NWWNL – Chapter 9

Chapter 9.

Xu Xinyi met Anya at the set the next day.

“What? You two aren’t getting divorced?” Anya sounded even more shocked than when Xu Xinyi asked her for a drink yesterday and she heard that Yi Yang was going to divorce her. She looked at Xu Xinyi foolishly. “Are you alright?”

“Anya, it turns out he didn’t have an affair. It was all a misunderstanding that day. Those misleading photos were taken deliberately by Zuo Rong and they had nothing to do with him.”

“So what? He doesn’t love you. It’s only a matter of time before he cheats on you.”

Xu Xinyi was looking forward to that eagerly but outside she said: “He said that love can be cultivated with time… and I believe him.”

Anya gave her a helpless look that seemed to say ‘You are hopeless’. “Xu Xinyi, do you really believe him? Are you stupid?”

Seeing Xu Xinyi’s bullheaded appearance, Anya sighed helplessly, unlocked her phone, and swiped her thumb through her WeChat’s address book list to pull up a pile of people’s names.

The people she brought up from her WeChat pretty much all just had shots of their heads. At a glance, the screen of her phone was filled with nothing but handsome guys with sunny facial features who exuded male hormones. 

“I had thought your divorce was settled, who could have expected this to happen? Just look at this one. Isn’t he thousands of times better than your Yi Yang?” Anya picked one of them and opened the selfie spot on the man’s profile to show Xu Xinyi.

“Look at this, 21 years old, 1.88 meters, a real campus prince! He’s even on a basketball team! Look at those abs, look at this face, isn’t it handsome?”

“Or look at this one, 23 years old, 1.8 meters. And he looks very gentle. Don’t you think he smiles sweetly?”

“And all of these,” said Anya, picking out several WeChat moments one by one, and showing Xu Xinyi several different headshots. “This one is 20, this one is 22, they’re all tender and fresh, all good boys!”

With that, she sighed, “Aside from wealth, I think any one of these boys is better than that Yi Yang. But you are so muddleheaded that you can’t see!”

Xu Xinyi looked eagerly at the screen of her friend’s mobile phone and covered her chest with her hands. She could feel her little heart beating like a war drum.

Who is too muddleheaded to see?

“Yi Yang… he… He’s fine, Anya. Stop it.” Please. Or she really won’t be able to help crying.

There were so many little fresh meats in front of her, but she could only look at them from afar, and couldn’t get close. It was cruel! Too cruel!

With a swipe of her thumb, Anya locked her cell phone.

“Forget it. I know your character. After you make a decision even a team of bulls couldn’t drag you back. I won’t mention it anymore.”

Xu Xinyi reluctantly withdrew her eyes from the now black screen and said, “Tonight on set you don’t have to worry about me. Don’t bother getting a driver to send me off.”

“Is something happening tonight?”

Xu Xinyi nodded shyly and her face was covered with happiness. “Yi Yang said he would come and pick me up tonight.”

“He’s picking you up from work? Doesn’t he want your marriage to be a secret? “

“If Yi Yang doesn’t want to make it public, then it won’t be made public.”

Anya rolled her eyes and said, “OK, I won’t ask any more questions about you two. Anyway, no matter how many times I ask, the result is always the same.”

On the set, there seemed to be something going wrong with the scene they were shooting. Director Zheng was cursing the people there, his voice was bellowing out like thunder, and all the staff were silent.

Anya nudged her with an elbow. “What are you planning to do with Zuo Rong? She seems like a greedy and difficult woman.”

Xu Xinyi’s face changed like flipping the page of a book. She leaned back calmly and sneered, “Let’s talk about her later.”

In fact, Xu Xinyi really has no reason to try to settle accounts with Zuo Rong. After all, the marriage between her and Yi Yang is a secret. No one knows about their marriage and that obviously includes Zuo Rong. So what Zuo Rong did was, at best, just like what many other ordinary stars in the entertainment industry did. She tried to find a patron and cling onto a powerful single man who could sponsor her.

“Alright, that’s a wrap! Everyone has worked hard this morning. Let’s break for lunch and continue in the afternoon. “

At the command of Director Zheng, the crew all vanished like smoke.

The smell of the delivered meals wafted over the whole set.

But Zuo Rong didn’t bother to eat, instead, while everyone else was eating, she hurried into a dressing room and locked the door.

“How is it? What did the magazine say?”

