Wen Fan was taken aback, “IRS?”

Forgive him for his ignorance and inexperience, but he really never heard of this term before.

Lou Wei nodded, “This is an online organization that has been declared on Bloomberg that was under pursuit. They often donate funds for reactionary organizations in various countries that violate social order. The police have been searching for their whereabouts but they never found them.” Lou Wei lowered his head and gazed at Wen Fan.

Bloomberg is an international public platform that provides information on global business, finance, and economic information. When Bloomberg released the information, every country was looking for the whereabouts of this IRS, but found nothing. However, it is obvious that although Wen Fan wasn’t able to use his ability on the internet outside of the firewall, he still has the ability to search the IP data within the country that those people couldn’t stop him.

The information that Wen Fan passed to Lou Wei about Huazhong Jinxiang happened to allow Lou Wei to find out the real name and actual identity of the real investor abroad, the person in charge of the finance, and the participation from the IRS. This information is enough to shut down and start an arrest warrant to the company. 

Lou Wei also used the information from the overseas Dealogic database and the domestic financial data to carefully check the share of Huazhong Jinxiang. He roughly confirmed that there were five companies that had frequent business transactions with Zhonghua Jinxiang were small companies and they were non-listed small companies that were established within the past one year. The top management of those companies and the investors of Zhonghua Jinxiang were the shareholders of each other’s companies.  

Wen Fan used the names of the companies provided by Lou Wei to track the IP addresses and dug out information on the internet regarding the source of their funds and the list of their recent customers. 

Besides Ke Yanan, he also discovered that there were three more celebrities that were almost blackened by the internet recently, eventually stuck back from adversity, and made a comeback. Moreover, the way they made a comeback is very similar to what Ke Yanan is doing now.  

When they were blackening the celebrity on the internet, they published information about how the celebrity was being persecuted by their investors, inciting fans and unaware bypassers, leaving negative remarks, destroying the credibility of state personnel. They even went beyond the firewall to publish the information about the celebrity being ‘persecuted’. They then created hype on new topics and diverted the focus to recent hot news of other celebrities. Once the traffic dies down after a few days, they would once again publish the news of fans that were also ‘persecuted’ previously to further influence another round of public discussion.

In the end, they would make a comeback and whitewash the celebrity with dark history to a celebrity who was framed for their dark history. And most importantly, marketing companies like them will also simply publish negative remarks of how others were being persecuted on foreign social platforms, harming the reputation and image of Z Country abroad. They would also go as far as to maliciously photoshopped pictures and spread rumors about the government colluding with investors, publishing negative remarks, and destroying the citizen’s trust toward the government. 

Moreover, the contracts they signed were all kept digitally on the company’s intranet. The scanned contracts all clearly stated the harmful impacts on the Z Country government’s credibility and stability of the people’s patriotism toward the country. However, the three celebrities and Ke Yanan still proceed to sign the contract without hesitation. 

Up until this point, Wen Fan is already convinced that the reason why Huazhong JinXiang Marketing Company is able to charge a low fee is that their main objective is to drive a mass reactionary discussion.

Wen Fan’s and Lou Wei’s eyes met and they both saw the anger in each other’s eyes.

At first, Ke Yanan’s incident was just a one-off event of a domestic celebrity. But now, because of Ke Yanan and Huazhong Jinxiang’s deliberate course of action, this has turned into a big matter that endangered the country’s image.

Lou Wei opened Facebook, Twitter, ETtoday, Instagram, Kakaotalk, and other international social network platforms. Sure enough, Ke Yanan’s incident has already steered toward the direction of conspiracy theory and is constantly developing. From the entertainment industry, crossing over to unspoken rules, and from there crossing over to political standpoints..

The internet is in fact a platform for making friends and exchanging information speedily. Ke Yanan’s incident flooded the internet at an extremely fast speed because of the deliberate inducement of public opinion and also of the netizen’s thirst for gossip. The news of Ke Yanan suspected of being forced to comply with ‘unspoken rules’ immediately topped the Weibo chart after its release. 

It dominated Weibo once again.

In addition, a lot of pictures of Mingxi Entertainment suspected to be involved in the ‘unspoken rules’ leaked on the internet. There were even videos of Liu Jinxing hugging a few second and third-line celebrities. Liu Jinxing’s face was shown clearly on the videos and the few celebrities were also dragged into this scandal news. Mingxi Entertainment’s public relations team quickly got to work, but their official blog couldn’t escape the fate of being bombarded. With the video serving as conclusive evidence and pictures that were not known if they were photoshopped or not, all the netizens started to believe that Ke Yanan was being ‘forced’ to become like this.

