Chapter 368: Wave Studio!

Chapter 368: Wave Studio!

Those three paparazzi were not nobodies.

The door had been open for only a few seconds, but Wu Chen had already sensed something wrong and had been looking toward the entrance.

He had seen all three faces clearly.

The one leading them was the balding middle-aged man.

His name was Yang Pinghe.

He belonged to Modu’s Wave Studio and was one of its core members.

He specialized in tailing and covert photography, and his investigative ability was no worse than that of some well-known private detectives.

Wave Studio had been founded thirteen years ago.

It was not the earliest paparazzi investigation team in the country, but in recent years it had become the most famous.

And more famous still than the Wave name was the studio’s owner.

Peng Wei.

Peng Wei was hailed as the number-one paparazzo in mainland China.

In recent years he had broken a great many major celebrity scandals. Some of his exposés had even driven celebrities to smash cars in protest and had set off enormous storms of public opinion.

In paparazzi circles, Peng Wei was known as Master Peng.

Wu Chen did not know Modu as well as he knew Donghai.

But only by comparison with Donghai.

Peng Wei and his Wave Studio were highly conspicuous figures in Modu, and Peng Wei himself had very strong backing. He knew whom he could afford to offend and whom he could not, and his connections throughout the entertainment industry ran extremely deep.

A figure like that, Wu Chen had naturally investigated during the thousand-year loop.

Including every one of Wave Studio’s core members.

He knew them all.

He even knew that for the past year Wave Studio had been hunting for dirt on An Menglan.

And not only Wave.

Many mainland paparazzi studios had their eyes on An Menglan.

When Wu Chen hung up, everyone in the living room looked at him.

“They’ve got them all. They were in an alley nearby. Hadn’t gone far,” he said to An Menglan with a smile.

She visibly let out a breath.

Then he went on.

“However… they’d probably already sent the photos out. They were using a laptop…”

Her face changed sharply again.

She should not have been panicking.

But this time the guilt was real.

At this moment she had the feeling that something serious was about to happen. If the photographs had already gone, there was no catching whoever had received them. In a few days, perhaps, she and Wu Chen would be making the headlines together.

“Miss An, do you know those paparazzi?” Wu Chen asked, putting a question whose answer he already had.

“Well…” She hesitated.

She had not gotten a clear look at any of the three. The instant she opened the door the flashes had gone off in her face at point-blank range. She could not see a thing.

Then she had shut the door.

“They’re probably from Wave Studio,” A-Li said suddenly from where he stood to the side.

“Hm?”

“Wave?”

An Menglan and Liu Jing both turned toward him.

Both their faces changed.

“Probably.” A-Li nodded. “When I chased them downstairs and they got into the car… I saw the man in the front passenger seat. It was Yang Pinghe from Wave.”

An Menglan and Liu Jing both went pale.

They both knew Yang Pinghe.

The man had been following An Menglan for a year. On average her bodyguards spotted him once or twice a month.

In truth there was nothing unusual about that. What celebrity was not followed and photographed?

None of them. It was the same for everyone.

Every celebrity had to live with it.

An Menglan had always held that an upright person had no cause to fear a crooked shadow. And in Modu she had a particularly large security detail around her.

Paparazzi had trouble getting close, and could not photograph anything compromising.

No one had expected that on a low-key trip to Donghai, with fewer people around her, they would finally get their shots.

So they had their pictures.

Ordinarily, so what?

Even if there was a problem, connections could settle it.

But this time.

It was Wave Studio.

That made things very difficult.

“It’s over, it’s over. Wave Studio? How did they follow us all the way to Donghai?” Liu Jing said, and slapped the arm of the sofa without meaning to.

She was panicking too.

An Menglan’s face was no better.

Wu Chen watched both women’s reactions.

He knew exactly why they reacted this way.

Because An Menglan could not handle Wave Studio.

Even her family could not simply make it disappear.

For two reasons.

First, formidable as An Menglan’s background was, the An family were Xiangjiang tycoons, not a true political power clan.

