Chapter 37

Chapter 37: Blood Calamity

[He looks so honest and kind. Who would think that this man, who everyone agrees is an honest person, is actually a male chauvinist gambler in private, who loves to drink and beat his family? He has every bad buff stacked on him!]

Still not knowing that his fake mask had already been torn off, Hong Shi Tao kept smiling as he greeted Li Zhao Yang: “Chairman, I heard that you invited a Grandmaster to check the company’s feng shui. Is it our department’s turn now?”

“Your news spreads fast.” Li Zhao Yang was rather familiar with Hong Shi Tao. He turned and introduced him to Du An Rao: “This is the PR Director I mentioned earlier, Director Hong, the one who worked overtime too late, ran into a robbery on his way home, and almost had something happen to him.”

When Hong Shi Tao heard Li Zhao Yang bring up that night again, his smile froze for a moment, but he quickly recovered and shook hands warmly with Du An Rao.

[I really should let that deputy director from the Finance Department come and take a look. This is why he is only a deputy while other people are the real leaders. Look at this man’s emotional intelligence and acting skills. Even if he thinks you are a fraud and has doubts about you, he would never show it on his face. In fact, he would rather you be a useless fraud.]

Xi Jing Yue’s eyes flashed, as if he had thought of the same thing as Du An Rao.

Even though she knew there was something wrong with Hong Shi Tao, Du An Rao did not argue with him right away. Instead, she followed Li Zhao Yang and walked around the lobby of the Public Relations Department.

She had only planned to gently point out a few small problems with the layout, but changed her mind when she saw a young woman in her early twenties sitting in a corner.

[Huh, this girl…]

Du Yu Xi and Xi Jing Yue both stopped because of Du An Rao’s little cry and looked over in the direction of her gaze.

Li Zhao Yang also noticed that something was off with them and felt his heart jump: “Is there another problem?”

Du An Rao glanced at the decoration on the girl’s desk: “Is this… Snow in June?”

Suddenly surrounded by her direct supervisor and the big boss of the company, Tang Qian Qian was already nervous and uneasy.

When she heard Du An Rao ask this, she only stammered: “Y-yes.”

“Why did you decide to grow this? I see that most people in your department like to grow pothos and succulents. Only you are raising a Snow in June.”

“I just thought the flowers looked pretty. The person selling the plants also said this kind of potted plant is easy to care for, that it can live well even if you do not pay much attention, so I… I just bought a pot to try raising it.” After she finished, Tang Qian Qian could not help asking: “Is there something wrong with this flower?”

Du An Rao was about to explain, but when her eyes fell on the top of the other girl’s head, her face suddenly changed.

[Ahhh, what is going on? Just now there were only Ominous Clouds Overhead, so why did it turn red all of a sudden? Is this the legendary… Blood Calamity?]

Both Du Yu Xi and Xi Jing Yue were also shocked by this sudden Blood Calamity. Their eyes toward Tang Qian Qian became more cautious at once.

“If I may ask, Miss, what is your surname?”

“Ah?” Tang Qian Qian was stunned for a moment. “M-my surname is Tang.”

“Tang?” Du An Rao rolled this surname around in her mouth. Her face stayed calm, but in her head she was already racing, trying to recall everything related to this person as fast as possible.

[Wait, surname Tang, and an employee of Xi Sheng? Could she be that unlucky Miss Tang who bumped into a crime scene and was silenced?]

A crime scene?

Du Yu Xi almost cried out in shock, and Xi Jing Yue also clenched his hands without thinking.

In Du An Rao’s memory, Miss Tang was mentioned in a piece of social news. It said that a woman surnamed Tang was walking home late at night after work and passed by a small alley. She happened to run into a criminal suspect killing his ex-girlfriend out of love and hate. Shocked and scared, she made a noise and was discovered by him.

That man had already gone crazy with killing. He was already panicking because he had killed his ex-girlfriend in a fit of anger and then found there was a witness nearby.

In a hot-headed moment, he killed Miss Tang as well.

This was a shocking murder case. For a social news item like this to suddenly appear in a rich-family CEO novel with entertainment circle elements, there had to be a reason.

Sure enough, later on, when Li Zhao Yang’s company was already on the verge of collapse under the joint attacks of Jiang Yi Ming and several of Li Qian Xi’s bootlickers, someone suddenly exposed this old case.

By then, Tang Qian Qian’s parents had already died, one after another, from the grief of losing their only daughter. The one who came out to speak was an uncle who did not have much affection for her.

At Li Qian Xi and the others’ hint, this man cried in front of the media as he talked about the fate of Tang Qian Qian and the Tang parents. On purpose or not, he blamed the Tang family’s tragedy on Tang Qian Qian working overtime and going home late that night.

This was quite similar to Hong Shi Tao’s story about being beaten while collecting debts. Usually, the Public Relations Department stayed pretty hidden in the company.

Its main job was to manage public opinion about the company’s entertainers and the company itself. As long as nothing big happened with the entertainers, the whole department stayed rather free.

But once they ran into a crisis like the one with Pei Yi Yuan a few days ago, working overtime became normal. If things were serious, it was very possible that they would not be able to go home for several days.

Everyone knew this before they joined the company, and the company also paid overtime according to the law. After Tang Qian Qian was killed, the company even paid a large amount of money out of basic humanity to make sure her parents would have no worries about food and clothing for the rest of their lives.

In addition, they set aside another sum of money so that Tang Qian Qian’s parents could go to court against the killer without any worries and make him pay with his life for their daughter.

But people who only wanted to seek justice and thought that they, like Tang Qian Qian, were victims being exploited by capital did not care about these details.

On top of that, Tang Qian Qian’s uncle hid the company’s payment and help to the Tang parents on purpose so that he could get more compensation.

And so a big public fight against the “heartless capitalists” began with great noise.

When she first read this part, Du An Rao had found it funny. The little girl had been killed, yet instead of hating the crazy killer who murdered her, people blamed the company that had helped seek justice for her and taken care of things afterward.

It seemed that in Li Qian Xi’s eyes, anyone who opposed her would become a tool. No matter what they did, they were seen as awful people, only there to set off her “truth, goodness, and beauty” when she dragged them down from their high position.

Du An Rao just could not do that, especially now that she was looking at the very alive Tang Qian Qian standing right in front of her.

Thinking about how she had already died with hate in her heart, yet still had to be dragged out by relatives to suck her blood and scrape her bones, used as a chess piece to topple others, and to suffer comments like:

“One hand cannot clap by itself. Why did that man kill you and not someone else? There must have been some conflict between the three of you before this. That man is a beast, but these two women may not have been pure and clean good people either.”

“A woman wandering around alone late at night, who knows if she was doing something shameful. She deserved to die.”

“She even managed to blackmail the company after dying in the street. In this world people will use any death to extort money. With relatives like that, I bet the dead girl was not any good either. It was all karma.”

Comments like these really made people angry and chilled.