Standing inside the elevator, Ye Qiusuo looked at the flickering floor numbers, thinking about the things she had recalled.
Previously, her focus had been entirely on Xie Xi, and she had forgotten there was another person behind him.
For so many years, Xie Xi had remained at the top without facing widespread attacks. It wasn't that no one tried to smear him, but because the gold-medal agent Wei Qi was behind the scenes, manipulating things to minimize all negative impacts and never giving opponents any chance to amplify them.
There were too many people in the industry secretly watching Xie Xi, wanting to pull him down.
In the original book, on the day after the finals recording, which is today, something happened at Huayun Culture & Entertainment Company.
— Xie Xi's agent, Wei Qi, fell to her death.
The death of a non-celebrity couldn't generate much heat and was only mentioned in passing in the book. Yet, it led to Xie Xi being completely surrounded by public opinion when the finals aired the following week. Eventually, voices emerged saying it was his terrible temper and constant harassment of his agent that caused Wei Qi's depression and suicide.
Without Wei Qi's tough yet flexible methods for handling public opinion and scandals, Xie Xi immediately fell into a predicament. The agents who later replaced her lacked the ability to deal with so many underhanded schemes and manufactured scandals flying about. His resources began to decline steadily.
Given Xie Xi's talent, he could have simply released a new album to win back popularity and make the public forget those ambiguous scandals.
But Xie Xi didn't. He even went along with the wave of scandals and directly retired from the industry.
The book didn't detail the reason, but in a later chapter, to highlight the male lead Lu Mingzhe's 'kind' quality, it mentioned he discovered his new agent had some connection to Wei Qi's fall.
The day before, workers had been doing construction. They had placed a warning sign near the rooftop guardrail. This agent saw it, then turned and left, but accidentally knocked the sign over. She didn't pick it up. As a result, the next day when Wei Qi went to the rooftop to smoke, she leaned against the unstable guardrail and fell directly.
Lu Mingzhe comforted the agent, telling her not to blame herself, that it wasn't her fault.
From then on, the agent worked hard, striving to secure resources for Lu Mingzhe.
Ye Qiusuo had forgotten about this incident before. She only vaguely remembered Lu Mingzhe changing his original agent, and that agent later went on to manage another actor.
She pressed the button for the top floor. As soon as the elevator door opened, Ye Qiusuo headed towards the emergency staircase, looking up; there was still one more floor.
Ye Qiusuo quickly walked up to the rooftop and, sure enough, saw Wei Qi walking towards the guardrail, head down as she lit a cigarette.
"Sister Wei." Ye Qiusuo called out to her, raising her voice.
Hearing someone call her from behind, Wei Qi turned around. Seeing it was Ye Qiusuo, she was taken aback. She looked around again, confirming it was the company rooftop and she wasn't hallucinating. "Professor Ye, what brings you here?"
Ye Qiusuo couldn't directly say the guardrail was about to collapse. She adopted her teacher's demeanor and said seriously, "I wanted to discuss Xie Xi's situation."
It must be said that Xie Xi was a useful tool. The next second, Wei Qi stubbed out her cigarette and quickly walked over to Ye Qiusuo. "Xi Xi, is he not cooperating with you? Professor, as I mentioned before, he gets dizzy looking at words, so could you possibly make an exception regarding the homework and such?"
"It's not about homework." Seeing Wei Qi move away from the guardrail, Ye Qiusuo felt a wave of relief. "Xie Xi invested in my project. He only transferred the money; we haven't signed a contract yet."
"Investment?" Wei Qi was completely unaware.
"Perhaps, Sister Wei, you can ask him about it later." After saying this, Ye Qiusuo glanced at her phone. "Sorry, on my way here, I must have accidentally held down your number."
Wei Qi instinctively took out her own phone. Over twenty missed calls, all from Professor Ye.
"Phones are prone to accidental touches. I've had that happen before with those old button phones too." Wei Qi didn't mind and smiled. "I'll find time to ask Xi Xi about this matter."
Ye Qiusuo nodded, then looked at the floor to the right behind Wei Qi. "It seems something fell over there."
Wei Qi followed her gaze and finally noticed the extra sign. "This wasn't here yesterday."
As she spoke, she went over, picked up the sign, and wanted to see what it was. She then saw the warning on it: Guardrail unstable. Do not approach.
A chill ran down Wei Qi's spine. She had just been about to walk towards that guardrail. By her usual habit, she liked to come up here, lean on the guardrail, smoke, and clear her mind.
