“What’s wrong with this ancestor of ours? Did someone piss her off again?”
Assistant Xiao Mei blinked, her eyes darting around as she searched through her memory for any clue. After a long moment, she turned to the manager and said, “No, Sis, she’s been like this for the past few days.”
“What? She’s been like this for days! We’re finished, the world is about to end! It’s definitely going to explode any second!”
Xiao Mei’s mind was filled with question marks. She looked down at Jiang Nianzhi, who was lying on a camping chair right in front of them.
The woman was dressed in an antique-style qipao. Her hair had been specially styled by the hairstylist into Western-style curls. With her fair, exquisite face and bold red lips, a striking, exotic beauty radiated from her.
Even with her eyes closed, just looking at her face was enough to take one’s breath away.
“Is it really that bad? I don’t feel like anything’s out of the ordinary. Nianzhi-jie is just sleeping.”
“No, this is a massive anomaly. Normally after wrapping up a scene, your sister would be holding her phone, searching where to fly for a vacation, or at the very least swiping through her phone looking for travel guides.”
As she spoke, the manager pointed at Jiang Nianzhi, who was resting on the camping chair with her eyes closed. “Instead of just lying on a camping chair like this, resting with her eyes closed.”
“Based on my ten years of experience taking care of her, she is definitely thinking about how to murder the person who pissed her off right now.”
“If I could murder someone, I’d kill you first. You talk too much!” Jiang Nianzhi opened her eyes and spoke sinisterly.
Though her voice was quiet, her resentment and anger had already reached their peak.
The two people beside her instantly went quiet, so quiet that even their breathing couldn’t be heard.
Jiang Nianzhi closed her eyes again and began to seriously ponder who that woman from that day actually was.
She had later tracked down the owner of the hot spring inn to inquire, but the owner gave her the exact same response: they could not disclose guest information, and there were no relevant photos or surveillance footage available.
This state of affairs left her thoroughly baffled. How on earth did that woman erase all traces of herself? For the past half month, she had been pondering what kind of capability this woman possessed to wipe out surveillance footage, and to do so simultaneously for both a secluded, hard-to-find hot spring inn and a major top-tier tertiary hospital.
Just what kind of immense power and reach did she have?
Was that chance encounter around the corner truly an accident, or had it been meticulously planned all along?
And why did she bring up heatstroke as an excuse? Could she possibly have nude photos of her in her hands?
Was she preparing to blackmail her? Or use AI?
Jiang Nianzhi’s catastrophizing mindset completely veered off track. What if that person had already used her photos to do something bad?
Her career would come to an end!
In this world, even if a male celebrity exposed his male genitalia, people would still praise it as funny.
Yet the demands on female celebrities were almost more severe than those of a feudal dynasty.
The more Jiang Nianzhi thought about it, the more she felt she had to act in advance. Her eyes suddenly widened, and with a whoosh, she sat straight up from the camping chair. Still wrapped in her blanket, she turned to look at her assistant Xiao Mei beside her. “Quickly, go find me a PR firm, it must be the absolute best in the country!”
The next second, a wail of utter despair erupted beside her. “We’re doomed! See, I told you Jiang Nianzhi was about to kill someone!”
Jiang Nianzhi turned her confused gaze to the person beside her, her manager. “When did you get here?”
“I came here with you.”
“I was planning to take you to move to the next shooting location soon, so I thought I’d catch up with the directors first.” As she spoke, the woman suddenly cupped her hands over her heart, her shoulders wiggling continuously, a flatteringly obsequious expression on her face as she shuffled closer to Jiang Nianzhi bit by bit.
Jiang Nianzhi raised her eyes, her pupils moving up and down as she scanned her. She picked up her water from the side, took a sip, and only after a long pause did she leisurely offer her evaluation: “You’re so suitable to play a role in our script.”
“What? What role? Can I enter the entertainment industry now?” Sun Lin was quite pleasantly surprised. Jiang Nianzhi had very high standards. Since her debut all these years ago, there had been no shortage of men and women offering olive branches in the industry; even when dealing with top-tier A-listers, Jiang Nianzhi would turn around and walk away without batting an eye.
In Jiang Nianzhi’s own words:
“Even if you put a plastic surgery freak in front of me, I won’t hold back when I get hands-on.”
From this sentence alone, one could tell how demanding this woman’s standards were.
Thus, Sun Lin was extremely curious about what kind of role Jiang Nianzhi thought suited her.
“Eunuchs are the most sycophantic, and the most extreme kind, at that.”
As the words fell, a dark shadow suddenly flickered past opposite them, moving extremely fast.
Jiang Nianzhi was subconsciously drawn to that dark shadow, her eyes shifting slightly.
It was a woman. Her black hair was styled into a low ponytail, and she wore a black suit. The cinched waist outlined her waistline. Her lower half featured a pair of neatly tailored, slightly wide-leg suit trousers, and on her feet were black leather shoes.
