Once news spread that Tang Can was still deeply tied to the Tang family, the livestream comments—previously immersed in admiring the child and worshiping beautiful faces—gradually filled with discordant voices.
The paid commenters hired to smear Tang Can were not only active on the trending pages. They flooded his livestream in large numbers to steer the discussion.
【Low-class Can, stop pretending, okay? You’re obviously the same kind of trash as that whole Tang family, so why are you pretending to be a loving good dad on livestream? Disgusting.】
【What a waste of a good face. Anyone who mixes with garbage adoptive relatives like that can’t be decent inside. Beautiful outside, rotten stuffing within!】
The new wave of Dengdeng mom-fans and dad-fans who only wanted to adore the child were bewildered. After the “helpful passersby” in the comments explained the history, they quickly became united in hostility too, though most of their concern centered on the child.
However, before the one-sided opinion could fully form, it was interrupted by the mention of the car thief during the police call.
【Tang Xinrong? Isn’t that Tang Can’s former uncle who was listed online as his driver?】
【So… they were supposedly birds of a feather, but in reality Tang Can turned around and called the police to send him straight to the station?】
【And what’s this about an online lawsuit? Tang Can’s attitude toward the Tang family is obviously completely different from what the internet says.】
The viewers were still arguing fiercely when, after Tang Can hung up, the camera turned toward the toddler emerging from the fitting room.
Clothes make the man and gold makes the Buddha shine. Huo Dengdeng was the sort of toddler who could look good in a burlap sack, but once he changed into beautiful new clothes, everyone still felt their eyes brighten.
【HOLY SHIT!!! This is way, way, way, way too cute!!!】
【Damn you, Tang Can, you stole my child!!! I recognize him now. This is my child!!!】
【Sob sob sob Dengdeng my baby, this has to be somebody’s little bunny spirit taking human form. He’s cuteness personified!】
【This child-adoring maniac has seen countless child stars and child models from China and abroad, and Dengdeng is absolutely number one in toddler looks. [drool][drool]】
【For the child’s sake, I forgive Tang Can again. [crossed eyes, poking fingers.jpg]】
【To be fair, Tang Can was raised by the Tang family. Years of being raised by someone aren’t easy to sever. The fact that he can call the police on Tang Xinrong now proves he can still tell right from wrong…】
The audience bounced back and forth between worshiping the father-son pair’s looks and debating Tang Can’s scandals. Everyone assumed Tang Can would seize the opportunity to clear his name further. Instead, he dragged the child into his bizarre “Duanmu Can” performance. Nobody knew what to make of him. All they could do was call him crazy and then laugh along.
Tang Can picked ten outfits for the child in one breath. After that, his eyes started glazing over from too many options. It felt as if the child looked good in everything, but in theory, if you were buying clothes, you should obviously buy the ones that looked best.
So Tang Can temporarily took the child over to the pajamas and underwear section instead, changing things up by choosing several sets of adorable sleepwear.
As for himself, compared with food and entertainment, he had very little interest in clothing. His only requirement was comfort. The original host had never deprived himself, either, so Tang Can planned to simply choose normal pieces from the original host’s closet.
He had originally wanted to book another two-star Michelin restaurant for dinner, but the previous night’s Michelin Japanese meal had been thoroughly mediocre.
The child was too young, so Tang Can had asked the chef to cook some of the sashimi. Although the child still cleaned every plate, the light in his eyes had been noticeably dimmer than when he ate the Filet-O-Fish.
Tang Can ate the original raw versions, but perhaps he simply did not care much for Japanese cuisine, or perhaps he was a wild boar incapable of appreciating refined grain. Either way, neither father nor son had eaten particularly well.
Tang Can also suspected that particular restaurant might have been the problem. After all, he had called around and it was the one place with few enough customers to book anytime. So he planned to try a difficult-to-book non-Japanese place with the child next time. Tonight, however, he safely chose a long-established tomato-and-beef hotpot restaurant.
Tang Yichen, meanwhile, ate that evening at Yun City’s most difficult-to-book three-star Michelin French restaurant, accompanied by his wealthy husband and stepson.