If Professor Ye hadn't come to call her just now, then...
"If Professor Ye hadn't come today, I might have fallen." Wei Qi propped the sign up properly, feeling fortunate.
Seeing that sign, Ye Qiusuo knew she hadn't remembered wrong. Many things in this world were still developing according to the original book.
"I must treat Professor Ye to a meal," Wei Qi said with a smile.
"No need, I still have some matters to attend to. I'll take my leave first."
Ye Qiusuo nodded to Wei Qi and went downstairs.
Just as she stepped out of the elevator on the first floor, the receptionist called out softly, 'Professor Ye.' When Ye Qiusuo looked over, the receptionist immediately waved slightly, clearly excited.
Professor Ye: "..." She had already performed too much today.
Wei Qi came down from the rooftop and went directly to find the person in charge of managing and maintaining the building. She asked him why they hadn't added supports to the guardrail and only placed a sign there.
"The workers came yesterday and told me they ran out of materials, so they couldn't put up a barrier. They temporarily put up a sign. The materials are already on the way today and will be installed shortly." Seeing Wei Qi's troubled expression, the person in charge asked if something had happened.
"I almost fell." The more Wei Qi thought about it, the more frightened she became. If Professor Ye hadn't come looking for her today, she might have fallen.
"Didn't you see the sign? We were planning to dismantle and rebuild that guardrail. It would collapse under a person's weight."
"The sign was lying on the ground."
The person in charge frowned. "I went up to check yesterday afternoon. The workers specifically placed it in a conspicuous spot out of the wind. How could it have fallen over for no reason?"
"Have someone guard the rooftop now, until the reinforcement is complete. I'm going to check the surveillance footage." Wei Qi felt something was off.
The gold-medal agent of Huayun Culture making a big deal about checking surveillance footage made some sensitive people smell something unusual. They began discussing privately about what had happened.
After Wei Qi finished reviewing and downloading the surveillance footage, even the company director was alarmed and came down specifically to ask her what was going on.
"See for yourself." Wei Qi had the director sit down and played the exported footage for him.
There were three segments. One was from the afternoon, showing several people chatting and laughing by the guardrail. Then workers came to dismantle it and shooed the people to the other side.
Halfway through the dismantling, a worker made a phone call. After hanging up, he went downstairs, brought up a sign, and placed it near the dismantled guardrail. He also said something to those few people from the company.
After a while, the people who had been chatting earlier returned to their work area. By then, the warning sign was already in place.
"This is?" The director didn't quite understand.
"Keep watching."
Wei Qi clicked on the next surveillance clip. It was already evening. Someone approached, holding another intact section of guardrail. Judging by their movements, they seemed to be shouting to let off steam, a common stress-relief method at the company.
None of that was the main issue. The key point was that as she left, she took a few extra steps and accidentally knocked over the warning sign.
That person glanced at the ground but showed no intention of picking it up, simply walking off the rooftop terrace directly.
The director watched the person leave: "Is that Shi Ru? Her manners are rather poor."
Wei Qi didn't respond, instead opening the last segment of surveillance footage, which showed her walking towards the terrace earlier.
That section of guardrail was the best viewing platform, offering a direct view of the downtown landmark building and a distant look at the natural lake to the left. Many people who came up to the terrace liked to stand there, and Wei Qi also enjoyed leaning there to relax. If she couldn't be found in her office, she could usually be spotted on the terrace.
"I just called and asked the worker from yesterday. He reminded those few people who came up not to let colleagues lean on the guardrail these next few days."
Those people belonged to different departments. Other departments had already notified all their members in group chats yesterday, but the talent agent department hadn't received any message.
Hua Yun's agents were often out on the road. Wei Qi had been out all day yesterday having meals with industry insiders, maintaining connections, and was completely unaware of this matter.
But Shi Ru knew she had been at the company all day and would definitely go up to the terrace when she went downstairs.
"My conflict with Shi Ru isn't a new thing." Wei Qi reopened the second surveillance clip. "There are plenty of good actors in the company. We can let them see whether Shi Ru knocked over that sign on purpose or not."
The director sighed. "It's a good thing you didn't walk over. I'll call everyone in for a meeting later."
It was difficult to pin responsibility on Shi Ru for this incident. She knocked over the warning sign, but even if it was intentional, it couldn't be judged as attempted murder. However, the malicious intent was clear for everyone to see.
The final outcome was the company dismissing Shi Ru.
