Chapter 164: Kindness in a grain of rice, enmity in a bushel

"I see," Jiang Xianyue nodded.

"By the way, you still haven't told me what's been troubling you," Jiang Zheng said.

Hearing this, Jiang Xianyue fell silent for a moment before saying, "Actually, it's nothing much. It's just that a close friend whom I thought was wonderful ended up stabbing me in the back for the sake of profit."

Hearing this, Jiang Zheng couldn't help asking, "Could you tell me the specifics? What happened?"

Jiang Xianyue replied, "There's nothing that can't be told."

After that, Jiang Xianyue began to tell Jiang Zheng the whole story. The cause and effect of the entire matter were long and filled with a massive amount of information, taking Jiang Zheng quite a while to gradually comprehend.

In the era of rapidly developing short videos, Jiang Xianyue had already seized the short video trend two years ago.

The guzheng-playing videos she published drew widespread attention and attracted a multitude of fans.

Jiang Xianyue's video style was very simple: she never showed her face or her legs, conquering her fans purely through her music.

She played not only traditional classical tunes on the guzheng but also contemporary songs, which she adapted and performed on the instrument. From time to time, she even played pieces of her own composition.

In this world, talent never goes out of style. As long as one possesses sufficient talent, one can gain fans even without showing their face or legs.

Jiang Xianyue was a case in point.

In fact, many netizens often remarked that what Jiang Xianyue looked like no longer mattered; with such formidable talent, physical appearance was merely icing on the cake.

Gradually, Jiang Xianyue became a renowned talented woman on the internet, and even many guzheng masters spoke highly of her.

Among short-video creators, Jiang Xianyue could be considered a top-tier influencer. Jiang Zheng himself knew of her, as he often stumbled upon her videos while scrolling through short-video apps. However, he had no idea that this creator was actually Jiang Xianyue.

Hearing Jiang Xianyue mention her own account just now, Jiang Zheng was truly shocked.

Jiang Xianyue was not only talented in music but also possessed a natural gift for business.

After becoming wildly popular, she earned a considerable amount of money. Instead of squandering it, she used the funds to establish a studio specifically dedicated to signing and nurturing short-video creators.

Thanks to the short-video boom, Jiang Xianyue's studio developed at a remarkable pace. After signing numerous creators and cultivating them under the studio's guidance, several of them had already become million-follower influencers.

It was precisely at this time that a former classmate and close friend of Jiang Xianyue from her school days suddenly came to Jiang Xianyue's studio for an interview.

Jiang Xianyue had always maintained a low profile; when filming her guzheng videos, she never showed her face and rarely spoke.

Consequently, almost none of her friends knew that Jiang Xianyue was the wildly popular musical talent on the short-video platforms.

Facing her friend's arrival for an interview, Jiang Xianyue felt a complex mixture of emotions. In the end, she stepped forward to meet her friend in person.

She shared certain things with her and ultimately chose not to sign her to the studio, but promised instead to help her out in the realm of short videos.

Her friend agreed, as she herself did not particularly want to be signed under Jiang Xianyue's studio either.

The reason Jiang Xianyue acted this way was simply because she believed that once a formal contract was signed, many things would imperceptibly change.

She still cherished this friendship and did not want these business matters to taint the bond between them.

With Jiang Xianyue's assistance, her friend gradually made a name for herself, transforming from an obscure, unnoticed minor creator into an internet celebrity whose follower count surged from a few dozen to hundreds of thousands.

This should have been a happy ending for all involved. If the story had ended here, it undoubtedly would have been regarded as a heartwarming tale.

However, human greed is deeper than the Mariana Trench; desires that can never be satisfied will ultimately devour human nature.

Jiang Xianyue's friend grew dissatisfied with merely having hundreds of thousands of followers.

Due to her own inherent limitations, her follower growth rate began to slow down after she reached the several-hundred-thousand milestone.

Later on, she approached Jiang Xianyue and begged her to do a collaborative video together.

The first time, Jiang Xianyue agreed.

Following the collaboration, the other woman gained a boost in followers.

Later, she requested a second collaboration, and Jiang Xianyue agreed once again.

Subsequent requests followed, but this time, the demand crossed the line.

She actually asked Jiang Xianyue to show her face in the collaboration and to wear short skirts designed to intentionally expose her legs.

This time, Jiang Xianyue refused without a moment's hesitation. What a joke—she had never done such a thing in her own videos, yet she was now being asked to do so in a collaborative one.

Although everyone always said that Jiang Xianyue's appearance didn't matter and that compared to her talent, her looks paled into insignificance, if Jiang Xianyue were to truly reveal her face, it would inevitably trigger a massive wave of hype.

Naturally, this was not the kind of hype Jiang Xianyue wanted.

The other woman's motive was simple: she wanted to leverage that hype to skyrocket her own follower count.

However, this rejection caused the other woman to harbor deep resentment.

During one of the other woman's live streams, she "accidentally" let slip several pieces of "dirt" regarding Jiang Xianyue. Because they were classmates who had known each other for a long time and had been quite close back in school, the woman knew a great deal about Jiang Xianyue's private life.

Of course, Jiang Xianyue had no genuine scandals or reprehensible dark secrets to speak of, but with the other woman's malicious twisting and sensationalizing, even non-issues were turned into scandals.

Dropping these fabricated secrets successfully gained the other woman another surge in followers.

After that, the woman became even more vicious and unbridled.

Such behavior also caused many people to question her character, especially since the two had previously collaborated.

Yet, under the woman's distorted narrative, the story changed entirely: Jiang Xianyue's past help was no longer seen as assistance, but rather as manipulation and exploitation.

This led uninformed onlookers to flood Jiang Xianyue's space with accusations and questioning.

At first, Jiang Xianyue did not respond; she was too heartbroken and could hardly believe that her friend could stoop to such actions.

She immediately reached out to ask the woman for an explanation, but received no reply.

The situation fermented rapidly in a short period. Because Jiang Xianyue failed to issue an immediate response, she even became the target of severe cyberbullying.

When Jiang Xianyue's studio finally began to fight back, they discovered that the other woman was not acting alone.

It was only then that Jiang Xianyue realized her former friend hadn't signed with her studio because she had already been signed by another company.

After a period of public relations management, Jiang Xianyue managed to halt the worst of the cyberbullying, but she still suffered lasting fallout.

Due to the psychological bias of first impressions and the societal tendency to sympathize with the perceived underdog, the support the other woman received clearly outweighed Jiang Xianyue's.

Furthermore, the other woman released numerous "black materials," many of which were entirely fabricated, mixed with just enough grains of truth to sound plausible and easily deceive the public.

Manufacturing false accusations is effortless, but clarifying and refuting them is by no means an easy task.

Even though Jiang Xianyue's team was doing their utmost to respond, they simply couldn't keep pace with the sheer speed at which the other side generated new rumors.

This ordeal left Jiang Xianyue physically and mentally exhausted over the past few days, and her account's guzheng videos had gone unupdated for days.

She couldn't fathom how, despite helping the other person so many times, a single refusal to assist could drive the other party to such extremes.

Could all those years of friendship turn out to be nothing more than cheap plastic?