My Queen, My Rules - 70
The Ptototype
"Su Ke? Drug trafficking?” When Ji Mingshu saw the news, she had just finished putting on a face mask. She hurriedly peeled it off, then dashed out of the bathroom without even bothering to rinse her face. "This was your doing, wasn't it?"
Cen Sen was propped against the headboard, reading a book. He looked up and asked calmly, "Do I look like a gangster?"
Ji Mingshu: "..."
Cen Sen turned the page leisurely, the gold rims of his glasses catching a faint glint of light. "It's not as if I can force someone to commit a crime."
Ji Mingshu understood. Translated into plain language, what he meant was: I can't force someone to commit a crime, but I certainly can grab hold of the evidence of their crimes and report them.
She really hadn't realized that Cen Sen, CEO of Junyi Group, was such an exemplary model citizen.
She sidled over to the bed and stole a glance at the book in Cen Sen's hand. Sure enough, his CEO aura was cultivated to perfection. Even his leisure reading was some highbrow literature in a foreign-language edition.
She pressed down on the book, planted a kiss on his lips, then quickly straightened up and looked down at him with a smug little air. "Good job. Here's your reward."
Cen Sen gave a soft scoff, his gaze returning to his book.
The only reason Ji Mingshu dared to initiate a kiss at night was because she was on her period and could therefore get away with anything. What she called a ‘reward’ was more like torture.
Ji Mingshu knew that perfectly well herself. Having finished teasing him, she rose in a splendid mood, clasped her little hands behind her back, and bounced along as she walked, humming the theme song from a palace-intrigue drama that had somehow made it all the way to the ends of the earth.
Cen Sen glanced at her retreating figure. In the warm halo of the floor lamp, his normally serious features seemed to soften, and the corners of his mouth curved upward in the faintest, almost imperceptible smile.
Actually, if Li Wenyin hadn't been so determined to stir up trouble, Cen Sen had never intended to make his move this early or this ruthlessly.
Other scandals could be covered up, suppressed, or simply left to blow over with time. They would have little effect on the movie. But drug trafficking was different. This was no longer a matter of scandal or a disgraced celebrity. This was a criminal offense that would land someone in prison.
What was more, every report about the arrests made a point to include that Su Ke had been apprehended on the set of Li Wenyin's film.
Li Wenyin's movie was being shot at an international high school in the capital. At the time, they had been filming a scene in which the male lead stayed alone in the classroom while the female lead secretly watched him from the back door, a classic unrequited-love moment. Without the slightest warning, the police suddenly stormed in and took Su Ke, the suspect, into custody.
The sudden disruption forced production to halt. Everyone on set was taken in for questioning. Supposedly, the female lead even threw a tantrum and refused to go to the police station, making such a scene that the officers nearly had to drag her there.
For a while, alongside the uproar over Su Ke's drug trafficking, all sorts of topics about the movie itself were exploding across the internet.
Back then, Li Wenyin had personally chosen Su Ke as the ideal male lead after weighing his connections, popularity, acting ability, and various other factors. She knew he wasn't clean, but she also knew that behind his dirty dealings stood a substantial network of connections. Barring some unexpected disaster, he would be very difficult to bring down. That was why, after officially announcing him as the male lead, she had even confidently posted on Weibo to publicly support him.
Who could have imagined that everything would change overnight?
After leaving the police station, Li Wenyin's phone was constantly engaged.
At first, she thought there was still a way to salvage the situation. After all, filming had only just begun. If the male lead was out, they could simply recast him.
But then, like a coordinated strike, the female lead, second lead, and supporting actors all posted Weibo announcements stating their withdrawal from the movie, without even notifying her first.
Seriously, who would dare keep filming? Everyone outside was already calling their production a drug den!
If it had been some other kind of publicity, riding the wave of attention might not have been a bad thing. But right now, they'd rather be unknown extras for the rest of their lives than be associated with Li Wenyin's production!
The capital side was even more practical than the celebrities. The movie had generated a fair amount of buzz during its early promotion, and Li Wenyin had already secured several brands for product placements. Now, one after another, they called to cancel their partnerships.
The Yuan family went even further. They didn't even bother contacting her personally and simply sent an assistant to deliver the cold message: they would not seek repayment of their initial investment, but all subsequent funding would be canceled.
It was upon receiving that call from the assistant that Li Wenyin finally came to her senses. Perhaps genuine admiration did not really exist in this world.
Back when Feng Shuxiu introduced her to the sickly heir of the Yuan family, she hadn't thought much of him. Still, with the intention of building connections, she had behaved with perfect courtesy, neither too distant nor too eager.
Unsurprisingly, the other party expressed great admiration for her. He repeatedly invited her out to see movies and art exhibitions, discussing classical literature and art with her, as well as the history of Chinese and Western cinema.
Gradually, she changed her opinion of him. She came to believe that he really did possess some genuine talent, and that his appreciation for art was sincere.
So she had used a few subtle tricks to make the man firmly believe that her motivation for making this movie wasn't because she still harbored feelings for her first love, but rather a pure desire to create the most inspired work of art, a pursuit of artistic creation.
It wasn't vanity to say that she knew exactly how much appeal she held for a certain type of man. The fact that she had ultimately secured investment from the Yuan family was proof enough.
