The images attached to the trending report showed Shi Xia opening the car door and welcoming Chang'an out, then the two of them walking side by side, seen from behind.
Never mind how well they matched. Thankfully, they hadn't caught a clear front shot of Chang'an. But they did capture the moment Shi Xia smiled and reached out her hand to him.
The key issue was the combination of three tags: late night, goddess, and underage pretty boy. That was more than enough to set people's nerves on fire in minutes.
A few pictures at the start, and the rest of the story was all made up.
Still, the media didn't really dare go all out against Shi Xia and the others now. At most, they could skirt the edge and farm traffic. Otherwise, if the Ye Clan set their sights on them, the whole agency might be reporting from Africa by tomorrow.
They used to dare to fabricate things outright. Now they didn't. Instead, they'd switched tactics, being all snide and disgusting, playing the line with suggestive gossip and ambiguous scandal bait.
In short, they were guiding the audience to think in that direction, toward human desire, or rather, the darker side of it.
Even a beautiful, pure, saintly woman has desires, right? And the one she likes just so happens to be an underage boy.
Did that count as a crime? Or did it somehow not count if it was a beautiful woman targeting a younger boy?
Come to think of it, society had indeed started paying more and more attention to cases where girls assaulted boys.
And yes... those old laws and public attitudes that only recognized male-on-female assault really did need to change.
But that wasn't a reason for unethical media to use it to smear Ye Shixia.
Granted... Ye Chang'an really was still underage. Seventeen.
But more importantly, smearing Shi Xia like this would seriously damage the credibility of the Chang'an Foundation.
After all, Shi Xia was one of the public faces of the Chang'an Foundation. She served as an image ambassador. If a scandal broke out, it would heavily affect the foundation's income and future development.
Human goodwill is abundant, especially online, even if those same people might not actually go do any good themselves.
That's where the "hero" in keyboard warrior comes from. Sadly, not everyone can truly become a hero.
They didn't stop to think how the media had even concluded that the boy was underage. In truth, Chang'an was 175 centimeters tall. He didn't look obviously underage at all. At most, from a distance, you could only make out the outline of his face and get the impression that he looked youthful and fair.
The kind of pretty boy type a lot of women would like.
You could also call him a pretty face, though that term usually carried a more derogatory tone.
What people were really fixating on was this: underage equals orphanage child.
That point alone was enough for them to imagine all kinds of vile scenarios. Like maybe Shi Xia was also one of those sanctimonious saints, righteous on the surface, while secretly preying on children from the orphanage...
But in this age of mass entertainment, the comment section ended up veering off in a completely different direction.
"Let go of that boy, goddess, come at me instead! I'll take the damage for him!"
"He's still a kid! But I'm not. I'm available anytime!"
Of course, there were also people seriously criticizing and doubting Shi Xia.
And there were plenty defending her too.
The latter even seemed to quietly make up the majority. Clearly, that was also because of everything Shi Xia had done over the past few years.
The way she treated the children at the orphanage, and everything the Chang'an Foundation had done, had all been seen by the public.
Even the children who had been helped, though they had gone on to new families, still sincerely felt grateful to the orphanage and to her.
And so, seeds of kindness had been scattered across the land of Anyang City, blooming into flower after flower of goodwill.
Shi Xia looked through the report and the comments, frowning at times and sighing at others. In the end, she simply set her phone aside, wrapped both arms around Chang'an's arm, and sought comfort for both body and heart.
Dad still hadn't woken up yet.
In the future, it would probably be best not to let Dad get involved in things like this either...
If Dad wanted to go to school, then she should just let him go.
Shi Xia had already grown into a woman capable of standing on her own, so it felt only natural for her to start thinking for Chang'an's sake.
But comfort was comfort. The issue still had to be handled.
Very soon, Shi Xia picked up her phone again, only to find that the news report had already been manually removed from the trending list.
Only then did she notice the nonstop flood of messages Xiaoxian had been bombarding her with this whole time.
First, she skipped over the huge pile of complaints.
Things like—
"Shi Xia, you brat, how dare you not reply to my messages!"
"You think you're so amazing just because your b-boobs are big?!"
"My brother likes lolis like me! You damn dairy cow!"
Her gaze moved to the messages after that.
"I've already had the trending topic taken down, and that paparazzi reporter who wrote the piece has been arranged for a one-way tour of Africa."
"But the foundation's PR team will still need to handle the aftermath, so spare me some trouble, will you? Don't go stirring up any more scandals."
"Most importantly, who exactly is that boy?"
Xiaoxian really was absurdly reliable. Mostly because the Ye Clan's influence was enormous. Shi Xia couldn't help smiling.
And when she saw the last line Xiaoxian had sent—
Her smile suddenly took on a trace of smugness, even a slightly mischievous, naughty curve.
Then she abruptly leaned close to the still-sleeping Chang'an, pressing in with an intimate, face-to-face pose. She even loosened one of her shoulder straps a little, exposing her bare shoulder.
She created a visual illusion.
Then, with a click from the camera—
A "bed photo" was born, the kind of thing that, if it ever hit the trending charts, would cause a real uproar.
And the moment she hit send—
Shi Xia could practically hear Xiaoxian screaming from the other side of the screen.
Come to think of it... was she maybe bullying that girl a little too much?
