Ding Jie confidently introduced the new project, finally assuring Father Ding and the executives, “If I’m put in charge of this project, I will definitely bring the company considerable profits and take it to the next level.”
“Good! Excellent!” Father Ding’s gaze was full of praise as he looked at his son, then turned to the other shareholders with a smile. “What do you all think? Not bad, right?”
The shareholders could all see Father Ding was fishing for them to praise his son. However, the project really was quite good, so they all offered a few words of praise.
“Like father, like son, Chairman Ding. A worthy successor.”
“Ding Jie has really grown through his experience. With him helping you in the future, your burden will be lighter.”
“With such an outstanding junior in the company, we old folks can rest easy, just waiting to collect our dividends.”
Father Ding exchanged pleasantries with them for a while, then said with a laugh, “Alright then, it’s settled. Ding Jie will take the position of General Manager, with full authority over this project.”
Xu Ziyan, having heard from Fu Qixuan that Ding Jie was launching his new project today, went to a cafe across from the Ding Corporation building. Sure enough, she soon heard 001’s report: 【Congratulations, Host, for completing the plot: Helping the male lead steal trade secrets, pushing the male lead to smoothly seize power and make a stunning debut.】
Xu Ziyan grinned from ear to ear. She barged into the Ding Corporation with her bodyguards in tow. The employees and security guards all recognized her and didn’t dare to stop her forcefully. She stormed all the way to the top-floor conference room, breaking through the sounds of congratulations for Ding Jie’s appointment. “What’s going on here? Celebrating something?”
Ding Jie was stunned. “Zi Yan? What are you doing here?”
Father Ding frowned at the sight of someone from the Fu family and questioned coldly, “Is this how the Fu family juniors are raised? So ill-mannered?”
Xu Ziyan took off her sunglasses, revealing surprised eyes. “Chairman Ding, your son first stole a game from the Fu Corporation, and now he’s stolen one of our projects. Is that what you consider good manners?”
Father Ding’s heart sank. He looked at Ding Jie. A father knows his son best. He didn’t even need to ask to know that what Xu Ziyan said was definitely true. Otherwise, why was there no news before, and suddenly he produced such a good project out of thin air?
The shareholders and executives also looked suspicious. After all, Ding Jie had a record—he really had stolen Fu Qiming’s game before. Now that the other party was knocking on their door, it couldn’t possibly be for a friendly chat, could it?
Ding Jie was furious. He glared at Xu Ziyan and warned, “I was wrong for not looking for you recently because I’ve been too busy. Don’t make a scene here. If you have something to say, let’s go outside and talk.”
Xu Ziyan made a face of utter distaste. “You make it sound like I like you and we’re having a lover’s spat. Please, I have so many handsome guys around me, each better than you. You, a married illegitimate son with a kid, what about you is worth my liking?”
“What? You’re married and have a child? How come I didn’t know?” Father Ding stood up, feeling this son was nothing but trouble, and couldn’t even clean up his own mess properly.
The others also looked at Ding Jie with disapproval, while Ding Jie himself was stung by the words “illegitimate son.” He strode up to Xu Ziyan, wanting to grab her wrist. “You, come with me outside to talk!”
“Sir, please show some restraint.” Several bodyguards blocked Ding Jie, shielding Xu Ziyan completely.
Xu Ziyan directly projected a screen, saying, “Don’t say I’m making trouble without proof. This project was thought up by my eldest brother. Here’s the evidence.”
The various documents displayed on the screen were timestamped. The project was from a year ago, while Ding Jie claimed he had conceived it in the last few months. Who was lying was crystal clear.
Ding Jie never imagined Xu Ziyan would do this. Did she want to crush him just because she didn’t like him anymore? What kind of logic was that? Backed into a corner, he could only stubbornly insist, “It just means Manager Fu and I had similar ideas. This doesn’t prove anything.”
“Oh, okay then.” Xu Ziyan shrugged. Before Ding Jie could sigh in relief, she projected another document. “I’m just here to remind you, what you stole was a project my eldest brother scrapped. The project itself is quite good, but it has a fatal flaw—it’s guaranteed to lose money. I trust you all can understand this?”
This wasn’t hard to verify; it would just take a month or two of detailed investigation. The Ding Corporation would have discovered it sooner or later; they couldn’t have been scammed out of money. So Xu Ziyan exposed it directly, doing her part to send the male lead to prison. She had disliked him for a long time!
