Chapter 42: Lover

They Are All Stepping Stones for Xing Yue

Early the next morning.

Bu Yao got up early while there were still few people around, preparing to leave.

The fewer people who saw her, the better. Otherwise, Xing Yue would have to waste breath explaining how she could bring two people when everyone else was limited to one.

She got dressed and, afraid of waking Xing Yue, whose sleep was light, even her washing was done quietly. She didn’t apply makeup, just simply splashed her face with clean water. Changing direction, she headed to Luo Zhi’s office.

“Eldest Miss! What brings you here?” Luo Zhi exclaimed in surprise.

Rumors from a couple of years back said the Eldest Miss would be taking over the company, starting with learning from the bottom. Back then, the entire company was on constant high alert, just waiting for Bu Yao to arrive.

In the end, Bu Yao had no intention of managing the company’s affairs. She hadn’t come to the company once in years. If not for having the honor of attending a high-level dinner at the annual banquet, thanks to Madam Bu bringing her, she would have never even seen Bu Yao. Eldest Miss Bu was also so breathtakingly beautiful that even a single meeting two years ago remained fresh in her memory.

Seeing Bu Yao at the company so suddenly was incredibly shocking.

Bu Yao didn’t explain the reason for her sudden appearance and simply instructed, “Reschedule today’s eight AM training session. Push it back to after ten.”

Hearing this, Luo Zhi instinctively glanced at the clock on the wall. It was already after seven. Staff and the artists should all be getting up to prepare. An unexcused, sudden two-hour delay…

Her face showed difficulty. “That might not be good. It would somewhat delay the work schedule.”

Even Madam Bu wouldn’t disrupt the work plan without reason. Luo Zhi was management in this company. She had responsibility and didn’t dare agree lightly.

Bu Yao’s face was cold, frost covering her eyes. She scoffed slightly. “Is that so? Then you don’t need to work here anymore. No work, no delays.”

Luo Zhi’s expression instantly froze. She’d long heard Eldest Miss Bu had an eccentric temperament—appearing gentle and dignified at grand banquets, but revealed to be incredibly overbearing and arrogant in private. At the time, she had thought these rumors exaggerated. Now, it seemed Bu Yao truly was that kind of person.

Just as she was caught in a dilemma, Madam Bu appeared, accompanied by Mr. Bu.

Nearing fifty, Bu Changqin still had a sturdy physique and was dressed in refined, noble Tang-style attire.

He rarely came to the company. Today, he had accompanied his wife on a visit. Standing in the office, he happened to hear his daughter’s words and faintly furrowed his brow.

Luo Zhi felt like she’d found a savior and quickly relayed to the two of them: “Chairperson, Eldest Miss said she wants the training delayed by two hours. This… everyone is already prepared… is it really…”

Ji Wenyan usually wouldn’t appear at the company at this hour. Her unexpected presence now was, of course, to check on her daughter.

She gently smoothed a lock of Bu Yao’s hair. Seeing the sleep indentation left by the pillow on Bu Yao’s face, identical to when she was little, her heart immediately bloomed with joy. She smiled warmly. “Then delay it.”

At these words, Luo Zhi was astonished. “But the daily training schedule is all laid out. All the staff responsible for this program are strictly following…”

Before she could finish, Ji Wenyan interrupted: “Customized training plans can be revised. You can’t solve such a small issue?”

It was indeed a very small matter. But forcing all staff to readjust their schedules was no longer simply a two-hour delay. Luo Zhi was full of objections but dared not speak further. Even Madam Bu had said so. As a subordinate, what could she do but obey?

After Luo Zhi left, only the family of three remained in the office.

Bu Yao called out a greeting to her parents, said she was in a hurry to get to work, and quickly left as well. She found Luo Zhi and stopped her directly.

“Hold it.” Bu Yao walked up to Luo Zhi, her stunning, assertive eyes full of displeasure. She was overbearingly arrogant. “Your official position isn’t high, but your guts aren’t small. Who gave you permission to tattle to my mother?”

Luo Zhi secretly broke into a cold sweat, an exaggerated smile plastered on her face. “Eldest Miss, how would I dare tattle on you to the Chairperson? That was… consulting. Seeking the Chairperson’s opinion. Afraid of doing something wrong that might affect the company’s development. I’m in this position, dedicating myself entirely to New Shadow Entertainment, just wanting the company to…”

“Enough. I don’t want to hear it.” Bu Yao had no interest or patience for such superficial talk. She got to the point. “From now on, I’ll be coming over every night after midnight. Don’t schedule any work tasks for that time.”

Given the precedent, naturally, whatever Bu Yao said went. Luo Zhi didn’t dare resist anymore. “Understood.”

……

Inside the office, Bu Changqin watched his wife browsing through a contract. He hesitated several times before finally speaking. “Madam, Yaoyao has never managed the company before. It’s not a big deal for her to be a bit willful, but how could you just go along with this nonsense?”

Ji Wenyan was unconcerned. “It’s just delaying a training session. How is that a big deal?”

In her eyes, something this trivial didn’t even qualify as nonsense.

Seeing that Ji Wenyan still hadn’t grasped the seriousness, Bu Changqin’s expression grew solemn. His tone was helpless yet stern. “Today was delaying training, making all the staff scramble. What if tomorrow Yaoyao dislikes this show and wants the company to halt it? Then when the show airs, because Yaoyao doesn’t like watching it, we just pull it off the schedule? Loving your child isn’t done this way. Before, when Yaoyao was young, you wouldn’t let me intervene. Now she’s twenty-eight, and you’re still spoiling her like she’s eight. You’ve completely spoiled her.”

