Chapter 63

Chapter 63

The underground parking lot at Huan Zhou Entertainment was semi-enclosed. Wang Shanshan was very familiar with the layout and, along with Yan Wan, had been waiting early next to An Ye’s nanny van.

When the four-person team exited the elevator, Chi Tuo had Lan Yifang lead Qi Wei and An Ye around to the back of the van to get in.

Once inside, Lan Yifang quickly locked the doors.

An Ye looked out at Chi Tuo, who said something in a low voice to Wang Shanshan. Her already unpleasant expression grew even uglier. She glanced at An Ye through the car window—and, surprisingly, actually followed Chi Tuo away.

Yan Wan looked like he wanted to stop her, but Chi Tuo stood between him and Wang Shanshan. Chi Tuo was tall and strong, while Yan Wan had long since been hollowed out by drink and debauchery. When he reached to grab Wang Shanshan, Chi Tuo blocked him, causing him to stumble and nearly fall.

There were security guards in the parking lot, and it was likely that upper management had given instructions. When Yan Wan tried to follow Wang Shanshan, he was stopped. He tried to approach the van as well but was again blocked by security. In the end, he spat in the direction of An Ye’s nanny van before getting into the elevator.

“Huan Zhou won’t protect him anymore,” Qi Wei said in the car. “My informant over here told me that after we proposed terminating the contract, Qing Ze blocked Yan Wan’s number and already switched managers. Yan Wan’s work ID and office desk have been removed, his internal accounts canceled, and someone’s been assigned to watch him at work in case he runs. They’re just waiting to prosecute.”

For Huan Zhou, the fact that Yan Wan abused artists and caused early contract terminations wasn’t fatal. What was fatal were the sex-and-drink deals he made in the industry. Each one crossed the line, and Huan Zhou couldn’t possibly cover for him anymore.

An Ye watched the direction Wang Shanshan and Chi Tuo disappeared toward and asked absentmindedly, “Has Qing Ze confirmed the date for the event I promised to attend with him?”

Qing Ze had played a big role in taking Yan Wan down. He had an impeccable sense of timing. On the second day of the Lunar New Year, he had found An Ye and sent her several videos—recordings and footage of Yan Wan making shady deals with upper management.

What he wanted was simple: once it was certain that An Ye wouldn’t stay with Huan Zhou, he asked her to appear with him at a summer fashion show next month. Just once.

He was born for the entertainment industry. After playing up their CP pairing ambiguously so many times, he was worried people might speculate about their relationship once An Ye left Huan Zhou. This public appearance would be a clear signal—and a favor owed to An Ye.

For some reason, An Ye suddenly thought of Lawyer Chi’s “sole exclusivity.”

If Chi Tuo hadn’t come back, and she had chosen Qing Ze as her intended guardian, she wasn’t sure whether Qing Ze would’ve switched sides and sided with Yan Wan after learning about her mental health.

Chi Tuo had declared “sole exclusivity” so righteously, as if she were the one with all the choices.

But the truth was, if he hadn’t returned to the country, it was questionable whether she could’ve exited the contract unscathed. She might’ve actually ended up locked away in the Ninth Hospital.

“Sometimes I wonder…” Qi Wei happened to be thinking the same thing. “If we hadn’t gone to Lawyer Chi and had found someone else instead, that person might not have approached the case the way he did.”

“When I went to Jin Ding for meetings, I visited Lawyer Chi’s office,” Qi Wei gestured with his hand. “There were about four or five rolling carts, each about waist-high, filled with files related to your case. Lin Hao said those had already been filtered twice.”

“His team hasn’t gone home since Lunar New Year’s Eve,” Qi Wei said. “We originally planned to act on the third day of the New Year, but moved it up three days because Lawyer Chi went to your house and found out that your mom and Yan Wan were planning a press conference to publicly disclose your mental condition…”

An Ye gave Qi Wei a surprised glance.

Qi Wei looked even more surprised. “Lawyer Chi didn’t tell you?”