At this, several shareholders stood up. They were shocked to realize the project really couldn’t be executed, and on top of that, they had lost massive face in front of their rival. They immediately began frowning and criticizing.
“Young people are just unreliable. Wet behind the ears and irresponsible. Chairman Ding, you really need to properly educate this son of yours.”
“An outsider raised on the side just won’t do. Chairman Ding, you should quickly bring Ding Yao back and train him properly.”
“First, clarify whether he actually stole it or not. If it’s true, that’s purely his personal action. The company certainly didn’t order him to do it.”
Xu Ziyan chose that moment to release some evidence. “And this here is proof that Ding Jie instructed Lin Xiaoyun to steal trade secrets.”
Ding Jie roared, “Xu Ziyan! Have you gone mad?!”
Xu Ziyan laughed. “It’s precisely because I’m not mad that I’m exposing you. I’m from the Fu family. Did you think I’d help you after you stole from the Fu family?”
The evidence was conclusive. Ding Jie was now facing charges of stealing trade secrets. He raged, “If you accuse me, then you’re an accomplice! Don’t forget what you’ve done!”
Xu Ziyan feigned surprise. “What have I done?”
“You…” Ding Jie suddenly went speechless. He remembered that Xu Ziyan seemed to have done… nothing. He had asked Xu Ziyan to create opportunities for Lin Xiaoyun. Reportedly, Xu Ziyan had only had Lin Xiaoyun deliver coffee and tidy up. It was Lin Xiaoyun herself who secretly propped a door open, disabled the surveillance, and entered the office to steal things. Unfortunately, there were other hidden cameras in the office that recorded all her movements.
And that time he asked Xu Ziyan to create an opportunity for Qin Yuexiang… what had Xu Ziyan said that day? That she had just been about to help when she saw Qin Yuexiang leave with Fu Dongfeng, and she even showed him the surveillance footage. Xu Ziyan had done nothing.
And before that, with Fu Qiming’s game, Xu Ziyan had gone to the restroom, and he himself had taken it from her bag. So many, many other things… Xu Ziyan had perfectly kept herself out of it. Forget being an accomplice; one could easily believe she knew nothing. She hadn’t even leaked a hint over the phone.
How could one person be this cautious? It could only mean Xu Ziyan had never been on his side from the very beginning. She had been scheming against him from the start!
Ding Jie’s eyes blazed with fury. “You’ve been deceiving me all along?!”
Xu Ziyan felt the atmosphere had built to this point, so she tentatively said, “I only help my own people. But haven’t you always denied our relationship, haven’t you?”
Ding Jie was so angry he felt his lungs might explode. Hearing this, he lashed out without thinking, “How could I possibly like a scheming woman like you? Someone who can even betray the family that raised you? Who would dare to trust you, to fall in love with you? I never had any feelings for you from start to finish. You were just a tool, that’s all!”
【Congratulations, Host, for completing the plot: The male lead confesses he never liked you and breaks with you.】
Xu Ziyan laughed out loud. “You didn’t really think I had a bad relationship with my family, did you?”
The conference room door opened again. Fu Qixuan and Ding Yao walked in together, followed by several police officers.
Fu Qixuan said calmly, “Xiao Yan is the apple of the Fu family’s eye. Her relationship with her family is excellent; there has never been any betrayal. Those baseless accusations are all your own delusions. Ding Jie, for instructing Lin Xiaoyun to steal trade secrets from the Fu Corporation, I have already reported it to the police.”
Ding Jie’s face was a mask of shock—not just shock at Xu Ziyan’s close relationship with the Fu family, or at Fu Qixuan calling the police, but also shock at seeing Ding Yao completely unharmed. “You… How can you…”
Ding Yao smiled triumphantly. “How can I be here? How come I’m not a crippled beggar? Ding Jie, you hired people to kidnap me and dump me abroad. Did you really think you could succeed and cover the sky with one hand? Those kidnappers have already confessed. Your dealings with them have all been uncovered. Exactly how many crimes you’ve committed… you can think about that slowly once you’re inside.”
The police stepped forward to arrest Ding Jie. Father Ding and the others asked in shock, “What on earth is going on? What kidnappers?”
Ding Yao’s face turned cold. “You produced this illegitimate son, raised him up, and indulged him in fighting with me. He directly hired people to kidnap me, planning to dump me abroad as a beggar, with specific instructions to cripple me. If I hadn’t been alert, I would never have made it back in this lifetime.
