Rebirth of a Star

Chapter 67 – Sowing Dissension (5)
Since the last time Fu Bainian had visited the villa, he’d unexpectedly not reappeared after that. When Lan Jinyao was lying in bed at night, she was thinking that if all that Xu Jin’ge had said was true, then Fu Bainian was truly an expert in showbiz because whenever he was facing her, she seemed to only discern deep affection through his eyes.

Now that she’d had a short break, she couldn’t help but send Fu Bainian a text message: Hey, are you currently busy with something?

This was clearly a typical greeting, but she felt inexplicably guilty because Xu Jin’ge had said before that Fu Bainian was busy expanding his business opportunities abroad.

After the text message was sent, it seemed to have sunk to the bottom of the sea as there was no reply for an extremely long time.

“Meimei, you’re up next!”

She glanced at the phone screen again before replying, “Okay, I’ll be right over.”

Still, no new text message came in.

Fu Bainian, are you actually really busy at the moment, or is it that you just don’t want to answer me?

After shelving her thoughts for another time, she put her phone in her bag and then walked towards the traditionally decorated room. This scene was between her and the male lead. Basically, Xu Jin’ge wasn’t involved, so this scene was shot quite smoothly.

Following that, just as the makeup artist was redoing her makeup, the male lead suddenly walked over.

The male lead for Rouge Fermentation was a teen idol that had debuted not too long ago. He was quite young and he looked charming as whenever he smiled, two little tiger teeth would be revealed. Nowadays, the audience’s insight was all the more sinister, and their taste was also becoming increasingly picky. This kind of teen idol was precisely what the audience currently liked.

“Big Sis Meimei, you did really well just now. It seems that after filming this drama, I’ll have certainly made some progress by acting alongside you.”

Lan Jinyao slightly nodded at him, showing a generous and natural smile. “Thank you for the compliment! Likewise, I’m also learning a lot from you, so we ought to improve together.”

When Li Ya received her compliment, he looked away as if he was a little shy.

“I’ve heard horrible rumours about Big Sis Meimei in the past, but your image is unexpectedly completely different from that hearsay. I personally find you very outstanding; no matter if it was in acting or in any other aspect.”

Lan Jinyao’s forehead was filled with black lines when she heard this. Truth be told, there was no way of measuring the extent of Chen Meimei’s bad history. Even if one were to count with ten fingers, it would still be uncountable.

She put on a fake smile and said, “Haha…is that so? Those are all rumours…and can’t be trusted.”

Li Ya seemed to be in high spirits. He straightforwardly sat down beside her and chattered on. “Yes, indeed! Only after seeing you in person did I finally realise how misleading the rumours are. They all say that you don’t have any acting skills. However, you are clearly more amazing than any of those current popular actresses. The public also says that you’re always shamelessly chasing after President Fu from Blue Hall Entertainment, but I don’t think so. You’re a very independent woman, and you’re not the kind of person that would rely on…”

He seemed to have realised that his words weren’t very appropriate, and he forcefully swallowed his last few words.

Lan Jinyao knew what he’d wanted to say next; he must have wanted to say either rely on a man or her family. However, she didn’t mind it because all of these things were done by Chen Meimei, so it had nothing to do with her. Besides, she didn’t care about those kinds of things at all. That was, as long as the comments didn’t bring about any substantial harm to her, then she was fine with it.

“Actually, what you just said isn’t entirely false. I did chase President Fu before, but that was because I really liked him, so some of the things I did might’ve been a little overboard and resulted in those remarks. Since it was something that I did, I’m not afraid of what others think about it.”

Li Ya gave her a thumbs up and said, “You’re really open-minded! Say, can someone like me have the honour of becoming friends with you?”

Upon hearing this, Lan Jinyao was puzzled as she looked at Li Ya. Did he mean friend or boyfriend? He’d asked that in such a bashful manner…was she just overthinking things?

After a while, Lan Jinyao started laughing and patted Li Ya’s shoulder. She imitated Chen Meimei as she readily said, “Of course we can! With my personality, I can be good friends with anyone.”

“Huh? Oh, haha!” Li Ya looked up and awkwardly smiled at her.

After Li Ya left, the makeup artist asked Lan Jinyao, “Meimei, don’t tell me that you couldn’t tell that that teen idol actually fancies you?”

“Huh?” Lan Jinyao pretended to be ignorant. “Is that so? How come I didn’t sense that? You must be wrong!”

“Sigh! You only have President Fu in your eyes, so how can there still be any spots left for other people? I must say, you look fantastic since you’ve slimmed down. Your looks, in general, aren’t that bad, it’s just that it was a little more chubby before. Now that you’ve slimmed down, who knows how many bees and butterflies you’ll attract?” The makeup artist pointed towards the direction in which Li Ya had left and added, “Oh, that one’s not bad; a lot of people on the Internet are clamouring to marry him.”

Lan Jinyao absent-mindedly answered with a ‘mhmm’ while she reached into her bag and took out her mobile phone.

She stared at the phone screen and saw that there still weren’t any text messages yet. She didn’t know why, but she started to feel her insides tingling with irritation. Thus, she angrily threw her phone back into her bag.

No one noticed that Xu Jin’ge, who currently had no scenes, was secretly hiding in a dark corner nearby. As she watched Lan Jinyao’s movements, her lips curled up into a cold and eerie smile.

At night, Xu Jin’ge went to Lan Jinyao’s room again. This time she didn’t use a key to unlock her door and had instead pushed the door open and walked in. Meanwhile, Lan Jinyao had just finished taking a bath and was checking the news on her phone on the bed.

The shooting of Rouge Fermentation’s hadn’t finished yet, but its official Weibo had already begun to promote it. It was unknown which staff member had posted a photo of Lan Jinyao and Li Ya sitting and talking together online. Although Li Ya wasn’t very popular yet, the previous incident regarding Lan Jinyao and Fu Bainian’s divorce was quite large-scale, so the group of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ fans had already started to speculate about things.

They came up with posts like Lan Jinyao having an extramarital affair after marriage, and something about Great President Fu being tragically cheated on…all kinds of eye-catching headlines that one could think of were there. In any case, their imaginations were overrated.

Following that, not just Li Ya’s Weibo, but also Chen Meimei’s Weibo had nearly crashed.

Lan Jinyao opened one random post. The photo was taken at a very precise angle, and it seemed that the person was hiding somewhere very close to her when the picture was taken. She carefully thought back to that moment and recalled that there were too many people around her at that time. There was not only the makeup artist but also other staff members. Even if she’d wanted to find out who the photographer was, that would prove to be quite tricky.

She’d initially wanted to take this opportunity to post a Weibo message to clarify this matter. She’d already edited the content, and it was definitely official, but, after waiting for a long time, her hand still moved to the delete button.

It looked like it was better to save this as a draft first. She just wanted to see what kind of reaction Fu Bainian would have after he’d seen the news.

Lan Jinyao suddenly had expectations and was looking forward to seeing his reaction.