Fu Dongyan currently lacked the courage to provoke Xia Zeyu any further. The vortex of blue flames he had witnessed in Xia Zeyu’s eyes last night resembled a ferocious dragon; a single glance made it abundantly clear that Xia Zeyu’s supernatural tier dwarfed his own by an unbridgeable chasm.
Raising his hand, his slender fingers traced a circle in the air, summoning a tiny azure dragon that materialized out of thin air, coiling around his wrist and nuzzling affectionately against his skin.
Compared to whatever monster power Xia Zeyu is packing, this little guy wouldn’t even last a second. Trying to fight him would be pure suicide.
[Host, Xia Zeyu is extremely dangerous. I strongly advise you to keep your distance.]
“No, the correct approach is to rope him in. Wouldn’t it be an immense advantage if he could be brought over to our side?”
[Do you honestly believe he’d ever submit to you?]
“I don’t need his submission. I merely need his willingness to lend a hand.”
Fu Dongyan rubbed his fingertips against the small dragon’s head, feeling a mild wave of helplessness as he watched it act spoiled.
Having already offended Xia Zeyu, how on earth was he supposed to salvage his favorability rating?
Though, truth be told, Xia Zeyu had never held a single shred of positive favorability toward him to begin with.
“System, given all the individuals you’ve monitored across your assignments, what kind of person do you think someone of his temperament enjoys interacting with?”
[My assessment is that right now, he doesn’t care to interact with anyone at all.]
“Even if he shares my transmigration background, a personality shift this drastic still defies logic,” Fu Dongyan mused thoughtfully. “There remains one distinct possibility: the soul inhabiting that body might no longer be the original model.”
[Host, I have detected zero anomalies in his biological scans.]
“You… sigh, never mind. I’ve long since stopped expecting anything useful from you.” Fu Dongyan released a weary sigh.
Opening up the entertainment news page, he watched history replay itself much like his past life: the production crew officially dropping Chi Wei’s promotional stills. Bolstered by the endorsement boost from the Xia enterprise, public reception this time around vastly outperformed the corresponding timeline in his previous existence.
That Shen Congjin handed Chi Wei over to a competitor without a fight came as no surprise; with Shen Congjin’s arrogant disposition, he likely operated under the delusion that anyone he touched was guaranteed stardom, seeing zero necessity to hemorrhage capital competing with Xia Zeyu over Chi Wei out of pure spite.
He could already vividly picture the moment Chi Wei skyrocketed to superstardom shortly, triggering a massive, complete meltdown from Shen Congjin.
A soft chuckle escaped Fu Dongyan’s lips.
As for why he hadn’t poached Chi Wei himself, his reasoning was simple: letting Xia Zeyu sign the endorsement and reap the financial dividends would amplify the dramatic irony tenfold. As a minor, insignificant extra, standing safely on the sidelines to watch the primary storyline characters tear each other apart offered top-tier entertainment.
[Host, the rumors swirling around you and Xia Zeyu are becoming increasingly unhinged. Do you intend to let them go unchecked?]
“I have no plans to intervene,” Fu Dongyan extracted a cigarette, leaving it unlit as he absentmindedly twirled it between his fingers. “Let the fire burn a little brighter. Only then will Xia Zeyu be forced to seek me out proactively, right? I’m getting rather exhausted of constantly playing the role of the fawning supplicant running after him.”
[If you harbor no romantic affection for him, how were you able to force a kiss down like that?]
“There are plenty of things I thoroughly dislike doing, yet I grit my teeth and push through them anyway, don’t I? How else do you suppose I managed to survive and reach where I am today?”
Placing the cigarette between his lips, Fu Dongyan lowered his head slightly to flick a lighter flame against the tip, the familiar aroma of tobacco briefly soothing his raw frayed nerves.
Originally, his sole target was Shen Congjin; with Xia Zeyu forcefully inserting himself into the chessboard as a wild card, the mission difficulty had scaled up exponentially.
He had a mere two years remaining. Within this tightly compressed window, he had to completely extinguish Shen Congjin’s remaining protagonist halo; otherwise, they would suffer brutal backlash from the narrative’s plot forces, plunging them straight back into the horrific outcome of family ruin and total destruction that claimed his past life.
While outsiders perceived him as eternally unflappable and composed, only he knew the crushing, suffocating anxiety and panic consuming him every single waking second.
He possessed precisely this single shot at redemption; his margin for error was pitifully microscopic.
Right as the cigarette burned down close to the filter, his phone trilled sharply. Catching sight of the caller ID, Fu Dongyan’s expression darkened into a scowl.
Accepting the line, he maintained total silence, waiting for the caller to break the quiet.
After a brief pause of several seconds, Shen Congjin’s gloomy, resentful voice drifted through the receiver: “President Fu, do you genuinely harbor such an insatiable appetite for picking up discarded items I’ve thrown away?”
“What exactly are you referring to? Xia Zeyu?”
