Chapter 18

Even though she held a substantial sum of money, Sheng Quan ultimately chose to prioritize: sleeping.

In the grand scheme of things, rest was paramount. For her to stay up until midnight waiting for settlement results was already considered quite unusual.

The next day, after breakfast, Sheng Quan lay comfortably in her bed and started browsing various platforms.

The buzz about her “Rich Woman Books Fan” didn’t die down with time. Instead, because she hadn’t come forward to clarify whether Huaxing Building truly belonged to her, even after so long, people continued to discuss it repeatedly.

As the saying goes, the person involved never gets to enjoy the benefits of their actions.

However, since everything had been discussed extensively, it was time for her to make an appearance.

In “The Road of Life” group, although Sheng Quan hadn’t spoken since the first time she trended, this group, which was originally just a casual gathering, had turned into a frenzy.

Many onlookers applied to join the group, flooding the group owner’s phone with requests to the point where they couldn’t do anything. Eventually, the owner had to set the group to “Not allowing anyone to join” just to keep things peaceful.

This showed that the group owner had integrity; otherwise, they could have set a “pay-to-join” feature to make some money.

Some even offered high prices to get closer and enjoy the spectacle, posting rewards for access to the group’s QQ number. Whether these people actually gained entry remained unknown.

However, since “Victory Assured” had been offline since then, some speculated that the rich woman didn’t want to attract attention and had abandoned the account. As time passed, the excitement in the fan group gradually subsided, returning to its original state where anything could be discussed.

When Sheng Quan checked in, she saw that in just five minutes, these girls had managed to chat about “how nice the weather outside looked,” “which place would be best for a trip on such a nice day,” “our classmate asked for likes on post number 77,” “I saw a handsome guy on my last trip,” “I also saw a cute little girl on my last trip,” and “how nice does this picture look.”

Her attention was caught by the message asking for likes.

The message came with a link. Clicking on it, Sheng Quan found herself on a rudimentary website, with bizarre design and rows of photos resembling ID cards, alongside images of people with questionable makeup.

Was that supposed to be smokey eye makeup? Their eyes were barely visible.

And why was that obviously young person made to look so mature with makeup?

Scrolling all the way to number 79, Sheng Quan looked at the person in the photo with a saucepan-like head, covered in black powder with a mask on, easily cosplayable as a pirate. Her gaze fell on the name beside it: Jin Jiu.

Even though it had been a long time since she last saw that name, Sheng Quan couldn’t help but shiver when she saw it.

The kind of shiver one gets when wanting to curse a trashy author.

Finally, she understood why the name of the singing competition sounded familiar. It was because it was one of the many shoddy shows Jin Jiu had participated in.

Jin Jiu, a typical example of a comeback story in “Starlight”, had natural talent for singing from a young age. At a time when the industry hadn’t started to pay attention to singers, sixteen-year-old Jin Jiu was handsome, had an outstanding voice, was talented, and worked hard. He could be described as a prodigy.

He should have caught the best opportunities of his time. However, at his peak, he was poisoned out of jealousy, and his naturally gifted voice was destroyed completely.

Although the perpetrator was quickly apprehended, Jin Jiu’s voice, once praised by newspapers as “the voice kissed by angels”, was gone forever.

Even though the truth of the incident was suppressed because of the other party’s company’s protection, Sheng Quan vividly remembered feeling outraged at the time. Only after searching on Baidu did she realize that such examples existed in real life. Since then, she had gained a clearer understanding of the chaos in the entertainment industry.

At the age of sixteen, Jin Jiu should have had a clear understanding. When he first debuted, everyone praised him. The boss was kind and friendly to him, and his agent treated him like a big brother. Wherever he went, he received love from fans and flowers.

After his voice was destroyed, the once “genius teenage singer” became an ordinary young man.

The boss turned hostile, forcing him to sing to earn money with high penalty clauses, just after being discharged from the hospital. The agent, who used to treat him like a brother, became a tyrant who didn’t care about his well-being, organizing meeting after meeting, concert after concert, squeezing the last bit of benefit from Jin Jiu as much as possible.

Jin Jiu used to have the love of fans, but after he repeatedly “scammed everyone for money”, fans turned from love to hatred and disappointment.

Under the tacit consent of the boss and the manipulation of the company that poisoned him, Jin Jiu’s “scamming for money” seemed to become an ironclad fact, even though he never received a penny and technically hadn’t yet turned sixteen, still being a minor.

On his sixteenth birthday, a bunch of flowers was placed on Jin Jiu’s table. Despite being exhausted to the extreme, he still happily hugged it to his chest upon seeing it.

It wasn’t until he opened the card and saw the words: “I truly regret ever liking you.”

In that moment, his burning heart seemed frozen.

Jin Jiu chose to commit suicide that day. Saved by his parents, he realized, as he looked into their tears, that if he wasn’t afraid to die, what else could he fear?

That day, he walked into the boss’s office with a paper knife and cut himself in front of the boss, smiling as blood flowed onto the floor.

The boss was frightened out of his wits. Jin Jiu hadn’t done anything to him, so he couldn’t even call the police. Plus, Jin Jiu’s reputation was already tarnished. In order to “ward off the plague”, he not only released Jin Jiu but also compensated him three thousand yuan.

