Chapter 385: Isn’t It Just Money? Prepare Thirty Million!

Chapter 385: Isn’t It Just Money? Prepare Thirty Million!

Peng Wei hesitated, instinctively, for a brief moment. Taking down United Media’s top male star and breaking with United Media altogether was something he had never dared even imagine.

United Media was his backer. Naturally it was far more powerful than he was, a force he couldn’t afford to cross.

True, Peng Wei wasn’t a United Media employee. Theirs was a relationship of mutual benefit, and neither side owed the other anything.

But.

They had worked together for so many years. If he suddenly turned on them, there would be retaliation.

Peng Wei understood. Wu Chen wanted a pledge of allegiance from him.

“All right, Mr. Wu. I agree. No problem!” After only three seconds’ hesitation, Peng Wei put on an eager smile and agreed wholeheartedly.

Something he had never dared imagine before, he now decided with ease.

He even felt a kind of eagerness.

Because he had worked through the logic. This, he felt, might be a blessing in disguise.

Breaking with United Media, losing that backer, facing their retaliation: all of that would certainly be hard.

But.

Look at it the other way.

Working with Wu Chen was as good as having two new forces at his back. The Li family. And the An family.

He still didn’t know exactly what An Menglan was to Wu Chen, but the fact that she would eat breakfast with him first thing in the morning in pajamas showed how close the two of them were.

The power behind An Menglan alone was enough to stand up to United Media.

And the Li family was a force United Media wouldn’t dare provoke.

In other words, he would lose United Media as a major backer, but gain even bigger ones.

No wonder Peng Wei was eager. He even felt he ought to make a real effort to get on Wu Chen’s good side.

The negotiations went very smoothly.

Wu Chen had first driven Peng Wei into a psychological dead end, then opened a gap for him and offered him a bright road ahead. On the surface, Peng Wei seemed to have made the best possible choice, one that could carry him to even greater heights. In reality, it was the only choice Wu Chen had left him.

There was no trust between them. If Wu Chen wanted to reach an agreement quickly, this was the only way to arrange it.

Next, the two of them discussed Zhou Shenglong’s affair with Wang Yaoyao.

Mostly, Wu Chen talked and Peng Wei listened.

Wu Chen even had Peng Wei switch his voice recorder on to capture what he dictated. There was simply too much of it, and it was so precise that Peng Wei couldn’t possibly commit it all to memory.

Zhou Shenglong was forty-three and had been in the industry for nearly twenty years. He was a veteran, though still counted among the younger-to-middle generation of accomplished actors. In his first few years, several TV dramas he headlined had taken the year’s ratings crown one after another, cementing his status as a film and television superstar.

Wang Yaoyao was twenty-nine, a popular actress signed to Guanglu Media. Three years earlier, United Media and Guanglu Media had co-produced the epic period drama Love in Those Years, with Zhou Shenglong and Wang Yaoyao as the male and female leads.

It was their first collaboration. And their only one.

But that one was enough for the two of them to get together.

At the time, Wang Yaoyao had a boyfriend, an actor she’d been with for several years. Zhou Shenglong had been married for more than ten years and had a ten-year-old son.

Both of them were cheating.

The detail Wu Chen gave was so extraordinary that Peng Wei almost couldn’t believe it.

Yet much of it could be verified.

For instance, Wu Chen told him that Wang Yaoyao kept an alternate Weibo account where, without ever naming names, she recorded little snippets of her daily life with Zhou Shenglong.

Then there were the backup phone numbers the two of them used, the places they regularly met, and the dates and destinations of several trips abroad they had taken together.

Wu Chen told him all of it. Every bit could be checked.

“Zhou Shenglong and Wang Yaoyao see each other every week and spend the night together. Either at Apartment 601, Donghu Building, No. 19 Huafu Road, Ganjiang District, Hang City, or at Villa No. 4, Area B, Dingmao International Villa Community, Dongpu District, Modu…”

“For the past two months, Zhou Shenglong has been filming at Hengcheng Film and Television Base. Wang Yaoyao just wrapped her new drama and isn’t very busy. Hengcheng is only a little over a hundred kilometers from Hang City, so personally, I think they’re more likely to meet in Hang City. Wang Yaoyao will go to him…”

Wu Chen was nearly done.