Even in just one hour, Weibo was blown to nothing by the surge of traffic. By the time it was able to re-enter the homepage of Weibo, Weibo had almost been dominated by Ke Yanan and Mingxi Entertainment. Mingxi Entertainment was overwhelmed by public opinion. In the previous pictures and videos, the Weibo that Ke Yanan sent directly to the male and female celebrities who were dragged down by the Huazhong Jinxiang in the pictures and videos were also bombarded indiscriminately.

 The internet was swarming with news of how Ke Yanan used to pour in so much effort to fulfill the jobs that he accepted, how he put in a dozen times more effort compared to others because he wasn’t major in acting. accepting jobs and also how he had difficulties in finance turnover and hence was forced to bow down to ‘unspoken rules’ by investors and his agency, eventually landed in the fate of being abandoned. 

His fans were wailing while clasping onto him, passerby apologized to him through his Weibo account and some gaming fans even started to doubt their own perceptions. Seventy percent of the netizens all felt Ke Yanan is no longer ‘the despicable one’ but had become ‘the one who was being forced.’ He gradually became the poor young bloke who was trapped in the swamp in the middle of the rain. 

At this moment, the term white lotus cannot be used to describe Ke Yanan. He is simply the white lotus fairy who leaves a bunch of white lotus seeds wherever he goes.      

Meanwhile, Ke Yanan who sat beside the computer was staring in the direction of the discussion threads. He finally couldn’t hold back and let out a disdainful laugh. Those who stood tall under the name of justice at the peak of morality and logical thinking were nothing but a pawn in the hand of a public opinion player like himself.  

Moreover, they are good chess pieces no matter where they were placed.      

While they were seeking justice for himself who was being forced into ‘unspoken rules’, they didn’t protect the other celebrities who were in the arms of Liu Jinxing, suspected of being forced into the ‘unspoken rules’. Such justice was promoted in an appropriate manner and they were advertised by the desire to gossip concealed under the mask of justice.

That distraught expression that he had early on disappeared without a trace as he thought about this. Ke Yanan was like a camel who finally found an oasis, catching a glimpse of hope with just a little source of water. 

However, at this instant, the news of ‘Compagnon’ was completely forgotten as everyone was focusing on Ke Yanan’s gossip. Only a handful of netizens who were totally chill were paying attention to the news of ‘Compagnon’ excitedly. Although Huazhong Jinxiang also published the news about ‘Compagnon’, it was obvious that people are more into gossip. Yuancheng Technology was outcast in a corner, almost forgotten.

Ke Yanan felt that it was a pity, between Yuancheng Technology and Mingxi Entertainment, he was already very delighted to be able to destroy Mingxi Entertainment and use Liu Jinxing as his stepping stone. Ke Yanan was no longer greedy and he was very satisfied with the outcome. He fixed his stare on the screen, looking at the numbers of his fans increasing on Weibo and the comments saying that they will support him. The smile on his face widened and it even appeared a little hideous. 

FWen Fan touched the little fox and white squirrel in his arms. The two furry balls curled up in his arms and rolled around, rubbing Wen Fan’s arm with their heads. Their fluffy tails rested on Wen Fan’s thighs, patting them gently. The soft and warm light inside the room made it a completely different world compared to Ke Yanan’s cold bedroom.   

The milky white cheetah next to him eyed Firefox and UC squirrel enviously. It turned its head and extended its long tail to wrap around Wen Fan’s ankle.  

Wen Fan reached out his hand and stroked the cheetah’s handsome face. He lifted his head and looked at Lou Wei, “It’s time to take action now.”

Lou Wei nodded and opened the financial database on his computer, “Okay, I’ll help you.”

Suddenly, a massive number of empty accounts appeared on Weibo. They were unregistered accounts but they functioned like normal accounts. This is simply abnormal. Weibo’s official personnel were also conducting a thorough investigation, they suspected that there is a glitch with their system.

Because there were too many inappropriate comments flooding Weibo, the cyber police were also tracking the source of those public opinions. However, they simply couldn’t track any relevant information or location of the accounts that published those reactionary comments.

