CHAPTER 746: CHAPTER 508: THE GREAT WINDS ARISE (PART 2)

Helping others also depends on whether the person is worth helping.

If you help someone, but they cause trouble after receiving your help, stirring up all kinds of mess and bringing you trouble, you’d feel that helping them was a waste and regret it deeply.

Did Zhou Yun hope for some kind of return from Wang Jing after helping her?

To be honest, of course she did have such thoughts. But Zhou Yun never felt "Wang Jing must repay her."

Don’t turn the tables, don’t deny the benefits received, don’t do these things that are like stabbing her in the back; she’d be satisfied enough with that.

That day, she and Wang Jing were heading to H city for a roadshow.

Joining them was the director Xue Qin.

Zhou Yun watched "Behind the Scenes" again, finding it captivating on the second viewing—after all, it was an enthralling story with strong dramatic conflicts.

This time, she carefully watched her own performance and couldn’t help but feel emotional after, thinking she acted incredibly well.

During the shooting, many scenes were improvised, with a strong sense of spontaneity. At that time, the script was written on-the-fly, with no time to ponder, research, or dissect the character’s inner thoughts like layers of an onion—everything had to be done spontaneously, and then adjustments were made based on Xue Qin’s feedback. But acting this way was truly satisfying. Performance without preconception offered a different kind of acting experience.

However, during this roadshow, when the creators were on stage answering questions from the audience, Zhou Yun encountered a rather awkward situation.

An audience member asked, "I’d like to know, how disappointed was Zhou Yun for not winning the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival?"

Grasping the microphone, Zhou Yun reminded herself not to smile awkwardly.

In everyone’s eyes, she displayed an effortless grace and said, "Whether I win Best Actress or not doesn’t affect my mood because the movie I acted in won awards and was loved by many, which as an actress is what I value most."

This segment was captured on video and uploaded to the internet, where it spread quite widely.

This time, however, people’s perceptions of Zhou Yun began to change.

Some said she was too phony.

Indeed, Zhou Yun often encountered such accusations online, and she had grown accustomed to it. In this era, if you excel even slightly, if you chase perfection a bit too much, people will say you’re fake. Whether it’s your commitment to ideals, your self-demands, or just mouthing platitudes on special occasions, those who unrestrainedly flaunt the flag of "pursuing the self" attack it as "pretense."

Their logic is simple: How can anyone truly be like that? How can anyone think that way?

"Zhou Yun didn’t win Best Actress, does she really not care as she said? Impossible!" That was the kind of rhetoric.

"Why can’t she just candidly admit once that she’s disappointed for not winning Best Actress?" There was also such commentary.

"Talking about being happy as long as the movie is good, if it were me, even if the movie were great, that’s not a personal award, and I wouldn’t truly be happy." And there were such comments too.

This time, such attacks suddenly multiplied, coming fiercely and overwhelmingly.

Zhou Yun’s Weibo comment section was nearly overrun.

This wave was fierce. Zhou Lan communicated with Zhou Yun over the phone, saying, "It seems many people have banded together against you; you’ve posed too great a threat to them, and they can’t sit by any longer, starting to suppress you."

Because Zhou Yun’s rise was too rapid, threatening others’ market share, she had already faced several attacks before, but this time the onslaught was more threatening than any previous ones.

Previously, it involved manufacturing smears and sullying Zhou Yun’s name, issues that could be resolved by simply clarifying the truth and presenting evidence. But this time, the haters didn’t concoct any real smears; instead, they attacked her for being hypocritical—a spiritual and nebulous accusation that’s much harder to disprove.

Zhou Yun couldn’t just declare on Weibo: I am not such a person. Doing so would only attract more mockery and derision. Zhou Yun also couldn’t ask her friends to speak out for her, as that might drag them into the line of attack too.

The online assault on Zhou Yun grew louder.

For a while, it seemed as if a massive wave of noise had formed.