Feng Tang finally got her wish and met Fu Chongming, and also got her wish of being somewhat disappointed.
“He really isn’t as handsome as his professionally retouched photos,” she commented after they left. “But he’s still pretty handsome.”
“He’s a male celebrity, after all.” Shu Yu had a deeper impression of Fu Chongming because she had always remembered the character setting of this award-winning actor in the novel. “And his family has some background too.”
Shu Yu didn’t know whether the original author of the book she had transmigrated into simply had a particular fondness for hidden-identity reveals. In any case, the male lead currently appeared to be nothing more than an ordinary award-winning actor, but by the end of the story, he became an award-winning actor and domineering CEO with an impressive background who was arrogant, cool, and dazzling.
“Why does everyone in the entertainment industry seem to have some kind of background?” Feng Tang was very confused. “If your families are already so rich, why do you still come out to act?”
“Because acting makes money faster. Even faster than the family business,” Shu Yu said as though it were obvious. “Look at all those livestreamers who sell products. Plenty of them come from wealthy families too, and some are even business owners themselves.”
“That’s true. Nobody complains about having too much money.” Feng Tang was a little envious. “If only I could get rich overnight too.”
Unfortunately, Feng Tang’s wish did not come true.
Getting rich overnight didn’t happen, but waking up and immediately having to work happened quite often.
After spending four or five days in Hengdian, visiting all the scenic areas and seeing plenty of celebrities, Shu Yu was awakened by a phone call in the middle of the night.
The caller was Secretary Xiao Cai.
“Sister Shu, Sister Shu, something happened!” Xiao Cai said anxiously. “There’s a major case over in L City.”
“Calm down and tell me slowly.” Xiao Cai’s words instantly chased away all of Shu Yu’s sleepiness. “What exactly happened in L City?”
“A patient livestreamed herself jumping from the hospital building in the middle of the night!” Xiao Cai finally managed to organize the words properly.
Shu Yu: “…”
If she remembered correctly, Yan Yu had seemed to have the same idea last time.
Unfortunately for him, they had stopped him.
“Is she still alive?” Shu Yu was more concerned about this question at the moment.
“She’s still being resuscitated.” Xiao Cai was also waiting for the latest news.
“They aren’t planning to handle it themselves?” Shu Yu asked.
Xiao Cai sounded extremely helpless. “They just saw what happened in C City. They’re afraid something might go wrong, so they called us as soon as it happened.”
Shu Yu couldn’t yet determine how big a public-opinion crisis this incident would become, but there was no way something like a livestreamed suicide attempt by jumping off a building wouldn’t make the trending searches.
“We’ll take the case for now. Once we get the detailed information tomorrow morning, we’ll discuss the specifics.” Shu Yu quickly made her decision.
Most people were still asleep right now. The public-opinion crisis wouldn’t truly begin fermenting until at least the following morning.
Xiao Cai agreed and hung up.
Lying in bed, Shu Yu began wondering whether this case might once again be related to the same opponent from the previous two cases.
Public-opinion cases occurred somewhere across the country every few days. Shu Yu had no intention of developing the habit of immediately suspecting that a specific organization was involved every single time. That would affect her judgment of the actual circumstances of each case.
And so, early the next morning, Feng Tang received the unfortunate news.
“At least we got a few days of rest,” she consoled herself. “Hopefully this case will be easier to handle.”
Shu Yu naturally hoped so too. The previous case had consumed far too much mental and physical energy.
Xiao Que and Lu Anran, who were also on vacation, received the news. The four of them soon regrouped in L City, where they met the staff member who had come to receive them.
As expected, this one was young too.
“Sure enough, whenever something like this happens, the young ones are always forced to bravely charge straight to the front lines to take the blame.” Lu Anran complained irritably.
“Including us?” Xiao Que asked.
“What do you think?” Lu Anran rolled her eyes. “First education, then the police, prosecutors, and courts. Now it’s finally the medical system’s turn?”
That wasn’t unexpected. After all, the three sectors Lu Anran had mentioned were all frequent targets of public-opinion crises.
The girl who had come to pick them up looked as though she hadn’t graduated from university very long ago. Sitting in the front passenger seat, she hesitated, seemingly unsure how to begin.