“Back then, he exhausted every trick in the book to win my affection. Scarcely a month has passed do you honestly believe he’s truly let go of me?”
“President Shen, try not to flatter yourself so excessively. I can assure you with absolute certainty that the current Xia Zeyu despises you,” Fu Dongyan retorted, a flicker of genuine annoyance flaring in his tone. “Furthermore, he is not some object belonging to you; he is an autonomous human being, entirely free to choose whose side he wishes to stand beside.”
Shen Congjin let out a dry, cynical laugh. “In that case, it’s only a matter of time before he comes crawling back to me. All this clinging to you right now is merely a desperate ploy to catch my attention.”
“You’re deeply mistaken. It isn’t him clinging to me; I am the one clinging to him,” Fu Dongyan stated with deliberate, loaded emphasis. “I hold a genuine, profound appreciation for him.”
“Then your taste is utterly abysmal.”
“Xia Zeyu was, at the very least, your first love and your legally affianced partner. Why must you constantly leap at every opportunity to denigrate him? Besides, let’s not forget you were the one who cheated and broke faith first.”
Shen Congjin lapsed into silence. Fu Dongyan had driven his scalpel straight to the absolute core of the issue, leaving him utterly stripped of a counter-argument.
Observing that Shen Congjin lacked the spine to speak up, Fu Dongyan terminated the call without ceremony, entirely disinclined to waste another fraction of a second trading barbs with him—listening to the man’s voice for even a single additional second felt like swallowing poison.
At this exact chronological timestamp in his previous life, Xia Zeyu had already been interred underground. Not a single soul shed a tear over his tragic demise; instead, a chorus of individuals breathed a collective sigh of relief on Shen Congjin’s behalf, operating under the delusion that Shen Congjin had finally shaken off a malicious, unhinged lunatic, paving the way for a blissful, sugar-coated future alongside Tang Tang.
They functioned essentially as mindless, programmed automatons cheering blindly for Shen Congjin, utterly blind to the fundamental root of the disease. The primary catalyst who drove Xia Zeyu down a path of toxic, unhinged madness was undeniably Shen Congjin himself, yet not a single person condemned Shen Congjin for maintaining an active engagement while simultaneously seeking out a physical replacement and committing infidelity.
If Xia Zeyu truly shared his transmigrated background, his reservoir of hatred directed toward Shen Congjin ought to rival Fu Dongyan’s own. Yet whenever Xia Zeyu cast his gaze toward Shen Congjin, those eyes mirrored nothing but cold detachment treating him with the casual, sweeping indifference one might reserve for a piece of refuse fluttering down the street, entirely devoid of extraneous emotion.
That was the unmistakable gaze of a detached spectator standing entirely outside the board.
It baffled him profoundly. This world was growing increasingly distorted by the day.
Xia Zeyu had been swept up in a whirlwind of corporate obligations over these past few days, racing against the clock to push a wave of new product arrivals while capitalizing on their peak momentum. Managing the overlapping strategy documents nearly induced a migraine, leaving him zero spare bandwidth to hunt down Fu Dongyan for a proper accounting.
During this interval, Shen Congjin made an appearance down at the corporate lobby to corner him—ostensibly to interrogate him regarding why he was entwined with Fu Dongyan. Finding civilized verbal warnings entirely ineffective, Xia Zeyu summarily swept Shen Congjin’s legs out from under him with a swift kick, sending him crashing flat onto the marble floor. True to form, Shen Congjin never dared show his face near their building again.
The day Frostless premiered matched the synchronized market launch of their new product line.
Day one: public reception remained lukewarm. Day two: streaming metrics steadily ticked upward. Day three: viewership exploded overnight into a viral sensation. Day four: new product inventory sold out completely, falling drastically short of market demand.
In episode five of Frostless, the martial artist character portrayed by Chi Wei brandished a massive saber, standing her ground against a horde of over a dozen cutthroats. Her fluid, ferocious combat choreography radiated an arresting, fierce heroism; a mere minute-and-a-half sequence sent shockwaves rippling across online forums.
Refusing to rely on body doubles, she had diligently mastered every single movement under the meticulous guidance of the martial arts stunt coordinators, enduring countless hours suspended on heavy wire rigs and executing backward somersaults that rubbed the skin raw along her inner thighs. Clenching her teeth through the agony, she persevered until she delivered a flawless, breathtaking performance.
Consequently, Xia Zeyu firmly believed Chi Wei’s triumph had zero to do with Shen Congjin, stemming entirely from her own relentless grit and sweat. Even if she originated as a minor supporting character destined for a mere two-or-three-chapter run, authentic resilience carried an irrepressible vitality capable of carving out its own destiny.
The colleagues who previously whispered behind his back, mocking him for lacking business sense and tossing away capital on an obscure rookie, abruptly swallowed their words. Encountering Xia Zeyu in the hallways now, they bowed their heads respectfully and offered crisp, deferential greetings of “Director Xia.”