So in connections and influence on the mainland they were far weaker than the great mainland houses.

Had something like this happened to Li Ruobing, one word from the Li family would have brought everyone to heel.

The An family had no such power on the mainland.

Second, as the country’s foremost paparazzi studio, Wave Studio had astonishing backing of its own.

The An family’s Huaxing Group wholly owned an entertainment and media company, Huaxing Entertainment, one of the top three entertainment giants in the country and a major force in the industry.

Wave Studio, however, had extremely close ties with another domestic entertainment giant.

Zhonghe Media Group.

Rivals in the same trade were natural enemies.

Zhonghe Media and Huaxing Entertainment were already competitors. Paying online commenters to smear each other’s artists was routine.

So now that Wave Studio had explosive material on An Menglan, burying it through connections would be extremely difficult.

Wave Studio had Zhonghe Media’s protection.

It had no reason to fear the An family’s Huaxing Entertainment Group.

Not that settling it was completely impossible.

But there would certainly be a price.

Money, for one.

And not a small sum.

Even ordinary people had heard the rumors: some celebrity paying tens of millions to keep a scandal from breaking, buying compromising photographs back from the paparazzi.

Those rumors were real.

There were cases too where photographs were traded for “resources.”

If two actresses were competing for the same leading role and one of them obtained leverage over the other, they could negotiate. The other actress might withdraw from the running in exchange for the photographs.

If the material was explosive enough, it could even be traded for more resources from the other party’s agency. Endorsement deals, for instance.

At bottom it still came down to money.

Paparazzi studios spent enormous time and effort trailing celebrities, hunting scandals, major scoops, compromising material, all of it for money.

A piece of dirt capable of destroying an A-list career was worth tens of millions at the very least.

And to obtain something like that, paparazzi might follow and watch a celebrity for a year, or several years. That was perfectly ordinary.

An Menglan’s face was grim, and the longer she thought the more uneasy she became.

Had Wu Chen been single she would not have feared exposure. Headlines were headlines.

But Wu Chen was not single.

She had already begun thinking about using connections and paying to settle it.

And yet she also understood that even if she was willing to pay, the other side still had to be willing to take the money.

There were many ways to turn compromising material into profit.

Wave Studio could sell the photographs to Zhonghe Media, and Zhonghe Media could then use them to bargain with the An family’s Huaxing Entertainment for resources.

What An Menglan found hardest was that however this was handled, the matter between her and Wu Chen would become known to a great many people.

It might even reach her family.

The photographs might never be published in the end, but within the circles of the great families she could very well acquire the label of mistress.

A reputation for stealing the boyfriend of the Li family’s eldest granddaughter was not an easy thing to carry.

The living room was quiet for a while.

The plump Liu Jing fidgeted restlessly, shaking her head, scratching at her hair, then pushing her glasses up, plainly straining for a solution.

An Menglan sat with her lips pressed together, saying nothing.

Every so often she looked at Wu Chen.

Her gaze was complicated.

“I’ll make a call,” Wu Chen said suddenly, smiling.

Then he took out his phone.

Everyone looked at him.

They watched him dial, with no idea who he was calling.

It was an unsaved number. He entered it by hand, dialed, and raised the phone to his ear.

Five or six seconds later the call connected.

“Hello? Who is this?” came a man’s voice.

“You just looked at my photograph, and now you’re asking who I am,” Wu Chen said, his tone calm and faintly amused.

“Hm?” The man on the other end was clearly taken aback.

It was Peng Wei.

Wu Chen had called the owner of Wave Studio directly.

“You… you’re the man in the photo?” Peng Wei asked after a moment, uncertain.

“That’s me,” Wu Chen admitted.

He paused, then gave a faint laugh.

“Boss Peng, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Delete the photographs, and I can pretend none of this ever happened.”

“Hm? Are you threatening me?” Peng Wei’s tone shifted.

Then he gave a scoffing laugh.

“Heh. Miss An really is a big star. The way she handles her problems really is different from everyone else’s.”