Just when both parties were at a loss, they received an X-mind map that looked complicated but at the same time was extremely easy to understand. This graphical file appeared in their mailbox out of nowhere and there was no information of the sender, with only the subject titled ‘Relevant Information of Ke Yanan and his marketing team’.

The graphic data placed Huazhong Jinxiang as the core, surrounded by the four celebrities who turned from blackened to popular within the last one year and in addition the five other small non-listed companies as the side branches, listing a lot of negative information about them, such as records of their bad conversation, financial transaction records and the ISR accounts and information of the six companies.

Regardless if it was from a financial standpoint, or IP address, or GPS location of the companies, they were listed clearly in the diagram.      

Moreover, Wen Fan connected Ke Yanan’s electronic system with Liu Jinxing’s electronic products through the internet and dug out the records of ambiguous and sexual chat logs between them, video messages that were much more intimate compared to Liu Jinxing with other celebrities.   

All this information was collected by Lou Wei and Wen Fan. And all the content about foreign countries was found by Lou Wei, including the complex and convincing graphical data. Wen Fan admired Lou Wei’s ability on data integration that was clearly demonstrated by his evaluation report of ‘Heaven’s Dream’ and the recent information put together in the graphic data.  

The cyber police who were in charge of the investigation were dumbstruck. They stared at the screen with wide eyes for a long while. They couldn’t believe that such a good piece of information appeared out of nowhere. 

Is this a trend that Tian Luo lady would help to collect evidence nowadays?? (T/N: Tian Lou lady is a character from Chinese Folktale)  

But when the person in charge called in the team’s strongest internet tracking staff and asked him to help trace the sender’s mail address, he had no idea of the identity of the sender at all. There was simply no network gateway to be traced at all.

However, the top priority now is to control the outbreak of negative comments on the internet. 

The efficiency of the cyber police is much higher than that of the marketing companies on the internet. And of course, the news about Ke Yanan colluding with external networks cannot be published directly. The relevant government officials speedily dispatched their units to the location that Lou Wei and Wen Fan provided on the graphical date to start arresting.  

Wen Fan also uploaded all the evidence that he collected on the internet on Ke Yanan taking the initiative to court Liu Jinxing and also the intimate chat logs between Ke Yanan and Liu Jinxing.

The fans who had just seen clearly the ‘other side’ of President Liu of Mingxi Entertainment would, of course, not believe the authenticity of these videos, pictures and so-called ‘evidence’. But Wen Fan never intended to bring down Ke Yanan from public opinion. They are not the judge for Ke Yanan’s acts of slandering the image of others, leaking confidential information. All these should be judged by the law

However, Wen Fan did not expect that after he posted that information, Liu Jinxing actually admitted that Ke Yanan was the one taking the initiative to approach him. He even declared an official statement on Weibo and posted a video of how Zhou Jian brought Ke Yanan to meet him for the first time and pleaded with him to ‘have his eyes’ on Ke Yanan.

Compared to this video, the stuff that Wen Fan posted was nothing but child’s play. In the video, it seems as though Ke Yanan gave his all to please Liu Jinxing. The video was taken without the consent of Ke Yanan. Liu Jinxing had his back facing the camera and the video never captured his face. However, Ke Yanan’s face was clearly shown in the video and there were also some naked scenes. 

Wen Fan sighed while watching the video.

… But this Liu Jinxing is indeed not an ordinary person. After this incident, he will be the first boss of the entertainment showbiz who admitted and explained himself after being exposed for keeping a celebrity.

When Wen Fan watched the scene where Ke Yanan started to remove his clothes, Lou Wei immediately turned off the video.    

Wen Fan swung his tail and turned around to look at him. He saw Lou Wei looking at him with a stern face, “Don’t watch that…it’s not good for the eyes.”     

""

Wen Fan, “…”

 The cheetah and penguin beside Wen Fan nodded together. The penguin took out a pair of sunglasses from its *ss and put them over its giant head. It then took out a whiteboard and wrote, ‘Could cause sty.’ Firefox even stood up immediately and placed its fluffy tail in front of Wen Fan’s eyes, helping him to block off his view of the video cover.

Wen Fan, “.”

But it doesn’t matter if he didn’t see it. In the next two to three days, the news highlight reported that six illegal companies were shut down and they were that six companies that were connected to Zhonghua Jinxiang. 