He had never agreed with Ji Wenyan’s way of raising children, but she was very assertive and wouldn’t let him participate.

In Bu Yao’s life, his role was purely that of a provider—giving candy when she asked for candy, giving an amusement park when she asked for one. Bu Yao’s academics, her career planning—he couldn’t touch any of it. It was all managed by Ji Wenyan.

Listen to what his daughter said. A high-level manager of a company, simply for raising a question about an unreasonable request, faced the threat of losing her job. In any major corporation, you couldn’t just casually fire an important employee.

Still, Ji Wenyan remained unmoved.

This forced Bu Changqin to bring up their daughter’s love life again: “You say Yaoyao doesn’t need to inherit the family business. We’ll find people to manage it, and she just collects the profits. But then you worry outsiders can’t be trusted, that they’ll bully her. You want to find an in-law with a similar family background so that in a hundred years, if there’s turmoil in the company, she’ll have her husband’s family to rely on. You worry about this, you worry about that, finding fault with A’Yue in every way. Why don’t you consider letting Yaoyao grow a little, become independent enough to stand on her own? Then would she even need to rely on others?”

Why couldn’t Ji Wenyan understand that relying on relatives or in-laws was all an illusion? Only if Bu Yao herself took control of the company would it be real.

The Bu family was a piece of choice meat. He and Ji Wenyan couldn’t live forever; they would pass away sooner or later. How could they protect Bu Yao for a lifetime? Once the two elders were gone, who knew what bloody upheavals would occur.

Just because Bu Yao didn’t want to manage, Ji Wenyan let her off. In any other family, wouldn’t the child have been groomed from childhood to take over the family business? Only Bu Yao, at twenty-eight, still had no clue what the family’s main industries were, completely clueless about managing a business.

Raising his daughter into this state, Bu Changqin didn’t want to shirk his own responsibility. He only begged his wife to finally see reason.

“Alright, alright. Why are you so angry this early in the morning?” Ji Wenyan put down the documents, sounding a little aggrieved. “I just want our daughter to be happy. Life is only a few decades. I don’t want to force her to do things she doesn’t like.”

Bu Changqin softened his tone and placed his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Madam, I’m not angry at you.”

These topics weren’t new between them, but every conversation ended fruitlessly. Year after year passed; he was both helpless and anxious.

“I’ll think about it and find time to talk to Yaoyao.” Ji Wenyan took Bu Changqin’s hand, finally relenting.

Even if it was just the consideration stage, it was still better than Ji Wenyan being solely fixated on finding someone else to be responsible for their daughter’s future.

Between this couple, as long as one side showed some softness, the conflict wouldn’t last long. Bu Changqin was, to his wife, almost completely compliant.

Their bond was deep—so much so that his affection for his daughter didn’t surpass his affection for Ji Wenyan. Unfortunately, Ji Wenyan placed her role as a mother first, and only then came herself, then her position as Madam Bu…

The originally scheduled eight AM training became ten AM.

Xing Yue was too tired. She saw the notification and went right back to sleep without thinking much about it, only getting up close to the time.

Today, she had to discuss the script the production team provided, so she didn’t bother with makeup. She just changed into a halter-neck V-neck top and a white fishtail pencil skirt—a daily outfit that was effortlessly sophisticated and feminine.

After receiving her script, she looked at the first page. It nearly made her vision go dark. The company wanted her, in the very first round, to provoke Lan Qianqian. The host would ask her impression of her teammates after spending time together, and they’d scripted a line for her that subtly insulted Lan Qianqian.

Lan Qianqian, however, was once a wildly popular actress in her day, and she still had many nostalgic fans and die-hard supporters. When the show aired, viewers would zero in on her, the arrogant, ill-mannered, unknown internet personality, generating a wave of hate.

When the online criticism reached a fever pitch, Lan Qianqian would then perform the competition in a way that dragged her team down. The narrative online would shift to: “See, she was slacking off,” “I told you she has a huge attitude, doesn’t even show up for rehearsal.”

And both Xing Yue and Mi Ning would be eliminated due to this little episode, prompting netizens to lament, “Their talent didn’t deserve this.” Then in the second round, they’d have a solo comeback segment.

The script certainly had its ups and downs, highly attention-grabbing, perfectly designed to draw in emotion. Xing Yue would be the biggest beneficiary—hated by netizens, only for them to later discover they’d blamed the wrong person. Meanwhile, Xing Yue, who’d been scolded, would be regretfully eliminated because the person everyone was defending dragged her down. Then, the netizens who had cursed her would scramble to apologize. It was a perfect way to rake in massive traffic and gain a wave of neutral fans.

This method of playing fans for fools, using them as weapons, was a common tactic of capital. From beginning to end, the only ones who were truly invested were the netizens themselves.

“Treating Senior Lan like this…” Jiang Yue played the good guy, glancing at the silent Lan Qianqian with apparent concern. “Is it really okay?”

Lan Qianqian didn’t have much of a reaction. “It’s fine. As long as there’s traffic.”

She’d been irrelevant for so long anyway. The company hadn’t given up on her, sending her on the show. Having screen time was better than none.

Jiang Yue sneered inwardly. On the surface, the company claimed they were promoting Mi Ning. This script direction was clearly promoting Xing Yue. They were all stepping stones for Xing Yue.

And they deliberately leaked the news that she got in through the back door with a letter of recommendation, causing her to be scorned and sidelined by Mi Ning. Yet about Xing Yue being Eldest Miss Bu’s lover? Not a single word.