386 Shui's birthday banquet arc (16)
Shui worriedly went over to her family’s side. “Bro, Dad. What is happening?”
Siying answered. “I don’t know. I never thought this would happen. I am not sure what misunderstanding happened between Mr. Lin and Gu Yating, but did he have to bring that here!?” His gaze darkened. “Look, how the atmosphere has turned so grim.”
Zhiyuan was well beyond his tipping point. “I don’t get it either but hell that Lin guy to ruin my daughter’s banquet. Not only that, people are unnecessarily targeting Zhou Ai. This has to stop. Siying.”
“Let me settle it-“
Before that could happen, Yating burst with angry flames at the woman taunting him. “Mind your own damn business!” He snarled. “What I do and what I don’t doesn’t concern anybody here, and I won’t hear a single word against Ai.”
Somebody commented. “Of course, you won’t. After all, she is the woman you love so much. I am more concerned about Zhou Ai’s character. She first seduced Gu Yating and then left Dream High. She then met Liu Jun, joined Sky and since then, hasn’t her writing career flourished so much?”
That earned Ai a lot of suspicious gazes.
“Yeah she won the Summit and immediately got an offer from Sky.”
“Personally from Liu Jun!”
“I cannot help but think if she used his influence…is her victory even legit anymore?”
One of them sneered. “What will Zhou Ai do next? Once she gets bored of Liu Jun, will she leave Sky too and find another man to hug his thigh?”
“Maybe she found something lacking in Gu Yating and left him for the more prestigious Liu family’s son.”
“Poor Gu Yating. Wasting his feelings for such a fickle woman…”
“What can be more expected from a woman of her class?”
“Gu Yating loved her so much that he wanted to make a whole company for her sake. Such true love that I pity him.”
“Heh. If she won the Summit like this, then even we can become writers. How hard can it be?”
“Hahaha, yes!”
Within a matter of a few minutes, Ai’s credibility – both as a person and as a writer, was heavily questioned and looked down upon. Until now, she was praised for winning the Summit but all her efforts now fell under the scrutiny of deceit.
Which made Xing Bi and Yating flip. But before they could confront, a voice sharply echoed.
“Enough!” Shui exclaimed.
At first, she was going to let Siying handle the mess but seeing Ai humiliate so much, she couldn’t hold back anymore.
Shui glared at all those women, talking bullshit about Ai. “You have some nerve coming to my banquet and humiliating my friend right in front of me! How dare you question Ai? If you don’t know anything about her, then shut the fuck up!”
The women froze and didn’t expect such a reaction from Shui.
“Han Shui, we really respect you. But are you sure you should be taking her side? I mean, everybody here knows about your and Liu Jun’s relationship. Now Zhou Ai came out of nowhere and you broke up soon enough.”
“Don’t you think that she might have something to do with it? How could you be friends with a woman who has possibly ruined your relationship?”
Shui sneered. “If you think that’s what it takes for us to break up, then you really don’t know Jun at all.”
Xing Bi gritted her teeth. “And don’t even think about questioning Ai’s credibility as a writer! Do you know how hard she worked for her story!? It was just a short story for the whole world, but she spent endless sleepless nights to craft and polish those few lines that touched everybody’s hearts. Don’t demean her efforts behind somebody’s influence! I am her editor and I have seen my Ai’s struggle from the point she professionally started to until now!”
One of the socialites raised her brow. “Oh you are Xing Bi, right? I heard that Liu Nian is openly wooing you. How strange. First Zhou Ai captured Liu Jun’s attention and now you caught Liu Nian’s…Heh. Did you two plan to target the Liu family’s sons?”
Her brow twitched.
This woman…is garbage filled inside her brain!?
It was now when Ai, who was calmly listening to everything until now, unfazed and unperturbed, spoke up, “We didn’t have any such plan in our minds but sure enough, it seems that you do.”
Silence.
Nobody really expected Ai to speak up, thinking that it was her guilty silence.
“Why are you going in roundabout circles when you can just directly come to the point?” Ai said, “Just say that you are jealous of Jun liking me and Nian liking Xing Bi and how unfortunate you feel that it’s not you in our place, so you got the perfect chance to vent out your frustrations on us.”
Every woman who ever had thoughts about Jun or Nian coughed out blood in their minds. She kept it so simple and to the point in the open that it was a home run.
“If you think I am blind, then you are wrong. When I entered the banquet, I already noticed so many women oogling at Jun. I felt some not so pleasant gazes and the owners of those same not so pleasant gazes are the ones talking so much right now. But here is my question. If you want to talk so much, why didn’t you invest that energy before? If you have the guts, then confess rather than curse the person he or she is dating. You are all not so amazing cornering me like this. You are just looking like cowards.”
Liu Hai could feel the mental damage on behalf of every socialite.
They are going to need a lot of booze to handle that…
She continued. “As for my credibility as a writer, my hard work and the result is out there in the world for you to see. If you think that I used Jun as a connection to succeed, then more than half of you present here should simply zip their mouths because more than half of you are heirs to your family businesses, and that is using your family’s connections to become the CEO. If I did use Jun, then how are you different from me?”
“Let me prove that difference,” a quiet but a cold voice echoed.