. Jiang WenYu's two other assistants would help with cleaning the apparatuses. Chang Xin was a man of few words and would also be able to complete any task that was assigned to him. Jiang WenYu knew very well that this new assistant was a spy placed close to him by Zhang Bi.

As he wanted to figure out Zhang Bi's next step, he allowed Chang Xin to stay. He, however, would never leave any data behind in the laboratory. He would write them on papers and bring them with him.

Most of the time that he had spent at the Zhang's he had been soaking up all the Zhang's knowledge like a sponge. He spent the rest of the time performing some minor experiments of his own. He knew full well that the Zhang's had yet to show him anything of their real secret formulas. They had only been showing him the most peripheral and crude ones so far. But those were already enough for him to integrate them into his knowledge and to build upon them.

In particular, the way that could preserve the efficacy of the medicines were the most eye-opening. He felt that he could adopt that method and apply it to Beautify Pills in order to increase its shelf life. So far the Beautify Pills would only last up to 6 months.