Are you satisfied now? This is the illegitimate son you admired and treasured!”
Father Ding never imagined the conflict between his two sons would reach this level. He staggered and fell back into his chair, seeming to age ten years in an instant. Today, he hadn’t just lost all face; he had also ruined the Ding family’s reputation with his own hands.
Ding Jie was shoved into a police car and taken away. Through the window, he saw Fu Qixuan and Ding Yao walking on either side of Xu Ziyan. The belated realization hit him—the three of them had joined forces! He also suddenly remembered: that project was one Fu Qixuan had scrapped a year ago. It wasn’t the secret project he had been negotiating abroad recently at all.
It was laughable. He had been so confident that Xu Ziyan was deeply in love with him, willing to do anything for him. He had always asked Xu Ziyan to help him, which ended up leaking many of his secrets. He had even trusted Xu Ziyan more because he successfully stole that project. It was all a trap! He hated it!
Ding Yao asked Xu Ziyan, “Want to go somewhere to celebrate?”
Xu Ziyan looked at the distant police car, then at the blue sky and white clouds. She took a deep breath and smiled. “No, I want to go home and have a reunion dinner with my family. We can celebrate another day.”
A reunion dinner? Ding Yao and Fu Qixuan were both taken aback, simultaneously remembering the consequence of deviating from the plot: world collapse. They had no other plotlines to follow. They certainly couldn’t ruin their own careers and cripple themselves just to stick to the original plot. So, it ended here, with the so-called “male lead” sent to prison.
They didn’t know what the final mission judgment would be, or how long the world had before collapsing. They really should cherish every minute and second they had now. Ding Yao smiled. “Alright then. I’ll go visit Annie at her film set. See you later!”
This time when they met, he hadn’t heard a single ‘inner thought’. It must be because his own ending had been reversed, so he could no longer hear them. The sword hanging over his head had finally disappeared. Ding Yao felt an unprecedented sense of relief.
Even if the world was going to collapse, in the time before it did, he hoped to live happily, not as a miserable cannon fodder.
The Fu family felt the same way. The whole family returned home, prepared a table full of sumptuous dishes, talked and laughed, feeling happy that they could still be together as a family at this moment.
While there was laughter and joy over here, Ding Jie’s situation in the detention center was miserable. He initially wanted to get a lawyer and deny everything, only to find the police had already been investigating him for some time. The evidence was ironclad; there was nothing to argue.
He thought he had won, but in the end, he had suffered a crushing defeat!
Bai Qingqing was shopping at a mall. She had her eye on a bag—the same one Xu Ziyan had been carrying the last time she saw her. She took out her card. Now she could afford it too. Xu Ziyan wasn’t better than her in any way.
Who would have thought the store clerk would tell her the card was declined. Bai Qingqing felt the clerk’s gaze, and the looks from other customers, were all weird, definitely mocking her. She immediately called Ding Jie. When she couldn’t get through, she called Ding Jie’s secretary, only to receive shocking, terrible news.
“What? Ding Jie was arrested?”
Bai Qingqing’s legs went weak, and she slumped to the floor, feeling dizzy. She grabbed her fallen phone in a panic. “What do you mean ‘arrested’? He can’t have committed a crime. There must be a mistake. Didn’t you know how to stop them?”
The secretary was speechless. “The police were making an arrest. How could we stop them? Ding Jie stole trade secrets from the Fu Corporation and hired people to kidnap Ding Yao. There might be other crimes too; the police will investigate thoroughly. Anyway, he’s no longer with the company, and he’s not my boss anymore. Don’t call me again in the future.”
Bai Qingqing’s face turned deathly pale. Her eyes rolled back, and she fainted on the spot, frightening the clerk into immediately calling 120!
Xu Ziyan was in the middle of dinner when she heard the system broadcast: 【Congratulations, Host, for completing a hidden plotline: Causing the female lead to have a miscarriage scare and be hospitalized. Reward: 5 skill points.】
Xu Ziyan was puzzled. 【What’s a hidden plotline?】
001: 【It refers to events that happened on the male and female leads’ side but weren’t written in the original plot.】
Xu Ziyan understood. No wonder Ding Jie had been so ruthless to her in the original plot. So Bai Qingqing had also been hospitalized due to a miscarriage scare because of her. Not bad, not bad. Even this could earn a reward. Her luck really was bursting at the seams!