CHAPTER 304: CHAPTER 304: SOLVING POTENTIAL TROUBLES

The agent’s words were subtle, giving Sang Ning the feeling that she was about to be sidelined by the company.

Bad things always come one after another, and apart from the agent, Qin Jiaxiang also called her.

He said that the other actors in the cast were already undergoing intensive training, but as for her, considering her current condition, she could choose to delay her participation.

If her condition still didn’t improve, the training period could be postponed further.

Sang Ning felt like Qin Jiaxiang and the agent were playing the same game—one was going to freeze her out, while the other might strip her of her lead role altogether.

She wasn’t one to beat around the bush, so she bluntly asked Qin Jiaxiang if her role as the lead in the movie "Female Grandmaster" was completely out of the question.

But Qin Jiaxiang was very slick with his words. He didn’t give Sang Ning a direct answer, instead responding vaguely, "What’s meant to be yours will be yours. What’s not yours, you’ll never get."

Sang Ning thought Qin Jiaxiang was speaking nonsense. Since his answer was so ambiguous, she simply took it to mean she had been fired from the cast too. Right now, she felt like an unemployed drifter.

The online harassment aimed at the Sang Family continued relentlessly—for days, the internet was flooded with negative news about them.

Especially after Qingyue woke up, his head wrapped in layers of bandages, he held a press conference with a "stubborn resilience" and publicly accused Sang Ning of terrible wrongdoing.

He claimed she was vicious enough to almost beat him to death and yet, frustratingly, the police could do nothing to hold her accountable.

Qingyue used his victim narrative to blur and obscure the situation with Duan Wenhu, successfully redirecting the public’s anger back onto Sang Ning.

Duan Wenhu saw this as the perfect opportunity to crush Sang Ning completely, leaving her no chance for a comeback.

The only ones who could achieve such a high-level smear campaign were the top legal experts at Hai Chuan Group’s headquarters Legal Department.

But after several failed attempts to secure headquarters’ support, the head of the Legal Department finally had enough and bluntly told her:

"President Duan, only Mr. Li has the authority to mobilize us directly. Your rank isn’t high enough."

Duan Wenhu was infuriated. She understood this was Li Juezhou deliberately sabotaging her.

It was just a matter of a few legal personnel, yet Li Juezhou wouldn’t give her the slightest face.

She considered approaching Li Juezhou directly, but after visiting the headquarters several times, she failed each time.

The secretary told her that Li Juezhou hadn’t come into the office for a long time, but Duan Wenhu didn’t believe it, assuming this was just an excuse for him to avoid her.

Failing to see him in person, Duan Wenhu resorted to calling him—only to find out her number was blocked by the other party, which made her fury even greater.

Duan Wenhu refused to accept defeat and insisted on contacting Li Juezhou, so she had no choice but to take a roundabout approach by starting with Li Juezhou’s father, Li Haidong.

When Li Haidong received Duan Wenhu’s call, he was vacationing in a remote location with Wei Lan.

At that moment, he was practicing meditation deep in a mountain filled with refreshing negative ions, but Duan Wenhu’s call instantly disrupted the peaceful atmosphere in the valley.

Seeing her name flashing on the screen, Li Haidong’s brow twitched.

"What’s up?" Wei Lan opened her eyes and turned to look at Li Haidong.

Holding his phone with disdain, Li Haidong sneered, "The debt collector is back again."

The phone kept ringing, as if it wouldn’t stop until he answered.

Li Haidong exhaled deeply and, just as the call was about to stop, pressed the answer button.

"Brother, I need your help with something. I want to borrow some legal personnel from the headquarters’ Legal Department, but Azhou isn’t granting me the authority. Can you talk to Azhou for me? After all, we’re family—there’s no need to be so rigid." Duan Wenhu’s tone implied entitlement, even though she was asking for help.

Li Haidong had had enough of this sister. He had already handed Hai Chuan Entertainment over to her, yet she was still so insatiable, trying to meddle in the affairs of headquarters.

But his bottom line was Hai Chuan’s headquarters, and Duan Wenhu better not even think about meddling there. He held the phone farther away and said, "Hello?"

Then he brought the phone closer again and said, "Hello?"

"Say something! Why aren’t you talking? I’m in the mountains and the signal is bad. Huh? What is it? I’ll be stuck in the mountains for another six months. How about I call you after I come out?"

Finished speaking, Li Haidong directly ended the call and quickly switched his phone to airplane mode.

"Hello—hello—brother, say something—"

Duan Wenhu muttered to herself over the call, only to be interrupted by a dial tone.

Seeing the screen display that the call had been disconnected, she angrily smashed her phone.

Was Li Haidong playing tricks on her? He wasn’t some enlightened monkey that had trained himself for six months in the mountains!

After hanging up, Li Haidong placed his phone on a nearby low table and resumed his meditation posture.

"Lanlan, aren’t you going to put your phone on silent? What if the debt collector calls you next?"

Li Haidong offered a friendly warning, but Wei Lan scoffed and laughed mockingly, "She wouldn’t dare bother me, not even with ten times the courage. Unlike you, whose gentle temperament makes you an easy target!"

Wei Lan was speaking the truth—Li Haidong’s overly mild nature made him incapable of holding up the group after Old Master Li passed away, forcing her son to abandon his dreams to take over the family business.

"Ah, you don’t understand. Family ties are like severed bones bound by tendons. You can’t do things too ruthlessly," Li Haidong said with a heavy sigh.

Wei Lan rolled her eyes at him, unwilling to say another word.

To her, Duan Wenhu was at best a half-relative—just a daughter born out of an affair. The fact that she was granted control over Hai Chuan Entertainment was already a significant favor.

It was only because Duan Wenhu’s mother had a fiery personality and happened to encounter Li Haidong’s docile mother that they managed to extract such concessions.

Thinking of this, Wei Lan shook her head. Li Haidong’s mild personality was exactly like his mother’s—it was fortunate that neither her son nor daughter inherited such traits, otherwise it would have driven her mad.

Wei Lan didn’t know what Duan Wenhu was trying to borrow headquarters’ legal staff for, but she still sent a message to remind Li Juezhou.

[Son, stick to your principles. Don’t be like your father, who gives in too easily. If your troublesome aunt asks for the personnel again and you can’t justify turning her down, blame it on me. Your mother isn’t afraid of offending people.]

Li Juezhou saw the message and responded with a simple "Mm."

Wei Lan felt her heartache. Indeed, her son hadn’t inherited his father’s mildness, but where had his cold-blooded indifference come from?

Not only did Li Juezhou refuse to lend any legal personnel from headquarters to Duan Wenhu, but he even transferred the entire legal team at Hai Chuan Entertainment to headquarters under the pretense that the group was understaffed.

Sang Ning didn’t want him to fully intervene in her personal affairs, but that didn’t mean he would tolerate Duan Wenhu pulling tricks against her.

The existing troubles were for Sang Ning to handle herself, but his duty was to eliminate any potential future ones for her.