While this family of three spent a rare warm moment together, the workers on the other side were still working hard to find a solution along the lines of their discussion.
Of course, in terms of salary, Mr. Shen was indeed very generous.
Secretary Xu expressed that he was extremely willing to devote himself completely to the family head and his spouse.
In the days before, Secretary Xu and Lin Pei's makeshift team had already made several attempts to reach Yuan Chenguang — different phone numbers, different approaches — and been refused every time. They couldn't afford to spook him, and for a while the whole effort stalled. They split into two tracks: one group working to manage the online situation, the other gathering and organising the evidence Bai Xia had retained over the years. Secretary Xu and Lin Pei spent their time working on the hardest problem — Yuan Chenguang himself.
Bai Xia slept better than he had in some time that night. It might have been the hot spring the evening before; it might have been the blackout curtains in the hotel room blocking every trace of light. Either way, he — who usually woke on schedule without an alarm — was still deeply asleep when Ningning stirred.
His personal phone had no lock screen. Shen Mingjin had already switched off his alarm. He was replying to a few work messages when the small body beside him began to wriggle. Shen Mingjin pressed a gentle hand over Ningning's mouth before the child could make a sound. Ningning opened his eyes, found Big Dad's face looking back at him, and blinked in brief confusion — then, with commendable good sense, stayed quiet. Shen Mingjin lifted him carefully out of bed and took him to wash up.
It was nine o'clock before Bai Xia finally surfaced. The other two were gone; from somewhere in the room he heard the low sound of a keyboard. He turned his head to find Mr. Shen at the desk beside him, working.
"Where's Ningning?" Bai Xia's voice came out slightly rough with sleep.
"Outside having breakfast." Shen Mingjin closed the laptop and poured him a glass of warm water, passing it over. "Are you hungry?"
Bai Xia's mind was still moving slowly. He took the glass without thinking and drank in small sips.
After washing up and pulling himself together, he came out of the bedroom to find Ningning seated at the dining table in his little bib, halfway through a bowl of something. Secretary Xu and Lin Pei were beside him, both of them quite unashamedly taking advantage of a wealthy man's breakfast spread.
Bai Xia was about to ask about the previous day's developments when Shen Mingjin cut him off: "Eat first."
No one dared say another word.
Mengwa Growth Diary was scheduled to record once a week, five or six days at a stretch — a tight cycle even under normal circumstances. Since it was, in effect, their own programme, the scheduling would bend around Bai Xia's needs without question. The problem was thorny, but time, at least, was not the constraint it might have been.
After breakfast, everyone reconvened in the meeting room. In the course of one night, the team had already made real headway.
The communications team had seeded a number of topics and directed some traffic. Without any official statement, there was only so much they could do — but three years had done some natural work of their own; the intensity and reach of the original controversy had faded considerably. Between that and the carefully placed misdirection the team had put into circulation — a mixture of partial truths and deliberate distractions — they'd managed to thoroughly muddy the water. Alongside the chorus of voices attacking Bai Xia, a new current had appeared: people questioning whether the original videos had ever been genuine, people asking why not a single person directly involved had spoken in all this time. It was enough to dilute things, at least.
Bai Xia and Lin Pei both felt it — the recognition of what a real team could do, and the contrast with three years ago, when it had been just the two of them standing against something far more vicious.
Secretary Xu summarised the current situation and concluded: "The only remaining obstacle is Yuan Chenguang. If he'll give us what he has, we can issue a statement immediately."
Silence in the room. Bai Xia was trying to place the name — but the competition had had a hundred candidates, and behind the cameras there were vast numbers of crew besides. He had no memory of the man that amounted to anything useful.
"Give him a taste of his own medicine," Shen Mingjin said suddenly.
"You mean… let people go after him online as well?" Secretary Xu asked.
"Let him feel what it's like," Shen Mingjin said. And then, perhaps worried Bai Xia would take the words badly, he reached over and gave his head a light, absent pat.
The people in that room were all exceptional professionals. The instruction needed no elaboration. They set to work at once.
With the Shen Group behind them, there was no need to run a faithful reproduction of what had been done to Bai Xia — that would be slow and leave traces. What they needed was simpler. From what they'd gathered, Yuan Chenguang was living quietly in Z City, keeping to himself, nothing left of the idol he'd briefly tried to be. A few dummy websites, a handful of convincing screencapped topics, a small number of hired performers placed around his daily environment. For this team, it was trivially easy.
In Z City, Yuan Chenguang made his way home from the neighbourhood market in a grey jacket and cap, mask pulled up. He was barely past twenty, but he moved like a man twice that age who had lost something he couldn't name. He was carrying vegetables, as he did most days.
He'd managed to buy a small second-hand place here — modest, but enough for one. Z City was cheap. He'd saved enough during his brief moment of income to secure it. His parents were from this area originally, both of them plain, hardworking people living in the village about half an hour away. They'd never made a fuss about his brief stint in the spotlight, and they'd never complained about how things had turned out. He'd never married, rarely saw other people — but if he thought about it honestly, he had enough to eat, his parents were alive and well, and no one had come looking for him in three years. That was, in its way, a good life.
What a fool he'd been. He'd spent months cultivating goodwill with his company's management just to get himself onto Shining Stars — only to be eliminated in the first round, short on both talent and luck, with nothing to show for it but a dented wallet and the memory of watching the others transform overnight from unknowns into objects of public adoration. He'd known envy, and he'd known resentment.