“That’s enough.” He gave Peng Wei a small gesture.

Peng Wei switched off the recorder.

“Can you get photos this week?” Wu Chen asked.

“Yes. With this many leads, absolutely!” Peng Wei guaranteed it outright.

Wu Chen had given him an enormous amount of crucial information. Any single piece of it would have been a lead worth chasing on its own, and now he had all of them at once. If Peng Wei couldn’t get photos quickly with all that, he didn’t deserve to be called the number-one paparazzo.

“Um… Mr. Wu, I have a question.” Peng Wei spoke up again, choosing his words with care. “How… how do you know all this?”

“We’re in the same line of work. I deal in intelligence too.” Wu Chen smiled at him.

“Ah…” Peng Wei said, as though that explained everything.

In truth, he didn’t believe a word of it. He could tell Wu Chen didn’t want to say, so he played along and asked nothing more.

After that, the two of them talked privately for well over another half hour.

Before they knew it, it was nearly three in the afternoon.

They were done.

They left Qingyuan Teahouse one after the other. At the entrance, Peng Wei made a point of shaking Wu Chen’s hand, then watched him get into his car and drive away.

Only once the Lamborghini was well into the distance did Peng Wei look away. Standing at the roadside, he took the voice recorder out of his jacket again, looked at it, closed his fist around it, and gave it a little shake.

Even now, he was still riding a wave of excitement.

He could almost have sighed aloud at how strange life was. Coming to Donghai had been the right call after all.

Half an hour later.

North District, Zunrong Donghai Huafu. Wu Chen pulled up at home.

At the same time.

West District, Dingxiang International villa community, Villa No. 9, Area C.

An Menglan had moved out of the hotel. The night before, she had officially moved into Song Xuan’s home, at Song Xuan’s own invitation. Paparazzi had photographed her at the hotel Song Xuan had arranged, and Song Xuan felt rather bad about it and wanted to make amends.

The hotel really wasn’t as safe as Song Xuan’s home, so An Menglan had accepted.

The basement.

The gym.

It was a spacious home gym. Song Xuan had spared no expense renovating the villa: home theater, gym, recording studio, all of it.

An Menglan was alone in the gym.

In yoga clothes, she balanced on one foot on a mat, her body fully extended in a very difficult pose…

She was practicing yoga.

She had only fallen for yoga in the last few years. As a star, she needed to stay in shape, and yoga helped her focus and quiet her mind.

She loved exercise like this, gentle in appearance and punishing in reality.

Song Xuan’s gym had every kind of equipment, and An Menglan happened to have packed yoga clothes, so she had come down to practice.

Working out several times a week was one of her habits.

Clack-clack-clack!

Rapid footsteps sounded outside, approaching from a distance. The sharp click of high heels.

Bang!

The gym door flew open.

It was Liu Jing, her assistant.

“Boss, Peng Wei called.” Liu Jing was a little out of breath from running.

“Hm?” An Menglan turned her head toward her, slowly drew her outstretched body back in, and set her other foot down.

“What did he say?”

“He wants to meet you. He asked where you are and said he’d come to you.”

An Menglan frowned at once. “Peng Wei’s in Donghai?”

“From the way he talked, it sounds like it.”

“That man…” An Menglan’s face darkened.

She didn’t even need to ask why he wanted to see her. What else could it be? The paparazzi had their photos and had already posted a teaser. If he was coming in person now, it had to be about money.

An Menglan thought it through carefully.

True, they had agreed that Wu Chen would handle this.

But.

Since Peng Wei had come to her and reached out himself, meeting him wouldn’t be a bad thing. Better still if she could settle it outright and be done with it, and spare them any more trouble.

“What did you tell him?” she asked after a moment.

“That I’d call him back shortly.” Liu Jing lifted the phone clutched in her hand.

“Mm…” An Menglan considered a little longer, then looked at her. “Normally, when paparazzi get photos like these… how much does it actually take to buy them back?”

She had a rough idea, but she had never been through anything like this herself, so naturally she didn’t know the specifics.

“Probably… maybe thirty million,” Liu Jing said, not sounding sure herself.

An Menglan pressed her lips together, paused briefly, then said, “Prepare thirty million. Run it through the company accounts. Call Peng Wei back. Don’t let him come to Miss Song’s house. Arrange to meet him somewhere else…”