Zuo Rong’s agent was good at creating hype and under his hands he had managed to hype up many popular stars. So he had urged Zuo Rong strongly last night to take advantage of the rare opportunity to climb up Yi Yang and hug his thigh. 

He had gone around to find several magazines and entertainment media companies, hoping to seek out a win-win for his artist’s hype and for the outlets’ popularity. But for some reason, overnight, the originally smooth talks with the media outlets had disappeared and they all refused to publish.

“I found several magazines but they all suddenly refused to cooperate with us. Maybe President Yi decided to stick his hands in.”

Zuo Rong’s thoughts had all been on Yi Yang for the past two days.

When she saw Yi Yang that night, she saw a man who was calm and self-contained, and his arrogant eyes bored straight into her heart. This was the first time that Zuo Rong had been so obsessed with a man.

Nowadays, many actresses in the entertainment industry could marry into wealthy families, and she has been recognized by the entertainment industry as exceptionally beautiful. So why couldn’t she be next?

“How could that be? We didn’t leak those photos out, so how could President Yi know about them? “

“Anyway, the magazines are no good. We can only contact some bloggers. I contacted several marketing companies last night so we will be able to spread the photos tonight.”

“Really?” Zuo Rong’s eyes lit up.

“After they spread, you have to be calm. Don’t say anything on the matter no matter who is asking. Only after we let the situation brew for a day or two, you can send a clarification statement.”

Zuo Rong vowed, “Don’t worry, I know what to do.”

—–

At five o’clock in the afternoon, Xu Xinyi had a face-to-face scene with Zuo Rong.

Actually, this scene had been re-written slightly after she had gone over it with the director.

But Zuo Rong’s line-reads were not good. The previous day the director had called her and asked her to memorize all of her lines with Xu Xinyi, but she had only casually tried to remember them. Now, when she really appeared on the stage, her acting was full of loopholes, and the number of ‘NG’s reached a peak.

Director Zheng got frustrated and had to take a five-minute break.

Xu Xinyi was also frustrated.

“Zuo Rong, can you even act? Could I trouble you to put in a little more effort?”

Zuo Rong stood on the spot and looked at her at a loss, not daring to answer back.

“Who are you showing off your pitiful look to? I have something to do later. Do you know that you are delaying my schedule?”

“I’m sorry, Sister Xinyi. I didn’t mean to. I’ll work hard!”

“Work hard?” Xu Xinyi glanced at her critically, and her face was covered with contempt and disdain. She spoke arrogantly: “I can sprinkle rice on the ground, and a chicken will act better than you. With your acting skills, I advise you to change your career as soon as possible and stop dragging other people down. It’s a waste of my time to act on the same set with you!”

Zuo Rong’s face turned pale but Xu Xinyi did not relent and continued to say, “Nowadays some ‘stars’ aren’t worth much. I’ll have to pay more attention to the script’s cast next time. What if the person I’m acting with doesn’t know how to act and never bothers to study to improve their acting skills? What am I going to do if their incompetence affects me?”

Such merciless ridicule and accusation made Zuo Rong’s eyes turn red instantly. She was a small and beautiful woman. When she cried her whole person seemed to become extremely weak, like a flower without branches to rely on, making people feel pity.

“I’m sorry! Really sorry! I will work harder!” When the flower-like woman shed tears like rain and kept apologizing, it looked really pitiful.

“Alight Xinyi, you are a good actress, so don’t worry about her. Zuo Rong, you can just muddle through as best you can. If you don’t remember your lines we can just dub it later. Let’s try to get through the scene this time.”

“Yes director, I will try my best!”

Xu Xinyi rolled her eyes.

Finally, after ten more NG, Director Zheng reluctantly let the scene pass.

When Xu Xinyi finished work and was about to call Yi Yang to ask where she should meet him, Anya came over angrily and handed her a mobile phone.

“Xinyi, you have to talk to the director about this and find out who uploaded this video!”

“What video?” Xu Xinyi took a look, and it turned out that not long ago, her arrogant and domineering words spoken to Zuo Rong were filmed and immediately posted on the internet.

One was arrogant and domineering, the other was pitiful and weak, the contrast was so strong that the netizens were hurling abuse.

Of course, this abuse was directed at Xu Xinyi.

Xu Xinyi looked at the 10,000+ comments under the video but did not click on it. Instead, she handed the phone back to Anya, and said absent-mindedly, “I know. I will talk to Director Zheng later.”