Yuancheng Technology continued to do intensive studies about ‘Compagnon’s’ other new functions and the final finishing touch. At the same time, they didn’t forget to appeal to the court to seek compensation from Ke Yanan for breaching the contract.     

And Ke Yanan was falling from the traffic altar at the speed where the naked eye could catch up with. With the huge amount of compensation and addition to the felony of collaborating with foreigners to induce public opinion, he is destined to have a difficult time for the next ten years.

As for Liu Jinxing, after all, he is the boss of a big entertainment company. Although he has been affected by this incident, with Ke Yanan’s video, he was able to get himself off the hook by not forcing others to comply with ‘unspoken rules’. He only responded to Ke Yanan’s initiative. Thus, the incident didn’t really affect him that much. 

However, in order to avoid risks, Liu Jinxing began to retreat behind the scenes. He has already passed his tasks to the new person in charge and was no longer directly involved in managing the company’s affairs. Other than that, there is no real impact. But after this incident, he didn’t intend to find trouble with Yuancheng Technology.

But for some reason, Liu Jinixing was convinced that it was Yuancheng Technology who leaked the negative news about Ke Yanan, even though they obviously didn’t leave behind any clues to prove that it was them behind this. However, he had a feeling that it was Lou Wei who exposed Ke Yanan’s collaboration with the marketing company and wiped them off so that Ke Yanan would never be able to make a comeback. It’s true that one should never offend a youngster who is tech-savvy. Liu Jinxing read the post on Weibo about Ke Yanan’s involvement with criminal infringement, making up and spreading of fake news, endangering the safety of others. He turned off his phone in fear.

But the busiest time of Yuancheng Technology was not over yet because the release date of  ‘Compagnon’ has been moved forward. Although they had sought compensation from Ke Yanan and gotten the appropriate compensation for the breach of contract. The consequences of the exposure of ‘Compagnon’, bringing an early consumption of the public’s expectation toward the game was something that was unredeemable.

‘Compagnon’ has exposed its main selling point. If they waited too long to release the game, the level of anticipation from the gamers might drop.

Therefore, Yuancheng Technology must speed up with the release date. They decided to make an official announcement next week and officially release the game within this month.  

Therefore, Lou Wei was really busy for the next five days, he was so busy that he had not stepped foot outside the design department at all. He was working with the ‘Compagnon’ development team every day. Being the ‘first generation’ of Compagnon characters who had already met the staff, Wen Fan became the company’s favourite.

When Lou Wei was less busy, they would sit in the office and talked to each other. When Lou Wei was busy, Wen Fan did not feel bored at all, because the staff who were taking their break would gather around the phone and talk to him…especially those young ladies.

Wen Fan’s body figure followed the ratio of the human body which has been scaled down by thousands of times in proportion. And because of the resolution of the phone screen, his body curve appeared slightly different from that in reality. However, his looks and facial appearance looked outstanding. An avatar will not grow acne nor have bad skin conditions, his skin condition has always been excellent.  

Furthermore, Wen Fan was still wearing the puppy suit that Lou Wei picked for him. He wagged the tail behind him, almost killing the group of sisters. 

The Head of Department of the designing department took out a virtual lollipop from the snack cabinet of ‘Compagnon’ and waved it in front of Wen Fan, “Fan Fan, call me dear sister and I will give you a lollipop~”   

“…” Wen Fan secretly glanced at Lou Wei who lowered his head to sketch a design on his office desk. Wen Fan’s ear trembled and pouted his lips without saying anything. 

The female employees immediately covered their mouths and shrieked, “Ohhhhhhh, this is so cute!!”

The movements of ‘Compagnon’ characters are extremely anthropomorphic. The very first version of the scanned avatar could only do a fake smile. But after a few weeks of research, the tiny man could already do a lot of rich expressions to express more detailed expressions such as happiness, shyness, excitement, anger, sadness, grievances, etc… 

So, they were not surprised at all when they saw Wen Fan’s expression. They only found that this version of ‘Compagnon’ is really successful.     

However, Wen Fan was very embarrassed to call out the HOD of the designing department with the group of ladies watching him. His face got redder and the golden-brown tail behind him curled up and tugged in-between his legs and stopped wagging. 

The female head of department didn’t give up. She put the lollipop in her hand back to its original place and coaxed Wen Fan in a gentle voice, “Fan Fan, don’t be scared. Call me dear sister and I’ll show you some exclusive pictures of President Lou’s!” Because based on ‘Compagnon’ questionnaires, the character created would develop more dependence and love to the person who accompanied them the most.   

