Who Needs a CEO? I Choose Stardom

Chapter 44: Chapter 40: Another Reversal

[I knew it! Someone like my Bingbing would never do something like that. And even if she did, she wouldn’t stoop to... ahem, you-know-who!]

[So, why was her husband right there, but he still had our Bingbing take her to the hospital?]

[Friendly reminder to the poster above: isn’t a certain award-winning actor 51 this year? Maybe he couldn’t carry her himself? Pfft...]

[Keep my man out of this~ A guy who loves his wife that much would definitely be more worried than anyone seeing her with a broken leg! Didn’t you see the pictures of him at the hospital? Use your heads, people!]

[Who can run to the hospital while carrying a grown adult? Of course he needed someone to drive! They just happened to run into each other, and they’re acquaintances, so helping out is totally normal, right? This was clearly a positive thing, but some people just have to sling mud. Haters, have some decency!]

[Damn all you rumor-mongers! If a good man like him cheated, pigs would fly!]

[Thank god, thank god. I’ve been a fan for over ten years. I really thought even a veteran actor like him was going to have his pedestal crumble, hahahaha! This rumor is kind of hilarious! If you’d said he evaded taxes instead of cheating, I might have actually suspected something.]

[Poor Bingbing did a good deed and still got dragged through the mud. Everyone, it’s time to stand up for her!]

...

The fans joked around joyfully, flocking to Ni Bingyan’s official social media account to comfort the good Samaritan. There, they discovered she had actually filed a police report overnight. Clearly, an innocent person has nothing to fear, and this earned her another wave of brownie points.

Ni Bingyan stood guard by her fishing rod, not moving an inch. She paid no mind to the fish biting her hook and didn’t even think about lunch. When she finally saw the tide turn, she couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief.

But before she could relax, the situation changed again.

[Holy shit! Is gossip getting a sequel now? /crying-laughing emoji. This is a tip-off from a fan, get a load of this. [Image]/[Image]/[Image]]

The news was first broken by a fairly famous relationship blogger. The screenshots were of a long, essay-like post from someone’s Moments. The first line read—

"Wei Hang, this is the first time I’ve mentioned you on my Moments, and it will probably be the last."

The bitterness and hurt poured out of the screen.

What followed was a detailed account of everything she had done for Wei Hang over the years, specified down to the exact day and year, all with solid proof and witnesses. Then came piece after piece of evidence of Wei Hang cheating on her and wronging her.

Every word practically wept blood.

You could almost imagine Wang Baochuan muttering the same things while digging for wild greens.

At first, people thought the post was from Liu Yi’s Moments, but by the end, they realized it had been posted by another woman.

The online spectators collectively went, "Say what?!" This was getting hilarious.

In this day and age, mistress number one actually had the gall to call out mistress number two?

This was so damn outrageous!

Netizens were absolutely stunned!

Next, mistress number two played innocent, crying on Weibo that she didn’t know this bad bunch. She claimed she was just minding her own business at home when she was unfairly dragged into this, and she felt so wronged.

With every netizen acting like Sherlock Holmes and a touch of what seemed like divine intervention, they quickly found solid proof and, bizarrely, ended up digging up Xiao Wu.

Xiao Wu, however, was quite frank. She came out and said she had been deceived and didn’t know he was a married man.

The netizens collectively spat in disgust.

Some mischievous people even went to the official social media accounts of the major telecom companies to leave comments—[There are still places without internet access these days? You guys are slacking!]

The social media managers for the two companies were also quite amusing.

One feigned injury—[/crying emoji. You can’t wake someone who’s pretending to be asleep. If she won’t admit she signed up for a 5G plan long ago, we can’t just leak customer privacy!]

The other promoted corporate policy—[Answering the nation’s call to build a beautiful countryside, our telecom service is always on the way.]

Everyone had a good laugh before going back to watch Xiao Wu’s performance.

Xiao Wu had plenty of tricks up her sleeve. In the blink of an eye, she posted a melodramatic video.

Countless netizens evaluated it online—[The acting is cringey, the logic is inconsistent, and that plastic surgery face is a bit scary.]

