Chapter 16 One Instant Collapse
Ruoyu found me a week later.
She arrived travel-worn, yet still looked at me with that arrogant gaze.
“Xin Xin, what do you mean by this?”
A week earlier, I had sent her the hidden “past” I had dug up from overseas.
The content and the scale of it were enough to wreck her image in the industry beyond repair.
This time, I took a sip of tea and looked at her.
“Nothing much. I just happened to run into a paparazzo who wanted to expose all of this. For the sake of old ties, I bought it off him.”
She looked half-convinced.
“Really?”
I neither confirmed nor denied it.
Of course it was a lie.
Those materials were what I had specifically asked Chen Heng to help dig up.
What I wanted was for her to taste that same restless fear of gaining and losing.
After I saw her that day, in every kind of interview I liked to circle around those old matters of hers, never naming names, only saying things that sounded almost true.
On social platforms, I also liked posting captions that held the characters for “Ruo” or “Yu,” little metaphors.
I hinted that some people wore two faces and owed a debt in morals.
I left netizens to guess and to read between the lines.
People who had done wrong always grew extra sensitive and careful at times like that.
She specially built a team just to watch every move I made in public.
At the slightest stir, even when it had nothing to do with me, they stayed on high alert.
They jumped to PR. They sent lawyer’s letters at the drop of a hat.
Those abnormal moves did dent her reputation in the end.
Some partners, tired of how “messy” she had become, simply cut ties.
Under my steady needling and the string of lost resources, her state of mind grew less and less stable.
She even blanked out and lost composure at important events.
Once a person climbs high enough, she fears the fall more than anything.
What I had to do was hold a boomerang that might strike her at any time.
Bit by bit, I wore down her nerves.
I threw her off balance. I made her impossible to control.
At last, the day after I posted a Weibo that hinted at her “moral rot,” Qin Ruoyu could not take it anymore.
She stormed into my house like she had lost her mind and grabbed my collar at once.
“What exactly do you want? Does torturing me make you happy?
“So what if I seduced your husband? Zhou Yang liked me from the start to the end!
“In this whole mess, you were the thief. You were the third party!”
“Ruoyu, maybe you should calm down first—”
I had only meant to warn her kindly.
My phone was still set up behind her.
But the more she talked, the more worked up she got, and the more she lost control.
“I won’t calm down. Why should I calm down! People like you, born into the upper class—have you ever truly felt how hard it is for people like us?
“So what if I blocked you from film and TV resources? Wasn’t I forced into it by people like you?
“You and Zhou Yang are the same. You never looked up to me!
“Back in school, did you really mean to help me? You were just showing off in another form, flaunting how many more social resources you had. You only wanted to feed that high-and-mighty charity of yours!
“You never once saw me as an equal!
“If Zhou Yang had really valued me, why didn’t he just have Zhou Group sign me and debut me?
“If you had valued me, why didn’t you just put me in your stepfather’s company?
“The only reason you didn’t was that you never wanted me to live better than you!
“So what if I traded my body for resources? So what if I took some shortcuts by any means? I still earned them myself!
“What right do you have to be unhappy? What right do you have to threaten me and torture me like this?
“I enjoy watching you get surpassed by me, and watching myself play both of you in the palm of my hand!”
I had never known that this was how Ruoyu saw Zhou Yang and me.
Those words later went online exactly as she said them.
Because at that moment, I was livestreaming a Piano exchange.
Her breakdown was recorded from start to finish.
In an instant, her name was ruined.
What followed was her dramas pulled from air, endorsements cancelled, her name struck from crews, variety-show shots cut or mosaicked.
The fall of a top star took only that one moment.