I Rely on My Versatility to Reach the Top of the Entertainment Industry [Ancient Times to Modern] - Chapter 15

The young nurse closed her eyes.

Initially, she had become a fan of Murong Yi because, like that patient in the same room, Murong Yi was willing to speak up for frontline nurses like them.

What she admired was Murong Yi’s integrity, nothing else.

The young nurse took out her phone and started recording.

“Damn, can’t you be gentler?” Murong Yi shouted from inside the room.

Zhao Jie: “How can it look convincing if I’m gentle? The more severe your injuries appear, the better. Later, when the doctor comes, I’ll slip him some money to document your injuries as more serious. We absolutely cannot give Jing Yi any chance to make a comeback!”

Murong Yi: “Hmph, we’ve built up his image as a magnet for haters so well—it’ll be a long time before he can turn things around. I’m resting now; you handle the rest. Oh, and take a photo for my Weibo to keep up the act.”

Hearing this, the young nurse turned and left.

Not long after, a notification from her Weibo special follow arrived.

Murong Yi: My stomach hurts too much. The doctor said I need to rest early today. [Image][Image]

As soon as the photos of the bruised abdomen were posted, the comments under the Weibo instantly swelled with over a hundred messages of comfort and curses directed at Jing Yi.

This time, the young nurse didn’t join in. Instead, she clicked on the links where people had tagged Jing Yi and entered his Weibo page.

After two years in the industry, Jing Yi had posted fewer than 50 times and had only a little over 500 followers.

These 50 posts contained no personal thoughts from Jing Yi—they were all official reposts. Despite the low number, his latest promotional post for Seduce the Monk still had tens of thousands of hateful comments.

Unable to resist, the young nurse searched for Seduce the Monk‘s official Weibo.

This low-key web drama team had only two posts aside from the first announcement of the crew’s formation five months ago and one post marking the start of filming.

Even with just these two posts, the comments were flooded with demands to replace the male lead.

The young nurse sighed and was about to close the official Weibo when she accidentally refreshed the page.

Seduce the Monk official Weibo: #TheTemptationOfAMonk# Filming completed. Premiering exclusively on Cloud Mist Video starting October 1.

@Jiang Wenwen @Jing Yi @Liao Chen. Between her and him, him and him—from meeting and understanding to never meeting again. In a relationship from beginning to end, who truly tempted whom?

Beneath the concise promotional text were two stills.

The first showed Jiang Wenwen in red, lying atop a Buddha statue. Her clothes fluttered, fox ears atop her head and a tail raised high behind her. With a seductive, teasing gaze, her red lips curved as she stared down at the monk chanting below.

The monk’s face was not fully visible; it seemed the lighting during the photoshoot was deliberately used to blur his features.

The second photo was even more bizarre—someone else was actually sitting on the Buddha statue, legs crossed casually, seemingly watching the chanting monk, yet the monk’s face remained unclear.

The comments below exploded.

Initially, people came to look because the Weibo post had tagged Jing Yi. After mindlessly venting their anger, they took a closer look at the stills and compared them with the original novel Seduce the Monk. Some book fans began furiously questioning in the comments: “Is there any need to hide Jing Yi’s face? Are they afraid we’ll criticize him? And who is this Liao Chen? There’s no such character in the original novel! The account this Weibo was reposted from is just an ordinary person!”

For a time, riding on the earlier hashtag #JingYiHitsMurongYi, this Weibo post also surged to trending status.

More and more people came to view it, more and more left comments, but the official Weibo account for Seduce the Monk gave no response.

The young nurse did not join the campaign against Jing Yi this time.

She put down her phone, patted her cheeks to compose herself, and began her serious work for the day.

—Accompanying the doctor and police into Murong Yi’s hospital room to conduct an injury assessment.

…

Jing Yi learned about the start of Seduce the Monk’s promotional activities in the group chat and was even summoned by Guo Lin for a stern reminder.

“I think you’re a bit too straightforward, young man. No matter who privately messages you on Weibo asking who Liao Chen is, you absolutely cannot mention Lu Yuzhi’s name, understand?”

After listening to the voice message, Jing Yi also replied with a voice note.

“Okay.”

His two monosyllabic responses prompted a flood of laughing emojis from stylist Xiao Liu. Looking closer, others in the crew had also copied Xiao Liu’s emojis, including Lu Yuzhi.

Guo Lin: “What’s so funny? What’s so funny? The same goes for all of you—absolutely no leaks! We want to create a sense that netizens vaguely suspect who Liao Chen is but don’t quite dare to believe it! Also, Jing Yi, sorry about this—the crew is leveraging the heat from your current backlash.”

Jing Yi replied again: “It’s fine, I don’t mind.”

His tone was icy, as if the backlash meant nothing to him.

This attitude left Guo Lin helpless, and he couldn’t resist privately messaging Lu Yuzhi: “What do you think is going on in this kid’s head? I’ve seen the insults under his Weibo posts—his private messages are probably flooded too. How can he be so calm?”

Lu Yuzhi: “Maybe he’s grown accustomed to it.”

After saying this, Lu Yuzhi took a deep breath, closed Jing Yi’s Weibo page, and sent him a private message.

“What are you doing?”

Seeing the message, Jing Yi temporarily shifted his gaze from the New X Dictionary he had bought, took a photo of the dictionary, and sent it to Lu Yuzhi.

Lu Yuzhi stared at the photo in surprise: “Why are you reading this?”

Jing Yi: “I bought a few books, but there are some characters I don’t recognize, so I bought a dictionary to study.”

