Salted Fish Enters the Palace

Chapter Fifty

#Li Wenchuan Beats Up Street Vendor#

#Never Thought I'd See the Day—He Actually Ended Up at the Station#

#Jiang Hansheng Takes Part in Group Brawl#

#Li Wenchuan Is Definitely Doomed#

As long as you opened Weibo's real-time trending searches during this period, these posts were hanging on the list, their "Hot" and "Explosive" labels especially eye-catching. Fortunately, it was neither a holiday nor the middle of the night. The programmers rubbed their shining bald heads, smiled, and high-fived, declaring that it would not crash this time.

How many times had it been? Every time, these two men nearly brought Weibo down. How were they so good at stirring up trouble?

Cheng Shuangshuang had not been a Li Wenchuan fan for long. Every day, she voted on time and liked positive posts related to him. It was just a pity that her idol was so unwilling to put out content. Most of his old Weibo posts had been deleted too.

Looking at his Weibo now, it was full of all kinds of takeout every day. It really looked too miserable, 5555. Her poor baby.

Ever since she had watched the preview for that variety show, she had been waiting for it. But the production team had done a good job keeping things secret. There were only a few behind-the-scenes clips to watch, and the camera was basically focused on other people. Her baby's popularity was still too low; he could not even get screen time on a variety show.

What she did not know was that this had been deliberately handled by the production team. You had to moderate the flames when stoking them. Besides, Li Wenchuan really was an oddball celebrity whose haters outnumbered—and were more dedicated than—his fans. For the time being, they did not want to set themselves on fire and launch themselves into the sun.

Through clever editing, fans from every camp who watched part of the clips were quite satisfied.

And today was the day the variety show aired. Cheng Shuangshuang had already turned on her computer and settled in to wait—only to find that her baby had exploded across the trending searches.

When Cheng Shuangshuang saw the trends, her first reaction was disbelief. Chuanchuan was, at most, a goofball. How could he possibly beat someone up? Even when he had been young and impulsive, he had never hit anyone.

Her thick fan filter had turned acting like a diva into youthful impulsiveness. Yet after seeing solid video evidence of Li Wenchuan "fighting," Cheng Shuangshuang's eyes practically sparkled.

What was she supposed to do? Her baby looked so handsome when he fought, so cool. Those quick moves were practically straight out of a wuxia novel.

Sure enough, doubts soon appeared below, and at first they were all from haters:

"As a public figure, he has zero positive influence. He's been like this since debut and still hasn't left the industry."

"Why do I keep seeing him? Is Weibo's mute function just messing with me?"

"I really have to admire this move. They're going all out for publicity."

But plenty of people who finished the video were confused:

"Really? I don't believe it unless you get Li Wenchuan to do it again on the spot."

"Those moves were aimed at Yawei, right? Could it be an arrangement by the production team?"

"They made him look like some martial arts master. I'm gonna throw up."

"Your flop celebrity changed his persona. Happy now?"

"Is the person above sick? Didn't you see the police and police car at the end of the video?"

"This piece of trash actually has fans? What a joke."

There were basically no positive comments. Unless passersby spoke relatively fairly, but even that could not withstand the haters' indiscriminate attacks. His public reputation was being ruined bit by bit.

Cheng Shuangshuang grabbed her keyboard and went to war. Was this not just a contest of typing and talking? She was a pea shooter majoring in Chinese language and literature, a professionally trained troll with a bachelor's degree. Time to face them head-on.

Only a bandit's logic could defeat a bandit:

"If you don't stan him, are you going to stan yourself? I can tell from the way you talk that you're ugly. Were you raised as a placenta?"

"When you say others are sick, did you forget to visit ophthalmology and neurology? Other people got hauled away—could it be that your mung-bean-sized brain was hauled away too?"

"The official account hasn't even said anything. Want us to install a loudspeaker for you so you can howl into it every day?"

