WAM CH46

This name sounded familiar to Shao Si, but he just couldn’t remember where he had heard it before.

“Regarding him, I don’t know much either, but this person’s reputation is indeed not very good. His family background runs very deep… It’s said someone in his family took part in the revolution back in the day; in short, he’s not someone we can casually interact with.” Director Ou recalled, “When filming Man Jiang Hong in ’94, he provided most of the funding.”

Back in their time, this title of ‘Fourth Master’ was like a local prince, famous and powerful; whenever he was mentioned, no one dared to speak out of line.

However, with the changing of times and development, a name carrying feudal remnants like ‘Fourth Master’ slowly vanished from the circle, and later everyone called him ‘President Wang’.

“Wang Shan, is he the President Wang from Tianyu?”

The moment Gu Yanzhou said this, Ye Xuan turned her head: “You know him?”

When Gu Yanzhou’s contract expired back then, he left Gu Feng to set up his own studio. Especially in recent years, his desire to transition behind the scenes grew stronger, negotiating many investment projects and coming into contact with more people.

This Wang Shan—the ultimate authority of Tianyu Media—he naturally knew him.

Half an hour later.

Li Guangzong finally waited for Shao Si to come out. His anger had mostly dissipated on its own, and he was past the point of having a temper.

“Hey, talk to Director Ou and ask him to make a post on Weibo later to cooperate with us,” Li Guangzong walked beside Shao Si, instructing, “I had the PR team clarify for you guys—since Director Ou was feeling unwell, you and Gu Yanzhou happened to appear together near the hospital… in a convenience store. Also, tell me yourself, how long has it been since you logged into Weibo? After the livestream, you completely vanished.”

Shao Si walked in front, his head slightly lowered, not responding.

Li Guangzong: “Did you hear what I said?”

After a long pause, Shao Si finally replied half-dead: “…I heard.”

Li Guangzong sized him up twice and asked, “What’s wrong with you?”

Shao Si walked out in silence. Only now did Li Guangzong belatedly notice that after their group came out of the hospital room, all their expressions looked quite bad.

Nobody spoke, looking immensely heavy.

Because the PR team’s speed in dispelling rumors was too fast and exposed the information that ‘Director Ou was hospitalized’, many media outlets were currently squatting outside the hospital entrance.

They were prepared to swarm around the moment they saw them come out.

However…

The guy from Entertainment Weekly rushing at the very front was a bit dumbfounded.

Not to mention Shao Si walking at the front, even Gu Yanzhou had a dark face. In all his years as a paparazzi, this was the first time he had seen Best Actor Gu with such an expression.

Before getting into the car, Shao Si looked back, not knowing what to say. After holding it in for a long time, he said in a hoarse voice: “My condolences.”

Ye Xuan finally couldn’t hold it back anymore. Raising her hand, she wiped her tears a couple of times, squatted down at the hospital entrance, and wept out loud, ignoring the camera flashes continuously blinking around her.

The next day, the media reported heavily on a piece of fake news: Director Ou is critically ill with not much time left; the main cast of “Mask” sobbed bitterly in front of the hospital!

This news created quite a stir.

At 4:30 in the morning, Chi Zijun called: “Ge, I saw it online. Is your film still shooting? Do you need to change directors on short notice? My condolences. I know you must be very sad that something like this happened… but life is unpredictable, life and death are decreed by fate, you don’t need to be too sad. You have to pull yourself together; after all, this is a career he couldn’t finish before he died…”

Shao Si had been suffering from insomnia at night, only falling asleep around two or three in the morning, and was not fully conscious when answering the call.

Only when Chi Zijun started talking about pulling himself together did he rub his hair and interrupt: “Wait, what are you talking about?”

At this time, Chi Zijun was still on set. Although he didn’t have much talent in acting, he could still pick up a few minor roles from time to time. He walked farther away and lowered his voice: “Didn’t Director Ou pass away from illness?”

“…Where did you hear that hearsay from,” Shao Si subconsciously refuted. “What kind of nonsense is that? Director Ou is perfectly fine, he just drank too much alcohol.”

Chi Zijun: “…” Is that so?

But he watched the video and thought the scandal looked pretty real.

“Ye Xuan crying wasn’t because of that. It’s not convenient for me to tell you the specific situation, but there is something I want to ask you about.”

As Shao Si spoke, he extended a hand to feel for the desk lamp. Turning on the light, he sat half up and continued, “Don’t you think the name Wang Shan sounds extremely familiar?”

On his way back, he had thought back and forth for a long time, but couldn’t recall anything.

So he guessed it shouldn’t be something from recent years, and maybe Chi Zijun would know.

Unexpectedly, he actually hit the nail on the head by chance.

Chi Zijun was silent on the other end of the phone for a long time before saying: “Ge, are you pulling my leg?”

Shao Si let out a quiet “Hm?”

“Isn’t that the client Qi the Pimp was looking for before? Qi the Pimp kept calling him President Wang, President Wang—Ge, did you forget? The day I was drugged, it was you who rescued me…” The more Chi Zijun spoke, the more he felt Shao Si might truly not remember this matter, so he abandoned recalling and said directly, “Why are you asking about this?”