“Hey, young comrade, how old are you this year?” Feng Tang leaned over and handed her a lollipop. “Don’t tell me you only just passed your probation period.”
The girl nodded timidly. Taking the lollipop, she said, “I’m twenty-three this year.”
“A fresh little newbie.” Feng Tang unwrapped her own lollipop. “You weren’t assigned to liaise with us because you’re the only person in your unit who knows how to use Weibo and the other short-video platforms, were you?”
“No. I attended your training last year,” the girl named Shen Xiaoli said softly. “That’s why they assigned me to come.”
“You were still on probation last year, weren’t you?” Shu Yu was somewhat surprised. “Your unit sent you there just like that?”
Shen Xiaoli nodded gently.
Shu Yu fell silent.
Sure enough, she really shouldn’t expect anything from them.
“It’s fine. Why don’t you first tell us what exactly happened this time?” Feng Tang could tell that she was nervous, so she kept smiling as she spoke to prevent her from becoming even more anxious.
Shu Yu had already watched the livestream recording. Although the video had been removed from all platforms that morning, it had already circulated for several hours, so it wasn’t difficult to find.
In the video, a woman named Cheng Lili stood in a hospital ward and, after leaving behind a single sentence, jumped.
That sentence contained only nine Chinese characters.
“My entire life is a joke.”
The video was very short, and so was the livestream, because when Cheng Lili’s body and phone hit the ground together, the livestream was cut off by the impact.
Shu Yu knew absolutely nothing about the circumstances surrounding the incident, nor did she know why a woman named Cheng Lili would leave behind such a sentence before attempting suicide.
So right now, she couldn’t determine at all whether this incident had anything to do with that mysterious force.
Patients suffering from terminal illnesses often chose to end their lives this way in hospitals, and a patient’s suicide could sometimes develop into a public-opinion crisis as well.
“We don’t know why she tried to kill herself either,” Shen Xiaoli said apologetically. “The hospital said that Cheng Lili’s mood had remained very stable before last night.”
Appearing emotionally stable did not necessarily mean that there was nothing wrong with someone’s emotional state. Shu Yu didn’t think the hospital could be certain that Cheng Lili had no psychological problems whatsoever.
Beds in a large Grade-A tertiary hospital like this were extremely scarce, and the doctors and nurses were also extremely busy. They simply didn’t have much time to pay special attention to the emotional state of an ordinary hospitalized patient.
“But judging from what she said before jumping, could it have been a relationship problem?” Lu Anran guessed randomly.
“We don’t know. Nothing particularly bizarre has emerged in public opinion yet. It’s mostly the usual attacks accusing the hospital of arbitrary charges, or people pushing the narrative that the hospital refuses to treat patients who don’t have money.” Shu Yu looked through the discussion roughly. “Anran, start monitoring public opinion now. If this is an ordinary public-opinion case, we’ll handle it the usual way.”
“My sixth sense tells me this isn’t going to be an ordinary public-opinion case.” Lu Anran opened the public-opinion monitoring software as she spoke. “Like I just said, the police, prosecutors, and courts and the education system have each suffered once. Now it’s the medical system’s turn. It’s hard to believe that’s a coincidence.”
Shu Yu was also particularly wary for this reason.
After arriving at the hospital, they gained a general understanding of the situation.
Cheng Lili, who had livestreamed her suicide attempt shortly after three in the morning, was thirty-two years old and suffered from mid-to-late-stage uremia. She had been hospitalized this time because her condition had worsened again.
“She was also a self-media content creator,” Cheng Lili’s attending physician said. “Her family isn’t well-off. After she became ill, she didn’t want her parents worrying about her illness, so she recorded her dialysis and treatment process online. I’ve watched her videos before. They were all very positive and cheerful.”
“Was it on the platform that people of our parents’ generation don’t often use?” Shu Yu quickly guessed.
The attending physician confirmed it.
Then she was a Bilibili uploader.
The group quickly confirmed the answer.
It was indeed a platform that could effectively prevent one’s parents from seeing the content.
“Did she show any unusual behavior before attempting suicide?” Shu Yu continued asking.
The attending physician thought for a long time but still couldn’t recall anything.
“I usually have more than a dozen beds under my care, so I really don’t have much time to observe her specific condition. I only remember that after I finished my rounds last night, she even told me to go to bed early and joked that my hairline was receding farther and farther.” The attending physician’s face also showed obvious confusion. “She seemed to be in pretty good spirits, so I didn’t pay much attention.”