What she hadn't understood was that neither the supposed attraction nor admiration could withstand a scandal that caused an investor's initial funding to go to waste.
The last person to call her was Feng Shuxiu.
Feng Shuxiu neither comforted nor mocked her. She simply pointed her toward the last road available to her. "The Cen family has sent word to the Zou family. You are not to show yourself in the capital again. Clean up whatever mess you have left behind, then leave the country. Don't come back."
Li Wenyin closed her eyes.
In that instant, countless memories came flooding back.
She remembered being a child and seeing Ji Mingshu in a pretty little dress, sweetly clinging to her uncle and aunt;
She remembered the boys in her middle-school class whispering among themselves about how beautiful Ji Mingshu was;
She remembered treating her classmates to dinner and karaoke, finally having what felt like a proper birthday for once, only to turn around and hear everyone talking about how Ji Mingshu had attended the prestigious Crillon Ball in Paris for her birthday...
For years, she had stood in Ji Mingshu’s shadow, closer than anyone else yet somehow separated by the most insurmountable distance in the world.
Only during those three months when she had been with Cen Sen had she, somewhere deep in her subconscious, truly felt that she and Ji Mingshu were standing at the same starting line.
Those had been the days she remembered most fondly.
Li Wenyin left. After posting an apology and announcing that filming had been suspended, she disappeared indefinitely.
But as Jiang Chun said, ‘once a green tea bitch, always a green tea bitch’. Even in her announcement about halting production, Li Wenyin had to leave one last tantalizing line at the end.
"That I could not put it to paper and bring it to the screen is my regret. But no matter what, those were the days I hold closest to my heart."
Her fans had originally been pitying Li Wenyin for her rotten luck. But by suddenly linking the shelving of her book with the suspension of her movie, she had inevitably made people wonder: Was this all part of some elaborate targeting?
And the more people thought about it, the stranger it seemed. How could there possibly be such a coincidence? First her book was blocked from publication, and then her movie was forced to stop filming.
Some particularly curious netizens dug through the articles she had posted in the past and traced the inspiration for her first love. Since Ji Mingshu and her circle of friends were hardly airtight, it wasn't long before someone in the know subtly pointed them in the right direction. Li Wenyin's first-love inspiration was the husband of the woman recently at the center of the "Silencer" controversy, none other than Cen Sen, the current president of Junyi Group.
There was publicly available information about Cen Sen online, but it amounted to little more than his age, education, and career history, nothing particularly interesting. There weren't even photos showing his face.
And his lack of public photos only fueled more curiosity.
After all, Li Wenyin's writing had described the appearance of her first love as if there had never been a more beautiful man under heaven or on earth. He was practically a male lead who had walked straight out of a campus romance novel.
And that campus-romance male lead had grown up to become the male lead of the CEO romance novels of every girl’s fantasies. He had even wage a war for the sake of his beautiful wife, ordering searches removed and posts deleted, while Junyi Group's official account published post after post demanding justice for her.
One man, written into two different novels male lead by two different women? Naturally, people were dying to know more.
While the online drama enthusiasts were intrigued by Li Wenyin's so-called final Weibo post, Ji Mingshu was practically dying of rage.
Overnight, countless Li Wenyin fans flooded Ji Mingshu's private messages, asking whether she had interfered in Li Wenyin and Cen Sen's relationship, whether she had any conscience at all, whether she and Cen Sen had been forced into a family-arranged marriage, and what the point was of living with a man who didn't love her...
The most infuriating part was that Cen Sen was still sleeping soundly beside her! His arm was wrapped so tightly around her waist! She couldn't even sit up to kick him!
Ji Mingshu already had a bit of a temper when she first woke up. At this hour, she couldn't be bothered to think any further. Her fingers immediately flew across the screen as she typed:
"since I was young, I was taught many rules of etiquette. My teachers would tell me what I could and couldn't do. Don't curse at people, that's uncouth. Don't get into confrontations with people in public, it only reveals one's own lack of grace. Don't nitpick over trivial matters; be magnanimous and forgiving.
"I've always believed that private disagreements should be discussed face-to-face between the people involved, rather than dragged onto the internet for spectators to pick apart and judge. But Miss Li seems to have taken it for granted that I would never publicly fall out with her, and has mistaken my repeated decision not to pursue the matter for permission to keep pushing her luck.
"So I'd like to ask one question. Miss Li repeatedly emphasize that her first love is married and that she doesn't want to disturb him, yet even after the person involved repeatedly asked her not to distort the facts by turning them into a book or a movie, she stubbornly insist on selling her so-called first-love nostalgia. Does Miss Li not feel that the term 'virtue-signaling hypocrite' was tailor-made for her?
"I hope Miss Li will have some self-respect and stop disturbing my husband's and my life. Let this astonishing performance of saintly innocence end here. I also hope no one would ever have the misfortune of encountering an ex who writes a post called My Ex Got Married on what should be the happiest day of your life, gets it onto the trending searches, and periodically decides to publish another book or make a movie just to reminisce about the past. @LiWenyin."
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Author's Note:
Little Golden Canary Baby: "Waaah, my followers are finally about to surpass that woman's!!! Cen-shi Sensen is such a useless pig! He won't even buy followers for me!!!”
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