Jin Jiu gained his freedom, but the once proud prodigy had layers upon layers of psychological burdens on his soul.

In the book, he remained silent for thirty years.

During those thirty years, he worked hard to earn money to treat his voice. Although his nearly perfect voice never returned, he switched to singing techniques, changed his style, and used various techniques to mitigate his vocal defects.

His personality also underwent a huge change, full of melancholy, with traces of sorrow in his eyes. Even if his old photos were placed beside him, almost no one could recognize him as the former teenage singing prodigy.

When Sheng Quan was re-reading the book for the second or third time, her favorite part was watching Jin Jiu’s journey of resurgence, especially when she was tired from overwork or overwhelmed by work-related stress. She would repeatedly watch that section, as if she could draw strength from it.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Jin Jiu, during a certain period, was Sheng Quan’s spiritual support to get through heavy workloads.

In the gradual formation of her character, Jin Jiu had a share of credit.

He taught her that not dying is living, and he made her understand that not everything in the world has results, but the process must be justified in one’s heart.

But unfortunately, while she was becoming stronger and better under Jin Jiu’s influence, Jin Jiu himself had a fatal flaw.

Being abandoned overnight by everyone who had once loved him caused him significant psychological trauma. Despite singing well on stage, whenever he looked at the audience below, he would uncontrollably recall the words from the card.

—”I truly regret ever liking you.”

Like a curse, this sentence always lingered in Jin Jiu’s mind.

In order to overcome it, he would sign up for any singing-related program, regardless of how shoddy or trashy it was, as long as he could register.

Finally, on his forty-sixth birthday, the singer who poisoned him was exposed for other reasons, and the truth of the past was also revealed to the world. When Jin Jiu saw many passersby who had listened to his songs before come to him again, saying they loved him and liked him, he found himself not happy.

He didn’t blame the fans; he just found himself feeling a bit tired.

Thirty years of youth, he never dared to slack off. In these thirty years, he had grown old, his parents had passed away, and the boss from the past had also died. Everything seemed to be in the past tense.

Jin Jiu could sing on stage again.

When his voice, which compensated for the loss with vocal skill, sounded just as good as in his youthful days, he naturally became popular.

He gained worldwide fame overnight.

Jin Jiu, who had been silent for thirty years, skyrocketed to fame at lightning speed. He regained friendly passersby and fans who loved him, and his name resounded throughout the country.

He won many awards and became a true singing god. It seemed like everyone was passionately and joyfully loving him again.

Then, on an ordinary day, Jin Jiu committed suicide by cutting his wrist, leaving behind only a short suicide note.

—”I’m sorry for those who once loved me.”

Jin Jiu’s ending was not a cliffhanger, but during the serialization of “Starlight”, readers were very upset. Sheng Quan, however, didn’t join the ranks of insulting the author like many did later.

First, she was deeply hurt by the ending. Second, although she was deeply hurt, upon careful thought, it seemed quite reasonable.

Many readers shared the same view. Although they were saddened, they felt that this ending was a release for Jin Jiu. Thirty years of silent nights were summarized in just one sentence in the novel, but for Jin Jiu, it was thirty years of exhaustion and pain.

From the beginning, the author made it clear that Jin Jiu longed for love.

In his upbringing, he was often separated from his parents, leading to a lack of love. The warm and straightforward love from fans was exactly what he needed, so he would reciprocate that love tenfold.

When this love was taken away, he didn’t know what to do.

Gained in one night, lost in another.

So, when he gained it again, he wasn’t happy because he was afraid of losing it again.

As the book wrote, he was too tired and had waited too long.

So, he chose death to protect the love he had now.

She understood the logic, but it was still heartbreaking.

Seeing Jin Jiu being abandoned by everyone, Sheng Quan wished she could leave dozens of comments in the comment section every day expressing her love for Jin Jiu.

But he was gone, and she couldn’t even comfort herself in the comment section.

During that time, even the pessimistic Boss Zhou came to her cautiously, asking if she had gone through a breakup. Did she want to take a day off to rest? Of course, it would be unpaid leave.

She refused outright, turned her grief and anger into strength, worked hard for a day. Perhaps because her resentment was too strong at the time, or perhaps because she was afraid that she would stop working altogether in this state, Boss Zhou changed his mind in the evening and gave her a paid day off.

The Sheng Quan who used to love going back to re-read Jin Jiu’s efforts was afraid to even glance at it after that. Under such forced pressure to forget, Sheng Quan finally emerged from this “unemployed” state.

Then she devoted herself to her career, and “Starlight” was still being serialized. She just stopped re-reading the previous plot. Every time she thought about it, she would comfort herself: this was Jin Jiu’s choice, don’t think about it anymore.

So, that trashy author indeed had a history.

If she had known earlier, she should have endured a bit longer and cursed a bit more.

And now, Sheng Quan, looking at the screen, chuckled at Jin Jiu, who was almost dressed as a pirate captain, and then glanced at the age beside him, 23, and smiled slowly.

Yes, this timeline was not the same as in the book; he was still alive.

This was Jin Jiu who hadn’t experienced thirty years of sleepless nights.

He was vivid, living in a real world.

And he was even dressed as a pirate captain.

[006, binding the second sponsored person, Jin Jiu.]