LWDC Chapter 11

Chapter 11 – On Vacation

Chapter 11 – On Vacation

Chapter 11 – On Vacation

Ning Fei was, in fact, on an absolutely fabulous vacation.

To be precise, he had booked a room at a hot spring mountain resort in the suburbs with complete entertainment facilities, and had been lazing around for the better part of half a month. Ning Fei slept until he woke up naturally every day, then wandered around the hot spring resort with his phone and cigarettes.

This phone wasn’t even his main phone. His main phone remained switched off, while a secondary phone that no one else knew about was turned on. Ning Fei used this secondary phone to surf the web, flitting around with a burner account to gather information from the sidelines and speculate on how things were developing.

For example, rumors had already surfaced online about Su Cenxi changing managers. In some of Su Cenxi’s behind-the-scenes work photos, the spot where Ning Fei should have been standing was occupied by an unfamiliar woman. Someone in the comments recognized her and posted: “[That’s Jaslyn, the golden manager from A+ Company! Why did he change to her, where’s Ning Fei?]”

Ning Fei knew that Gu Hechen was trying to screw him over, but he wasn’t worried at all; on the contrary, he was quite pleased. “To receive ‘repayment’ without having to personally collect the debt…where can you even find such a deal?”

Another example: Ning Fei saw that the top male models from ST had posted a group photo, which looked like behind-the-scenes shots from work. Most importantly, the location tag showed they were in China, and in the background of the photo was a casting director from Fashion Week!

When Ning Fei saw this, he realized something was wrong. “Tsk, if these guys are all coming to Fashion Week, Su Cenxi’s Fashion Week work is going to be drastically reduced. Duan Yunhong is actually bringing these pillars here to squeeze out the market…we really are destined to be enemies.”

Yet another example: Ning Fei actually saw a financial blogger break some news about Gu Hechen’s company: “[Amazing! Rumor has it that Gu’s made a big joke. The bidding team actually submitted the wrong bid documents. Irrelevant things were found in the bid document bag! Because this project is a key government project, Gu’s massive mistake will definitely lead to some ‘invisible penalties.’ No matter how capable Gu Hechen is, he’s going to be pulling his hair out for a while.”

This news hadn’t been confirmed by Gu’s, but the comments section was already going crazy with “conspiracy theories.” Many people spun elaborate scenarios, as if they had personally witnessed a commercial spy swapping out the bid documents.

Ning Fei wasn’t interested in whether Gu’s had commercial spies or not. He was well aware that such a big blunder at Gu’s was likely related to the decline in Su Cenxi’s luck. Gu Hechen, as the person closest to Su Cenxi, was simply experiencing the “ripple effect.”

Before, when Su Cenxi had been unlucky or seriously ill a few times, Ning Fei had temporarily lent him some “luck” to help him recover quickly. Ning Fei had recently collected all of this unreturned luck “with interest,” so Su Cenxi’s luck would naturally be much weaker. After all, Ning Fei’s was a “personal loan,” and the interest rates were very high.

Of course, Ning Fei could choose not to charge interest, but he didn’t do unprofitable deals. His interest was always set at the highest possible limit. Originally, as long as the transmigrator was obedient and diligently fulfilled the original owner’s last wish, they would completely obtain the original owner’s luck (or a portion of it) after success, which would be more than enough to repay Ning Fei. Ning Fei would also get a commission from the luck given by the original owner, which was a win-win situation. But if the transmigrator was disobedient and increasingly deviated from the original owner’s wishes, the luck allocated to them by the original owner would decrease.

The mildest consequence would be bad luck and illness, while the most severe consequence would be triggering the “rejection” of the world they were in, leading to their complete disappearance.

And if the transmigrator failed completely, Ning Fei would not only be unable to recover the luck he had personally lent out, but would also waste a lot of time collecting the debt. Therefore, Ning Fei generally wouldn’t bother “collecting debts” in advance unless he really wanted to give the transmigrator a “memorable lesson.”

However, this time, collecting the debt in advance was less about teaching Su Cenxi a lesson and more about giving Gu Hechen a warning. Su Cenxi and Gu Hechen’s fates were already intertwined, and their luck affected each other. If Su Cenxi was having a string of bad luck, Gu Hechen couldn’t escape either. Since Gu Hechen thought Ning Fei was a “demon” who was coercing and controlling Su Cenxi, Ning Fei might as well let him see the consequences of provoking him.

