Chapter 52 – Fans Are Revolting (1)
It wasn't until late that evening that Lan Jinyao finally saw what Xu Hao had forwarded to the press. Fu Bainian, who'd had lunch with her in the afternoon, had unexpectedly returned to the set that night.
His expression was extremely dark, so when the staff on the set saw him, they quickly retreated and gave way to him.
"What happened?"
Fu Bainian didn't say much, he just uttered, "I’ll take you home." Then, he grabbed her hand and walked towards the exit.
When Lan Jinyao was in the car, she suspiciously eyed Fu Bainian for a while before picking up her mobile phone. However, as soon as she switched her phone on, Fu Bainian unexpectedly glanced at her and then snatched her phone away; throwing it to the back seat.
Lan Jinyao was puzzled as she stared at him. "What are you doing?"
"Don’t play with your phone!" Fu Bainian's tone sounded somewhat dispirited as he continued, "At least, wait until I bring you home to do that. Once you're home, you can take your sweet time playing with it as much as you want."
"This is absurd!" Lan Jinyao glanced at her mobile phone laying on the back seat but didn't refute any further.
As soon as their car reached the gates of the residential area, Lan Jinyao saw a large mob standing outside the security booth. It seemed that they were arguing about something. She was just about to ask Fu Bainian what they were doing when he extended his hand and pushed her head down. Lan Jinyao, who was forced to bend almost in half, felt the flames in her heart increase by the second.
"What are you doing…?"
"Shh! Be quiet; we’ll arrive home soon."
Fu Bainian intensely stared at the group of people crowding around the security booth.
Fu Bainian only let go of Lan Jinyao once he'd driven past the barrier and was surrounded by residential buildings. Lan Jinyao quickly raised her head, then pinched her brows as she stared at him. “What the hell are you up to? I noticed that something wasn't quite right when I saw you on the set earlier. Why did you do that just now?"
The moment Lan Jinyao asked that she immediately thought of the answer.
"That group of people are here for me, right? There must be some shocking news on the net about me, and you didn't want me to see that, right?"
While she was trying to think of what news could cause such a commotion, she felt herself getting dizzy due to the thoughts swirling around her mind. After a while, she abruptly asked, "Was it Xu Hao?!"
Right after Xu Hao had come to find her today, she'd appeared on the news which resulted in those fans quickly rushing to her place. However, since she'd been filming all day, she hadn't had any time to check her phone and post an explanation.
As soon as Lan Jinyao got out of the car, she immediately picked up her mobile phone. Fu Bainian had wanted to snatch it from her again, but she swiftly put it behind her and glared at him.
"You said before that you’d let me check my phone when we get home."
She was furious now, so Fu Bainian slowly withdrew his hand and stared at her with his pitch-black eyes, not knowing what to say next. The things posted on the net weren't necessarily true, but the words of the netizens could be very hurtful sometimes. Additionally, the worst part were the groups of people who always loved to fan the flames for fun, even though they didn't know the truth behind the stories.
Fu Bainian clearly knew that after she read the news, she would feel deeply hurt and sad. But, at this moment, he chose not to stop her.
"You deliberately improvised on the spot the last time we were on set and caused Shen Wei'an to have to soak in the water for so long. Also, you were harbouring evil intentions when you swapped the powdered sugar, which was a prop initially prepared by the crew, with salt. Due to all this, I've every reason to suspect that you tampered with the wires that Wei'an used."
"Yes, those deeds were indeed done by me!"
That conversation, which was taken out of context, was continually being circulated on the internet. It looked like it was published on almost every news site available.
"Chen Meimei has appeared once more to play the devil!"
"Karma will always catch up to those that plot mischief!"
"I'd initially thought that she just had a fiery temper, so I didn’t expect her to have such a wicked heart underneath that fat body! Poor Wei'an."
Lan Jinyao looked at Fu Bainian, and then suddenly raised her voice as she asked, "Why are they saying things like that? They don’t even know the whole picture! This audio recording Xu Hao posted was tampered with, and things were taken out of context! Besides, you can't even properly see the face of the person in this video!"
She covered her head in disappointment and crouched down. She felt that her thoughts were in an utter mess now, so she needed to calm down. She was being blamed for no reason, and for something that she didn't do! No matter what, she couldn't let this matter go like this.
"That incident was obviously caused by someone else, but now that Xu Hao has framed you the blame has been shifted to you. I'll definitely get to the bottom of this matter."
Fu Bainian was about to reach out and comfort her with his hand, but Lan Jinyao was a step ahead of him and stood up before he could do so. With a determined expression, she stubbornly said, "You don’t have to meddle with this; I’ll find out myself. Something trivial like this won’t hurt me."
She clenched her hands into fists and then walked to her room.
That night, Lan Jinyao lay in bed tossing and turning. When it was around 12 AM, and she still couldn’t fall asleep, she glanced out the window. The lights in Fu Bainian’s room were still on.
Not long later, she received a text message from Fu Bainian.
"Don’t overthink things! Rest early!"
Suddenly, Lan Jinyao jumped up and propped her head on her hands as she thought. How did Fu Bainian know that she wasn't asleep yet?
The next day, when Lan Jinyao opened her eyes, she found that the sky was still dark, but she picked up her phone and checked the news anyway. Since neither she nor her company had come forward to solve the issue, the news and comments on the internet were gradually getting worse. When she logged on to her Weibo later that morning, her account was stuck, and she was unable to scroll down as a large group of people were scolding her on her homepage.
However, there were also a few people who stated that since Shen Wei'an didn't have a good character, and that she'd done plenty of awful things; it served her right to have fallen and broken her leg.
Shen Wei'an was still popular, but because of her latest scandal, she'd lost quite a lot of fans. Now, however, when one looked at Chen Meimei’s Weibo, one could see that the number of people scolding her on her page had nearly doubled.
"Haha, no wonder Li Qi had said that rumours on the internet could kill." If it weren't for the fact that Lan Jinyao had already died once, she would surely have wanted to commit suicide in the face of all these cruel comments.
After Lan Jinyao had entered the entertainment industry, she'd been protected along her journey by Fu Bainian and Shen Yu; she was practically the only female artist in the entertainment circle with zero scandals. Due to that, she'd never experienced something like this before. Now that she was experiencing it first hand, she felt quite sad, and like her whole world was about to collapse.
She dropped her phone on her bed and then said to herself, "Lan Jinyao, you’ve already experienced death once, so what other difficulties can’t be overcome?"
Lan Jinyao decided to ignore Shen Wei'an's crazy fans. Unfortunately, before she could leave the house, she saw a large crowd barge into the neighbourhood that the security guards were unable to stop. It looked like the crowd didn't know where she lived yet, so they were wandering around the block like headless flies.
Lan Jinyao took a quick look, and then hurriedly closed the curtains. At this moment, her phone suddenly rang.
"Hello?!"
"Chen Meimei, don’t go out today. The news about you is getting out of hand and increasingly ridiculous! I was walking around your residence a moment ago and saw a large group of people surrounding the gates to your residential area. They nearly attacked me! Fortunately, I was quick on my feet and managed to run away!"
Lan Jinyao’s expression instantly darkened. "Li Qi, can you help me get Xu Hao’s phone number?!"