“No.” An Ye shook her head. “I didn’t ask.”

Qi Wei clicked his tongue twice and shook his head. “Once you start running your own studio, you can’t keep floating like this. That’ll be your business, after all.”

An Ye didn’t respond.

Qi Wei fell quiet for a moment too.

After thinking it over, Qi Wei decided to be direct: “I heard before that having the company manage your social media accounts was your own idea. Xiao Lan also said you rarely interact with fans, never search your own news online, and only check the trending lists when Yan Wan made you. Is that true?”

Xiao Lan shrank her neck in the backseat.

An Ye nodded.

“Can I ask why?” Qi Wei asked. “Going forward, should we stick to your usual habits, or will there be some changes?”An Ye withdrew her gaze from the window, thought for a moment, and replied with a rhetorical question: “Do you think my emotional intelligence is suited for interacting with fans?”

Qi Wei was stunned.

So was Xiao Lan.

“I kept my distance from fans because, back in the early days with that ragtag troupe, I managed my own social media accounts. At that time, I landed a lively role, and once I got into character, I had a strong urge to share—posting ten Weibo updates in a single night, things like that. Later, Yan Wan took over all of it and deleted everything I had posted.”

“What did you post?” Qi Wei was curious.

“Stuff like asking why people liked me, I think?” An Ye couldn’t really remember clearly.

Qi Wei fell silent.

After a while, she said, “I still think you should manage these things yourself. You’re not a newcomer anymore—you don’t need to build a persona. A purely business-run account will make you feel out of control with what you're doing.”

“Not too close, but not too far either.” Qi Wei added it to her memo app, then changed the subject. “There’s another thing—I need to have some clarity about it too.”

After saying that, she stayed quiet for a long time, tapping away at her memo app.

“You mean me and Chi Tuo?” An Ye spoke up for her.

“Mmhmm.” Qi Wei dragged out the hum into a wave-like sound. “You need to give me a straight answer. We’re all adults here. If you two are just friends, then I guess every so-called platonic man-woman friendship in this world should be able to have kids.”

An Ye: “……”

She looked out the window again.

“We really were just friends before.” An Ye said. “Now, he’s my guardian.”

Qi Wei: “……”

Lan Yifang: “……”

Qi Wei pushed forward bravely: “And in the future?”

An Ye fell silent.

She wasn’t used to sharing personal things. After a long pause, she gave the same answer she used to give Yan Wan: “If anything develops, I’ll let you know in advance.”

She honestly didn’t know what kind of relationship she and Chi Tuo had. But she knew she relied on him—a lot. Emotionally, she leaned on Chi Tuo intensely. It had only been a little over three months since he got back in touch, but if she didn’t make an effort to control herself, she was already at the point of wanting to complain to him about what she ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

She also knew—no matter what kind of affection this was—if it carried that much dependency at its core, it couldn’t be healthy.

Just like Wang Shanshan’s dependency on her. She knew Wang Shanshan loved her, had no other life pursuits. Her only goal was her.

She knew exactly how suffocating that was. And she also knew very clearly—that kind of suffocation would be passed on to Chi Tuo.

So she didn’t know about the future.

And she didn’t dare to think about it.

Chi Tuo spoke with Wang Shanshan for nearly an hour.

It actually could’ve been shorter. He let her vent emotionally for over twenty minutes. Only when she had nothing left to yell did he finally cut in.

His feelings toward Wang Shanshan were complicated. She had taken care of him when he was young. Wang Shanshan was very kind to outsiders. He still remembered how she would save money by skimping on food and other expenses to buy fountain pens for the two of them. Even when she could barely afford a meal, she still couldn’t help but buy something nice for the two kids—and always two of everything.His mother, Zhang Rou, attempted suicide for the first time—it was Wang Shanshan who discovered her and rushed her to the hospital.

When he had a fever and Zhang Rou wasn’t home, it was also Wang Shanshan who came running through the freezing winter night to take him to the hospital.

