Chapter 9: The Script Is Getting Too Real

As his fingertip roughed across the yellowed edge of the photograph, the whole slapdash, glib, don't-give-a-damn act on Chi Xingran's face wiped itself clean.

On the front of the photo was a mud-covered half-grown kid with his hair tied in a skyward little tuft and a snot bubble at his lips, a palm-sized, broken wooden tag hanging from his neck, its brush-written characters wobbly and crooked: [South-City Orphanage · Chi Xingran].

In the lower right corner, the dark-red embossed stamp of the Zong Charitable Foundation was pressed in deep.

That was his scruffy self from before age eight. Years of scrounging meals on the streets, and even he had almost forgotten what he'd looked like back then.

"Boss Zong, isn't this script a bit overdone?"

Chi Xingran's fingers tightened, pressing two dead creases into the stiff photo paper.

He lifted his eyelids slowly, and the peach-blossom eyes that usually circled nothing but red banknotes now held a hard, unfamiliar layer of scrutiny.

"The job I took was as a day-rate extra—eight hundred yuan to wreck a blind date for you. I was careful enough not to hand even a copy of my ID to the agency."

"So why does Zong Zeyu have the original file photo of me, aged eight, registered at the orphanage?"

"Even my birth characters, precise down to the minute—how did he dig them out of a safe to scheme with?"

The spacious living room had gone so quiet it grated on the ears. The central air-conditioning hummed on, and the atmosphere had sunk into something hard and heavy.

Watching the young man's rare defensive stance, Zong Wen's gaze darkened badly.

He wasted no words. He reached back, yanked the tablet out of Assistant Zhou's hands, swiped hard twice across the screen, and pushed it right under Chi Xingran's nose.

"See for yourself."

The man's voice landed on the table, hard and heavy.

Chi Xingran looked down.

On the screen was an internal liquidation ledger of the Zong Charitable Foundation from twelve years ago.

At the very bottom of the dense columns of reimbursed items, two lines of bold print stood out glaringly:

[South-City Chi Family Medicinal Kitchen—demolition compensation: 10 million yuan]

[Chi husband and wife—consolation payment for accidental death in truck rollover: 2 million yuan]

In the signature line for actual disbursement, the three characters were unmistakable: Zong Zeyu.

"Twelve years ago, during the old-city redevelopment, Zong Zeyu ran the laundering channels and gobbled up land."

Zong Wen stubbed out his cigarette, his gaze boring straight into Chi Xingran's face.

"The Chi Family Medicinal Kitchen was the only ancestral shop that refused to sign over. The old man was stubborn—the demolition agreement stalled for three solid months."

"Three months later, on a mountain road where the Chi couple were delivering a batch of prepared broths, their brakes failed. The truck went straight off the winding highway. They never even got the chance to be saved."

A hollow roar went off in Chi Xingran's skull.

All those years begging on the streets, sleeping under bridges, fighting stray dogs for half a cold steamed bun, he had believed his parents had simply been unlucky—some traffic accident—and that was why the shop closed and the family broke apart.

Not an accident.

Nothing about bad luck at all. It was a blood debt these wealthy families manufactured, in cold blood, to grab land and devour a household with no one left to protect it!

"And this... Young Master Chi, look at this!"

Auntie Song, the old cook who had been standing by the kitchen door all along, hurried forward wiping her tears and fished a flat, rusted tin box with chipped paint from under her apron, setting it on the marble counter.

When the bodyguards had dragged Butler Xu out with his arms wrenched behind his back, Auntie Song had clamped her hand over her apron pocket and not dared bring out the tin box until every last one of Xu's people was cleared away.

Auntie Song sniffled, her voice thick with weeping:

"Young Master Chi, this old servant has worked for the Zong family almost thirty years. Some shameful things have rotted in my belly because I didn't dare speak. But with that plague Butler Xu toppled, I can't hide them any longer."

"Back then, Butler Xu helped Zong Zeyu ransack your parents' belongings and forcibly took a yellowed fragment page of a medicinal recipe. Zong Zeyu used that recipe to buy himself enormous face before the old patriarch—that's how he secured his position."

"Later, when Mr. Zong suffered mania and insomnia, every calming broth he drank had been tampered with behind his back by Butler Xu—key ingredients stripped according to that fragment page, cut with a slow, filthy drug that frays the nerves!"

"Mr. Zong had to keep taking it to stay on his feet, but the more he drank, the worse his temper got, and at night he simply could not close his eyes!"

"It wasn't until last night, when you cooked that chili-oil noodles, Young Master Chi—the house recipe of black cardamom and dried tangerine peel happened to break straight through the drug in that fragment. One whiff, and Mr. Zong finally let his guard down completely and slept a sound, solid night!"

That string of filthy accounts snapped shut into a dead loop in Chi Xingran's mind.

Why, the moment the blind-date scheme collapsed, Zong Zeyu's first move hadn't been to send bodyguards to beat him but to hurry back to the Zong estate and dig out Chi Xingran's old file from a hidden compartment—because the guilty man had locked the Chi family heir's birth records in that compartment years ago, guarding against exactly this day of reckoning!

Why the smell of him, of all things, was what finally let Zong Wen sleep.

Why Butler Xu had looked at him walking into the kitchen last night like he'd seen a living ghost.

Zong Zeyu hadn't just stolen the shop by trampling his parents' lives—he had used the Chi family's old recipe to loop a death-rope around Zong Wen's neck for years on end!