Looking at the woman’s outfit, Jiang Nianzhi thought to herself that she had pretty good taste.
Thanks to some of her colleagues in the industry, whenever she saw a suit nowadays, she could only think of her peers’ shoes, which appeared flat-soled on the surface, but were actually thicker than a female celebrity’s high heels.
It was practically like stepping onto two cinder blocks for an appearance.
The woman’s silhouette looked exceptionally crisp from behind. Broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and sleek shoulder blades were neatly outlined by the suit. Her back was straight, and when she turned sideways, her silhouette formed a graceful curve. Her long legs looked straight and powerful. One of her hands was casually tucked into her pocket as she leaned against the utility pole behind her.
If one didn’t know better, they would think a magazine photoshoot had shifted locations.
However, the woman’s movements were a bit strange. She kept poking her head out, looking left and right, appearing exceedingly curious as if she were searching for something.
The woman patted the suit pockets on her body, but found them empty; she dug into her pockets with more force, but they were still empty.
Jiang Nianzhi saw the woman’s back go stiff for a few seconds before she quickly recovered. She casually stopped a female crew member, and together, the two of them walked toward the corner where Jiang Nianzhi was sitting.
The moment the two turned and walked over, Jiang Nianzhi instantly closed her eyes, appearing as though she had fallen asleep.
As the distance between them narrowed, the voices by her ears grew clearer.
Without knowing what the woman had said, the female crew member covered her mouth and burst out laughing. Hearing the crew member’s laugh, as clear and silver as a bell, Jiang Nianzhi slowly opened her eyes.
Jiang Nianzhi then saw the woman holding a mobile phone, seemingly placing a call. Once the person on the other end answered, she began to speak.
While on the phone, the woman would occasionally turn back to look at the crew member, sometimes flashing a brief smile and exchanging a couple of words with her.
She managed to get her own task done while effortlessly keeping the other person entertained.
After a moment, it seemed a question from the person on the other end of the line stumped her; the woman looked around at her surroundings.
She then blinked at the female crew member as if pleading for help.
With her cheeks flushed pink, the female crew member leaned closer to her. With one lowering her head and the other looking up, the scene looked straight out of a TV drama.
Finally, the woman read the information out to the other end of the call.
Handing the phone back to the crew member with what looked like a word of thanks, the woman turned and walked away.
Yet just as the female crew member took back her phone and looked up, the woman was nowhere to be seen. She looked left and right in disbelief, her entire expression painted with deep regret.
She seemed to regret not asking for the woman’s contact details in time before she disappeared.
Wrapped in her blanket, Jiang Nianzhi thought to herself: This routine is something most people couldn’t master even in ten years.
She achieved her goal while effortlessly leaving the other person completely enamored.
A truly rare flirtatious flirt.
Taking in this good show in its entirety, Jiang Nianzhi quietly closed her eyes again.
Only to hear the director shouting in her ears once more:
“Cut!”
“Stop the car!”
“Stop! Hurry up and stop the car!”
Sui Ning waved her arms frantically as soon as she spotted her assistant and driver’s car, but the two blind fools kept driving straight forward.
She took several large strides forward, watching her driver’s car slow down. In the narrow alleyway, filming equipment and props were set up all around. Both sides were terrified of colliding with each other, one being a luxury car, the other a film crew.
In a few steps, Sui Ning reached the side of the vehicle, tapped casually on the rear window, and looked helplessly at her driver and assistant. “Stop the car.”
Sitting in the passenger seat, Assistant Zhao stared at her CEO in complete disbelief.
Sui Ning pulled open the door and sat straight inside. Before her buttocks could even settle, her eyes shut tightly, assuming a posture that firmly refused all conversation.
Yet Assistant Zhao maintained the demeanor an assistant ought to have. She pushed open the door, got out, opened the rear door, and flopped into the back seat herself.
She saw her CEO clutching her head, leaning back against the seat with her eyebrows tightly knit. Occasionally, Sui Ning would open her eyes to glance at her, looking as though she wanted to speak, only to close her mouth again.
Assistant Zhao was intimately familiar with this look. Back when they were kids and she used to drag Sui Ning into playing house, Sui Ning had had this exact same attitude. But today, she really didn’t want to ignore that look of disdain anymore. She was dying to know how Sui Ning had managed to slip away right under the noses of the entire executive office.
“Sis, how did you get here all by yourself?”
Sui Ning held her head with her eyes closed, looking thoroughly exhausted, though she made no effort to suppress her chaotic breathing.
Ignoring all of that, Assistant Zhao leaned in close to Sui Ning, practically burying her head in Sui Ning’s lap. “Cousin! How did you get out? I made a bet with the others, please tell me!”
“I’m begging you! Just let me win once!”
