That one remark from Uncle Wang.
Hit both of them like a bolt from the blue.
Ji Nanxian's head buzzed. He had wanted to ask a few more questions, but Uncle Wang coughed awkwardly twice and made up a random excuse to brush him off.
"Ahem... well, my second uncle's daughter's husband's younger brother's best friend's wife's cat is having kittens, and I'm in a hurry to go see. Nephew, I'll hang up now."
"..."
"..."
Then came the beeping of the disconnected call.
Jiang Yunli had originally come rushing to Ji Nanxian in a panic to ask for help.
Who knew she would find out his father had acted like this instead?
The Ji Family elders had always turned a blind eye to her relationship with Ji Nanxian before.
Why had they handled things so decisively this time?
She thought about her own predicament while trying to guess what the Ji Family elders were thinking.
She felt as though her head was about to explode.
Meanwhile, Ji Nanxian was still preoccupied with his father's remark: "You don't really think you're my only son, do you?"
So much so that he had no mind to comfort Jiang Yunli.
Ji Nanxian irritably raked a hand through his hair. Anxious and unsettled, he could only brush Jiang Yunli off. "It's just the entertainment industry. If it really doesn't work out, forget it. You told me before that you only joined for fun, to kill time anyway."
Jiang Yunli was frantic.
She had only said that to fool Ji Nanxian!
Money came so quickly in the entertainment industry. Although she had the Jiang Family and Ji Nanxian to fall back on.
She still needed to leave herself a way out.
Other people were unreliable to begin with.
Especially men!
Jiang Yunli gave a sorrowful sob, retreating to advance:
"Nan Xian, if this really puts you in a difficult position, let's break up. I don't want your parents thinking I've been clinging to you."
Jiang Yunli's voice caught just enough, tears hovering at the corners of her eyes without falling.
It made her pitiful appearance seem even more fragile.
Ji Nanxian had always fallen for this routine of Jiang Yunli's, and the sight immediately made his heart ache.
"What nonsense are you talking about?" Ji Nanxian said. "They've never said that about you. My dad's just worried he won't be able to answer to the Ji Family."
Jiang Yunli was still shedding tears, but inwardly, she let out a long sigh of relief.
As long as the Ji Family elders hadn't told Ji Nanxian to break up with her, that was enough.
As long as Ji Nanxian's feelings hadn't changed, she could still get some more benefits out of him.
"I'm sorry, Nan Xian," Jiang Yunli said. "It's just that so much has happened all at once. We've made it through all these years together. I shouldn't have brought that up."
Ji Nanxian had plenty weighing on his own mind and could only make a halfhearted attempt to comfort Jiang Yunli:
"Don't overthink it. Just put up with this for a while. Once I've dealt with my dad... you know the internet only has a seven-day memory. It's only a few days. Shen Yunzhi has been getting trashed for years, and nothing's happened to her. Just don't take it to heart."
Jiang Yunli: "..."
Ji Nanxian really wasn't putting any thought into comforting her.
What a load of crap. With any other couple, the woman would already have exploded.
Shen Yunzhi wasn't even in the industry, so of course it didn't matter what people said about her online.
When she had nothing to do, she either chased after Ji Nanxian or went on shopping sprees at the mall, buying things and flaunting her wealth.
But that was the life Jiang Yunli should have been living.
If Shen Yunzhi hadn't come back, she wouldn't have had to suffer any of this.
Jiang Yunli clenched the hand tucked beneath her, but only smiled at Ji Nanxian:
"Okay. I'll listen to you."
Tang Jianing won the lawsuit.
The studio was so guilty that, faced with piles of questions and condemnation from Shen Fans.
They simply started playing dead.
All the embellished smears against Shen Yunzhi were finally cleared up.
But the Jiang Fans who had been deceived before were shaking with anger.
They had always thought Shen Yunzhi was the one constantly stirring up trouble, while Jiang Yunli was the one who kept enduring it.
The studio's actions must have been authorized by Jiang Yunli.
For all these years, Jiang Fans had doted on Jiang Yunli, condemning and hurling abuse at Shen Yunzhi.
Jiang Yunli had said she wouldn't have had to be sent back to the village to suffer back then if Shen Yunzhi hadn't done everything she could to stir things up.
Jiang Yunli had lived in the village for a while, and as soon as she was brought back to S City, she loudly proclaimed that abuse had left her with depression.
Yet she had never told the public that Shen Yunzhi had suffered even more than she had.
That included Shen Yunzhi's relationship with her adoptive parents. Before Shen Yunzhi returned to the village, everyone had called her an ingrate who forgot the people who raised her once she had money, who didn't want to mention her village roots because she thought they were low-class.
Netizens dug up more rumors like these, some true and some false, from those paid troll accounts.
All of them had been spread by the studio.
It turned out Jiang Yunli had been the one stirring up trouble all along.
Shen Yunzhi was the truly unlucky one.
All these years, Jiang Fans had thought they were charging into battle to defend their wronged idol, only to end up being played for fools.
How could that not make a huge number of Jiang Fans snap and stop supporting her?
Jiang Yunli's Weibo following of over five million instantly dropped by half.
All that remained were the inactive followers she had bought.
Super Topic moderators fled, major fan accounts were deleted, couple fan sites shut down, and the posters and merchandise fans had stockpiled were sold as scrap.
The entire internet mocked her.
Tang Jianing let out a long, satisfied breath.
She was just about to go on Weibo and post a few more things to kick her while she was down.
But a clip from the All Villains livestream popped up on her home feed.
-it was a clip a major Jiang Yunli fan had edited before her downfall, the part where the diary appeared.
The fan had originally edited it out of sympathy for Jiang Yunli, wanting others to know how much she had suffered in the village.
Who knew it would backfire so quickly?
The video hadn't been deleted in time.
Tang Jianing clicked on it, gleefully planning to leave a comment.
The video played automatically. Ji Nanxian opened the diary, and Jiang Yunli snatched it away and hid it behind her back, her expression extremely unnatural.
"?" Tang Jianing raised an eyebrow, feeling that something was off.
Jiang Yunli wanted nothing more than to tell the whole world how miserable she was. After getting depression, she brought it up in Weibo posts every few days.
Wouldn't this diary be solid evidence of Jiang Yunli's miserable life, then?
Why didn't she want anyone else to see it?
She wasn't the sort of person who didn't want to expose her scars to the public, was she?
Tang Jianing rubbed her chin in thought and dragged the video's progress bar back.
She watched it several times.
The more she thought about it, the more something seemed wrong.
She paused the video and stared at the writing in the diary.
Tang Jianing felt her guess had to be right.
Then the clue to Jiang Yunli's strange behavior had to lie in this diary.
...Could it be that she hadn't written this diary at all?
Holy crap, Tang Jianing thought, connecting it to something.
She immediately called Jiang Chi and got straight to the point:
"Little Chi, do you have anything your sister wrote by hand?"
Before you continue