Perhaps out of a guilty conscience, Shi Ru left quietly without offering any rebuttal.
...
"What project did you invest in for Professor Ye? She mentioned your contract hasn't been signed yet." Wei Qi went to Xie Xi's place that evening to ask him.
Xie Xi: "A tech project."
Seeing he wasn't willing to elaborate, Wei Qi didn't press further, simply saying, "Get the contract signed soon. Professor Ye came to the company specifically to talk to me about this today."
"Why didn't she come directly to me?" Xie Xi felt a twinge of dissatisfaction. He was the investor, not his agent.
"Probably assumes all your contracts go through me." Wei Qi smiled. "Thanks to Professor Ye coming over, otherwise you might not have seen me again."
Hearing the odd note in his agent's words, Xie Xi slowly sat up straight. "What do you mean?"
After listening to Wei Qi's account, Xie Xi frowned. "Not reporting it to the police?"
"Reporting it wouldn't help. She only knocked over a warning sign. If I had fallen, it wouldn't have been because she pushed me." Wei Qi was actually quite unsettled inside. Anyone who had a brush with death wouldn't remain calm, but she had been masking it with work.
Wei Qi roughly outlined the arrangements for the second half of the year to Xie Xi.
Xie Xi listened attentively and, once she finished, said, "Wei-jie, you should go back and rest first."
"Alright, I really am tired."
After Wei Qi left, Xie Xi took out his phone and opened Ye Qiusuo's WeChat.
His notes usually weren't in text. For Ye Qiusuo, Xie Xi had entered a green leaf emoji and a female avatar wearing glasses in the note field, representing Teacher Ye.
This way, he wouldn't get dizzy looking at it and could still recognize who it was.
He held down the voice message button, then let go after a moment, suddenly not wanting to send a voice message. Perhaps text would seem more formal.
Xie Xi stared at WeChat for a long time before finally deciding to type it out character by character.
[Thank you for Wei-jie's matter.]
It took him several minutes to type this one sentence, mainly because he couldn't see clearly—the characters seemed to be dancing.
Ye Qiusuo was still in the underground wind-tunnel laboratory. Visitor passes were only issued for a single day. Exceeding that time would invalidate the ID card, and the next application would have to wait at least a month. This was a rule she had put in place when the company was first founded, intended to protect intellectual property and prevent outsiders from stealing research results.
"Professor, can I give it a try?" Lin Lu looked at a piece of equipment, eager to get hands-on.
"No." Ye Qiusuo refused her student's request. "Visitors cannot touch the instruments. If you want to operate these, you need to become an employee of Tianqiu Tech."
"Then after graduation, can I apply to come here?" Lin Lu was utterly envious of the abundance of experimental equipment inside Tianqiu Tech.
"You can submit an application then."
It wasn't until 11:30 PM that Ye Qiusuo led her still-reluctant-to-leave students out. Exceeding midnight would deactivate the ID cards, and leaving afterward would trigger the alarm.
Only after sending the students back did Ye Qiusuo see the message from Xie Xi. She stared at the last character for a moment, turned off her phone, and did not reply to his message.
It was already past midnight. Replying now might disturb his rest.
Meanwhile, in the villa, the great star Xie, unable to sleep and getting up to check his phone in the middle of the night, hugged his completely silent phone. The white light illuminated his face, giving him a somewhat forlorn look.
The great star Xie tossed and turned in bed, finally opening Weibo and posting the photo he had taken earlier: [Disgusting. picture.jpg]
Although he posted in the middle of the night, fans who were still awake immediately saw it.
[Xixi, it's 3 AM! Why aren't you asleep?!]
[Zai Zai, what are you eating at this hour? You'll gain weight.]
[Awooo, I ate that today too. Rounded up, that means Zai Zai and I ate together~]
[I also thought it was disgusting, totally tasted like artificial sweetener.]
[Am I the only one who noticed Zai Zai is holding two?]
[Zai Zai is eating two by himself, one white and one colored. I ate like that the first time too.]
[Zai Zai changed cars? This one seems more ordinary, but that model car on top must be a limited edition. People were paying high prices for that a couple of years ago.]
[Zai Zai hasn't been active for so long. Besides the new album, we can only see him on "Tomorrow's Star." Saturday's episode of "Tomorrow's Star" is the finale, boohoo.]
Although it took a while to fully read the fans' comments, Xie Xi felt comforted watching the comment count rise within a minute. It seemed someone was replying to him instantly after all.
...