Of course, this data is just to enhance the player experience of the game. As virtual characters, this means that they will pay more attention to the information related to their ‘host’, and when they start to have more conversations with the ‘host’, they would blush and show more positive mechanical emotions.

The female head of department knew this well and so she used Lou Wei’s picture as the ‘lure’.

And the result was what she had anticipated.

As soon as the female head of department finished her words, the ears on top of Wen Fan’s head tilted back as it opened and closed slightly. He also let loose the tail in between his legs and it looked as though he was tempted by her offer.

But Wen Fan was definitely tempted.

He really wanted to see some ‘exclusive’ pictures of Lou Wei. What sort of pictures will that be?     

However-

A ‘click’ sound was heard and the few female employees immediately turned around to look at Lou Wei who was making the sound. 

Wen Fan looked closely at the pencil in Lou Wei’s hand. He was certain that he heard the sound of the tip of the pencil breaking just now.     

Lou Wei, who was focusing on sketching on the draft paper, already tiled his head and his eyes met with the female Head of Department’s gaze, “Photo?”    

Lou Wei who always wore an indifferent expression looked empowering. The HOD of the designing department and the staff behind her were instantly swept with a guilty conscience. Without Lou Wei repeating himself again, she took the initiative to answer his question, “Boss, I got those pictures from Lou Xia.” She secretly stole a glance at Lou Wei’s expression and added the next statement, “In exchange for a VIP account for ‘Heaven’s Dream’.” 

As a working-class woman, although Lou Wei’s cold face was really handsome, she preferred a boyfriend who was gentle and considerate. However, a lot of young girls who just graduated are really into those dominating precedent types like President Lou Whenever there are some newcomers joining the company, she would show them Lou Wei’s pictures. That was simply the magic trick to keep those newcomers in the harsh and complicated working environment in the gaming industry. 

And of course, this is especially effective toward female newcomers.

Wen Fan was speechless for a moment, “…” Lou Xia, only you will do such a thing!  

But to be honest….he really wants to see it.    

Wen Fan blinked at the HOD and a speech bubble floated on top of his head, “Sister.”

Not only the female HOD saw the speech bubble on his head, the rest of the employees behind her also saw it. Even Lou Wei saw it too.   

She thought she succeeded in tricking the system. However, she didn’t realize that this was entirely Wen Fan’s desire.   

But Lou Wei was aware of it.

He glanced at Wen Fan on the screen who is wagging his tail, looking at the HOD. Perhaps his gaze was a little too intense, Wen Fan subconsciously turned his head around and smiled at him gently. With the enhancement of the ‘Compagnon’ operating system, when the character turned around and smiled, the system would automatically add some background special effects.

The moment Wen Fan turned his head around, Lou Wei saw that a lot of stars appeared on the screen and they were sparkling. They scattered down around Wen Fan and there were even little pink hearts floating around the screen.  

 Lou Wei immediately turned his head away and he felt his action was a little stiff when he turned his head. 

The man who was still holding onto the black pencil grasped the broken pencil tightly, and pretended to look down at the document and spoke with a voice that was calm but yet was faster than usual, “Let him see it.”

The HOD received the order and immediately pointed her phone screen showing the picture stored in her picture album to Wen Fan.    

It was a candid photo of Lou Wei reaching out his hand to open the dark-colored curtains in front of the balcony garden. The beautiful scenery of flowers blooming everywhere, warm sunlight outside of the window pouring down from the curtains, slowly spreads out in the lens. Lou Wei, who was still in his white pajamas stood in the middle of the curtain slit, basked in the sunlight outside of the window. The sunlight bounced off the brown flooring behind him, reflected on his soft facial outline.

It’s no wonder that Lou Xia is Lou Wei’s family member. She is really good at taking pictures.

In the picture, Lou Wei’s facial features were still as cold as ever. However, it gives off a completely different feeling. He didn’t have that arrogant and fearsome aura and he appeared a lot more gentle. 

Wen Fan felt an indescribable feeling. So this is what Lou Wei really looked like.  

His breathing became shallow and he vaguely heard his heart beating wildly.

He then heard the HOD letting out a soft cry, “Wow, little Fan Fan is blushing!”   

Wen Fan, “…” I’m not. Don’t be ridiculous!    

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