The notification did not display the content of the email, only that it was from an unfamiliar number.
Li Quyin was familiar with such situations; it was clearly spam. He often received junk advertisements or harassment emails from unscrupulous game companies, which he found endlessly irritating.
Xia Xixi, likely afraid of missing important information, had set his email to send dual notifications. As soon as an email came through, his phone would vibrate and emit sound simultaneously.
Adding to the commotion, the phone was placed on a glass tea table. At night, the vibrations made the noise even louder.
Hearing the disturbance, Li Quyin glanced at Xia Xixi.
Xia Xixi had already furrowed his brows, as if he were about to wake up from the noise.
Li Quyin quickly reached out, picked up the phone, and pressed the lock button to quiet it.
The room fell silent again. Xia Xixi unconsciously shifted his head slightly and, before long, drifted back to sleep.
Li Quyin let out a sigh of relief but couldn’t resist cursing the lunatic who sent the message. People who send such harassment messages should be locked in an asylum and never let out.
After placing the phone back on the table, he pulled a chair over and sat down beside Xia Xixi. In the faint moonlight, he quietly watched Xia Xixi’s sleeping face.
The first time he saw Xia Xixi, Li Quyin, who was accustomed to all kinds of real or artificially enhanced beauties in the entertainment industry, had been stunned. He hadn’t expected someone so stunning to exist in this world.
Xia Xixi’s beauty wasn’t the kind achieved through meticulously sculpted facial features but an innate elegance that radiated from within.
He carried an unapproachable, graceful aura that others could not replicate.
To be honest, he exuded the aura of a reclusive sage from ancient times.
Perhaps he had been bewitched back then; otherwise, why would he impulsively approach Xia Xixi for a chat, only to be met with a pair of eyes brimming with disdain?
Thinking back to that moment, Li Quyin felt a stifling discomfort in his chest.
Why did Xia Xixi hate him so much?
Li Quyin pulled out his phone and decided to give his assistant a hard time. “Where’s the list I asked you to make?”
It had been two days already.
“Boss, you’ve got to be joking...”
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Li Quyin lowered his gaze. Was he the kind of person to crack jokes?
“Then... should I really send it?” the assistant asked.
Li Quyin raised an eyebrow. So the list had already been compiled?
“Send it to my email,” Li Quyin replied.
A minute later, his phone buzzed, notifying him of a new email in his inbox.
When he opened it, a warning popped up, cautioning him about the large file size and potential data usage. His mouth twitched involuntarily.
A large file?
Had he really done so many things to make people hate him?
Li Quyin’s gaze turned icy. His assistant was certainly... honest.
“Boss, you specifically asked me to compile this. I only gathered the dirt on you that’s available online. The content has nothing to do with me...”
As if sensing Li Quyin’s reaction, the assistant immediately followed up with a text, hurriedly distancing himself from responsibility.
Li Quyin ignored him and put away his phone.
After carrying Xia Xixi downstairs and settling him in, he returned to his own room and took out his phone again.
The villa was nestled deep in the mountains and dense forest, where the signal wasn’t great, leading to network delays. While the villa had Wi-Fi, it could only be detected downstairs.
Sitting on the bed, before checking the email, Li Quyin deliberately opened the one he had sent to the expert earlier.
There was still no response from the other side, as expected.
Unlike messages, emails weren’t automatically read upon receipt.
Li Quyin wasn’t in a hurry. He had patience.
Closing the previous email, Li Quyin opened the massive one sent by his assistant.
The assistant had thoughtfully included a timeline, arranging the incidents in reverse chronological order for easy reference.
Skimming through the contents, Li Quyin noticed the assistant had actually listed dozens of items.
As a celebrity—especially one who was currently at the peak of his career and constantly in the spotlight—it was impossible to be free of controversies. Even if there were none, entertainment reporters and paparazzi would invent plenty.
Among the incidents listed in the email, at least 80–90% were outright fabrications, and the remaining 10–20% were gross distortions of the truth.
For instance, there was the infamous incident at an awards ceremony where he was accused of making a female celebrity cry.
Li Quyin remembered that incident vividly. It had caused quite a stir at the time, with numerous entertainment outlets latching onto the story.
Some claimed he was throwing his weight around, others called him arrogant and conceited, and still others labeled him as unreasonable and a bully toward newcomers.
But not a single outlet bothered to report the real story—that the female celebrity’s original seat wasn’t even near him. Her placement next to him had been orchestrated by her company.
As for their motives, anyone with half a brain could figure them out.
Moreover, the company didn’t just alter the seating arrangement. They had also pushed out a small-time actor who had been slated to win an award, replacing them with that female celebrity instead.
Li Quyin didn’t care what kind of agenda the other party had, but once they crossed such a line, it became utterly unforgivable.
So, throughout the entire awards ceremony, he didn’t give that female celebrity a single pleasant look. Who would have thought she’d end up crying on her own?
Aside from that incident, the email contained a slew of other accusations—claims that he "oppressed newcomers," "abused his seniority," or "acted arrogant." Li Quyin even stumbled upon one or two entries criticizing his appearance, calling him "ugly" and accusing him of having "a plastic surgery face."
Looking at the collection of unflattering photos, Li Quyin’s gaze grew dark and icy, exuding an oppressive chill.
After a moment of thought, he decided to dock his assistant’s bonus.
The entire bonus. For this month.
He had every reason to suspect that those hideous photos were intentionally slipped in by the assistant as a private jab. There was no way he could look that ugly.