After the programme ended, his company had nothing to offer him. He'd followed the path he'd seen others take — the social rounds, the late evenings, the patient cultivation of useful connections. And then Liu Fengyu and Han Zichen had found him.
He'd agreed almost without thinking. The money was good, initially. Then, as things unfolded, better than he'd imagined. After the video circulated, his life changed entirely: his search numbers climbed, his inbox filled with sympathy and encouragement, people praised his looks and his stage presence, told him not to give up. His management started paying attention. Someone even talked about putting a team together to develop him properly. He'd had a glimpse, for the first time, of what it felt like to be noticed.
It hadn't lasted long. Within days, word reached him that Liu Fengyu and Han Zichen were tangled up in something legal — and potentially seriously so. The thought of what he himself had done began to take up a great deal of space in his mind. He'd barely started piecing together what was happening when his agent appeared, announced the termination of his contract, and demanded he pay a substantial penalty. His room was reclaimed. His accounts were taken. He was told to clear out that same day. Everything that had been discussed fell through at once.
And then, worse still: he'd barely found a temporary place to stay when a group of men came through his door. They didn't knock. They searched the room with rough efficiency, broke things, shoved him to the floor, and went through everything he owned. When they didn't find what they were looking for, they took his phone, hit him several times in evident frustration, and left him sitting on the floor amid the wreckage.
He understood later that they'd been sent by Liu Fengyu and Han Zichen — after the chat records. He moved immediately, spent several days braced for them to return. Then the news broke: Zhou Peng and Shen Wenbin had been arrested. In the public eye, both were entirely unconnected to Bai Xia. But Yuan Chenguang knew better. Shortly after, the announcement came from Liu Fengyu and Han Zichen's company: both had left the industry, citing personal reasons. He breathed again.
A City was closed to him — he owed money, and there was nothing left for him there. He came back to Z City. People here didn't follow entertainment news. Few had any idea who he was.
He spent his days in a supermarket uniform, face down, barely recognisable. His evenings he spent at a nightclub, making himself agreeable to generous customers, working off his debt a little at a time. Life became simple and repetitive. Three years passed.
And then one day his phone rang, and someone said they were Bai Xia's agent.
He'd felt the guilt immediately and hung up. He'd long since changed his number — he had no idea how they'd found him. He didn't follow entertainment news anymore; the memory of those men coming through his door was still sharp enough to make his hands unsteady. He'd taken a few days off work and stayed inside.
The calls stopped. He thought they'd given up. He watched for signs that something was happening and saw nothing. He went back to work.
Then, this morning, he'd walked into the supermarket and the other staff were looking at him strangely. By the lunch break they'd gathered in small clusters, whispering, glancing over.
That's him, isn't it. Would never have guessed. I always thought he was odd, never mixing with anyone. Turns out he was hiding something. Young as he is. He'll get what's coming. Not even that good-looking, honestly.
Yuan Chenguang usually ate alone in some corner during the break. The whispers put him on edge, and he took his lunch box and went outside. Coming home that afternoon, he passed the cluster of elderly residents who often gathered at the entrance to the building — and got the same looks he'd been getting all day. He walked faster, unsettled.
Then, as he was getting ready for the evening shift at the club, his supervisor called.
"Xiao Yuan, don't come in tonight."
"Why? What's happened?"
"Why? As if you don't know what you've done." The voice was sharp. And then the call ended.
The only thing he'd ever done was that one thing — but that was years ago, and no one had come about it. He searched his own name online in combination with Bai Xia's, with the programme's name — every combination he could think of. Nothing came up. Not a single post.
That doesn't make sense, he thought. The topic had been dead for years. He couldn't find anything; how would the people around him know?
He went in to work the following morning anyway. Coming downstairs, he noticed the courtyard was unusually crowded — this early, it was normally only a few elderly people out for morning exercise. He heard the whispers before he could make out the words.
That's the one who was kept by some bigshot. They say he was the other man. Young and healthy, and that's how he spends his time. I've seen him going out at night. The things he wears.
Yuan Chenguang felt a wave of disoriented fury. He worked at a nightclub — that was all. This part of the city didn't exactly attract wealthy patrons; the men he spent his evenings with were far from anyone's idea of a bigshot. He was exhausted by the performance of it already. The idea that he would have submitted himself to some arrangement on top of that was absurd. But the residents here were mostly older, and their thinking was older too — working in a nightclub was disreputable enough; being kept was in another category entirely, and the suggestion that he was breaking up a relationship made it worse again.
He lost his composure. "Stop spreading lies," he shouted. "Yourself, more like."
The residents weren't intimidated. One of them held out her phone. "You've been on the news, young man. It's all over. See for yourself. Have you no shame."
He caught a glimpse of his own photograph and looked away. He turned and went back upstairs, heart hammering, and pulled out his phone with shaking hands.
The results came up at once. The topics were everywhere: #Washed-Up Idol's Secret Kept Life, #Saddest Fall From Grace, #Yuan Chenguang The Third Party. He opened the comments and immediately wished he hadn't — they were far worse than anything the people downstairs had said. And someone had brought his parents into it. The implication was clear: what kind of people could raise a child like this.
His hands were trembling. His parents had worked honestly their whole lives. They'd raised him on principles he'd long since abandoned. And now he'd done this to them — dragged two decent, blameless people into the worst thing he'd ever been part of.
His phone rang. An unknown number. He answered without thinking.
"Is this Yuan Chenguang? Your mother saw the news and collapsed — she couldn't catch her breath. Come quickly."
Everything in him went cold. He was out the door before the call had properly ended.
