My Queen, My Rules - Chapter 70

Chapter 70

"Su Ke involved in drug trafficking?" When Ji Mingshu saw this news, she had just finished applying a facial mask. She hurriedly tore off the mask sheet and ran out of the bathroom before even having the chance to wash her face. "This wasn't your doing, was it?"

Cen Sen was leaning against the headboard reading a book. He lifted his eyes and asked gently, "Do I look like a member of organized crime to you?"

Ji Mingshu: "..."

Cen Sen turned a page with measured composure, his gold-rimmed glasses catching a slight reflection. "It’s not like I could force him to commit a crime."

Ji Mingshu understood. To translate that sentence: While I can’t force someone to commit a crime, I can certainly grab onto the pigtail of their criminal activity and report them to the authorities.

She truly hadn't expected that Mr. Cen Sen was, in fact, an outstanding "Chaoyang District neighborhood volunteer."

She scooted to the edge of the bed and peeked at the book in Cen Sen’s hand. Sure enough, President Cen’s aura was cultivated to perfection—even his leisure reading was entirely in a foreign language.

She pressed down on the book, suddenly leaned over to plant a kiss on him, and then quickly sat upright, looking down at him from her superior position. "Good performance. Here’s a reward."

Cen Sen gave a faint, mocking smile and lowered his eyes to continue reading.

Ji Mingshu taking the initiative to kiss him late at night was nothing more than her taking advantage of the fact that she was on her period and could do as she pleased. While she called it a reward, it was more akin to torture.

Ji Mingshu was well aware of her own game. After teasing him, she hopped out of bed in a great mood. With her little hands behind her back, she walked with a skip in her step, humming the theme song of a palace drama she’d seen ten miles away.

Cen Sen watched her retreating back. Even his usually cold and rigid face seemed to soften significantly within the halo of the floor lamp, his lips curling into an almost imperceptible, upward arc.

In truth, if Li Wenyin hadn't been so determined to stir up trouble, Cen Sen wouldn't have intended to take action so early, nor would he have wanted to be so ruthless.

If it had been any other kind of scandal, it could have been covered up or suppressed, or they could have just waited for the hype to die down—it wouldn't have affected the movie much. But drug trafficking? This was no longer just a matter of a scandal or an artist with a tainted reputation; this was a matter of committing crimes and serving jail time.

Moreover, every single related news report about the arrests stated that Su Ke had been apprehended on the spot at the set of Li Wenyin’s film.

Li Wenyin’s movie was being filmed at an international high school in the Imperial Capital. They had been shooting a scene where the male lead was alone in the classroom and the female lead was secretly watching him from the back door. Without any warning, the police suddenly stormed in to apprehend the suspect, Su Ke.

The incident happened so suddenly that the production halted immediately. All staff were taken away for investigation. It was rumored that the lead actress had acted like a diva, refusing to go to the police station, and the situation had become so ugly that she had nearly been forcibly dragged away.

For a time, along with the hype surrounding Su Ke’s drug trafficking, there were many other topics related to the movie trending.

Initially, Su Ke had been the best male lead personally chosen by Li Wenyin after considering capital, popularity, and acting skills. She knew Su Ke wasn't "clean," but she also knew that while he wasn't clean, he had powerful backing. Barring any accidents, he wouldn't be easy to take down. Therefore, after officially announcing him as the male lead, she had even confidently posted on Weibo to promote him.

Who could have imagined that such a drastic change would occur overnight?

After leaving the police station, Li Wenyin’s phone remained constantly busy.

At first, she thought there was still room for a comeback; after all, the film had only just started shooting. If the male lead had run into trouble, they could just replace him.

But the lead actress, the second female lead, and the second male lead acted as if they’d coordinated a plan—without a word of warning, they all posted on Weibo simultaneously, announcing their withdrawal from the film.

Please, who would dare to keep filming? People outside were calling their set a "drug den"!

If it were any other kind of hype, they wouldn't have lost much, but at this point, even if they had to be bottom-tier, anonymous nobodies for the rest of their lives, they didn't want to have anything to do with Li Wenyin’s film set.

More realistic than these stars were the investors. Because of the hype during the film’s early promotion, Li Wenyin had already negotiated several product placements, but now, the sponsors were calling one after another to cancel their cooperation.

The Yuan family acted even more ruthlessly. They didn't even contact her personally, simply having an assistant coldly notify her: they wouldn't reclaim their first round of investment, but as for any follow-up investment, they were terribly sorry—it was all cancelled.

It was only when she received this call from the assistant that Li Wenyin finally woke up to reality: perhaps true appreciation didn't actually exist in this world.

When Feng Shuxiu first introduced her to that sickly young man from the Yuan family, she hadn't been particularly impressed, but with the intention of building a favorable connection, her attitude had been appropriate and composed.

As expected, the other party appreciated her, frequently inviting her out to movies and art exhibitions, chatting with her about classical literature, and the history of Chinese and Western cinema...

Slowly, her perception of him shifted. She felt he had genuine talent and truly appreciated art.