Although patients in the nephrology department often developed depressive moods and even attempted suicide, it was still very rare for someone who had just been joking with you to suddenly decide to jump off a building.
A psychologist would probably encounter situations like this more often.
Based on the information currently available, Cheng Lili seemed like a patient with smiling depression, and her jump appeared to have simply been caused by depression.
And so, they sat in the hospital’s temporary meeting room and looked at one another.
“Nothing seems particularly abnormal so far. What she said before jumping also sounds like she was simply disappointed with the world,” Feng Tang said.
“I haven’t found anything wrong either.” Lu Anran looked at Cheng Lili’s information. “If there’s anything slightly strange, it would probably be her self-media account. She was still posting very optimistic updates as recently as yesterday, but that isn’t impossible for someone with depression either.”
“If nothing else happens, this matter can be wrapped up with an official statement,” Xiao Que raised a flag for himself. “Although I feel like I probably shouldn’t have said that.”
Feudal superstition was undesirable, but sometimes one had no choice but to believe in metaphysics.
Shu Yu instinctively stared at her phone, ready at any moment for a new trending topic to appear.
Facts proved that a sixth sense was always accurate. Just as Xiao Que had unhesitatingly raised a flag for himself, a trending topic quickly appeared on the backend of Lu Anran’s public-opinion monitoring system.
Lu Anran read the topic aloud.
“Cheng Lili, White-Coat Old Zhang.”
“What does that topic mean?” Feng Tang looked confused.
“I know White-Coat Old Zhang. It’s an account that often posts medical science education on Weibo. Whether he’s actually a doctor, I don’t know.” Shu Yu opened Weibo as well. “I know of him, but I’ve never followed him. What does he have to do with Cheng Lili?”
“The trending topic says that White-Coat Old Zhang recently dug into Cheng Lili’s family background and accused everything she’d done before of being an attempt to play the victim,” Lu Anran said after reading through the details. “Cheng Lili attempted suicide three days after White-Coat Old Zhang published his article.”
“If it was because her family background was exposed, then she’d be even less likely to kill herself.” Shu Yu quickly shook her head. “It’s obvious that she intended to use her illness to attract traffic to her account. Getting exposed sooner or later was inevitable.”
“If a marketing account gets exposed, at worst they abandon the account, switch to another one, and start over,” Xiao Que analyzed while leaning back in his chair. “That’s unlikely to be the main reason.”
What Feng Tang cared about, however, was that Cheng Lili’s family really was fairly well-off.
“Her family is actually quite wealthy. Her parents have stable incomes, and they own several properties,” Feng Tang said after pulling up the information. “But her illness is real. Why did she have to play the victim?”
“I don’t know.” Shu Yu couldn’t think of the exact reason either. “Judging from her videos, the persona she created for herself was that of someone from a poor family who was independent, strong, and working hard to earn money for her own medical treatment. This kind of persona is pretty common nowadays because it can attract sympathy from a large number of female viewers and get them to send her donations.”
Everything they had seen so far showed that Cheng Lili was a marketing account using her illness to create a persona and make money through self-media.
In other words, everything White-Coat Old Zhang had exposed was actually true. Cheng Lili’s family circumstances really were different from the persona she had presented.
“She’s already this sick. Why does she still need to make money through self-media?” Feng Tang still didn’t understand. “Why not just focus on getting treatment?”
“If she can wake up, perhaps we can only wait for her to tell us herself.” Shu Yu naturally didn’t know why either. “But this trending topic obviously has another purpose.”
Lu Anran had already investigated White-Coat Old Zhang’s real identity. He hadn’t made much effort to conceal his identity in real life. In fact, because he sometimes needed the authority of an expert to persuade netizens who had been brainwashed by pseudoscience, he had even posted his work ID before.
Although the ID had been censored, the general outline of his ID photo could still be seen clearly.
For a middle-aged doctor who could practically be described as running naked across the internet, it took only half an hour to uncover his real name, hospital, and department.
Soon, Lu Anran posted White-Coat Old Zhang’s identity in their group chat.
