Avenge Our Love
Translator: translationraven
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Song Yucheng drew up a table to show the itineraries of Tang Chi’s ex-bandmates. They’d claimed to have been so saddened by Tang Chi’s departure that they had not participated in publicity events and programmes. What the table showed, however, was that they had not stopped their activities at all. What was this about a great blow to them again?
They had not even taken a break for a day. The group had done all their scheduled activities, done their commercials and performances, and even went on variety shows and appeared in dramas.
“They call this ‘not participating in activities’? Let me show you guys what ‘hurt’ really looks like!” Song Yucheng’s voice was sad, but determined. He uploaded the pictures of the place Tang Chi had been living in for the past six months to the internet.
It was a dimly-lit basement room. The only clean-looking thing was the guitar in the corner— everything else was a mess. Beer bottles and cigarette butts strewn all over the floor told them how well Tang Chi was doing.
And, as if that wasn’t enough to scare them, Song Yucheng displayed Tang Chi’s health report too. He also pulled up Tang Chi’s sleeve.
Thin.
That was everyone’s first impression. Tang Chi was so thin it made their hearts ache.
At his most popular, people had said that Tang Chi had the most beautiful hands of all the male performers in the music industry. Playing the guitar looked like his first love.
But the hands which people had called beautiful were just skin and bone now. His healthy body, too, had deteriorated rapidly in just half a year. Tang Chi was almost 185 centimetres tall, but his body weight was under 55 kilograms. He would have looked even thinner if not for the camera effect of putting ten pounds on a person — poor Tang Chi was no different from a skeleton if you saw him off-camera.
It was obvious that the ex-bandmates who’d betrayed him had destroyed not just his dreams, but his life.
The reporters present were dumbfounded. They could not speak. The netizens watching the livestream were also at a loss.
What Song Yucheng had told them had shaken them to the core. This great shock still reverberated in them, and they could not react right away.
“Wh, What do we do? How do we respond?” At Leap Records, Tang Chi’s ex-bandmates were scared silly. They trembled as they looked at their manager.
They had actually been worried that this day would come when they’d heard that Tang Chi had signed on with Picture Domain. Their worries had come true now, and they were filled with dread.
However, Ding Mingcheng was uncontactable in this critical time. Normally, he would have come forward to preside over the response operations, but he was surprisingly absent. He had disappeared.
It wasn’t his fault — Ding Mingcheng was under house arrest of sorts, ordered to stay put by his grandmother. As for his phone, it had been confiscated long ago. He was clueless about all the problems Leap Records was currently facing, and there was no way for anyone to get to him and let him know.
It was a coincidence. Ding Mingcheng had actually planned on returning home to beg his uncle to teach Xie Qianchen a lesson, but was guided to his grandmother’s section of the estate by a maid as soon as he returned.
“Does the old lady miss me or something?” Ding Mingcheng was entirely unaware that something was wrong, and he smiled genially at the maid. When he got to his grandmother’s estate however, he was stunned by the first thing he heard from her.
He had not imagined that his grandmother would make him stay home to study Buddhist scripture and only be allowed vegetarian meals for a week. She had even specified that he wouldn’t be allowed to leave the prayer hall, nor have access to a phone, computer, or any modern device that could connect him to the outside world. He was to devote himself to Buddha and copy the sutra out 30 times.
“Granny, no! Wh, What is all this?! A week? One day is fine, but a week?! Come on, stop joking. I have something I need to do.” Ding Mingcheng was exasperated at what he heard, and began to suspect that his grandmother had been duped by someone. Everything was going fine, so what was this sudden order to copy the sutra 30 times for? He wasn’t a monk ordained in a monastery!
However, his protests were useless this time. His grandmother had steeled her heart, and he was to stay. Ding Mingcheng tried to run, but the residence’s security team caught him and closed him up in the prayer hall.
“Hey! This is way too sudden. Come on, one of you guys, come here and tell me what’s going on.”
“Well, Sir… Ma’am met with a great Master last week.”
“A great Master?” Ding Mingcheng was taken aback. He knew that his grandmother believed in these sorts of things, like old people did, but she didn’t usually take these things so seriously. She was behaving like he was haunted by evil or something.
The security staff kept talking, and Ding Mingcheng was stunned. The great Master really was incredible.
The Master had known all about his family’s affairs, even a secret he did not know about — his grandmother’s baby girl had died when she was a young woman. The Master had been right about everything,
“No, I mean, this is ridiculous! Are you guys sure that this Master is not some sort of professional scammer?” Ding Mingcheng’s knee-jerk reaction was disbelief.
The security staff, however, retorted, “Young Master, the Master is genuine. The Master told Ma’am two sets of lottery numbers. Guess what happened.”
“What, the numbers turned out to be the first prize?”
“Yes! Both sets of numbers won. He also predicted that the Chinese football team would win against Brazil in a penalty shootout!” The security staff was so excited he bounced on his feet.
The Master really was incredible. Guessing at Ding Mingcheng’s grandmother’s past could have been a lucky fluke, but getting lottery numbers right was true divinity. Add the Chinese football team’s win to the list, and it proved even more the authenticity of the Master’s divinity.
The Chinese football team had performed poorly for years, and were under great pressure. Brazil was normally nice to this poor team too, and didn’t defeat them too badly as a courtesy. A penalty shootout! This was unreal.
The Master could even predict an event like this, so he must be a real Master!
The reason for Ding Mingchen’s forced seclusion was because this Master had said he had to do it. The Master said that a great calamity was approaching Ding Mingcheng, and he must pray to Buddha for a week to ward it off, or he would lose his life. Ding Mingcheng’s grandmother was frightened by this news, and had him locked up right away when he came home to the family’s residence.
Ding Mingcheng did not believe in all of these superstitious things, but there was no winning against his grandmother. The old lady was set on locking him up, and he had no choice but to comply. If he did run away, his uncle was going to give him hell.
Whatever. There wasn’t anything going on at the company anyway. One week away was nothing. As for Xie Qianchen, he only had Shen Yi to count on so it didn’t matter if he took action against him one day earlier or later; it would be the same one week later.
And so, Ding Mingcheng was unaware of the chaos in Leap Records, and busied himself with copying the sutra in the prayer hall. The man never even thought of the possibility that the great Master who possessed astounding divinity was, in fact, Song Yucheng.
He had zero clue that Song Yucheng’s intent in closing him up in the prayer hall was not as simple of a ploy as it seemed — there was more to it.