Consequently, she used a few little tricks to make this man believe wholeheartedly that she wasn't making this movie because she still had feelings for a first love, but purely for the sake of creating the most spirited work of art—purely for artistic creation.

It wasn't boastfulness; she was very clear about exactly how attractive she was to a certain type of man. The fact that she had successfully obtained the investment from the Yuan family later on was the best proof of that.

However, she didn't realize that so-called attraction and appreciation could never withstand a scandal that caused the initial investment to fail.

The final person to call was Feng Shuxiu.

Feng Shuxiu offered neither comfort nor mockery, simply pointing out the last road left to her. "The Cen family has already sent word to the Zou family: they never want to see you appear in the Imperial Capital again. Handle the remaining mess and go abroad. Don't come back."

Li Wenyin closed her eyes.

In that instant, she recalled many things from the past.

She remembered seeing Ji Mingshu as a child, wearing a beautiful little dress and acting spoiled toward her uncle and aunt;

She remembered when she was in junior high, the boys in class discussing behind her back how beautiful Ji Mingshu was;

She remembered the time she invited her classmates to dinner and karaoke—the one birthday that was finally decent—only to find that everyone was talking about how Ji Mingshu was attending the Crillon Ball for debutantes in Paris...

For many, many years, she had stood in the place closest to Ji Mingshu, yet was separated by the greatest distance in the world.

It was only during those three months she spent dating Cen Sen that she had truly, subconsciously felt she was standing on the same starting line as Ji Mingshu.

Those were the days she missed the most.

Li Wenyin left. After publishing her apology notice and announcing that the film production had ceased, she left indefinitely.

But as Jiang Chun had said, "A 'green tea' is always a 'bitch'." Even as she left and posted the cancellation notice, Li Wenyin had to leave behind one last cryptic remark.

——"Being unable to put it to paper and let it jump across the screen is my regret. But regardless, those were the days I miss the most."

At first, the fans were all pitying Li Wenyin for her bad luck, but when she suddenly linked the book publication and the film cancellation together, people couldn't help but overthink: could all of this have been targeted at her from the very beginning?

The more everyone thought about it, the more wrong it felt. How could there be such a coincidence? First, the book couldn't be published, and then the movie had to be cancelled.

Interested parties followed the articles she had posted in the past to dig up the prototype for her first love. Coupled with the fact that the social circles of Ji Mingshu and her friends weren't airtight, insiders soon provided a subtle hint—Li Wenyin’s first love prototype was the husband of the "Silent Master" who had recently been causing such a stir in the city: the current President of the Junyi Group, Cen Sen.

There was public information about Cen Sen online, but it was just unimportant content like his age, education, and professional experience—he had never shown his true face.

Yet, the less he showed his face, the more curious everyone became.

Because in Li Wenyin’s writing, she had praised her first love’s looks as being peerless, like a male lead who had walked straight out of a campus romance novel.

And this campus romance male lead had grown up to become the male lead of the romance novels girls loved most, going so far as to get angry on behalf of a beauty, clearing hot searches and deleting posts for his gorgeous wife, and having the group’s official Weibo account post multiple times to seek justice for her.

A man whose stories with two different women were written into two separate novels—it was simply too intriguing!

Once Li Wenyin posted this so-called "final" Weibo, the gossip-seekers were intrigued, but Ji Mingshu was almost furious to death.

Overnight, countless Li Wenyin fans flooded her private messages, asking if she had wedged herself into the relationship between Li Wenyin and Cen Sen, asking if her conscience would hurt, asking if she and Cen Sen were in a marriage of convenience, and what was the point of living with someone who didn't love her...

The kicker was that Cen Sen was still sleeping soundly beside her! His arm was clamped so tightly around her waist that she couldn't move even if she wanted to sit up and kick him!

Ji Mingshu already had a bit of a "morning grump," and at this moment, she couldn't be bothered to think twice. She began typing furiously—

"Since I was small, I learned a lot of etiquette. My teachers would tell me this couldn't be done, and that couldn't be done. You can’t curse, that’s lack of breeding; you can’t have conflicts with people face-to-face, that just shows your quality is low; don't haggle over small matters, you must be a tolerant and magnanimous person.

"I’ve always felt that private conflicts should be resolved face-to-face between two people, not dragged onto the internet for bystanders to gossip about. But Miss Li seems to have counted on the fact that I wouldn't want to tear off the mask of civility in public, taking my repeated restraint as capital for you to push further and further.

"I’d like to ask a question: Miss Li has repeatedly emphasized that your first love is married and you don't want to disturb him, yet when the person involved has repeatedly expressed that you shouldn't distort the facts to publish books and make movies, you still insist on peddling your so-called 'first love nostalgia.' Miss Li, don't you feel that the phrase 'pretending to be innocent while being calculating' was custom-made for you?

"I hope Miss Li will love and respect yourself, stop disturbing the life of my husband and me, and stop the 'innocent white lotus' act here. I also hope that none of you will ever encounter a 'top-tier' ex who writes a book titled My Ex-Partner Got Married, gets it on the hot search list, and periodically wants to publish books and make movies to commemorate the past when you’re happily married. Ji Mingshu"