Scheme

Luo Ying shrugged slightly and slowly walked backstage.

As it was her first time here, she didn't know where the artistes' lounge was. After walking around backstage, Luo Ying had to pull over a staff member with a staff card and ask for directions.

The staff member pointed her in a direction. "The artistes from your company are all arranged to be in Section D. I'm not sure which room you're in, but you can work your way there."

"Okay, thank you." Luo Ying glanced at the name on her work pass and smiled. "Cutey Yinyin."

The staff member's face turned red. She held her face and watched Luo Ying leave in flash of red. She murmured, "Mom, I've been seduced by a fairy."

After walking around the corridor of Section D, Luo Ying finally saw her and Su Ran's names in the corner. Just as she was about to push the door open and enter, she heard Xia Lan's voice coming from inside.

"The company's opinion is to not let Luo Ying perform on stage later."

Luo Ying's hand paused. She stopped in her tracks and stood in front of the door.

"I don't think that's a good idea. I think Luo Ying is looking forward to tonight's stage. If she finds out that her act has been canceled, she will be very disappointed." When she heard the company's decision, Su Ran was happy inside, but she pretended to be worried and spoke up for Luo Ying.

Xia Lan's tone was filled with disdain. "With her singing and dancing skills, she'll only embarrass herself on stage. When the broadcast gets out, the audience will blast our company for pushing such a useless person onto the stage."

When Luo Ying heard this, she laughed in anger. If the company was truly aware of this, they wouldn't have stuffed the original body, who had no experience on stage, into a talent show and made her appear with other incomparably better-groomed girls. After her disastrous debut, they threw her to a bunch of subpar shows, ruining her prospects.

Why didn't the company do anything about her poor performances when they relied on her to earn money?

Now that she had been wrung dry of her commercial value, they had turned on her and accused her of being incompetent.

"But, we just had an interview on the red carpet. Everyone knows that Luo Ying is going to perform tonight. If she suddenly doesn't show up, the audience will only suspect that something has happened. That will be even worse."

"What's wrong with that? At most, she'll just find an excuse to brush it off. Anyway, she doesn't have many fans right now, and not many people are looking forward to her stage performance. The audience will just talk about it for a while, and it'll be over." Xia Lan didn't think this was a problem at all.

"Besides, the company is doing this for her own good. After sending her reputation crashing down for so long, she finally managed to get it back on the red carpet. If she exposes herself on stage again, it will cause an even bigger wave of backlash."

When Su Ran heard this, she perked up attentively. "You just said that Luo Ying regained her popularity on the red carpet. Is she on the hot search?"

Even Xia Lan couldn't help but be impressed. "That's right, her face showed up in the live-stream, so she's on the hot search."

When Su Ran's expression change, Xia Lan didn't dare to continue. At that moment, Luo Ying wasn't just on the hot search. She had just taken a quick look and found that the scene of Luo Ying walking the red carpet had quickly spread on various platforms.

The internet was a terrifying entity. If everything went as expected, Luo Ying would probably flood the platform for the next few days. This was an achievement that most artistes wanted to achieve, but Luo Ying had achieved it with her face alone. It really made people envious and jealous.

Su Ran took out her phone and swiped into the hot search. She saw that Luo Ying's name was in the top five of the hot search list. Su Ran was in the top 11.

Su Ran knew very well that many artistes would be attending tonight. As a newcomer, she must have been promoted by her company to be able to occupy a single hot search. However, at a time when everyone wanted to grab a spot on the hot topic list, Luo Ying had relied on herself to carve a bloody path and become a top search.

Su Ran bit her lip. She was very unwilling to accept this, but she also understood that the entertainment industry was not a place that could be reasoned with. As the saying goes, "A blip of fame depends on connections, but a major leap to stardom was up to fate." However, Su Ran did not want to believe in fate so much.

She raised her head. "Let Luo Ying go on stage with me."

Su Ran had managed to make a name for herself in the industry. She did not get there by being caught up in pettiness. Since Luo Ying was so popular now, there must be a lot of people paying attention to her, so she had to make use of her power.

Su Ran knew very well how terrible Luo Ying's singing and dancing were. She was not afraid at all. So what if she was good-looking? Before the camera, on the stage, their skills would speak for themselves.

If she could really rely on her looks, then Luo Ying wouldn't have been ridiculed for this long.