The recently-done "European-style" double eyelids and the nose bridge that warped whenever she blew her nose made her crying an absolute spectacle. It made people seriously question Mr. Wei’s taste, and they all started asking—[Excuse me, Mr. Wei, how did you bring yourself to kiss that?]

Some were even meaner, asking him—[Does a larger quantity make up for a lack of quality? Does this mean I should find a few more husbands? Help me! Nooo!]

After Xiao Wu finished her performance, as if on cue, Little Six made her grand entrance...

The women all cursed at each other, their argument descending into a chaotic free-for-all.

The matter was so complex and the plot so surreal that for the next two weeks, netizens probably wouldn’t even need to watch any TV dramas.

What drama could possibly be as exciting as real life?

While everyone was intently watching the drama unfold, Ni Bingyan felt that something wasn’t quite right. She sent a private message to Sister Wei to ask for guidance.

Sister Wei had just gotten home and was about to catch up on sleep. When she received the message, she replied with a cold snort—[They let you take the heat all night by playing deaf and dumb. They’re not getting away with that without paying a price. What do you think I was up all night for?]

’Oh, that explains it.’

’Even if Wei Hang was out of commission at the hospital, his team hadn’t all dropped dead. The award-winning actor’s team has at least twenty people. Their little stunt was obviously an attempt to sacrifice her reputation to generate a wave of publicity for their own star. I don’t know what they were thinking, daring to provoke Wei Shuojie. Did they really think that just because Sun Lizhi fell, she had become a toothless tiger?’

When a man gets into this kind of trouble, as long as he clarifies things, he’s considered a good guy again afterward. He might even play the victim and attract a wave of new fans.

But when a woman encounters something like this, even if she sends the rumor-mongers to jail, the stigma follows her forever.

In the future, people will speculate wildly about her without a hint of guilt. It’s like the broken window theory; once you have a stain on your record, you’re seen as capable of any immoral act.

She could almost hear the comments. "Female celebrities... are any of them ever really clean? Hehehehe." Just thinking about it was disgusting.

Once she understood what was happening, Ni Bingyan let out a sigh of relief. She went back to watching the show, her sympathy for Wei Hang completely gone.

It had to be said, the life of a low-level actor was vastly different from the daily life of a major star. The things she had once heard through the grapevine couldn’t compare to the simple, incisive analysis Wei Shuojie had offered in just a few sentences.

It was nothing new for a "little fresh meat" to have his career implode.

Acting like a diva, having a bad temper, getting plastic surgery, family members committing crimes, or even illegal acts like drunk driving—as long as they weren’t in a relationship, fans could forgive almost anything.

But for someone like Wei Hang—a veteran of the industry with a great reputation and a Best Actor award under his belt—his fans’ expectations were undoubtedly much stricter.

When a good person does something bad versus when a person with a long history of misdeeds does something bad, who receives more blame?

The answer was beyond doubt.

When he suddenly fell from grace, even though his fans weren’t the crazy, brainless type, the negative social impact was far greater than when a young idol’s career collapses.

That was because so many people had grown up watching his work and had a special connection to him.

His fans might not boost his chart rankings, comment on his social media all day, or mindlessly buy up every product he endorsed. But when faced with a malicious incident like this that completely shattered his image, his fans would feel genuine, profound sadness.

And after the sadness came the anger.

[I put so much faith in your character, and you do this?! How could you betray your fans’ trust like that?!]

[I’ve been a fan for so many years, from my budding youth to middle age, and I never thought that behind that honest and refined facade was such filth! #MyYouthIsDeadWhyAreYouStillAlive#]

They hated him.

And so they were vicious.

#MyYouthIsDeadWhyAreYouStillAlive#

This hashtag, brimming with sky-high hostility, climbed the trending charts at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Perhaps because the fallout was so bad, it wasn’t even censored by the websites.

Even if Wei Hang didn’t know a single one of these people, as long as you were a person, especially one who prided themselves on having a solid moral compass, you had the right to stand on the moral high ground, point fingers at him, and curse him as you pleased. If it weren’t for the law, quite a few would have wanted to drag him out for a beating.

After all, there were so many single people out there, yet he alone had psychopathically hoarded so many partners!

It was infuriating!