Both men were male spouses who had married into rich families, and they shared the old entanglement of the mistaken-at-birth incident. Their contrast had always been the strongest among the four groups, especially now that their livestreams were tied for first in popularity.
Naturally, both the comments and trending pages erupted into discussion. The general consensus mocked Tang Can’s forced entry into wealth as embarrassingly shabby: not only would his husband not appear beside him, he apparently did not even give him enough money.
Tang Can knew none of this. He had first focused on buying and buying for the child, then concentrated on driving. It was not until they sat down inside a small private dining room that he finally had time to check his phone.
Father and son sat on the same side. The child had already returned to his wooden-doll state, sitting blankly in a child’s chair with lifeless eyes as he waited for the food.
But Tang Can kept going “Hiss…” “Huh?” “Eh?” the moment he opened his phone, and eventually even the child could not suppress his curiosity.
To avoid attracting Bad Daddy’s attention, the child kept the same posture. His fluffy little head did not move at all; only his gray-blue eyes slowly shifted toward the corners as he tried to sneak a glance through his peripheral vision.
And unexpectedly met Tang Can’s waiting gaze head-on!
“Dengdeng! Why are you sneaking looks with your side vision again?!”
The livestream camera faced father and son directly, so viewers could see perfectly clearly that from the moment Tang Can unlocked his phone, he had not looked straight at the screen once. He had been peeking sideways at the child the entire time, making endless “hiss-ah-hmm-huh” noises specifically to attract the toddler’s attention.
And now the livestream showed father and son sitting side by side, both turning their eyes sideways until their peripheral gazes met successfully. The audience nearly died laughing.
【Hahahahaha “side vision” my ass, it’s called peripheral vision!】
【I’m dying, so this is entrapment? Bullying our innocent little child because he hasn’t seen much of the world!】
【To cure his son’s strabismus, the old father volunteers as the first casualty.】
【Not gonna lie, even with crooked mouths and crossed eyes these two are still good-looking. Goddess of Creation! This little lump of mud is filing a complaint!】
The child first felt guilty. Then joy surged inside him. Had Bad Daddy finally failed to hold back and decided to hit him?
Nobody liked pain. Even though the toddler had suffered mistreatment so often that he was accustomed to this life, he still shrank inwardly with fear at the thought of the beating and scolding to come. Yet compared with the chance to let everyone see Bad Daddy’s true face, infinite courage rose inside him.
Hit me! Hit me hard! What if it lets me get away forever…
The instant Tang Can raised his hand, the child squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his little lips firmly together. But the imagined pain never came. Instead, a warm large palm gently pinched his chin and turned his little head toward the phone screen.
At the same time, Tang Can moved the phone closer to him. “Didn’t Dad tell you? From now on, if you want to look at something, look openly. Stop sneaking around with side vision. It looks creepy. What if your strabismus becomes permanent and you really end up with crossed eyes?”
Huo Dengdeng, whose emotions had just gone through seventeen twists and eighteen turns: “…Oh.”
In truth, even when Tang Can placed the phone directly in front of him, the little fellow was still effectively illiterate and could not understand what he was seeing.
Tang Can skimmed everything quickly. Since the food had not arrived yet, he directly opened the online lawsuit interface and held it up to the livestream camera, flipping through it for the viewers.
“Regarding the statements on the trending list, I’d like to clarify something. I was indeed deceived before and mistakenly trusted malicious people, which caused me major financial losses. I am currently taking active steps to recover those losses…”
“Mr. Tang Yaozu, who said he would be my manager but defrauded me of more than five million, is probably watching this livestream too. I’ll use this opportunity to explain something at the same time. I’ve consulted a lawyer. Unlike the other loans, which need to be recovered through civil proceedings, the five million you conned from me can qualify as large-scale fraud. If you don’t hurry and return it, you can go inside and eat prison meals with your father.”
The viewers waiting to watch the beautiful father and son eat were suddenly force-fed a massive piece of gossip without warning. Question marks flooded the comments.
