Chapter 11

Pain!

Excruciating pain!!

Jiang Zihang felt as if the skin on his waist had been sliced open with a knife, and the pain caused him to roll around on the ground.

It all happened in just one second…

He never imagined that Su Xingyao would actually dare to whip him in front of so many people.

And to do it so fiercely…

Tears uncontrollably streamed down his face, making it hard to see. He lay on the ground in agony, covering his burning skin with his hand through his costume.

In his blurry vision, a pair of white boots appeared.

Jiang Zihang instinctively looked up, and as soon as he opened his eyes, he met Su Xingyao’s gaze.

The other person stood in front of him, their face expressionless.

But the pain in his body made him want to escape immediately.

For a moment, he couldn’t even tell if this was really Su Xingyao or the terrifying “Jade-faced Asura” from the play…

But his memory seemed to have a mind of its own, and a single sentence kept flashing through his mind.

“Don’t play these petty tricks.”

That was the warning Su Xingyao had given him the night he stood up from the water.

At the time, he had brushed it off and not taken it seriously.

But now, it had come true.

Everything that just happened was sudden, and many people didn’t even understand what had occurred after Jiang Zihang’s painful scream.

When Jiang Zihang’s assistant helped him up and lifted his clothing to reveal a long, red lash mark, everyone finally realized what he had just gone through.

A circle of staff gathered around, but almost all of them, upon seeing the scene, thought to themselves that Jiang Zihang deserved it.

He and his assistant had just so openly schemed to disgust Su Xingyao in front of everyone. Although no one said anything, everyone had heard it.

There’s a saying: “Don’t hit the face, but the back.”

Jiang Zihang had already secretly caused Su Xingyao to end up in the hospital for a week.

Su Xingyao, showing great tolerance, hadn’t held it against him, but he still had the audacity to mock him in front of his face, insinuating he was faking illness…

Especially with the words he had said earlier, if someone with a slightly shorter temper had been there, they would have slapped him twice to make him shut up.

The crew had been around them every day, so they all knew what kind of personalities and tempers the two of them had.

Su Xingyao, who had a bad reputation outside, was actually humble, gentle, and a good actor. He not only helped the crew solve various problems, but also helped the staff and the extras whenever he could, never acting high and mighty, and was easy to get along with.

On the other hand, Jiang Zihang, who fans praised for his excellent character, was a giant baby. He couldn’t do anything by himself, even needing his assistant to feed him and give him water… The key point was that his acting was terribly bad, and everyone in the crew had to work overtime late into the night because of his constant NGs.

The crew already had some negative opinions of Jiang Zihang, and when they saw that he was not even focusing on his acting but instead bringing in his people to bully Su Xingyao and find ways to provoke him again and again…

When they saw Su Xingyao whip him today, most of them felt a sense of secret satisfaction.

After Jiang Zihang was whipped, he screamed in pain.

His assistants turned pale with fear and hurried to surround him, carefully applying iodine to his wounds.

The assistant who was closest to him immediately grabbed some tissue to wipe his face, shielding him with his body to make sure no one saw his miserable state.

“What’s wrong, bro? What happened?”

Jiang Zihang was in so much pain that he temporarily lost the ability to speak. He could only look at Su Xingyao from a distance, his face full of grievance.

Seeing this, his assistant’s eyes widened, and he immediately scolded Su Xingyao like he was training a dog.

“What are you doing? Do you want to kill him?!”

The assistant had intended to scold Su Xingyao more, but as soon as he locked eyes with him, he immediately shut his mouth.

Su Xingyao ignored him, his expression didn’t change. He lowered his gaze and slowly started to wind the whip back up.

After finally holding the whip in his hand, he calmly spoke.

“Apologize to Xiao Yu.”

Upon hearing this, Jiang Zihang immediately cursed.

“Apologize to ***… Are you ***?!”

The crew members quickly gathered around.

Director Wang had just arrived and heard Jiang Zihang swearing.

He shot him a displeased glance but patiently tried to calm the situation.

“This whip is different from the other props. It’s harder to control the direction and force, and this solid one isn’t very safe. I’ll have the props team replace it later.”

With Director Wang speaking up, it was his way of giving both sides a way out.

The smarter ones knew this was the time to keep quiet and solve the problem privately later.

But Jiang Zihang acted as if he didn’t understand, still relentlessly.

Once he recovered, the first thing he said was, “You really couldn’t control yourself, or are you just settling personal scores?”

His intention was to target Su Xingyao, to let everyone see his true nature.

However, he didn’t realize that this statement directly offended Director Wang as well.

Upon hearing this, Director Wang’s face darkened.

Jiang Zihang’s assistant, as if the chaos wasn’t enough, joined in to fan the flames.

“Don’t think that just because you’re filming, no one can see what you’re trying to do.”

Su Xingyao had vented his anger and felt that he couldn’t back down either, so he immediately retorted.

“An award-winning actress might get so into character during filming that she accidentally slaps her co-stars.”

Jiang Zihang thought this sounded very familiar.

After thinking for a moment, he realized it was the same thing his assistant had said to justify his actions when he deliberately NG’d and pushed Su Xingyao into the water.

Obviously, Jiang Zihang wasn’t the only one who remembered this phrase, the crew members who were present that day all had a vivid recollection.

Today, seeing Xiao Yu use the same line against Jiang Zihang, some of the crew couldn’t help but laugh.