The art of arguing was this: if you could argue against anything and keep arguing until the other side could not raise another point, you won. Do not try to reason with hooligans, but you could certainly out-hooligan them.

Cheng Shuangshuang left a trail of devastation online, but she was also deeply worried about her idol. She scrutinized the video as though with a magnifying glass. Her idol really had followed the police officers away properly, while the two people being escorted in front were the ones in handcuffs.

After browsing countless Weibo posts, she found that Li Wenchuan had acted in self-defense. The other side had merely been a little too weak. Wasn't everything fine now?

While arguing and browsing the news, she chased away quite a few people in her private messages who seemed to be placentas that had gained sentience. Then she actually received several Weibo messages with a completely different vibe. In summary, they all meant one thing—were you a Sandy River too?

What a coincidence, so was she. She was a little goofball from Sandy River.

With one click, she joined the organization. There were not even five hundred people in the group. Chuanchuan was truly pitiful. Chuanchuan was really finished.

"Welcome to the group, newcomer." Several messages appeared at once, followed by an endless stream of +1s.

"Uh, may I ask, is this... a small group?" Maybe it was something like a second group, haha.

Her fantasy was brutally shattered. "No, this is the main group."

"Sis, although there aren't many of us, we believe it'll slowly grow stronger."

"You looked so cool arguing just now. I'm nowhere near as good with words as you are. I was almost crying from anger today."

Cheng Shuangshuang was embarrassed. "Not at all, not at all." It was just practice.

But overall, everyone in the group was especially united. "Don't attack innocent passersby. That'll hurt his public image. Carefully determine whether those foul-mouthed people are black fans or professional haters. If they're professional haters, just bite them to death. That's fine."

Ever since becoming a Chuanchuan fan, she had discovered something utterly baffling. It was normal for a minor celebrity—especially one with some issues—to have black fans, but why would he have professional haters? Who had so much money to burn that they would pay for this?

Elsewhere, Jin Yue, who had money to burn, let out an elegant sneeze.

He poured a glass of champagne and handed it to the woman before him. Though he felt irritated, his tone remained gentle. "Something troubling you again?"

The woman wore a slip dress, with a slender figure and careful upkeep. But on closer inspection, her exhaustion was obvious, and her mental state was truly poor. Her face was likely stiff from too many beauty injections. Under the dim yellow light, it looked somewhat eerie when she made expressions.

"I knew he had illegitimate children, but I never thought there would be so many," the woman said bitterly, taking a sip of wine. Thinking of her disappointing son, she drained the glass in one gulp. "The day before yesterday, he brought one home directly. Even that bitch is still alive."

Her husband had many mistresses outside, but she had always turned a blind eye. As long as they were not brought home and did not affect her position, everything was negotiable. Over the years, there had indeed been incidents involving illegitimate children. Women had come to claim kinship, but her husband had only given them money and sent them away. She had never imagined that he would actually bring one home, even having that bastard study alongside her son!

They had a huge fight over it, but this time, her husband refused to yield no matter what.

Especially since that woman had not gone abroad and had remained in the country. The more she thought about it, the more wrong it felt.

"But as long as you remain Mrs. Gu, she can only ever be a bitch, can't she? And that child can only ever be a bastard." Jin Yue sat beside her and comforted her softly, bending down to plant a light kiss on her neck.

"You're right." The woman smiled.

The kiss gradually moved upward, reaching her lips. Jin Yue was an actor; he could play anything. But at that moment, he froze. Those lips were like dead wood—dry, wrinkled, stripped of all youth.

Yet there was someone whose lips, even in sorrow and despair, were like withered rose petals, making you unable to resist tasting their sweetness.

"What's wrong?" The woman frowned.

"I suddenly felt that your husband doesn't know what's good for him."

At that very moment, Li Wenchuan and Jiang Hansheng were sitting properly in the police station. Across from them, a female police officer wore a stern expression. "Name."