Sorting through memory fragments was a difficult task. Jing Yi could recognize some commonly used characters in this world from them, but at times he still couldn’t accurately grasp their meanings.

Especially when reading law-related books, the precise meaning of words became particularly important.

Jing Yi had no choice but to start learning from a dictionary.

Lu Yuzhi was momentarily at a loss for how to respond.

His original intention had been to start a conversation and advise Jing Yi not to take Guo Lin’s words too seriously—ideally, to avoid checking Weibo too often. Yet, it turned out Jing Yi truly didn’t care about any of that at all and was instead studying a dictionary!

After a long while, Lu Yuzhi finally said, “Then I won’t disturb you further. It’s getting late, you should rest early.”

This message received no reply.

Jing Yi was intently studying the dictionary.

After finishing, he turned off the desk lamp and lay down to sleep.

Waking at 5 a.m. the next day, Jing Yi went downstairs for a run and practiced martial arts, then bought several plain steamed buns to eat as breakfast at home. After eating, he opened the dictionary again and continued his studies.

At 8 o’clock, his phone rang.

Jing Yi picked up the phone, which showed Yuan Hui’s name.

“Hello, Jing Yi, good morning. My husband has woken up and says he really wants to see you. Can you come over?”

Jing Yi closed the dictionary. “I’m coming.”

Opening the mobile map, he followed the navigation to the subway station, swiped his card to board, and closed his eyes to silently recite scriptures during the ride. It took over an hour to reach the hospital.

The hospital where Zhang Qiang was staying was the city’s best public hospital.

When Jing Yi arrived at the hospital, many girls with blue headbands tied around their foreheads were squatting on both sides of the entrance, sweating profusely and completely indifferent to the scorching sun overhead.

As soon as Jing Yi stepped within the hospital entrance area, someone exclaimed, “Doesn’t this person look like Jing Yi?”

Other girls nearby looked carefully and replied, “Now that you mention it, he does resemble him.”

“Oh my god, it’s not just similar – it’s definitely him! He’s wearing the same hat from the photos! Quick, stop him!”

The girls quickly stood up and surrounded Jing Yi from all sides.

Several reporters emerged from somewhere, holding miniature cameras to take photos.

“Why are you so vicious? Why did you hit our Xiao Yi?”

“Exactly, what’s the point of someone like you living? You gave our Xiao Yi such a large bruise on his stomach and made him lose consciousness.”

“Wuwuwu, how much pain our Xiao Yi must be in! He’s only 19 – what if there are any lasting complications?”

The girls spoke rapidly and emotionally, making it impossible for Jing Yi to respond to each individually. He slightly furrowed his brows but remained standing still. The girls’ accusations continued until they finally began chanting in unison: “Jing Yi flop, apologize quickly! Jing Yi flop, get out of the entertainment industry!”

Some people trying to visit the hospital saw the commotion from afar with the path blocked, and attempted to communicate with the girls from outside, but to no effect.

Hospital security guards also came out, but there were too many girls to maintain order.

Unable to advance or retreat.

Jing Yi pressed his palms together and said quietly, “Amitabha.”

He could actually use qinggong to break through these female devotees’ encirclement, but such an action would be too conspicuous.

Based on the fragmented memories of the original Jing Yi, this world had no concept of genuine qinggong.

Unable to move upward, he could only go downward.

Jing Yi sat down in the lotus position.

As the girls continued shouting, they saw the standing figure in the center suddenly lower himself. Their shouts gradually softened as they looked at each other.

“Everyone, it’s true that I sparred with Murong Yi.”

Hearing Jing Yi speak, the girls fell completely silent.

“But the sparring stopped at the appropriate point. I didn’t cause any substantial harm to Murong Yi.”

“Then how do you explain the injuries on our Xiao Yi!” The lead female fan spoke down to Jing Yi, found the position awkward, and simply squatted down. “Don’t try to deny it! If Xiao Yi hadn’t constantly reminded us that on-site support shouldn’t be impulsive and we should know and respect the law, I alone could take down three of someone like you!”

As the leader squatted down, the other female fans also crouched.

“I wasn’t the one who caused his injury.” Jing Yi placed his hands on his knees, his back ramrod straight. “Since you claim to understand laws and etiquette, you should realize you’re causing traffic obstruction in front of the hospital.”

The female fans stood up, glanced at the crowd waiting to enter the hospital outside the passageway, and gradually flushed with embarrassment.

Jing Yi also rose, brushing dust off his clothes.

“Shall we wait for the police investigation results?” As he spoke, Jing Yi looked directly at the girl leading the group. “If I’m proven responsible, I’ll accept legal punishment.”

Meeting Jing Yi’s gaze and sensing his sincerity, the girl frowned. “Fine, we’ll wait for the police report! Sisters, step aside now and apologize to these pedestrians.”

As traffic flow resumed, Jing Yi entered the hospital building.

After watching him disappear inside, one fan suddenly exclaimed: “The injury assessment is out! Let me see! According to the hospital’s onsite evaluation, we’re releasing the injury report for the #Jing Yi Assaults Murong Yi# incident.”

“The determination shows Murong Yi sustained abdominal soft tissue contusion… Based on audio evidence provided by an informant, the abdominal soft tissue contusion was inflicted by Murong Yi’s agent Zhao Jie to frame Jing Yi. The informant has been commended while the public figure involved has received disciplinary education?? What kind of nonsense is this? Is this really the official police account?”

Other girls reading the Weibo post together displayed thunderstruck expressions of disbelief.

It felt like their entire world had collapsed.