Jiang Zihang had already been humiliated by Su Xingyao, and now his assistant was subtly insulting him in front of everyone.

Feeling completely embarrassed, his blood boiled, and he angrily yelled at Xiao Yu.

“Shut up, you idiot!!”

When Jiang Zihang raised his hand, his assistant quickly stepped in to do what he wanted.

His action was swift and forceful, as he aimed to slap Xiao Yu.

However, his hand was intercepted just ten centimeters from her.

Su Xingyao grabbed his wrist with one hand and coldly asked, “What do you think you’re doing?”

Others also noticed the assistant’s intentions, and several actresses quickly shielded Xiao Yu behind them.

Ji Linghe could no longer stand by. After slapping away the assistant’s hand, he coldly spoke to Jiang Zihang.

“I think it would be better if you went and calmed down.”

Jiang Zihang was far from calming down.

At this moment, his manager arrived on the scene, stopped him from speaking further, and directly dragged him away from the set.

Frustrated, Jiang Zihang turned around, glaring at Su Xingyao. He flipped his the middle finger and threatened with a face full of anger.

“Su Xingyao, just wait. This isn’t over!”

After Jiang Zihang was taken away by his manager, the set finally quieted down.

At first, everyone thought that after his manager took him away for a lecture, he would calm down and stop causing trouble.

However, they didn’t expect that Jiang Zihang immediately contacted his fan who had been lurking outside taking photos, and using the photos they had secretly taken, he exposed the entire incident.

Soon, hashtags like #JiangZihangWhippedBySuXingyao#, #SuXingyaoTheBullyOnSet#, and #JiangZihangSoPitiful# dominated the top five spots on trending.

On social media, Jiang Zihang’s fans joined the fray, posting several high-quality photos and crying out about Su Xingyao’s workplace bullying of their “brother.”

Fans also began to condemn Su Xingyao, quickly creating a list of ten questions for him, demanding that he come forward and apologize to Jiang Zihang.

The sudden appearance of these trending topics shocked the crew of Falling Flowers and Glass who were still busy filming night scenes at the time.

By the time they finished and saw what had happened, Su Xingyao had already been subjected to tens of thousands of online attacks.

Meanwhile, on his own social media profile, a post from a year and a half ago had now accumulated over a million comments after going through several rounds of blacklisting and trending hashtags, with fans of Jiang Zihang adding to the insult.

Director Wang was quite speechless about the situation.

After all, no director would want to make headlines in this way before a drama’s release.

He had already been uncomfortable the last time when Jiang Zihang’s fans exposed the cast lineup at the opening ceremony.

And now, it was Jiang Zihang’s fan again who leaked the photos, completely exposing the crew’s carefully prepared costumes, makeup, and set designs.

The crew wasn’t happy about this, and the actors and staff also thought Jiang Zihang was acting crazy.

Although, in the eyes of his fans, he had suffered an enormous injustice today.

But to them, this was really just a very small matter.

Many actors in the crew have been accidentally injured by props while filming, some even coming close to losing their lives, but no one has ever made such a big fuss or bought trending topics to publicize it.

Moreover, this issue was actually caused by Jiang Zihang himself, the things he had done to Su Xingyao were far worse than this.

Yet, Su Xingyao chose to keep things under wraps, saying nothing to the public and not using any sympathy to discredit him. Jiang Zihang, on the other hand, reversed the situation by playing the victim, taking advantage of his large fanbase and the fact that the truth wasn’t known by people outside the crew, and blatantly slandering and leading the narrative.

By doing this, Jiang Zihang made it clear how the rumors about Su Xingyao had started in the past.

The crew understood, but the netizens were clueless.

Seeing that Su Xingyao was being painted as the villain, many automatically sided with Jiang Zihang.

【I told you Su Xingyao would cause trouble, and sure enough, just a few weeks into the shoot, here we are.】

【As a true Su Xingyao fan, I have to say this really fits his style.】

【Jiang Zihang is so pitiful, even filming a drama and getting bullied by a villain. My heart hurts for him.】

【Damn, does Su Xingyao have some powerful backers? He just does whatever he wants on set.】

【Can someone kick him out of the crew? I don’t want to see this villain anymore.】

Su Xingyao didn’t have a team or fans, and his manager had stopped handling his blacklists and trending topics two years ago under his parents’ instructions.

After Jiang Zihang found out about all this from Shen Huaixi, he became even more reckless in buying trending topics, and hired armies of online trolls in waves.

The next morning, unable to sleep, Jiang Zihang used a ^[1]burner account is a temporary or secondary online account, often created to remain anonymous or to avoid associating certain actions or statements with one’s primary identity.burner account to scroll through Weibo. He saw that netizens everywhere were viciously slandering Su Xingyao, and following the trolls’ lead, they were demanding that Su Xingyao be kicked out of the Falling Flowers and Glass crew.

Finally feeling like he had gotten some revenge, Jiang Zihang felt a little relieved.

He opened one of the photos of Su Xingyao whipping him, zoomed in, and mockingly poked at Su Xingyao’s face with his finger.

“How dare you, you bitch! You think you can whip me? Trying to stand up for an assistant? Do you believe I can ruin your career?”

After saying this, Jiang Zihang finished making his threats and was about to pack up and head to the set to enjoy Su Xingyao’s current expression.

Just as he was about to close his phone, someone tagged him directly.

“Wow, I’m so scared: @JiangZihang, want to explain what you’ve done before?”