“Zhang Jianguo, male, forty-three years old, deputy director of the Nephrology Department at T City Third People’s Hospital,” Lu Anran read from his résumé. “After completing a full-time master’s degree, he pursued an in-service doctorate. His professional record is about what you’d expect from a deputy department director at a Grade-A tertiary hospital.”
“Doctors who do science education don’t seem to be very young,” Xiao Que said, thinking of several major verified medical accounts he knew. “I suppose medical students under thirty are all still being worked like livestock in hospitals.”
Feng Tang quickly noticed the marketing accounts that had suddenly appeared under the trending topic.
“Here they come, here they come. After digging up Doctor Zhang’s identity, they’ve started pushing the narrative that doctors in public hospitals are all as lacking in empathy as he is.” Feng Tang didn’t look surprised in the slightest. “Now they’re swarming together and demanding that Third People’s Hospital punish Doctor Zhang.”
“He didn’t do anything wrong.” Shu Yu pushed up her glasses. “All the information Doctor Zhang posted was true. Cheng Lili’s family really is fairly well-off, just as he said.”
Although his method had been inappropriate, Doctor Zhang’s original intention had been to expose fraud. He also hoped that people would stop sending Cheng Lili donations.
“Something’s not right. Cheng Lili is the one who attempted suicide, but the center of public opinion has now been shifted onto Doctor Zhang. I’ve seen this episode before.” Lu Anran looked away from the screen. “This is exactly how they shifted our attention onto Yan Yu last time.”
“We have two choices right now.” Shu Yu frowned deeply. “The first choice is to follow our usual response strategy and proactively release evidence proving that Cheng Lili’s family really is well-off. But that would mean we’re taking Zhang Jianguo’s side. If there’s another reversal in this incident that we don’t know about yet, then once we take the wrong side, the consequences would be unimaginable.”
Feng Tang instinctively wanted to eliminate the first choice, but when she saw Shu Yu’s expression, she had a feeling the second option probably wasn’t a good one either.
“The second choice is to hold our position for now and observe what the other side is trying to accomplish. But under the pressure of public opinion, Third People’s Hospital may be unable to withstand it and end up disciplining Doctor Zhang. Our silence would cause an experienced deputy chief physician at a Grade-A tertiary hospital, someone the country spent years training, to leave the medical profession from then on. We would also lose a major verified medical science account with an established follower base.”
The meeting room fell silent.
No matter which of the two choices they made, the result was something none of them wanted to see.
“Looks like they’ve become harder to deal with after what happened with Yan Yu.” Xiao Que let out a long sigh. “Who could possibly make a choice like this?”
Responding immediately could very well mean jumping straight into a trap they had already dug for them. Yan Yu had nearly died last time.
But if they continued not to respond, Doctor Zhang, who had acted out of a sense of integrity to expose Cheng Lili’s deception, would become the sacrifice in this case.
Shu Yu suddenly remembered what Shu Ling had said that day.
Her character in that male-lead-centered political-intrigue drama was a princess sent away in a political marriage, a sacrifice in the war between two nations.
That was why her character was important, yet not important.
Her life was held in the hands of the players moving the pieces in the struggle between the two countries.
She was merely a chess piece.
Then what about Zhang Jianguo in the real world?
Would he also become that important yet unimportant character—the sacrifice they abandoned to ensure that nothing went wrong with their public-opinion response?
“If possible, I want to choose C.” Lu Anran looked at Shu Yu. “Besides, you can’t choose between them either.”
Shu Yu didn’t deny it.
“Following the conventional approach, we really would be forced to choose between the two.” Shu Yu looked at Zhang Jianguo’s printed résumé. “But while the other side is getting stronger, we’re not pushovers either.”
“Their ultimate goal this time is still to attack public hospitals and promote the privatization of healthcare. Then that’s where we need to start. We’ll work backward and figure out exactly how they intend to steer the narrative this time.” Shu Yu had no intention of admitting defeat. “We still have one day. Public opinion hasn’t fermented to the point where it’s impossible to handle yet. Whether we can predict their methods in advance depends on whether we can grasp the core of this matter.”
Lu Anran rolled up her sleeves, feeling her competitive spirit completely ignite.
“I’ll start by checking which companies these MCNs belong to and what industries their accounts usually operate in.”
Feng Tang also perked up. Biting down and crunching the lollipop in her mouth, she began investigating Cheng Lili’s information.