Chapter 88: A Forceful Intrusion

The day after his talks with Gu Cheng, Li Xiuman abruptly convened the board of directors of S-M Company and proposed a cooperative venture with Chepin Audio-Visual from Hua Xia.

Kim Young-min was the first to leap up and object.

But the partnership, however one looked at it, seemed to offer S-M nothing more than another friend and another path, with not a speck of risk. So even the financial backers standing behind Kim Young-min found themselves divided.

Li Xiuman easily secured the support of more than half the voting shares and forcibly pushed the negotiations forward.

On the other side, Gu Cheng transferred Lin Zhiling over from Wanwan, brought in several of his key agents from home, hired a few lawyers in Dongyi, and then began a protracted round of talks with S-M.

Lin Zhiling was by no means merely decorative. She had always been a beauty with the brain of a top student and a natural gift for social grace. After Gu Cheng took her into the entertainment world for a spin, let her play a role that made her face familiar to the public, and gave her a wealth of experience in dealing with people, she grew quickly. Later, she also helped Chepin Audio-Visual broker the signing of Cai Yilin, and by now she had acquired a rather sharp sense for business.

Yet after negotiations began, something decidedly unusual happened the very next day.

Early that morning, the head of S-M’s public relations department rushed into Li Xiuman’s office in a panic and reported:

“President, a trainee named Park Eun-ho, whom we expelled last year, has suddenly been arranged for a media interview by unknown people today. He brought up certain management problems inside our company back then, including tolerance of racial discrimination and letting trainees fight. He also mentioned Mr. Gu, who is currently working with our company.”

Li Xiuman’s eyes turned cold, and he nearly flew into a rage on instinct. But after a moment’s thought, he forced himself to calm down.

It was only the babbling of a castoff. It might not have been instigated by anyone inside the company; it was even more likely to be a smear campaign from a rival. He could not be too sensitive and fall for a counterplot.

“This isn’t anything serious. You’ve handled crisis PR this many times. Can’t you even manage this little thing? Tell everyone who had contact with Park Eun-ho to keep quiet, or just attack Park Eun-ho’s character and say he’s beneath trust. That should bury it.”

The PR manager looked troubled. “But... a few days ago, some staff members were implicitly told by their superiors to ‘speak from the facts,’ and now there’s some confusion below...”

“What?” Li Xiuman clenched his hand unconsciously, crushing a sheet of paper on the desk into a wrinkled ball. “Immediately emphasize that everyone is to keep to the same line! Say it was my personal order!”

“Yes.” The PR manager left at once.

Ordering the people below to keep to one script, or to keep quiet, was usually never announced directly by the company’s top decision makers. No one could guarantee that an artist in the company would never betray them and reveal everything after leaving. So all these dirty tasks had to be conveyed in the name of the public relations department, so that if anything went wrong, the company’s leadership could use that white glove to scrub their hands clean.

A ruler could never be the villain; at worst, he could only be deceived by treacherous ministers.

So for Li Xiuman to say today, “Tell everyone to keep silent in my name,” was already a grave matter. To prevent panic from spreading, he would not even bother with the white gloves.

Naturally, the subordinates who understood the severity of the situation immediately set about making arrangements.

Watching his trusted aide leave, Li Xiuman thought for a moment and still called Gu Cheng, briefly explaining the situation.

Gu Cheng, on the other end of the line, was not the least surprised. He said calmly, “President Li, I think the mutual trust between us should be deeper now. If you’re willing, I can set a trap with you and fish Kim Young-min out a little further.”

Li Xiuman’s face went livid, and no one knew what, exactly, he heard from Gu Cheng.

On the other side, the supporters behind Park Eun-ho were quickly exposed. It was the game company WEMADE. Everyone knew WEMADE had an old score to settle with Gu Cheng over the Legend business, and the matter seemed clear enough.

Within just a few hours, at WEMADE’s headquarters, Park Young-kwan received a thunderous blow to the head.

His card, Park Eun-ho, which he had played expecting help from Kim Young-min’s planted insider and a chance to splash filth on Gu Cheng, had instead run straight into a wall.

Who would have thought that S-M would be ordered to seal everyone’s lips at once?

Then the police under the inspection bureau stepped in to investigate. Aside from Park Eun-ho’s own account, they found no corroboration proving his words true. And since what he described was an incident from a year and a half ago, it looked suspicious no matter how one viewed it. Thus the fellow was taken away on suspicion of defamation.

Park Young-kwan had lost an able hand for nothing.

Unwilling to accept it, he called Kim Young-min. “Didn’t you say your people would cover for me? Why were they all silenced at once?”

Kim Young-min was even angrier than he was, and roared curses at him without restraint. “Get lost, you slut! We agreed to strike hard at Gu Cheng and make a scene right away. If you hadn’t secretly gone and met with Gu Cheng for another round of talks, would he have seen through it and reacted in time?”

At this moment, Kim Young-min’s state of mind was no better than that of Wilhelm II or the Führer discovering that Italy was a pig that sold out its own allies.

...

A week later, the preliminary cooperation agreement between Chepin Audio-Visual and S-M was finalized.

