Chapter 168: Clarification

"What?" Sang Yijia could not believe what she had just heard, freezing completely in place. It took her quite a while to regain her composure. Turning back to look at Lu Wenchuan, she hesitated for a moment before probing cautiously, "Lu Wenchuan, do you still remember why you came to participate in this dating reality show?"

"I lost a bet to Wei Heng." Lu Wenchuan frowned, not understanding why she would ask such a question. "What's wrong? Is something amiss?"

"No." Sang Yijia heard a crisp click in her mind, as if all the gear teeth had locked into place. The world had officially rebooted.

Sang Yijia hurriedly searched her phone for anything related to the original host's aggressive pursuit of Shen Jing, but it was all gone. Everything had vanished in an instant.

Sang Yijia fell silent. What she had believed to be transmigration into a book was actually just a return to the world that originally belonged to her, rendering her time in that previous world entirely illusory.

Closing her eyes, Sang Yijia let out a slow, heavy breath. "It's nothing. I'm just having a hard time processing it."

"What is it?" Lu Wenchuan asked, perplexed. Lowering his gaze to look at Sang Yijia's phone, he saw the words typed into the search bar and then the results that had appeared.

Sang Yijia and Shen Jing no longer had any connection whatsoever.

"Has everything been refreshed again?" Lu Wenchuan asked. "What on earth is going on?"

Lu Wenchuan had voiced the question aloud, but Sang Yijia could not answer. She shook her head. "It's fine. Everything from before is in the past now."

Following that, Sang Yijia hummed softly and asked, "Do you still remember?"

"Of course." Lu Wenchuan remembered every single reset. "So, are we starting over from the beginning now?"

"Yes, but not entirely," Sang Yijia said, spreading her hands. "Still, it doesn't have much of an impact on us now."

To be precise, it brought Sang Yijia only benefits and no drawbacks at all.

"Can we talk about the smear campaign now?" Lu Wenchuan changed the subject. "Did those things happen back in high school?"

Sang Yijia's memories were much clearer now. They weren't like before when everything she recalled was a tangled mess; now, the pieces had all connected.

"Yes, but they had nothing to do with me."

Sang Yijia pressed her lips together and continued, "That person wasn't a classmate in our class; she was from the next class over. I only knew her name and had heard a few things about her." She still wasn't clear how it had ever gotten linked to her name.

"Did she jump from a building?" Lu Wenchuan asked, wishing to understand more about what had happened.

Sang Yijia paused for a moment in silence. "Lu Wenchuan, everything I'm saying right now is just what I heard from other people. What the actual truth was, I don't know."

The production crew's cameras were still inside the room, and all of this was being recorded. Whether it would be edited out later remained uncertain, so Sang Yijia still needed to speak with caution.

"Alright, go ahead," Lu Wenchuan said, straightening up and looking at Sang Yijia with a serious expression. "I'm listening."

"Actually..." Sang Yijia drifted back into her memories.

***

After the malicious rumors were released, Sang Yijia remained firmly at the number one spot on Weibo's trending searches.

When Sang Qiwen saw it, he had people suppress the trending topics and investigate what was truly going on. Sang Qiwu went directly to the school authorities to demand a clear explanation and requested that the school issue an official statement.

Upon seeing Weibo, Duan Yuqing gave a dry laugh and logged into an account she hadn't used in a long time. It was her personal account; her former agency had no authority to take it back, and her fans all recognized it. Duan Yuqing simply changed her screen name to just "Qing."

"These people don't even draft their lies, and I have no idea what they use their brains for," Duan Yuqing posted, reposting those trending Weibo messages while tagging Sang Yijia and adding a single sentence: *Utter nonsense.*

Duan Yuqing's repost instantly caught the attention of her fans. Although they were unclear about what had happened, her followers all knew that Duan Yuqing had been gaming with Sang Yijia and the others quite a bit recently.

*Is this related to Sang Yijia?*

*Qingqing already said in her livestream before that she and Sang Yijia were deskmates, and good deskmates for three whole years at that!*

*We know very well what kind of person Qingqing is! Sang Yijia is Qingqing's deskmate, and if Qingqing says she's a good person, then she's a good person.*

However, quite a few fans were not buying it.

*Is only one person coming forward to clarify?*

*Where are the others?*

*Win and Sang Yijia might both be bullies for all we know!*

*Birds of a feather flock together!*

*Did you guys forget why Win quit her esports team back then? Wasn't it because she abused her power and bullied others?*

When Duan Yuqing saw this particular reply, she smiled and made another post, tagging her former boss and her ex-boyfriend.

*Qing: Are the two of you certain that you won't stop spreading rumors until I spill the whole truth?*

As soon as this post went live, Duan Yuqing's former boss and her ex-boyfriend were stunned.

"What should we do now?" the ex-boyfriend asked with some anxiety. "Those things from before..."

"Don't worry, she doesn't dare actually post them," the former boss said through clenched teeth. "Besides, does she even have any evidence to prove anything?"

The ex-boyfriend felt that since Duan Yuqing had said such a thing, she must have evidence. Even so, looking at his boss, he murmured assent; besides, it was about time he secured a proper public status.

Therefore, the ex-boyfriend had no intention of speaking out.

The former boss hadn't noticed what his current favorite was thinking, and he directly replied on Weibo with a tough stance, claiming that anyone who dared to do something but lacked the guts to admit it was nothing more than a dog.

Less than two minutes later, Duan Yuqing sent several photos and a video—partially pixelated, yet still revealing enough—to her former boss.

*Duan Yuqing: I still have backups on my flash drive.*

*Duan Yuqing: I'll give you one more chance to speak properly.*

*Duan Yuqing: Otherwise, the videos and photos I post on Weibo next won't be this mild; they'll be much more interesting.*

The former boss's face turned pale green.

Netizens were completely unaware of this hidden tug-of-war. All they saw were the posts made by Duan Yuqing and the tough reply from the esports team's owner.

Yet that reply was retracted in less than a minute. Shortly after, the team's official Weibo account issued a statement clarifying the false rumors surrounding Duan Yuqing's departure from the team, admitting instead that she had left simply because the organization wanted to build an all-male roster and she was a female player.

*Disgusting.*

*They certainly didn't say that back when Win led you all to win the championship. Her hand was injured, it's not like she couldn't play anymore.*

*Capitalists are truly revolting.*

*Once the leeks have been harvested, of course they get thrown away.*

This particular piece of drama managed to divert a fair bit of traffic away from Sang Yijia's scandal, but Sang Yijia's negative news still hung securely at the very top of the trending list, its position completely unshakable.

Duan Yuqing called Sang Yijia on the phone. "Jiajia, I'm going to find other classmates to testify."

"Chen Kexin's business has zero to do with you," Duan Yuqing said, referring to that female student from back then. "Jiajia, don't look at Weibo, and definitely don't look at those people's comments."

Duan Yuqing had glanced at a few comments and had gotten so angry she wanted to hit someone before logging into her game to slaughter a couple of matches; only then had she called Sang Yijia, fearing that her explosive temper might otherwise cause her to start swearing.