The system, utterly engrossed in the gossip, continued, “Gu Xiaozhi was so frightened she nearly fainted. Her team carried her into the car! … They’re heading to the airport now… The people sent by her father’s wife just crossed paths with them…”
The bullet comments flew across the screen at lightning speed.
【What? What?】
【So Gu Xiaozhi was definitely in cahoots with her real father, right? An illegitimate daughter moving into the family home and letting the legitimate wife treat her like a niece…】
【At this point, are the two of them still planning to deny it?】
【My heart aches for the legitimate wife】
【Trying to run? I’ve already tipped off the media to wait at the airport like sitting ducks】
…
Yu Jiaojiao didn’t sing. She sat on the blanket-draped sofa in the huge luxury KTV suite, listening to the director and his crew wail and howl like ghosts and wolves.
At the beginning, they’d been sober enough to worry about annoying her, the investor. But now, drunk as they were, they’d thrown all caution to the wind.
The others didn’t find the noise ear-piercing at all. They clapped and cheered enthusiastically, laughing along.
The system’s voice, however, cut through it all without issue—it came directly through her mind.
“Hahaha… Gu Xiaozhi had just gotten out of the car when she was swarmed by reporters. They’re all asking her if she’s really Gu Hengyou’s daughter. Gu Xiaozhi’s face is pitch black. Gu Hengyou’s wife caught wind of it too and sent people to collect her hair…”
“Oh ho~ Gu Xiaozhi refused to cooperate, so they plucked her hair right in front of the media. The whole scene has already been uploaded online. Netizens are dying of laughter.”
“Gu Hengyou is still trying to suppress the trending topic. The Gu family’s PR team has hired a ton of bots to frantically boost other news stories. They’re also imitating other netizens by pushing your trending topic, Host. Your trending topic just climbed into the top ten—oh, no, now it’s at number eight!”
Yu Jiaojiao: “?”
Barrage: 【??】
【Got it. Someone’s doing our work for us. Time to move the battlefield over there.】
【I love joining in on this kind of chaos, hehe… /sinister】
The gossip-loving netizens, upon hearing that someone was helping them out for free, immediately flocked to Gu Xiaozhi’s trending topic to feast on the gossip.
And feast they did. The moment they saw it, they nearly died laughing. The footage of Gu Xiaozhi refusing to have her hair pulled had already been turned into memes.
Netizens aren’t usually that sensitive to certain matters. If Gu Xiaozhi had just kept to herself, nobody would have bothered her. But knowing full well her true identity, she still shamelessly hid it from the legal wife and openly walked into her biological father’s home—that crossed the line for a lot of people.
Gu Hengyou had previously used his “loving husband and devoted family man” image to reap countless benefits. Now, he was finally suffering the backlash, being torn to shreds by netizens, and the Gu family’s stock price was plummeting.
Some even brought up Chen Yizun’s cheating scandal, which hadn’t yet faded from memory, and gave Chen Yizun and Gu Hengyou a sarcastic nickname: “The Dynamic Duo of Devoted Husbands.”
The whole affair was heating up, and netizens were having a field day eating their fill of gossip.
The Zhang family, who had been very close to the Gu family, inevitably found themselves caught up in the fallout. Some netizens discovered that Gu Xiaozhi had posted many photos with Zhang Tian on her Weibo, referring to each other as best friends. So they started tagging Zhang Tian, asking if she knew about the situation, and some even began to suspect that “birds of a feather flock together”—perhaps the warm and loving Zhang family wasn’t as picture-perfect as it seemed on the surface.
Zhang Tian had indeed been close with Gu Xiaozhi due to their similar ages, but she genuinely hadn’t known that Gu Xiaozhi was an illegitimate child. Upon learning the truth, she was stunned for a long time. Considering her own public image and fearing the fire might spread to her, she immediately ordered her team to distance herself from Gu Xiaozhi as quickly as possible.
As a post-00s young female star with countless fans in the entertainment industry, it wasn’t hard to manipulate the situation. Her agent sent a heads-up to her fan club leaders and superfans, who quickly mobilized, pushing back against the questioning netizens and shutting them down.