Sui Ning clutched her head, not even in the mood to open her mouth.
How on earth was she supposed to know why she had ended up here the moment she opened and closed her eyes?
She, too, really wanted to know how she had traveled all the way from the central district of Dongcheng to this suburban filming base.
Sui Ning remained silent the entire way. No matter how Zhao Xiao questioned, coerced, or tempted her, she refused to utter a single word.
Upon returning to her office, Sui Ning pulled up the security camera footage from the CEO office system.
She dragged the timestamp back to an hour ago.
On the screen, the woman was sitting at her desk reviewing documents, a fountain pen in hand. The next instant, the screen went black for a split second.
In that very instant, her onscreen self vanished into thin air.
The documents remained on the desk, leaving only the fountain pen hovering momentarily before landing on the carpet with a clack.
At the corner of the desk, the dark coffee was still gently wafting steam.
A person had simply vanished into thin air just like that.
Sui Ning: “…”
How should she describe this feeling?
Even after watching it over and over again, she still couldn’t believe she had just vanished into thin air like that.
If she brought someone in to verify this footage, Sui Ning felt there was an 80% chance she would be sent straight to a research institute before midnight tonight.
For the rest of her life, she would likely never see her company again.
The woman’s slender fingers slid the mouse, the crisp sound of clicks echoing inside the office.
Finally, she gave a light click: Delete.
Hope we never meet again.
Jiang Nianzhi scooped up the red shawl on the sofa and slowly draped it over her shoulders.
Beside her, Xiao Mei stepped in to assist, pulling out safety pins as she babbled away: “This awards ceremony is an industry-only event. When the time comes, Sis, just hand the shawl to me before you go on stage. You go up, take your award, sit downstairs for half an hour, and then we can leave.”
“Because you have so many fans, Sis, your turn to receive the award is placed quite far back. Thank you for your hard work, Sis! If anything happens, send me a message anytime and I’ll come find you.”
Jiang Nianzhi nodded, turning her gaze toward herself in the vanity mirror. She was wearing a black satin slip dress; the proud curves at her chest were covered by the wine-red shawl, while near her midriff, a patch of fabric was exposed, looking as though a cutout had been torn open, revealing the woman’s flawless lower back dimples.
Xiao Mei helped Jiang Nianzhi adjust her shawl. Fans of Jiang Nianzhi were bound to be present at a venue like this, so even in November, female celebrities would at most throw on a shawl for warmth.
A shawl, an item that appeared to be a very casual piece of warm clothing on the surface, was actually a fashion statement for female celebrities.
Early in her career, when Jiang Nianzhi attended awards ceremonies, the dresses she borrowed from brands either exposed her chest or were strapless. Lacking fame back then, Jiang Nianzhi had no choice but to accept them. But her acceptance came with adaptation: whenever it was winter, Xiao Mei would carry several shawls with her in case Jiang Nianzhi was dissatisfied with her gowns.
A beautiful woman, her white long dress trailing behind her, a white cashmere shawl draped over her shoulders, her gorgeous black long hair cascading over her shoulders, with every step she took, her fair shoulders, wrists, and gorgeous waist-to-hip ratio were tantalizingly revealed, as if proclaiming her beauty with every stride.
Later, a fansite admin who had long supported Jiang Nianzhi edited together a video compilation of Jiang Nianzhi walking into awards ceremonies over the years wrapped in shawls, pairing it with a high-energy beat-synced soundtrack.
Instantly, it ignited a nationwide shawl trend.
Quite a few female celebrities quietly jumped on the bandwagon as well.
However, everyone knew that Jiang Nianzhi was the pioneer of using shawls; no matter how latecomers tried to imitate her, they could never match this ultimate dream.
Jiang Nianzhi gently flipped her hair over her chest. Watching her, Xiao Mei felt a wave of despair; the stylist had labored all afternoon, and now everything had been reset to zero.
However, Jiang Nianzhi didn’t care. She had already walked the red carpet; next, all she had to do was sit in the guest area and wait for the awards.
Jiang Nianzhi opened the door, gathered up her dress hem, and stepped outside.
Wrapped in her wool shawl, Jiang Nianzhi walked forward, striding toward the path of her life.
Along the way, scattered groups of people greeted Xiao Mei and Jiang Nianzhi.
Jiang Nianzhi merely offered a slight smile and a gentle nod; turning her head back, she was still that familiar cold beauty.
No one cared anymore. For all these years, Jiang Nianzhi had maintained that exact same cold, distant attitude toward everyone.
Xiao Mei obediently followed behind Jiang Nianzhi, watching her dress attentively for fear that Jiang Nianzhi might accidentally step on it with her own high heels, or that she or someone nearby might tread on it. Her eyes remained glued to Jiang Nianzhi’s feet.
Suddenly, the woman’s footsteps froze right in their tracks.