Ning Fei was always skilled at such warning tactics, but this time, there was an unexpected little twist.

The timing of ST’s supermodels flooding in was too coincidental.

But it wasn’t impossible for ST to shift its focus to the Greater China region and send a group of powerful individuals for this Fashion Week.

–Duan Yunhong…

Ning Fei lightly stroked the scar that was already fading, thinking, “Surely the director of ST wouldn’t deliberately squeeze out the people I’m bringing just because I didn’t recognize him over such a small matter, hahaha.”

*

On one of the evenings of his third week “on strike,” Ning Fei went home, and his main phone was finally turned on.

New messages rang out incessantly. Ning Fei waited a few minutes for the phone to completely quiet down before he started looking at the messages.

And the first thing he saw was that he had been kicked out of the studio’s group chat.

“…Tch.” Ning Fei was amused. Looking further down at the private messages from his assistant, sure enough, the latest one was: “[Brother Fei, you’ve been absent from work for a week without reason, which has delayed a lot of Xi Xi’s work. This serious dereliction of duty has caused serious losses and negative impact to the studio. The studio has decided to terminate your labor relationship. Please remember to come to the studio to complete the procedures and hand over your work!]”

“Gu Hechen, Gu Hechen, you’re really bold,” Ning Fei sighed, not feeling particularly angry, just amused. It seemed that Jaslyn had really taken office. Morning Sun Studio hadn’t made the matter public yet, probably because they were still waiting for Ning Fei to go through the formalities and then put on a show of parting amicably.

Ning Fei didn’t reply, and didn’t even bother scrolling up to see what the assistant had said earlier. He exited the assistant’s chat interface and finally opened the avatar with the most messages – Su Cenxi.

In Su Cenxi’s dozens of messages, the most common content was asking where Ning Fei was and why he hadn’t gone to work. Interspersed in between were some real-time updates from Su Cenxi about his work; to be precise, he was expressing some fear, fear about the large-scale cancellation of his work.

Ning Fei did some statistics and could only say that it was indeed worth being afraid.

The runway shows of the eight top brands during Fashion Week, which had basically been negotiated for Su Cenxi to audition, and some had even been internally confirmed, had now only finalized two, and neither had the opening or closing slots. The others either didn’t pass the audition or had their auditions canceled altogether. Su Cenxi did get the opening slot for some of the slightly lower-tier brand runway shows. Overall, the total number of jobs secured for Fashion Week was only half of what had been previously estimated, which was definitely a slip-up for Morning Sun Studio.

As for some other scattered interview and photo shoot jobs, some didn’t pass the audition and some were canceled at the last minute. Some of the cancellation notices were even sent to Ning Fei, but Ning Fei didn’t receive them at the time and didn’t notify Su Cenxi, so Su Cenxi only found out about the situation when he arrived on set.

It could be said that without Ning Fei, Su Cenxi’s recent work situation was a complete mess. Even though Jaslyn wanted to turn the tide, it seemed that the results were minimal.

Su Cenxi also said that he had been having frequent stomachaches and headaches recently, and Gu Hechen also said that he had headaches and that Gu’s situation didn’t seem to be very good either… In short, Su Cenxi’s words implied that he attributed all of this to the obstruction of his “debt repayment.” Of course, he didn’t dare to explicitly say anything about “debt repayment.” He was afraid that Gu Hechen would suspect him if he saw these messages, so he could only hint at it.

In the last few messages he sent to Ning Fei, he asked: “[Ning Fei, what exactly is wrong with you?]”

“[Achen said you’re fine, that you left on your own. Don’t you want to help me anymore?]”

“[If you don’t come back, Achen is going to fire you. If you don’t want to help me, then don’t restrain me, just let me go, okay? I was fine before. You were the one who insisted on me reaching TOP 10, so why are you suddenly saying you’re leaving?]”

“‘Suddenly saying you’re leaving’… Ha.”