‘Qi the Pimp’ was the nickname the two of them gave Qi Ming.

Anyway, to sum it up, how could Qi Ming be considered a manager? At best, he was a pimp.

Shao Si really didn’t quite remember this matter. Hearing Chi Zijun put it like that, he had a slight impression.

It turned out that the day he broke in, the bald guy pressing on top of Chi Zijun… was Wang Shan.

The system had just logged online not long ago, and hearing these two sentences, it couldn’t listen any further, complaining: [When are you going to get some memory? That time we specifically inquired into what kind of background this Wang Shan guy had, and in the end, we still had to forcibly locate his phone before finding the specific location of the hotel.]

Shao Si didn’t care at all: [It’s been so long, how would I remember that?]

[Wait, didn’t we record a video back then?] Shao Si suddenly remembered this matter, [Back then we planned to use it to mess with Qi Ming.]

System: [Yes, I remember recording it too.]

“Alright, not talking to you anymore, talk later.” Shao Si immediately hung up the phone after finishing, not even putting on shoes as he got straight out of bed to turn on his computer.

Something that hadn’t been useful back then ended up coming in handy here after all.

Back then, their target was Qi Ming, but at the very last step, things went awry, and Qi Ming cleared himself squeaky clean. So this video recording couldn’t do much to him; if it actually got leaked out, it would instead have a negative impact on Chi Zijun’s reputation.

The video was still there. Although the clarity wasn’t great, pulling Wang Shan down wasn’t…

—”Impossible.”

Shao Si brought the video backup to the set early in the morning. After a few of them observed it once in a small, closed room, Gu Yanzhou reached a conclusion without even thinking twice.

Shao Si: “Why impossible? Both witness and physical evidence are here.”

Gu Yanzhou stood up from his seat, opened the video again, dragged it from the beginning to the end, and paused on Wang Shan’s action of unbuttoning his pants: “He didn’t succeed, which can only indicate an intent to commit sexual assault. Our country’s laws regarding cases of males being violated are not comprehensive enough yet, so you won’t win a lawsuit against him at all. This video, at most, can be used for a public opinion war, but Wang Shan isn’t an artist in the circle; he’s just an investor. Who can constrain him?”

Wang Shan in the video had a fat head and large ears, heavily overweight after aging, a protruding beer belly, looking greasy as could be, wearing brand-name clothing in a ridiculously absurd fashion.

“Yanzhou is right,” Director Ou had been on an IV drip until midnight yesterday, and his body was mostly recovered. He rushed back to the set early in the morning to continue filming, and in the blink of an eye, it was already noon. “This video is still not enough to bring him down.”

Ye Xuan lowered her head, her fingers tightly clutching her costume.

She wanted to avenge Ye Qing, but she also knew that taking down Wang Shan wasn’t going to be easy.

Gu Yanzhou turned off the projector, unplugged the USB drive, and handed it back to Shao Si: “Don’t rush yet. Dirty things on him are definitely not limited to just this one. I asked someone to look into it last night; he’s suspected of being involved in an underground prostitution chain.”

Shao Si: “…”

“What kind of look is that?” Gu Yanzhou patted his head. “I don’t work in that line.”

Shao Si thought to himself: I didn’t say you were involved in prostitution either, but for this kind of inside scoop to be uncovered overnight, I’m afraid this Best Actor Gu beside me has quite a background.

Ye Xuan raised her head and said softly: “I know, it can’t be rushed. That you’re willing to help me, I’m already very grateful.”

“This Wang Shan guy has a widely known characteristic in the circle: whenever he takes a fancy to someone, he will invest in the production team that person belongs to,” Gu Yanzhou added. “Last month, he invested in a drama called Troubled Times.”

“Sounds a bit familiar.”

…Shao Si belatedly remembered that he had seen the two words Troubled Times in his WeChat Moments before.

“Wait a moment, let me confirm.” Shao Si logged onto WeChat and opened his Moments. Sure enough, Qi the Pimp and the fresh young meat Yang Ze were flexing about this all day.

Rambling on and on, implicitly or explicitly, it was nothing more than bragging about how hard it was for him to win the male lead role, how high the threshold was when the director held auditions, how capable he was, and finally “casually” mentioning his acting fee.

Shao Si turned off his phone and said, “…I think I know who Wang Shan’s target is.”

However, right at this moment, Director Ou, who hadn’t spoken for a while, suddenly uttered something shocking: “I remember half a month ago, he asked someone to find me to talk about investment.”

“At that time, we were just preparing to start filming, and the startup funds were already sufficient, so I rejected it and didn’t take it to heart.” Director Ou added, “Now according to your words, in our crew… there’s his target?”

Gu Yanzhou said thoughtfully, “Do you remember if he specifically mentioned anyone’s name back then?”

After Gu Yanzhou finished this sentence, Shao Si felt his hair stand on end from Director Ou’s gaze.

In the end, he truly couldn’t ignore that line of sight and had no choice but to raise his finger and point at himself: “Me?”