Dad and the others were talking outside, and Gu Chen couldn’t fall back asleep.
She simply took out her phone and started scrolling through the Campus Forum.
The hottest topic of the past two days was, of course, the duel between Gu Chen and Li Fugui.
By now, the matter had spread like wildfire; the entire school likely knew about it.
There was a very popular thread on the Campus Forum titled: 【SHOCKING! School Bully Duels Quick Silver, Li Fugui Beaten So Hard He Shat His Pants!】
Gu Chen clicked on the thread.
Good grief, it already had 700 or 800 comments.
Among them, Gu Chen spotted Li Fugui’s ID.
Ever since Friday night, he had been posting incessantly on the forum, claiming that his loss was caused by a sudden case of diarrhea and not because Gu Chen had beaten him!
Li Fugui had filled over 100 floors of the thread just to explain himself.
However, his words were met with an overwhelming wave of ridicule.
Gu Chen watched the spectacle with amusement, even starting to feel a little bit of sympathy for him.
Yet, just as she refreshed the feed for the latest posts, a message instantly sent her heart sinking to her stomach!
【Everyone, I really only lost to Gu Chen because of sudden diarrhea!】
【Also, there is one more thing: he is actually a girl. If you don’t believe me, go check for yourselves.】
This was the content of Li Fugui’s latest post.
In addition to reiterating that his defeat was unfair, he had actually dropped a bombshell.
Since the forum was currently flooded with his embarrassing incident, his only choice to shift the fire elsewhere was to choose a more explosive topic.
The news that Gu Chen was a girl could, at the very least, divert half of the attention.
It seemed this guy had been flamed until his mental state crumbled, and he was now bent on taking her down with him.
“Damn it!”
Gu Chen’s face tightened, and a chill swept through her entire body.
‘Is the secret really going to be exposed?’
‘That bastard, is he really not afraid of me dragging him down with me?!’
She thought it was all over, but the students’ replies that followed were quite unexpected.
“Hahaha, Li Fugui, you had the crap beaten out of you, not your brains. Why are you talking nonsense?”
“A loss is a loss. Stop making excuses. If you could really beat him, why didn’t we see you challenge him in the past two years?”
“Looks like he’s hallucinating from the beating. He’s started using the Spiritual Victory Method.”
Almost no one below the post believed the nonsense about her being a girl.
They all felt Li Fugui was just talking trash to cover up his disgrace.
After all, no one would believe the words of a loser.
‘Whew, that scared me to death.’
Seeing that it was still a sea of mockery, Gu Chen patted her chest.
A spark of inspiration hit her, and she decided to use a strategy of retreating to advance.
She immediately used her own ID to post a comment: “Right, right, I’m a girl. Satisfied now? But you couldn’t even beat a girl; isn’t that just pathetic?”
Sure enough, even more people joined Gu Chen in mocking him.
It was hard to say what Li Fugui was feeling at that moment.
He started by arguing back against the earlier comments, but eventually, he vanished without a trace.
He had probably smashed his phone to pieces.
***
Outside the room, Dad and Uncle Guo talked for a long time.
It wasn’t until late at night that Gu Chen heard the sounds of them saying goodbye and the front door closing.
Gu Chen put on her clothes and rolled out of bed, intending to go out and ask about it.
Dad didn’t have any experience in this field, and she was worried he might be getting cheated.
“Chen, why aren’t you asleep yet?”
“I’m going soon. How did the talk with that man go? What exactly is the plan? You better not sign any random contracts. These days, so many people go bankrupt because of predatory contracts.”
Gu Chen nodded.
This involved the family’s finances, so she had to understand the details.
“Don’t worry, your dad isn’t a fool. It’s just a partnership agreement. He’s in charge of traffic and promotion. We’ll have a seventy-thirty split of the revenue from the inflatable dolls sold in the live stream,” Dad explained.
“Huh? We only get thirty percent?”
After all, Dad provided the supply and covered the costs.
They were going to take thirty percent of the profit just for shouting a few times in a live stream room; the thought of it was painful.
“What are you thinking? The seventy percent belongs to them. Whether we can even get thirty percent depends on Uncle Guo’s mood. They’re the ones with the leverage,” Dad said, spreading his hands.
He didn’t seem too happy about it either.
“Wait, we invested everything we had just to be at that guy’s mercy?”
“There’s no other way. We have to get the brand out there first. As long as the quality is good and we build a reputation, we can make our own money later. Don’t worry, Dad knows what he’s doing.”
Dad had been in the workforce for many years and was more experienced than Gu Chen in these matters.
He rubbed her head as he explained.
Gu Chen sighed; this was the only way for now.
“However, we still need to solve the model problem first. Although Uncle Guo has female streamers under his name, none of them are willing to be filmed with the inflatable doll samples. We’ll have to find someone ourselves. When the time comes, I’ll put up some money to hire someone online. We’ll do it at his company to make it look more professional.”
Dad thought for a moment and began planning the next step.
“Obviously. Who with even a bit of fame would dare take a job like this… Do you think our family is a brand like Durex?!”
Gu Chen covered her forehead.
While this business wasn’t illegal, it wasn’t exactly something you could brag about.
Anyone with a reputation would naturally refuse to take such an embarrassing advertisement; they would definitely be ridiculed.
The most important thing was that the budget was tight.
Finding someone who was beautiful and willing to film this was truly a difficult problem.
***
It was Monday again, the most annoying day of the week.
Gu Chen dragged her exhausted body out of bed to wash up.
After buying breakfast downstairs, she waited at the bus stop in front of the residential area that went straight to school.
Once she entered the campus, Gu Chen hadn’t forgotten about the previous incident.
She first went over to the high school sophomore section.
Her presence scared quite a few people into thinking she was there to beat someone up, and they all hurried out of her way.
“Hey, has Wang Jun arrived yet?”
She scanned the classroom but didn’t see him, so she asked a random student.
That guy was the previous Exhibitionist Pervert.
Because the Copycat had appeared at the same time, she hadn’t had the chance to deal with him yet.
Now that she had time, she wanted to find out exactly what was going on.
“No, I heard he took a leave of absence,” the student replied, trembling and nearly on the verge of tears.
“A leave of absence?”
It seemed the kid had a guilty conscience and didn’t even dare to come to school anymore.
He was truly a coward—wasn’t he afraid she would tell his sister?
Fine, she didn’t believe the guy could stay away from school forever.
She could only return to her own class.
The noisy environment instantly became silent as everyone turned their gaze toward Gu Chen.
“…”
Gu Chen was instantly speechless.
‘I’m not a murderer. Is there any need to be so dramatic?’
She simply ignored everyone’s stares, returned to her seat, and stretched.
“Big Brother, you’re finally here!”
Guo Ming greeted her from the side.
“If I didn’t come here, where would I go? Your house?”
“No, I thought you might be ambushed by Li Fugui on the way. A lot of people were placing bets on whether you’d make it to school alive.”
“What the hell?”
Gu Chen frowned.
That guy had been posting on the forum to cause trouble last night, but no one believed him.
She wasn’t sure what happened after that.
“Wasn’t Li Fugui framing you yesterday? As your subordinate, I couldn’t stand it, so I sent him over 300 private messages to flame him. He was so angry he made a bunch of typos saying he was going to kill you today,” Guo Ming said, rubbing his hands and chuckling.
“You idiot!”
Gu Chen slapped him on the back of the head.
She had only followed along with a couple of mocking comments, but Guo Ming had chased the man down to insult him.
Wasn’t that just forcing Li Fugui into a desperate corner?
He was her subordinate, after all—this grudge was definitely going to be blamed on Gu Chen!