Ning Fei leaned against the balcony railing, flicked the ashes from his cigarette with his left hand, looked at his phone, and couldn’t help but smile mockingly. Gu Hechen and Su Cenxi were truly a perfect match. He opened his phone’s photo album, swiped several times, found the target photos and videos, and sent them all to Su Cenxi in one go.

Three photos from different angles of the bloody wound inflicted by the sword.

Two photos of the bathroom mirror with half his body stained red (face obscured).

One photo of the sink after washing, leaving behind a pool of blood; one photo of blood-soaked shoes and socks; one photo of bloody footprints in the hallway; one photo each of the bloody clothes that had been taken off, the jacket, pants, and shirt.

And a video taken at that “Master Xu’s” house, and a short video of him unwrapping the blood-soaked bandage on his hand, one of each.

So much bloody material flooded the screen, creating a huge visual impact, almost like a death threat. Ning Fei didn’t bother to worry about whether Su Cenxi would be scared to death by these photos and videos; he didn’t even type a single word. He knew that Su Cenxi would definitely show these to Gu Hechen, and he planned to see Gu Hechen’s reaction.

After sending them, he didn’t want to look at any other unprocessed messages for the time being. He directly put the phone aside and continued to smoke, looking at the night sky.

This was the pack of menthol cigarettes he had bought for Su Cenxi, which were a little strange and weak for Ning Fei. But he didn’t have a big smoking habit. After finishing that pack at the hot spring resort, he hadn’t bought any more, so he could just make do for now.

As he was smoking, he saw a car drive up downstairs and actually stop right in front of his unit’s entrance.

Ning Fei’s home was on the sixth floor. Late at night, he couldn’t see the car very clearly. But for some reason, the car looked somewhat familiar…

The phone rang.

Ning Fei thought it was Su Cenxi and his partner, but when he picked up the phone, it was an unfamiliar number. He pressed the answer button, his gaze unconsciously falling on the car downstairs: “Hello?”

“Hello, you’re back?”

Hearing this somewhat familiar voice, Ning Fei suddenly realized – he had seen the license plate of the car downstairs before, it was Duan Yunhong’s car!

“Director Duan is in a good mood, running all the way to my apartment building late at night, then sitting in the car and calling me?” Ning Fei was sure that Duan Yunhong was sitting in the car, “I just got back and you were able to find me. Don’t tell me you’ve been waiting for me every day?”

Duan Yunhong still had that cold tone: “Just happened to be passing by.”

Ning Fei replied lazily, “Oh, okay.”

He didn’t argue with Duan Yunhong about this full of holes, which instead left Duan Yunhong silent for a few seconds. But Duan Yunhong quickly brought up a new topic: “Now that Gu Hechen and Su Cenxi don’t want you anymore, come with me?”

“Pfft, Director Duan, what are you talking about? You’re making it sound like I’m some lovesick fool,” Ning Fei took a leisurely puff of his cigarette, and slowly said, “They wouldn’t dare not want me, and it’s not up to them to not want me.”

“Su Cenxi’s new manager is already handing out business cards everywhere, aren’t you destined to be replaced?” Duan Yunhong said, “ST’s benefits won’t be worse than Gu’s. Many of ST’s supermodels have the strength to reach the TOP, why not come here and display your talents?”

Ning Fei smiled and said, “I don’t need your charity, Director Duan.”

Duan Yunhong said, “This isn’t charity…”

“Okay, then I don’t need you to be so fond of talent,” Ning Fei looked at the black car, and said mockingly, “I should be grateful that I haven’t been bringing Su Cenxi recently, otherwise I would have been suppressed by you, and personally recruited by you. Who could handle your combo? You even use gaslighting to poach people, Director Duan is so skilled, truly amazing–”

Ning Fei deliberately said those last three words in an ambiguous tone. At first glance, it sounded like flirting, but combined with the context, it was extremely sarcastic.

Duan Yunhong said, “I didn’t…”

Before he could finish speaking, Ning Fei received a new phone call. He looked at it, and this time it was Su Cenxi.

“Director Duan, sorry, I need to answer another phone call. Hang up if you don’t want to wait,” Ning Fei decisively hung up Duan Yunhong’s phone and answered Su Cenxi’s call.

The first thing he heard was Gu Hechen’s voice: “Ning Fei, what do you mean by sending these photos to Cenxi? Are you threatening him?!”