When Xie Xi woke up, he discovered Ye Qiusuo had replied to him, timestamped at exactly 7:00 AM.
And it was three voice messages!
The slight awkwardness in Xie Xi's heart dissipated a bit. He decided to delete the Weibo post from early morning later. Actually, it was okay, just a bit too sweet.
"You're welcome."
"You made a typo in the last character. You can send a voice message and convert it to text. No need to type. Didn't you say looking at characters makes you dizzy?"
"I will expedite the project conversion. Once it's done, you can simply wear the glasses and see the same characters as we do."
Professor Ye spoke like an all-business robot, devoid of any emotion.
After listening to these three voice messages, Xie Xi decided not to delete that early morning Weibo post after all.
...
On Thursday morning, Ye Qiusuo received a notification that Tianqiu Tech required shareholders to attend a voting meeting in the afternoon.
That afternoon, Ye Qiusuo drove to Tianqiu Tech.
She arrived half an hour early, but by the time she entered, the shareholders were mostly already assembled. She could even hear the murmur of conversation before pushing the door open.
"Qiusuo, sit here." Zhang Chengjue gestured for her to take the seat at the front right. "Professor, you may begin."
Ye Qiusuo looked toward the person walking to the head of the conference table—an unfamiliar face she hadn't seen before.
"The company previously invested a sum to initiate the Therapeutic Mushroom project, which has now achieved excellent results. The next step requires another round of funding for market expansion." That professor's actual capabilities were unknown, but he was certainly a smooth talker.
After he finished presenting the proposal, the shareholder vote began.
Including Zhang Chengjue and Ye Qiusuo, there were five shareholders in total. Ye Qiusuo voted against, one abstained, and the rest agreed.
With the majority against one, the Therapeutic Mushroom project secured its second round of investment.
Before leaving, Zhang Chengjue called out to Ye Qiusuo. "Qiusuo, there's something I'd like to discuss with you."
"What is it?" Ye Qiusuo looked at him calmly.
"Well, recently, someone reported that you frequently bring students here for visits, saying you disregard the regulations. We..."
Ye Qiusuo interrupted him. "Twice. I've only brought them here twice, and every procedure strictly followed the regulations."
Zhang Chengjue smiled helplessly. "I know you're not that kind of person. I've already reprimanded the individual who made the report."
Ye Qiusuo didn't acknowledge his remark. "The person earlier is not a member of the Therapeutic Mushroom project team."
"You mean Professor Zhao? He joined recently. He's one of the fifty talents recruited last year under the company's talent plan."
So that's how the talent plan was being used.
Ye Qiusuo's expression suddenly cooled. She looked at Zhang Chengjue. "I have other matters to attend to. I'll be leaving now."
In just one year, Ye Qiusuo had been subtly sidelined without even realizing it. With five shareholders, as long as two sided with Zhang Chengjue, her vote became insignificant.
Ye Qiusuo walked onto the glass sky bridge, looking down at the logo on the main entrance. This company contained so much of her heart and soul.
After a long moment, she withdrew her gaze and headed toward her own laboratory.
...
She continued coming to the company as usual, conducting experiments according to plan. Ye Qiusuo still followed her own schedule methodically every day, until one day when her project's progress was consistently delayed. She went to the top floor to find Zhang Chengjue.
"Access denied. Current permissions invalid."
This phrase repeated from the gate alarm as Ye Qiusuo swiped her card several times.
Soon, security guards from the other side came running over to see who was trying to force entry.
"This area is off-limits to you. Which floor are you from? Hand over your ID card." Several guards stared at Ye Qiusuo, demanding she surrender her ID.
Ye Qiusuo looked at the unfamiliar faces of the guards and said expressionlessly, "I'm looking for Zhang Chengjue."
"What's everyone gathered here for?" Zhang Chengjue's assistant approached from the side.
"Assistant Zhao, this person has been lingering here."
"This is Professor Ye. All of you, step aside." Zhao Guiyin used his own ID card to open the gate and let Ye Qiusuo in.
Ye Qiusuo watched as the guards simply let her pass and lowered her eyes.
"Professor Ye, are you here to see CEO Zhang?"
"Yes."
"I'll take you to him."
"Why has the security on this floor been replaced?" Ye Qiusuo asked him.
"CEO Zhang said the previous ones were slacking off, so they were replaced."
Ye Qiusuo asked no further questions and followed the assistant inside. Zhang Chengjue sat in his office, his back to them, gazing at the view outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, seemingly completely unaware that anyone had entered.