When they were little, the two of them used to mix up who they called "mom"—after all, they had two. No matter who they called out to, someone would turn around.

Later, Wang Shanshan began strictly controlling An Jiujiu’s diet. At thirteen or fourteen—the age when one eats the most—An Jiujiu had a huge appetite. She was the type who’d sneak a lick of a loquat hanging from a tree in the neighborhood. But because of Wang Shanshan, she basically cut off all junk food from that age.

Back then, Chi Tuo had already started disliking the way Wang Shanshan managed An Jiujiu. He’d secretly buy her snacks. He couldn’t bear to throw out his own used-up draft paper and would keep using it by switching to a red pen, but An Jiujiu almost never ran out of snacks. He always found ways to smuggle some to her.

Later on, that dynamic became the tone of his relationship with Wang Shanshan: she still treated him well, and whenever she treated An Jiujiu poorly, he would secretly make up for it.

When he was now explaining the law to Wang Shanshan, he felt like he was doing the same thing again.

Blood ties can’t be severed. No matter how angry or resentful one feels, under the law, An Ye still had a duty to support Wang Shanshan. All the more so because she was a public figure.

So Chi Tuo didn’t really go fully by-the-book. He just used the same method he had on New Year’s Eve—a little bit of threat, a bit of legal explanation, and a touch more of temptation.

Wang Shanshan wasn’t smart. It wasn’t hard to reel her in.

At the very least, he made sure she understood how many crimes Yan Wan had committed—and that prison time was likely. She had lost her ally.

Then he told her, there were indeed cases of child stars going mentally unstable and getting drained dry by their families—but usually, those families didn’t end up well either. When a celebrity is truly drowned by negative press, there’s not much blood left to suck.

There’s really not that much money to be made.

He jabbed at the point she cared about most and said: your family is ordinary—no connections, no backing. It was already hard enough for An Ye to make a name for herself on acting alone. If you expect more, that’s just greed.

After delivering that slap, he turned gentle and sincere. He said he understood—she’d been deceived by Yan Wan because she didn’t understand how the industry worked.

Wang Shanshan, caught in this back-and-forth, forgot to even ask about the guardian issue. All she remembered was Chi Tuo telling her: Yan Wan would go to prison. Yan Wan had cheated An Ye out of a lot of money. The money Yan Wan stuffed into his own pocket had been stolen from An Ye. Everything he’d told her before had been lies. She couldn’t keep helping Yan Wan anymore—otherwise, she might be considered an accomplice.

Even the Moutai and tea she served on New Year’s Eve had exceeded a normal value threshold.

With Chi Tuo’s stern face before her, Wang Shanshan broke out in cold sweat down her back. She no longer dared to even ask how much it would cost if An Ye terminated her contract.

Chi Tuo had no intention of letting her regain her senses. He made Wang Shanshan open her purse and took away An Ye’s psychiatric evaluations from the past few years, as well as the voice recorder Wang Shanshan had secretly activated back when this all started.

Before leaving, he still said a few heartfelt words.

“Auntie, Jiujiu has always listened to you. She understands all your hardships and difficulties.”

“But you don’t understand her.”

“The doctor said she sometimes can’t tell dreams from reality when she’s in a hypersomnolent state. But the doctor never said she was so violent that she needed to be restrained.”

“The rest… was your own imagination. You believed she’d kill you in her sleep.”

“Why?” Chi Tuo asked her, “Was it guilt? So much guilt that you think Jiujiu would kill you in a daze?”

“What did you do to her, to feel that guilty?”

Chi Tuo finished speaking and walked away.

Touching the past in Wangcheng was still too much for him—especially under sleep deprivation.

His vision started to blur again, and sweat beaded on both palms and the back of his neck. His smartwatch was alerting him that his heart rate was too high.

But even so, before getting into An Ye’s nanny van—he still didn’t take his medication.Didn't really want to spoil the mood.

After all, today was the first day of her new beginning.

He wanted to stay with her.