After reading the email, Li Quyin leaned back against the headboard, lost in thought.
Although he had no concrete evidence, Li Quyin firmly believed that Xia Xixi’s dislike of him wasn’t due to those baseless, chaotic rumors.
Xia Xixi wasn’t the type to lack discernment. On the contrary, he was incredibly intelligent. Someone like him wouldn’t judge a person’s character based on tabloid gossip, let alone harbor such deep-seated dislike.
But if it wasn’t because of those rumors, then why?
Had he and Xia Xixi crossed paths in real life before?
When? Why couldn’t he remember?
If he had met Xia Xixi before, with Xia Xixi’s distinctive aura, it would have been impossible for him not to remember.
Li Quyin spent the entire night mulling over it, yet he couldn’t make any sense of it.
The next morning, the first thing Li Quyin did upon waking was check his email.
The email he sent to the expert yesterday had been received, but after combing through his inbox, he found no reply.
After a moment of deliberation, Li Quyin sent another email:
"Hello, this is Shen Bailou. Regarding inviting you to participate in the film production, I would like to speak with you directly. Perhaps there has been a misunderstanding between us."
If he had a choice, Li Quyin would never resort to this level of persistence. But the other party had left him no opportunity to find someone else.
The meticulous lengths the other party had gone to made it clear they didn’t want him seeking an alternative. Since he couldn’t find anyone else, he had no choice but to circle back to them.
After sending the message, Li Quyin sat on the bed, waiting.
Meanwhile, in the adjacent room, Xia Xixi, who had been awake for a while but stubbornly lingering in bed, heard the notification sound. Turning over, he groped for his phone near the headboard with his eyes still closed.
Finding the phone, he groggily read the email. His sleepiness evaporated almost instantly, replaced by a surge of irritation.
"Stop bothering me," Xia Xixi said coldly. His tone was understandably sour. After everything that had happened recently, anyone in his shoes would have reacted the same way.
What irritated Xia Xixi even more was that, after being unable to reach him by phone, the other party had resorted to email harassment.
This was Xia Xixi’s work email, typically used for communication with important contacts. The last thing he wanted was for this email to become unusable because of someone pestering him.
"Perhaps there’s been some misunderstanding between us. Why don’t we sit down and talk?"
Xia Xixi sat up and replied, "There’s no misunderstanding. Stop bothering me. If you’re truly so sincere, why not change the lead actor? Change the lead actor, and I’ll talk to you."
His meaning couldn’t have been clearer. Anyone with a sense of propriety would stop clinging to him after that.
In Li Quyin’s eyes, a flash of anger, sharp as a blade, crossed his cold gaze. Change the lead actor?
He was the film’s absolute main lead—the movie had essentially been tailor-made for him. It seemed clear now that the other side’s resistance was directed entirely at him.
"I’d really like to know what I’ve done to offend you to make you so hostile," Li Quyin asked.
He didn’t consider himself a perfect person, but his behavior wasn’t so abhorrent that someone would despise him to this extent.
Xia Xixi almost laughed at the absurdity. Offended? Hostile?
Who was really causing trouble for whom?
Shen Bailou certainly knew how to play the victim.
This was their first direct interaction since that incident years ago, and Shen Bailou had successfully made Xia Xixi dislike him even more.
"You know perfectly well what you've done," Xia Xixi replied, not even bothering to argue further.
If it weren’t for his desire to avoid endless back-and-forth with the other party, he would have already blocked him outright.
Li Quyin gritted his teeth, his gaze as cold and sharp as a blade. What had he done?
"I have a clear conscience. If all you want is money, just name your price."
"Are you insane? I’ve already told you to stop bothering me. Can’t you find someone else? Why are you so fixated on me?"
"What exactly do you want?" Li Quyin felt that he had never exercised such restraint before. To think he was still talking to someone so unreasonable.
One moment, the other party told him to find someone else, yet the next moment, they were actively encouraging others to boycott him. When pressed, they simply threw back, "You know what you did."
Was this person not completely deranged?
Li Quyin waited a while longer, but no reply came. When he attempted to send another email, the system notified him that his messages were now being rejected.
Clearly, he had been blocked.
Li Quyin was so enraged that he burst into a bitter laugh. Crazy person!
Tossing his phone aside, he got out of bed and went to wash up.
Even by the time he sat down for breakfast downstairs, he hadn’t managed to quell the anger simmering within him.
At the dining table, Xia Xixi put down his spoon.
"Are you okay?"
Li Quyin’s expression was even worse than it had been yesterday. Though he tried to suppress his emotions and avoid showing them in Xia Xixi’s presence, Xia Xixi could still tell.
"Sorry," Li Quyin said with an apologetic smile, his dislike for that lunatic deepened even further.
Because of him, his rare outing with Xia Xixi had been completely ruined.
"If something is bothering you, you can talk to me about it," Xia Xixi said with a gentle smile. "I might not be able to help, but I can listen."
As he spoke, Xia Xixi’s fingers moved subtly, and he quietly unblocked a certain lunatic he had blacklisted in a fit of anger earlier that morning.
"Thank you," Li Quyin replied, his mood instantly lifting. Though he had no intention of troubling Xia Xixi with his problems, the gesture still warmed his heart.
Just as Li Quyin was enjoying this turn of events, his phone rang. He picked it up to check, and his expression instantly darkened.
"If you harass me again, I’ll call the police."
"Lunatic!"