But the netizens who had been following the gossip manhua livestream sensed something strange in the air. They quickly switched back to the livestream.
Sure enough, the system’s voice rang out.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. This young female star Zhang Tian and Gu Xiaozhi really are good best friends. Not only are their backgrounds similar, but their methods of quickly distancing themselves from trouble are also strikingly alike.”
【What?? What do you mean “their backgrounds are similar”?】
【I knew this young female star who’s been mentioned several times was hiding some juicy gossip!! But what does “similar backgrounds” mean? Is she also an illegitimate daughter?】
【That doesn’t add up. She grew up in the Zhang family. Her mother dotes on her like the apple of her eye. How could she be an illegitimate daughter?】
【The more I think about it, the scarier it gets. What if Zhang Tian’s dad also kept a mistress outside, and she happened to be pregnant at the same time as the legal wife, and then they swapped the babies?】
【Whoa, that guess from the comment above…】
【Oh my god! Could it really be true?! Zhang Tian’s mother would be even worse off than Zhao Runyan!】
【I need to get the full story on this within ten seconds!!】
Unfortunately, the system couldn’t see the barrage. And the only person who could communicate with it—Yu Jiaojiao—was completely unmoved by what should have been explosive news.
System: “Host, aren’t you curious? Zhang Tian is the next protagonist of our gossip manhua~”
Yu Jiaojiao’s response was a calm “Oh.”
System: “555~”
Barrage: 【Zhang Tian is the next protagonist of the gossip manhua?!】
【Yu Jiaojiao may not want to hear it, but we do! Spill the answer! Don’t make me beg on my knees!】
【I’m dying of curiosity here!! Just tell us!!】
【If you don’t tell us, I won’t be able to sleep again tonight, boohoo…】
But the system, its heart utterly shattered by Yu Jiaojiao’s cold indifference, had gone temporarily silent.
The netizens were left in agonizing suspense with nowhere to vent. Fortunately, although the people selected by the livestream loved their gossip, they had strong principles. Without concrete evidence, they weren’t about to start spreading random rumors.
They had no choice but to continue searching online. Yet, the Zhang family’s public image was flawless—so much so that the more the netizens dug, the more suspicious they became.
After a while of chaotic, demonic wailing in the KTV, someone from the production team finally noticed that Gu Xiaozhi had made it onto the trending list.
“Holy crap! Gu Xiaozhi is Gu Hengyou’s illegitimate daughter!”
The words jolted everyone, sobering them up a bit. Their eyes flew wide open.
The director, who had been seven parts drunk, sobered up instantly. He snatched the phone from the crew member’s hand, took one look, and his face fell.
Great. No matter what, they had to kick Gu Xiaozhi out now.
With this incident, naturally, the production team had a lot of issues to deal with. The group dispersed from the KTV.
Gu Xiaozhi’s mess kept many people up all night. Only Yu Jiaojiao, safely sent back to the villa by Sister Wang, went to bed at her usual time without a single care in the world.
When she woke up the next day, the ever-optimistic system had already emerged from its self-imposed silence, its cat-like eyes wide open.
“Host, host! Your trending topic stayed up for a whole day. The sixth chapter of the manhua is unlocked!”
The manhua popped into her mind, and the early-rising gossip lovers flooded in.
【Assistant Yang was quickly uncovered by the heiress. The heiress set a trap for her and caught her red-handed with the evidence.
The heiress called the police, who arrived and arrested Assistant Yang. During interrogation, Assistant Yang, overcome with fear, implicated the C-actor as the mastermind.
Now the C-actor has also been arrested. The heiress has decided to press charges, and the C-actor is now in detention.
At the same time, the heiress’s brother suddenly received a text message calling off his engagement… To find out what happens next, stay tuned for the next season of Gossip Manhua.】
The gossip-loving netizens zeroed in on the key point.
【I remember that person said before that Gu Xiaozhi’s young female star best friend is the fiancée of Xu Jiayi’s brother?】
【Oho! Isn’t that Zhang Tiantian?】
Is it really this explosive, so early in the morning?