Reviewing the current month’s financial balance sheet, Xia Zeyu grinned so wide his cheeks ached.
Clearly, no matter what universe one inhabited, pulling in massive piles of cash remained an unadulterated source of supreme joy.
Barely a few days following Chi Wei’s explosive breakout, the Shen Corporation countered by rocketing their own PR campaign to the top of the trending charts. The core hook centered on Shen Congjin chartering an entire pristine private beach, blanketing the sands in a sea of fresh blooms, and gifting Tang Tang a lavish residential villa nestled deep within the city’s most exclusive affluent enclave.
Bizarre. According to the original narrative timeline, this specific plot sequence wasn’t scheduled to trigger until Tang Tang’s birthday two months down the line. Why pull the trigger so prematurely?
Could it be a desperate bid to eclipse Chi Wei’s surging spotlight?
If that indeed served as their motivation, Shen Congjin was officially squirming in sheer panic, throwing both himself and Tang Tang onto the public chopping block simply to claw back public attention.
Yet, from a tactical standpoint, the move remained clever. Recognizing that his individual protagonist halo alone couldn’t suppress Chi Wei’s current organic momentum, he opted to drag Tang Tang the secondary protagonist into the fray, leveraging a dual-halo resonance to break through the encircle-and-suppress movement.
Sigh. The mandatory traditional trope where two major corporate power players sneeze, and the entire global media apparatus scrambles to document the phlegm.
At this juncture, Tang Tang was likely swooning in a haze of emotional gratitude, rendering any immediate attempts at instigating discord utterly futile.
Simply passing time out of sheer boredom, Xia Zeyu tapped open the trending topic tracking Shen Congjin and Tang Tang, diving with mild amusement into the comment sections.
[Oh my god, I’m about to faint from the sheer sugar rush these two are sickeningly sweet!]
[Just finished paying my monthly mortgage installment before opening this news headline. My class-warfare resentment has officially hit maximum velocity.]
[They’ve got bottomless fortunes and undying romance at this rate, I’m starting to suspect I’m just wandering around living life as a background NPC.]
[Wait, isn’t that one guy supposed to be going completely insane throwing tantrums somewhere?]
[You referring to Xia Zeyu? Didn’t he hitch his wagon to President Fu already?]
[President Fu never made any official public declaration, though. Who knows, maybe Xia Zeyu just threw a shameless clingy fit to trap him?]
“Sigh…” Xia Zeyu heaved a long, dramatic sigh. Shaking off the original owner’s deeply tarnished public reputation wasn’t a feat achievable overnight.
Roughly thirty minutes later, an entirely separate trending tag breached the top tier. Spotting the sole anchoring name of “Fu Dongyan” slapped across the header, Xia Zeyu experienced an immediate sinking sensation in his gut. Tapping it open plunged his vision into absolute darkness.
Fu Dongyan maintained an active, highly public social media presence, frequently updating followers with mundane slice-of-life content such as prepping meals for family members or unwinding during leisure hours by heading out to local fishing spots projecting zero oppressive airs of an unapproachable corporate overlord.
This sudden spike in trending prominence, however, stemmed entirely from a newly published microblog post dropped by Fu Dongyan himself.
He attached a single photograph: an unposed, candid shot of Xia Zeyu captured mid-motion while clad in athletic wear, tilting his head back to hydrate from a beverage bottle. Judging by the environmental framing, it had clearly been snuck as a covert telephoto capture.
Accompanied by a ruthlessly concise two-word caption: [Working out.]
Xia Zeyu felt the humor drain straight out of him, replaced by a sudden, surging wrath. Reaching out with his bare hand, he snapped his expensive fountain pen cleanly in half across his desk, spraying a messy arc of black ink across the polished mahogany surface.
Are you kidding me? Can this circus get any more chaotic?
Originally, the only narrative milestone mapped to this exact window was Chi Wei skyrocketing to fame off the back of her supporting role to drive brand revenue. Now look at the board: Shen Congjin and Tang Tang were parading their affection across trending search slots to manufacture artificial engagement, while Fu Dongyan chose to drop an ambiguous, loaded photograph to deliberately drag himself into the mud. Everyone treated public trending tags like an open farmers’ market, shoving and elbowing each other to fight for premier front-page real estate.
“System, exactly how unhinged is this world capable of becoming?” Xia Zeyu demanded with profound exasperation.
[Host, I honestly lack the data to project that. The original text certainly never contained any of these unscripted deviations.]
Massaging his temples to ward off an impending tension headache, Xia Zeyu navigated directly into Fu Dongyan’s active comment thread and dropped a single, deadpan message:
[Photography skills are passable. Keep up the mediocre work.]
Since the entire playing field is already burning in a dumpster fire, I might as well throw a few more logs onto the pyre. As a major recurring character boasting significant narrative weight, how could I possibly allow them to leave me out of the headlines?
Tossing his phone aside without waiting to see how Fu Dongyan’s followers reacted, Xia Zeyu buried his face back in his workload and powered through.