From Sidekick to Bigshot

“I… I want to rely on myself.”

Jian Yiling hesitated for a moment before she gave Jian Yuncheng an answer.

Relying on oneself was a sign of independence.

Their little girl had become independent.

However, she had become independent way too soon.

She was only fifteen. She could still be pampered and spoiled by her parents and brothers.

When she was hurt, she had the right to cry. When she was falsely accused, she still had the right to complain.

She wasn’t meant to tell them “I want to rely on myself.”

When a person’s first response was “I want to rely on myself,” it meant that in their heart, there was no one else to rely on.

Or perhaps… The people that she once relied on and trusted had let her down.

Yes, they had let her down.

And from that incident onwards, she had chosen to believe in herself.

Back then, she had the opportunity to tell them about the missing hotel surveillance video. She could have asked them to look into it.

However, she hadn’t asked them that. She chose to find the evidence and take care of everything on her own.

She stopped asking them to do anything for her. There was no need for her to ask people that she didn’t trust to do things in the first place.

After a long moment of silence, Jian Yuncheng said to Jian Yiling: “Yiling, I’ll always be here. Come to me when you need me.”

Jian Yuncheng could no longer convince Jian Yiling to listen to him. That was all he could say.

He didn’t know how long he would have to wait before he could regain Jian Yiling’s trust.

It took only a second for trust to collapse.

However, trust takes a long time to rebuild.

Jian Yiling replied “Okay” before she hung up the phone.

But at the other end of the line, Jian Yuncheng couldn’t help but listen to the beeping of the phone for a long time.

After a while, Huo Yu’s phone call brought Jian Yuncheng back to his senses.

“Hey Yuncheng, I have good news for you and bad news for you. Which one do you want to hear first?” Huo Yu asked. He liked to keep Yuncheng in suspense.

“Cut the chase.”

“Yuncheng, why do you sound a bit strange today? Have you caught a cold?”

“I told you to cut the chase.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll get right to it then. The good news is that I’ve checked everything you asked me to. However, the bad news is that I haven’t found any hacking records that were related to this matter.”

“No hacking records?”

“Yeah. There are no records. This means that if Yiling submitted her article, the changes must not have been made by an outside party hacking into the organization’s system. Therefore, I can conclude that the person who did this was very clever. They knew that they would be caught if they did it directly through the Internet. In other words, the changes were done offline. It was probably done by the same organization that published the news story.”

“I see.”

Jian Yuncheng hung up the phone without waiting for Huo Yu to say anything else.

Then he started to look for information related to that organization.

Yiling did not want their help. However, he couldn’t just do nothing, could he?

He would do this, even if his help was unneeded in the first place.

###

As soon as Jian Yiling hung up the phone with Jian Yuncheng, she received a call from Luo Xiuen.

When she picked up, she could hear the sound of Luo Xiuen’s boisterous laughter:

“Hahahhaha, darling! Do you know what just happened? Your cousin just called me! And do you know what he said to me? He said that he wants to meet Dr. F.S. He asked me to introduce him to Dr. F.S! He said that he wants to clarify to Dr. F.S that you didn’t plagiarize his article. Hahahahaha.”

Luo Xiuen couldn’t stop laughing.