After Transmigrating As The Female Lead Of A Cruel Novel, I Raised a Big Shot Cat - Chapter 21.1

Qiao Hua’en held a special status in the station. Though only 26, she possessed one First Class Merit and three Second Class Merits. Had it not been for a severe hand injury that made her unable to hold a gun steadily, she would likely still be fighting on the front lines. Everyone in the department admired her deeply.

They had occasionally asked what kind of person she liked, but she had never given an answer. Now, she had actually admitted to liking someone! This instantly ignited the gossiping hearts of everyone present.

While the police station was buzzing with discussion, a storm of “blood and fire” was brewing on the internet.

The woman who had been arrested went by the online handle “Your Sweet & Spicy Girlfriend.” Although she started her career by posting suggestive content, she had gained considerable fame after several years in the influencer circle.

News of her arrest was leaked online, quickly attracting a massive crowd of onlookers.

Although the specifics of the police investigation hadn’t hit the web yet, the fact that her “sugar daddies” had fled was dug up. Soon after, a video from a livestream, referred to by viewers as the “Most Beautiful Silhouette”, was rediscovered.

The beauty of a silhouette lies in its “blank space”, it leaves room for the imagination.

In the clip, viewers could only see a woman in a form-fitting long sweater wearing a large straw hat, carrying a small hoe. Just as she approached a small house, a swift cat leaped into her arms. The woman dropped her hoe, lifted the cat for a kiss, and then carried it into the cottage.

It was a simple scene, but the woman’s graceful figure, the swaying hem of her clothes, the straw hat, and the cat evoked a sense of poetic tranquility, the “picking chrysanthemums beneath the eastern fence” kind of beauty.

In a world of people trapped in the concrete jungle, who wouldn’t yearn for that?

Thus, this accidental footage captured in the corner of a livestream went viral. Countless influencers tried to mimic it, and some even tried to claim it was them. But their attempts were like “painting a tiger only for it to look like a dog”, they might have had similar body types, but none could replicate that ethereal, otherworldly aura.

The silhouette became an internet sensation. Some thought the cat looked like Big Boss, but the idea was quickly dismissed. It was well known that while there are attractive pet bloggers, they are rare, so the truth remained buried.

The matter might have ended there, but everything changed with a single photograph.

It was a photo from a “proxy snap” group (paparazzi). In it, a woman sat slumped in a chair, her face obscured, looking utterly exhausted. Despite the chaos around her, she seemed to exist in a world of her own, isolated from the surroundings.

Once the photo was released, it gained a massive following. “Pro” netizens began analyzing proportions and measurements, eventually proving that the woman in the chair and the woman in the silhouette were the same person.

The internet erupted. It was like a game where a missing clue had suddenly been found.

People began cross-referencing data, tracking flight schedules from that day to see which city the beauty had traveled to, and who in that city had suddenly become famous or been spotted as a stunning beauty.

For a moment, countless beauties were dug up by netizens. While everyone marveled at how many gorgeous women there were, everyone tacitly agreed: none of them were the woman in the silhouette.

Beauty is easy to find; temperament is rare.

Just as the internet fell back into a fog of mystery, a woman burst onto the scene with a video.

This creator was from Bilibili (Site P). She specialized in identifying locations or people based on a single image. Her original intent was to warn people about the dangers of oversharing personal photos, but she couldn’t resist the challenge of “troublemaking” netizens.

A war between the uploader and the trolls began. Their current record was 325 to 325.

It was a tie until a troll proposed a bet: find the true identity of the “Silhouette Woman.” If she won, the trolls promised to stop being “troublesome” forever.

The creator accepted. She locked herself in her house for a full week. When she finally emerged with massive dark circles under her eyes, she had fulfilled the mission. She found the owner of the silhouette: Ji Qingyue.

The process was tedious, but in short: The uploader first filtered all flights from the airport in the photo. Initially, she looked at Hangzhou, but she realized that the beauties appearing there in late October were mostly of a more “voluptuous” build, whereas the woman in the silhouette had a thin back and a lifted waist.

She ruled out Hangzhou and, after a long screening process and a tip from a friend, realized the Hangzhou flight had a layover in Changzhou.

She scanned Changzhou, but there were no famous influencers there at the time. Just as the trail went cold, she remembered Changzhou’s connectivity to other cities and eventually locked onto Shanghai.

At that time, Ji Qingyue wasn’t famous. But her cat was.

However, back then, Big Boss barely had any fur. In the silhouette video, Big Boss’s fur was growing but not full yet. It was almost impossible to confirm via the cat. But the uploader was stubborn. Adhering to the principle of “better to misidentify than to miss,” she scoured Ji Qingyue’s clothes and shadows in her videos, only to find nothing (since Ji Qingyue had deleted those videos after the cat got famous).

Just as she was about to give up, she found a video Ji Qingyue posted after moving to her new home. A building in the background matched a building in one of the female influencer’s videos.

After having a professional friend sketch what the cat would look like with full fur and comparing it to the cat in the silhouette, the result was clear. A perfect match!

Ji Qingyue was the Silhouette Woman.

Netizens were stunned. Simultaneously, Ji Qingyue’s follower count rocketed from 800,000 to over 3 million in an instant. This hunt had turned into a massive detective game, and everyone wanted to see the face behind the shadow.

Meanwhile, Ji Qingyue hadn’t checked her account for a week. Under Bo Shuhan’s constant feeding, she had actually gained a bit of weight.

The staff at MC Company noticed the surge and called her frantically. Thus, Ji Qingyue belatedly realized she was famous.

What added fuel to the fire was the news of the influencer’s sentencing. Although the police report was brief, Ji Qingyue was trending, and the woman who had tried to use her as a stepping stone was naturally under the microscope. Once the arrest was confirmed, “God-tier” netizens pieced together the entire incident with 90% accuracy.

When Ji Qingyue read the “gossip” about herself, she was shocked by the accuracy, marveling that the real experts were among the common folk.

The public was horrified by the influencer’s audacity and relieved by Ji Qingyue’s survival.

Currently, the “lucky survivor” was looking at her manager with a conflicted expression. The manager provided by MC Company was more like a head of social media strategy, a woman in her 30s with plain features but a very capable aura.

She was currently trying to persuade her: “Qingyue, you see how much your followers have grown. You know how rare this kind of traffic is. The netizens’ request is simple, they just want you to film another silhouette video. You don’t even have to show your face.”

Ji Qingyue knew this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. But she was still hesitant.

“Sister, it’s not that I don’t want to grab the chance, but I’m really… a little scared.” Her foot injury wasn’t healed yet. If Ye Sishen found the villa now, she wouldn’t even be able to run.

She didn’t want to be locked in a dark room again. She didn’t want to feel that powerlessness ever again. Ye Sishen was like a giant shadow, every time she thought she was free, he would reappear like a storm cloud.

Big Boss let out a meow. Ji Qingyue snapped out of her panic and stroked the cat’s head to soothe her anxiety.

Meow. (Bo Shuhan, say something! Would it kill you to help your woman?!)

Bo Shuhan sighed. She didn’t want to make decisions for Ji Qingyue. Everyone has the right to choose their own future. If she chose for her now, she wouldn’t be helping her, she would be interfering with her life.

In the end, all her thoughts condensed into one sentence:

“If you ever need a dance partner, don’t forget I’m right here by your side.”