【What the hell? Tang Can got scammed out of more than five million by the Tang family?】
【I checked the lawsuit screenshots. More precisely, it’s almost seven million.】
【Well damn. Everyone kept saying Tang Can was poor and low-class, but after all that, he was just getting screwed over by the garbage Tang family?】
【Please stop calling Tang Can poor. However poor he is, he still had seven million available to be stolen. How many people don’t even have seventy thousand in their accounts? And what did tomato-beef hotpot ever do to anybody? Just because ordinary people can afford it, it deserves to be compared to “swill” by noble French cuisine?】
【Exactly, sister. Tomato and beef forever!!! I’m on Tang Can’s side this round. [smile][smile][smile]】
Tang Can not only completed a clean break with the family but instantly established himself as the victim. Outside the screen, Tang Yaozu watched and hurled a phone to the floor in fury.
The cousin beside him howled. “Bro, why the hell did you smash my phone?!!”
Tang Yaozu had naturally received the news first thing in the morning that his father had been arrested. Even though he still did not know Tang Can had sued the entire family, Tang Yaozu had intended to confront him. But he also knew exactly how terrible his family’s online reputation was.
Four years earlier, when the scandal erupted, they had suffered badly under public opinion. They had even moved twice in succession before escaping the neighbors’ finger-pointing.
This time he had learned his lesson. He planned to wait until Tang Can ended the livestream before settling accounts with him. Never in his wildest dreams did he expect Tang Can to expose everything directly on air!
Worse still, Tang Yaozu unexpectedly learned that taking Tang Can’s money might actually send him to prison. While he was panicking and had no idea what to do, the house refused to give him a moment of peace.
His cousin stood nearby clutching the destroyed phone and shrieking, insisting Tang Yaozu had to buy him a new one. “Are you fucking sick? If you’re angry, smash your own phone! Pay me back! If you don’t, I’m taking yours!”
Not long afterward, Grandma Tang, who had gone out to play cards, rushed home and slapped her precious eldest grandson across the face the moment she arrived. “You little bastard, you’ve grown bold enough to swallow five million behind the family’s back?!”
Tang Can’s money should all have been controlled by her, the head of this family!
*
Without question, online discussion around Tang Can surged even higher after his clarification and the reversal it caused.
This kind of family drama, comparable to the most melodramatic soap opera, naturally attracted spectators of every age. For a while, saying the entire internet was discussing it would not have been an exaggeration.
When the dinner segment began, many viewers ran over to Tang Yichen’s livestream to watch the daily life of the ultra-rich. Tang Yichen had prepared in advance as well, planning to harvest a wave of couple fans.
After all, this was his first public appearance in the same frame as his wealthy husband. The man was thirteen years older and on his second marriage, but within wealthy circles he was still the rare elite heir from generations of money who had formally taken over the family business before even turning forty.
And because the man had maintained himself well over the years, the thirteen-year age gap did not look awkward. Tang Yichen understood the rules of public opinion deeply and was confident he could turn himself and his husband into the image of the happiest wealthy married couple, giving himself more leverage.
But Tang Can’s sudden livestream clarification interrupted everything. The audience immediately found Tang Yichen’s calm little rich-family romance far less delicious and flocked back to Tang Can’s livestream for gossip.
After publicly telling Tang Yaozu to hurry and repay the money, Tang Can and the child simply buried themselves in their food and ate enthusiastically.
On the way home, they passed a bookstore, and inspiration suddenly struck Tang Can. Right—he was supposed to become the number-one dad on a parenting show.
He had made a mistake that morning and accidentally overslept, turning into a “bedridden, paralyzed old father” who relied entirely on his child. He could not waste his opportunity tonight too.
With that thought, Tang Can immediately led the child inside and selected an entire box of bedtime picture books he had long ago memorized backward and forward, basically packing up every classic bestseller suitable for a three-year-old.
He would not boast about everything else, but when it came to storytelling and putting children to sleep, he had been the uncrowned king of his kindergarten, nicknamed the Sleeping-Pill Spirit.
No matter how lively or fully charged a child was, once they reached his hands, one story was enough to make them stop making a sound.
Tang Can pushed the entire box of picture books in front of the child and raised his chin with domineering confidence. “Pick your favorite. Dad will read it to you as soon as we get home!”
It was time to display the core competitiveness of a gold-medal kindergarten teacher.
