Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The hospital room was filled with the faint smell of disinfectant. Ever since I woke up, I had been staring at my phone, but after all this time, not a single person had called to ask how I was.

Then my manager finally called. The moment I picked up, he lit into me.

“Jiang Cheng, are you out of your mind? You deliberately fell off a horse for publicity, and now Director Sun wants to replace you. What am I supposed to do?”

I paused. “You think I fell on purpose?”

That horse had suddenly gone out of control.

“What else? Aren’t you just upset that Jiang Yiming stole your male lead role?” His voice was still furious. “Take a good look at yourself. You both have the surname Jiang, but he’s the eldest young master of the Jiang Family. Who do you think you are?”

I said nothing and listened as my manager continued on the other end. “You offended the Jiang Family. The company isn’t planning to protect you anymore. You’re on your own.”

So they were going to freeze me out.

The Jiang Family. How ironic.

I lowered my eyes. After a long while, I said, “Forget it. Let’s terminate the contract.”

My manager gave a cold laugh. “Terminate? Can you afford the penalty fee?”

“That’s none of your business.”

The moment I said the words “terminate the contract,” it was as if my whole body suddenly found its spine. I hung up on my manager without another word.

After that, I stared blankly at my phone.

My fall from the horse had indeed made the trending searches, but the overwhelming tide of comments was all hate directed at me.

Maybe the production crew had pushed it because they didn’t want to take responsibility. Either way, no one believed my fall had been an accident.

Jiang Yiming’s fans had already slaughtered the comments under my Weibo. Looking at those words now, I found I no longer felt much of anything.

Over and over, they asked, “Why hasn’t Jiang Cheng quit the industry yet?”

My parents finally called.

Before I answered, I still held on to the last tiny bit of hope.

Then I heard my mother’s first words. “Xiao Cheng, did you deliberately fall off the horse today?”

Even though that hope was slowly fading, I still felt a chill settle in my heart.

“Mom, aren’t you going to ask if I’m badly hurt?” I asked.

Before she could answer, a middle-aged man’s voice came from beside her.

“If he fell on purpose, how serious could it be? Did you do it on purpose to pressure the production crew into giving the male lead role back to you?”

I laughed. So my father did know the word “back” after all.

When I said nothing, he still tried to lecture me with righteous conviction.

“What role could you possibly want that this family couldn’t give you? Why do you insist on fighting Xiao Ming for this one? Don’t you know how important this role is to him?”

When disappointment reaches the very bottom, even arguing back feels exhausting.

They didn’t know that, to me, this role had also been my last chance to turn things around.

“Dad, Mom,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, “take good care of yourselves.”

Then I hung up.

They probably didn’t realize that call had been my goodbye. They didn’t call back.

I remembered the day I returned to the Jiang Family when I was twelve.

Jiang Yiming had been dressed like a little prince, while I was dark-skinned and stepped into a mansion for the first time with inferiority in my eyes.

Back when Jiang Yiming sweetly called me older brother, I would instinctively protect him too.

When he got into trouble, I didn’t mind taking the blame for him.

But later, I realized my parents had already decided I was a habitual liar, jealous by nature, and even morally corrupt.

And my friends had all become Jiang Yiming’s friends as well.

Even Xu Zhen, my fiancé, had become Jiang Yiming’s friend.

The truth was, I wasn’t some real young master who had been switched at birth. I had always been a young master of the Jiang Family. It was just that not long after I was born, a friend introduced my father to a certain master. The master read my birth chart and said I was destined to bring misfortune to the Jiang Family, explaining it all with perfect confidence.

As it happened, the Jiang Family’s business ran into trouble around that time, and my father believed him.

They followed the master’s advice and sent me to the countryside. Then they adopted a child from an orphanage whose birth chart was said to bring prosperity to the Jiang Family. That child was Jiang Yiming.

