Return of the Goddess

This was an extremely stunning picture, beautiful enough to be used as promotional pictures by photo studios.

Fresh flowers, the alluring beauty looking down, and the man with one knee on the ground, looking up at the beauty. They were gazing at each other as though the other party was everything in their own world.

Such a wondrous image would touch everyone’s hearts, if only… the leading lady in the picture wasn’t Ning Xi.

Moments ago, a number of people were still going all around to defame Ning Xi, and were eagerly anticipating news of Chang Shi Gui and Ning Xi’s breakup. Yet, they were face-slapped in the next second. If this Weibo post was posted by others, they could still insist that it was photoshopped. However, the owner of this Weibo account was “Speak and act cautiously”.

It was widely known that this user “Speak and act cautiously” was Chang Shi Gui’s biological cousin, the future head of the Tao family, and a renowned young master from a rich family in the city. His congratulatory post was equivalent to telling everyone that the messy rumours were useless - not only Chang Shi Gui unaffected by them, he had even proposed to Ning Xi.

The turn of events came too quickly, like a hurricane, and no one was able to react to it in time.

What shocked netizens the most was, in the next thirty minutes, a number of Weibo users who followed and were followed by Chang Shi Gui and Ning Xi reposted Tao Shenyan’s post, and even cheerily gave them their blessings, as though the rumours flying all over the internet didn’t exist.

Some extremely bored netizens went to check on the identities of the users, and were immediately dumbstruck. All of them were the rich young masters and mistresses from prestigious families!

Names like Zhao Meng, Bai Lu and Jiang Cheng, any one of these people would have to be treated with some form of respect, even by people in the entertainment industry. However, now that they had all stood out and generously offered their blessing to the couple, what did this signify?

It signified that Ning Xi was well-liked in their social circle, and might have already gotten along well with them.

This was truly a case of one living out her life well. No matter how much people tarnished her reputation or denounce her, her boyfriend refused to listen. Not only did he ignore these scandals, he even used his proposal to show the world his trust and love for Ning Xi.

Netizens were stupefied by Chang Shi Gui’s action. In the short span of thirty minutes, news of Chang Shi Gui proposing to Ning Xi became headlines on all the news portals. Some eagle-eyed netizens also noticed that many sites had already started to secretly remove the negative headlines about Ning Xi. Some sites didn’t only remove the headlines; the articles also vanished without a trace, and were replaced with some positive articles about Ning Xi.

Take for instance, there were articles praising “Three Lives of Rouge”, praising Ning Xi for her aura and beauty on magazine covers, and even those which took stock of the highlights of Ning Xi’s casual photos. It was as if they were on the verge of shouting that the entire site was Ning Xi’s hardcore fan, and their love for her was unchanging, even though an hour ago, they were still lashing out at Ning Xi with all their might.

In reality, when the bosses of a few sites knew that Chang Shi Gui had proposed to Ning Xi, they started regretting defaming Ning Xi for a tiny profit. They had previously dared to do so because they felt that it was impossible for Ning Xi and Chang Shi Gui’s relationship to come to a good end. Logically speaking, someone of Chang Shi Gui’s status would be furious if he saw that his girlfriend might have cuckolded him. Why did he propose to her instead?

Even though they didn’t really understand why, they reacted quickly, asking their staff to retract the negative articles on one hand, while contacting Jiuji Entertainment on the other.

An apology was necessary. It was still not too late if they apologised now. If they waited till Chang Shi Gui and Ning Xi reacted before they apologised, they would probably be ignored.

The people in charge of the larger portals reacted very quickly. Once news of Chang Shi Gui’s proposal was released, they started contacting Zhang Qingyun. When they realised that Zhang Qingyun’s line was engaged, they went to contact Jiuji’s boss. During these moments, it was no use keeping their pride. It was only when they put down their pride that they could progress further.

A few popular forum sites had also received the news in a very timely fashion, and the moderators hastily deleted all the posts that criticised Ning Xi or mocked Chang Shi Gui for being cuckolded. The reason for deletion was that the news were false, and could be seen as slander, and under the law, they had to be deleted. Regardless of whether netizens believed them or not, they proceeded to do so anyway.

As for the smaller entertainment sites which were slow in picking up the news and continued languishing in smearing Ning Xi’s reputation, no one was kind enough to warn them. Anyway, there are many people courting death all the time, just that there were especially too many today.

Jiang Yuanpeng had never expected things to develop in this way. A few site representatives had called him and asked to cease their cooperation with him; there were some who even tried to implicitly remind him not to go against Chang Shi Gui. After hanging up a call, he was so angry that he smashed the paperweight near his hand.

“Oh Brother, what happened to you?” Jiang Hongkai pushed the door of the study open and saw the mess inside. He then leaned back as he said, “Brother, don’t be rash.”

“Why are you here?” Jiang Yuanpeng put down the teacup in his hand, as he barely managed to calm the anger on his face. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing much.” Jiang Hongkai sniggered as he walked into the room, avoiding the paper and stationery on the floor, then rubbed his hand and asked, “Brother, were you the one who got people to release the news today?”

Jiang Yuanpeng threw a sullen look at him, but didn’t reply.

Jiang Hongkai was used to his elder brother’s attitude and didn’t mind it, as he continued speaking, “You didn’t handle this too well. You should have seen how Chang Shi Gui treats that little girlfriend of his; he protects her as though he’s protecting his eyes. If you get others to smear her reputation, isn’t that forcing Chang Shi Gui to go against us?”