“Go now! You can find out who did it, they must still be here!”

But Xu Xinyi didn’t take it to heart at all. While putting her things in her bag, she said, “Yi Yang is coming soon. Dealing with it now will be the same as dealing with it tomorrow.”

Anya looked at her in disbelief. “Xu Xinyi! I really want to crack open your head and see what rubbish is inside!”

Annoying Yi Yang. Xu Xinyi replied in her heart.

Suddenly her phone rang and Xu Xinyi answered it. She turned around, smiled, and said a few words excitedly, then hung up the phone, hurriedly put on her coat, took her bag, and walked away quickly. “Anya, don’t worry about this stuff. I’ll go first! You just have an early rest. Bye-bye!”

“Gah, you…”

Before Anya could say a word, Xu Xinyi disappeared.

Parked in a Bentley outside the set, Yi Yang was casually leafing through a pile of information about Xu Xinyi that he had ordered collected during the past two days. At the side, his mobile phone chimed and a news app lit up the screen.

On the screen was some entertainment news.

Yi Yang glanced at it and caught a glimpse of Xu Xinyi.

With an easy motion, he closed the folder he had been flipping through, put it aside, and picked up his phone. Then he clicked on the video.

The door opened.

“Husband!” Xu Xinyi appeared in the car and said excitedly, “Thank you for picking me up.”

‘I can sprinkle rice on the ground, and a chicken will act better than you.’ A sharp and sarcastic voice resounded throughout the car.

Xu Xinyi blinked, “Husband, what are you looking at?”

With a meaningful smile at the corner of his mouth, Yi Yang held the mobile phone screen up in front of her. “Mrs. Yi is so imposing.”

Xu Xinyi panicked as soon as she saw it. She gave Yi Yang an imploring look and explained, “Husband, that was not my original intention. I just want to teach this Zuo Rong a little lesson. I’m not usually like this with the crew, really! Believe me! “

Yi Yang pulled back his phone and flipped through the comments under the video.

Xu Xinyi’s eyes flickered with a strange repressed excitement under her ‘nervous’ expression.

–“Here we go. Come on! Quickly put on your iceberg face and say, ‘What is there to explain! I didn’t see it with my own eyes before, but now I can see it clearly in front of me. I didn’t expect you were such a vicious woman!”

Yi Yang continued to flick through the comments quietly.

–“Why haven’t you responded? Isn’t what I said vicious enough?”

–“Maybe, just now, I should have slapped Zuo Rong. It would have looked more vicious and been more persuasive.”

But Yi Yang just raised his eyebrows, turned off the cell phone, and leaned back in his seat.

“Don’t worry. I know you are not such a person and I believe in you. Besides, this is really not a big deal. If you want to scold a starlet, you can scold them. In the future, whoever dares to bully you, you just bully them back.”

He acted as if nothing had happened. It seemed that he really didn’t take it seriously.

Xu Xinyi gulped and stared at Yi Yang for a long time. She felt stunned.

But her acting ability was not forgotten. She needed to play the role of a ‘vicious woman’ to the hilt! Quickly, she threw herself into Yi Yang’s arms, and with a voice choked with emotion she cried, “I knew you would believe me! Zuo Rong is an unscrupulous woman who can only pretend to be pitiful and sympathetic. I was just giving her a lesson. I didn’t do anything wrong! “

“Well, you did nothing wrong.”

“…and those netizens! They scolded me so terribly. It’s so awful!”

“Well, I’ll sue them tomorrow.”

Xu Xinyi choked.

She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “Husband, Zuo Rong wants to seduce you. I don’t like her. I don’t want to see her face on set anymore.”

He looked at her and said, “Well, I’ll just block her then.”

“…”

Xu Xinyi stopped talking.

—“Why is this man Yi Yang so vicious?”

Previous TOC Next

I made a minor correction last chapter. Qin Yan is “…a graduate student, a designer, a model, and famous!”. Previously I had translated it as Qin Yan being a designer of graphic models which was wrong.

It was because this sentence “秦妍是知名设计师、平面模特，硕士研究生毕业” got translated by all the MTLs I use with the words “graphic model” inside of it which made me misunderstand. But after encountering the same description for Qin Yan in a later chapter and feeling a little confused I picked the whole sentence apart character by character and discovered that “graphic model” can also be translated as “advertising model” (as in a model in advertisements) which… uh… makes a lot more sense. So, sorry about that. Fixed now!