Strangely enough, from the moment I was sent away and Jiang Yiming was adopted, the Jiang Family’s business began to improve.

At first, my mother probably still couldn’t bear to let go of the child she had carried for ten months. For as long as I could remember, I had seen a woman standing at the village entrance several times, watching me from afar.

But Jiang Yiming had been brought home as an infant. He was raised by my parents themselves. The fortune-teller said he brought prosperity, and that was why the Jiang Family prospered. My mother poured more and more of her affection into him.

I used to think that way too.

Until Jiang Yiming, wearing that innocent face of his, kept adding fuel to the fire in front of our parents. After that, I couldn’t keep treating him like a brother. I didn’t like him.

Later, I entered the entertainment industry. I wanted to be a singer, but the company said I had good looks and was more suited to acting. If I wanted to sing, I could always do that later.

I acted in a few roles and made a bit of a splash.

Not long after, Jiang Yiming also entered the entertainment industry.

He marketed himself as the Young Master of the Jiang Family. My parents said his fate was closely tied to the Jiang Family, so I couldn’t reveal my own identity, nor could I expose the fact that Jiang Yiming wasn’t their biological child.

I didn’t care. But not long after that, a lot of dirt was dug up on me, including claims that I had a sugar daddy, that my acting was terrible, that I was disrespectful, and so on.

The company said hate-driven fame was still fame, and they refused to arrange any clarification.

When enough rumors, true and false, piled up, people only believed what they wanted to see, regardless of what was real.

I couldn’t say for sure whether I was still jealous or unwilling to accept it, but I really was tired. Trapped in endless emotional self-consumption, I saw a psychologist many times, unable to find any meaning in my existence in this world.

If they didn’t love me, why give birth to me?

If I wasn’t important, why bring me back?

The doctor repeatedly stressed that I should change my living environment.

Before I left, there were still some things I had to deal with. There was also one person I wanted to see again.

My injuries weren’t too serious, but I really couldn’t continue filming. It was normal for the production team to replace me.

It was just that after I was admitted to the hospital, not a single person came to see me.

Xu Zhen contacted me two days later. By phone. These days, he probably even found it tiresome to look at me.

Xu Zhen’s cold voice came through the line. “Xiao Cheng, are you feeling any better?”

I paused, then spoke only after mentally preparing myself. “Brother Xu Zhen, can we meet sometime soon?”

“Sorry, Xiao Cheng. I’ve been busy lately, so maybe…”

Before he could finish, I heard Jiang Yiming’s voice on the other end. “Brother Xu Zhen, what brings you here to visit the set?”

I didn’t know why, but in that instant, I suddenly wanted to laugh.

He had no time to meet me, but he had time to visit Jiang Yiming on set.

I said, “Brother Xu Zhen, let’s end our engagement here. If the Jiang Family and the Xu Family have to form a marriage alliance, Jiang Yiming would work too.”

“Xiao Cheng, what nonsense are you talking about?” There was displeasure in his tone. “If there’s anything else, I’ll talk to you after I’m done.”

I didn’t want to listen anymore, so I hung up.

After that, I hired a caregiver. He looked after me for a few days, and my foot recovered enough for me to walk normally. As long as I didn’t exercise strenuously, there was no problem.

I went to the company to negotiate the termination of my contract and used most of my savings from over the years to pay the penalty fee.

Maybe because they thought I had no value left, the company let me go without any fuss. When I walked out again, I felt like I had nothing left weighing me down.

After my previous fight with my family, my parents had frozen all my cards to force me to bow my head.

Actually, that was fine too.

I threw away the phone card I had used for more than ten years and deactivated every public social media account registered under the name Jiang Cheng.

Alone, I left this city far behind.

I didn’t know that on that day, I trended online. They were confused about where a person named “Jiang Cheng” had gone.

They had cursed me for years. Now that I had deactivated my accounts, there was nowhere left for them to curse me.

The next time I came into contact with the internet was several months later.