“A man who is so smitten by a woman,” Jiang Yuanpeng sneered, “Even if I didn’t do this today, so long as this woman is beside Chang Shi Gui, sooner or later he’ll come and deal with us.”

“What do you mean?”

Looking at Jiang Hongkai’s dumbfounded look, Jiang Yuanpeng’s veins on his forehead started throbbing, “Why do you think that Ning Xi became Chang Shi Gui’s girlfriend? She was doing so to take revenge against you! Against the entire Jiang family!”

Jiang Hongkai was startled by his brother’s yells, and he stood in a daze for a few seconds before replying, “That’s not right, didn’t they get together because Chang Shi Gui had actively pursued her?” Moreover, he had heard the news that his brother’s good son had also given his well wishes to Chang Shi Gui and Ning Xi on Weibo.

“Haven’t you heard of the term ‘playing hard to get’?!” Jiang Yuanpeng gritted his teeth as he forced these words out, because he was truly furious at Jiang Hongkai.

“You must be overthinking things. Chang Shi Gui isn’t that stupid…..” Jiang Hongkai’s voice became increasingly softer, and eventually disappeared under Jiang Yuanpeng’s murderous gaze. He shrunk back, and after a long while, finally garnered his courage to ask, “Tell me then, what should we do now?”

Jiang Yuanpeng’s eyes narrowed, as finally, he looked at Jiang Hongkai in a conflicted gaze, but didn’t reply.

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"Plump Dahai" was a popular Weibo user. From young, he despised people whose grades were good. Apart from studying, what else could these people do? As for him, he was originally down and out when he unintentionally became famous on Weibo, and started living the good life. This made him extremely proud. Although he used to play truant, fight, smoke and drink during his youth, and he wasn’t handsome, he was doing better than most of the people in his class right now. And when his popularity rose, even entertainment companies had requested for him to help write articles helping to clean up their reputation or defame them. This made him even more full of himself.

Take for instance, this celebrity named Ning Xi. He had disliked her for a long time now. Initially, when she was a rookie who wasn’t very popular, he had followed her during a rare moment of kindness. Unexpectedly, she looked down upon an influencer like him, and didn’t follow him back. From then on, he became displeased with her. After all, other rookies were much more polite towards him.

Following that, Ning Xi’s popularity soared. Not only did she act in many major productions, she even won the Best Supporting Actress award at the Feiyu Awards, and got attached to a man whom many women didn’t even dare to dream of. He felt even more unhappy then; how could this woman be so lucky that she managed to encounter all the good things?

Yet, no matter how much he disliked Ning Xi, he didn’t dare to demean her. This was because he had heard others mention that this actress was rather freaky - anyone who slandered her would never end up well. For instance, the bloggers who had helped Zhu Moli tarnish her reputation on Weibo previously had now became unpopular, and weren't even offered advertising deals.

He tolerated it for a long time, and his chance finally came. Not only did many major sites started smearing her name, many of the popular names in Weibo also acted accordingly, and started defaming Ning Xi.

Having spent so much time in this circle, he was clear that someone powerful was after Ning Xi, otherwise the matter wouldn’t have blown up so much.

Overnight, he wrote a long and metaphorical Weibo post with pictures, then went to sleep, feeling satisfied. He had only slept for two hours, but when he turned on the computer, the mood in the entire internet had shifted.

Chang Shi Gui had proposed to Ning Xi?

Countless young mistresses and masters from the upper class had came out to congratulate them?

These pictures were all slanderous, and there were people who found the original pictures, proving that these pictures were either a matter of false positioning, or were simply production pictures.

Under that long Weibo post of his, many people were asking how much money he had received for him to denounce Ning Xi in such a crazed manner.

Having been used to netizens’ praises and insults, Plump Dahai didn’t care about the comments at all. However, when he received a lawyer’s letter in his private mailbox, he knew that he was in trouble this time.

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Ning Xi’s fingers were fair and slender, and the diamond ring was extremely beautiful on her finger. It was an exquisitely cut diamond that emitted a magnificent brilliance.

Zhang Qingyun secretly peeked at the blinding diamond ring and thought to himself, he should earn more money. He was simply too poor.

On the other hand, Zhao Meng and Tao Shenyan had arranged for the workers to move a portion of the flowers into the house, and send the rest to charity organisations. They then gathered in the living room cheerfully. Tao Shenyan even ran to Ning Xi and said, “Thanks Sister Ning, for your willingness to accept this unromantic Brother Chang.”

“That’s right,” Zhao Meng nodded. “It’s hard on you.”

Tickled by the two of them, Ning Xi smiled and stood up to place the blue roses into a vase, “Since you both have said it like this, I’ll try my best not to dislike him.”

“That puts us at ease then.” Tao Shenyan smiled evilly as he took out his phone, “Now, the whole world knows that you are going to be married to Brother Chang. When will you decide on the date? We want to enjoy the auspicious mood too.”

Ning Xi didn’t think that Tao Shenyan would really post the matter on Weibo. Looking at Chang Shi Gui’s happy face, she guessed that they had probably agreed on this previously. Hence she waved, showing that beautiful ring, “Since I’ve already put on the ring, the wedding…” She covered her mouth and smiled, then looked at Chang Shi Gui without saying another word.