Li Xiuman pushed it through with all his strength, bringing Chepin Audio-Visual in as a secondary management company for all of S-M’s future artists as they moved into the Hua Xia market, with the two sides splitting the profits roughly sixty-forty.

Gu Cheng also formally appeared a few times at S-M in the role of a “friendly rival.”

Each time, Kim Young-min did his best to avoid him; when he could not avoid him, he could only force out a dead-faced smile.

As for the trainees who had once trained alongside Gu Cheng for a year and a half, and even the few artists already debuted, their feelings were even more complicated. Gu Cheng’s existence was both inspiring and poisonously sentimental.

Gu Cheng remained gracious. He did not put on airs before those former colleagues; that sort of thing was too low-class for him to bother with.

He did not want to flaunt wealth or buy people’s loyalty, and he did not host a banquet or arrange any activities. In the end, he simply gave out a few red envelopes as a polite gesture, one hundred thousand Yi currency apiece. That was only six hundred yuan, not enough for anyone with an agenda to say anything ugly.

His bearing gradually won over those former colleagues who had known him before. Kwon Boa had already been quite close to him; among the company’s other two major artists at present, solo singer Kangta and Jang Nara, who had just debuted and was filming her first television drama, both came to feel a touch of genuine respect for Gu Cheng.

On July 15, Kwon Boa finished her “summer vacation” and was assigned by the company to go to Australia to film the music video for a new album track, Atlantis Princess. Including recording, filming, and production, the project was expected to take half a month. In a sense, it was a reward for starting work during her summer break and an escape from the heat of the Southern Hemisphere.

Once Gu Cheng and Kwon Shunyu had finished that cooperation in Kaesong, he had originally been able to leave Dongyi and continue his summer trip with his cousin. But after this business with S-M came up, it dragged on for more than a week longer than expected.

Now that Kwon Boa was going to Australia to shoot the video, and Australia happened to be well suited for escaping the summer heat, Gu Cheng discussed it with his cousin and, under the pretense of a “cooperation inspection” and some sightseeing on the side, went to Australia together. He also brought a Chepin Audio-Visual cameraman along, so they could shoot promotional footage when the time came.

After all, if they wanted to promote Dongyi artists in Hua Xia, they naturally had to follow the habits of the Hua Xia entertainment industry and film some down-to-earth behind-the-scenes clips, artist introduction videos, and interview segments for future use. It was a perfectly reasonable request.

On the other hand, there was another reason known only to Gu Cheng and Li Xiuman: Gu Cheng wanted to use this opportunity to test Kim Young-min and see just how far he would go in smearing him, and whether he would go so far as to completely disregard the company’s interests.

Before Li Xiuman agreed to the plan, he stated only one condition: Gu Cheng was absolutely not to do anything improper to Kwon Boa. Otherwise, even if S-M lost one useful ally in cooperation, it would never compromise with Chepin Audio-Visual!

In Li Xiuman’s eyes, Kwon Boa still carried great weight. She was almost like his own daughter. The company’s chance to rise, to make history, to achieve glory, all of it rested on Kwon Boa’s shoulders.

Gu Cheng readily agreed. He had never intended to lay a hand on a fourteen-year-old girl in any case.

...

A day later, the group arrived in Brisbane, a port city on Australia’s eastern coast.

This city lay at the southernmost edge of the Great Barrier Reef region, and in terms of latitude was near the Tropic of Capricorn. So in mid-July, the temperature was about the same as winter in Fujian and Guangdong in Hua Xia, around twenty degrees.

The set chosen for the Atlantis Princess music video was designed in an ancient Greek style, since Atlantis belonged to Greek mythology. During filming, they would need to build something like the ruins of ancient Greek sculpted stone columns such as those of the Acropolis. There also had to be a lush coastal rise of land to complement the dreamlike atmosphere of Atlantis.

Kwon Boa and the other backup dancers appearing on camera would also wear ancient Greek-style princess gowns and classical laurel wreaths.

After arriving, the group found that Brisbane’s climate was indeed a little too cool, making it unsuitable for Greek-style robes, and the vegetation also did not match the filming requirements. So they rented several cars and drove north for half a day until they reached a town called the Sunshine Coast. The warm currents of the Coral Sea ran nearby, and the Great Barrier Reef lay close offshore. The production team selected an island with coral reefs and prepared to begin work.

Gu Cheng and his sister rented a suite in a hotel in the Sunshine Coast town, and they also rented a speedboat, which let them commute daily between the island and the shore.

Every day, by the blue waters of the Coral Sea, drinking champagne and sunbathing with family, and occasionally discussing art with a female star, such a life was simply too wonderful.

In just two days, Gu Cheng felt his body and mind completely relax, as though he had received a kind of tranquility and comfort he had never known before.

Pan Jieying was visiting Australia for the first time as well. With no advanced online image libraries in this era, hardly anyone in China had ever seen the Coral Sea. So the moment she laid eyes on it, she was overwhelmed by romance and spent each day intoxicated by the scenery.

In moments of rest, Gu Cheng would also occasionally turn things over in his mind, plotting how to lure Kim Young-min’s most devoted henchmen into showing their flaws. But he had never expected that not a single one of his elaborate schemes would get the chance to be used.

Because an accident came knocking at the door.