Chi Xingran crushed the yellowed photo in his fist, the veins standing out one by one across the back of his hand.

His chest heaved hard a few times, and a laugh scraped out of his throat—dry, savage.

The lazy street-punk slouch was gone entirely; nothing remained in his eyes but the ferocity of a man with nothing left to lose.

He slapped the old photo down on the marble counter, hard enough to rattle the glass beside it.

"So this was never some rich-family murder-mystery game."

The corner of Chi Xingran's mouth twisted. "These gentlemen in their suits and ties devour a dead man's household nice and clean—were it possible, they'd wring another two ounces of oil from the marrow."

Before he finished speaking, Assistant Zhou came hurrying in from the entryway, phone buzzing like a struck beehive.

"Mr. Zong! Mr. Chi! The internet has completely blown up!"

Cold sweat beaded Assistant Zhou's forehead as he shoved the phone screen forward.

On the trending charts, several topics stamped with a scarlet EXPLODING tag were rocketing upward:

#Bottom-Tier Comedy Streamer Chi Xingran Confirmed Kept by a Top Billionaire#

#Corporate Spy Poses as Influencer to Steal Core Trade Secrets of the Zong Group#

#Zong Zeyu Files Real-Name Report: Low-Tier Streamer Suspected of Massive Commercial Fraud#

He opened the first trending item: nothing but cut-and-spliced videos that Zong Zeyu had paid clickbait accounts to push.

The videos maliciously spliced together last night's prank-livestream clips, insisting Chi Xingran was a corporate spy planted by overseas capital at Zong Wen's side, sleeping his way up through dirty means—even forging a screenshot of an overseas account of Chi Xingran's, five million in dirty money appearing out of thin air.

The comments had long been overrun by the paid trolls Zong Zeyu hired, a wall of abuse:

"No wonder a nobody who used to run a street stall under the overpass gets to live in a hillside estate—he climbed into bed and became a spy!"

"How many years does corporate espionage get? Hurry up and arrest him—send him in to sew!"

"Doxx him! Dig up all his old garbage—selling knockoffs at his street stall!"

"The Zong heir himself filed a real-name report—how could it be fake? Economic-crime unit, open the case and arrest him!"

Assistant Zhou was so frantic his throat was smoking: "Mr. Zong, Zong Zeyu has gone all-in this time—seven top PR firms steering the whole web, overseas media channels activated. The entire internet is screaming to ban his account and arrest him. Someone's already filed a real-name report with the economic-crime unit!"

Chi Xingran stared at the filthy abuse—no panic on his face at all. The ferocity in his eyes only burned higher.

He reached up and tore the dangling button off the collar of his old undershirt, then slapped the unlimited black card down on the table.

"Kept man? Corporate spy?"

Chi Xingran pulled out his battered phone—screen shattered to cobwebs, edges wrapped in clear tape—and his fingers flew across the cracked glass, straight into the backend of the livestream account that had passed a million followers just last night.

"Back when I was out-scheming municipal enforcement officers over a street stall under the overpass, Zong Zeyu was still hiding in some godforsaken corner sipping bird's-nest soup!"

"He wants a public-opinion war with me? Wants to borrow someone else's knife to stomp me dead?"

Chi Xingran's head snapped up, eyes locking on Zong Wen, a wild grin pulling at the corner of his mouth:

"Boss Zong—lend me your gigabit fiber."

"If I don't strip Zong Zeyu down to his underwear and hang him on the trending charts to dry for three days and three nights, I won't be worthy of the big peonies embroidered on these shorts."

Looking down at the young man bristling with thorns, the long-suppressed fury in Zong Wen's chest churned a few times, then was smoothed completely flat by that weed-wild ferocity in front of him.

This young man who had climbed out of the mire, prickly as wild grass, had not only broken the dead trap that had tortured Zong Wen for years—he had plunged headfirst into the depths of his eyes.

Zong Wen crossed the two steps to stand behind Chi Xingran, his tall frame fencing the man in against the kitchen island, both hands planted solidly on either side of the counter, his heavy presence pressing down.

"Assistant Zhou."

Zong Wen's chin brushed the top of Chi Xingran's hair, his voice low and even, threaded with an unquestionable ruthlessness:

"Notify the Group's legal, tech, and PR teams—everyone enters Chi Xingran's livestream."

"Open every new-media channel under the Zong banner to him—all streaming permissions."

"Zong Zeyu buys a hundred thousand trolls to spread his lies; I'll smash him with tens of millions in real traffic."

"Let him stream it himself—and answer the whole web, under his real name."

Chi Xingran's back pressed against the man's hard chest, his ears going a little hot—but he didn't shift half a step. His finger jabbed the stream settings in the backend.

Into the livestream's title bar, he savagely hammered out eight glaring characters:

[The Zong Family Money-Laundering Files: Watch the Zong Heir Devour an Orphan's Inheritance, Live]

Zong Wen's large, callused hand came down and closed over Chi Xingran's right hand on the mouse, palm pressing down with steady force—and together they hit the GO LIVE button!

The very same second the stream connected to the entire web!

Sirens shrieked without warning outside the estate gates!

Along with the screech of brakes from several outside-broadcast vans, blinding pillars of red and blue light cut through the living room's wall of glass, closing in from far to near, howling straight for the main entrance!

Zong Wen's hand clenched suddenly, locking Chi Xingran's fingers tight in his palm.