CHAPTER 127: CHAPTER 127; SCANDALS (D)

# PoorShuyin is trending number two.

# LuZeyanAffair is number one. Your company stock is in free fall. And that press conference we spent several hours planning?"

She tossed the paper at his feet.

"Completely worthless now. Every word you said, every carefully crafted apology, every promise of transparency, all of it is buried under the news that you were sleeping with your mistress while your fiancé was in prison for a crime she didn’t commit."

The room felt like it was spinning. Lu Zeyan reached out to steady himself against the wall.

"What do I do?" His voice came out smaller than he’d intended, almost childlike. "Tell me what to do."

Wang Jing looked at him for a long moment, and he saw her make a decision behind her eyes.

"Okay. Listen to me very carefully, because I’m only going to say this once."

He nodded attentively....

"You are NOT talking to the press today. You are NOT making any statements. You are NOT issuing apologies, explanations, or clarifications. You are NOT going on social media. You are NOT calling Shuyin, texting her, showing up at her house, or trying to contact her in any way."

"But....."

"Let me finish." Her voice was steel. "You are going to go home. You are going to stay there. You are going to let me and the legal team handle the immediate fallout. And you are going to accept that for the next seventy-two hours minimum, possibly longer, you are going to watch your reputation burn and there is nothing you can do to stop it."

"I can fix this....."

"No." The word was final. "You can’t. Every time you try to fix things, you make them worse. Every statement will be twisted. Every apology will be called insincere. Every explanation will be seen as an excuse. The only thing you can do right now is shut up and let the fire burn itself out."

Lu Zeyan stared at her, feeling something fundamental and cracking inside his chest.

"She’s not coming back, is she?" he asked quietly.

Wang Jing’s expression softened, just slightly. "No. She’s not."

"What if I...."

"There is no ’what if.’" Her voice was gentle now, which somehow made it worse. "You lost her. You lost the narrative. You lost control of this situation the second that video leaked, and you are not getting any of it back."

The silence that followed was deafening.

Feng Ting cleared his throat awkwardly. "Sir, about the board meeting...."

"Not now," Wang Jing said sharply. "Everyone out. Give him five minutes."

The room cleared slowly, reluctantly, everyone glancing back at Lu Zeyan like they were leaving a wounded animal and weren’t sure if it was safe.

When the door finally closed, leaving him alone with Wang Jing, she spoke again.

"Zeyan." Her voice was softer now, almost kind. "You’re a brilliant businessman. You’ve built an empire. You’re ruthless when you need to be, charming when it serves you, strategic in ways that most people can’t even comprehend."

He looked up at her, desperate for whatever point she was building toward.

"But you’re also an absolute idiot when it comes to understanding people." She sat down on one of the folding chairs, suddenly looking exhausted. "You thought you could control this. Control her. Control the narrative. You thought that if you just said the right words, made the right gestures, threw enough money at the problem, everything would work out the way you wanted it to."

"I was trying to make it right...."

"No. You were trying to make it look right. There’s a difference." She rubbed her temples. "Shuyin spent a few weeks in prison for something she didn’t do. Most things in her life are gone. And you thought a press conference and a property transfer would make her forget that? Would make her forgive you?"

"I gave her everything she asked for...."

"You gave her what you owed her. That’s not the same as giving her what she needed." Wang Jing stood up. "She needed you to have actually changed. To have actually become the man you were pretending to be. And when she realized you hadn’t..." She gestured vaguely toward the door, toward the chaos waiting on the other side. "This is what happens."

Lu Zeyan sank into a chair, his head in his hands.

"What do I do now?"

Wang Jing’s voice was quiet when she answered.

"You sit here and you watch your world burn. There’s nothing else left."

She walked to the door, paused with her hand on the handle.

"For what it’s worth, Zeyan? I’m sorry. I know you didn’t mean for it to turn out like this."

"That doesn’t matter anymore, does it?"

"No," she said simply. "It doesn’t."

And then she was gone, leaving him alone in the silent backstage room, surrounded by scattered papers and shattered illusions, with nothing but the distant sound of reporters still shouting questions he would never answer.

Within minutes of the video leak, the entire country was on fire.

Not metaphorically. Not in the hyperbolic way people usually meant when they talked about viral content.

This was something different, something bigger and more consuming, spreading through social media like an actual wildfire, jumping from platform to platform, consuming everything in its path.

Weibo Trending Topics:

# 1: #LuZeyanAffair—8.9 billion views

# 2: #PoorShuyin — 6.2 billion views

# 3:#PressConferenceDisasterOfTheYear — 4.7 billion views

# 4: #LinYueling — 3.8 billion views

# 5: #JusticeForShuyin — 3.1 billion views

The numbers climbed every time someone refreshed the page, hundreds of thousands of new views per minute, comments flooding in faster than anyone could read them, shares multiplying exponentially.

Top Comment (2.1M likes, 847K shares):

"She stood there for FORTY-THREE MINUTES with perfect composure. Smiled for the cameras. Held his hand. Played the supportive Fiancé. And the ENTIRE TIME she knew. She knew about the affair, knew about the pregnancy, knew everything. And she still stood there and let him humiliate himself in front of the entire country before walking away with her head high. That’s not revenge. That’s ART."