Chapter 120: The Sun’s Dim!

Chapter 120: The Sun's Dim!

Pam and Sam Sun sat in the quiet luxury of the executive suite, both of them staring intently at the monitors displaying the viral online podcast interviews. The first clip featured Kate Kong, while the second showed Ana Zi addressing the exact same scandalous topic.

[I did not do the role in the second movie, The Vampire I Fell For, because I did not like the main lead they picked, but if Rick Lee did it, I will make the sequel. Plus Rick is a real life bodyguard and that is the role of the ML in the sequel movie! Ufufu, If he does it, he would do all his own stunts too, is that not exciting?!]

Sam pointed a shaking finger at the video playback of Kate, his lower lip protruding as he pouted aggressively toward his mother. "See mom, she admitted it! When you told her I would play the next male lead, she immediately claimed she wanted to focus on singing instead of doing the role with me. You even went out of your way to have the writers kill off the main love interest at the end of the first movie just so I could step in as the new one."

Pam Sun frowned heavily as the words sank in, her calculation shifting into darker territory. From a purely financial standpoint, Kate generated far more revenue through her cinematic features, voice acting roles, and high-profile television cameos than her solo singing career could ever hope to bring into the firm.

"She really declined the entire production simply because you were slotted as the main lead? How completely shameless. To throw away a perfectly good, premium sequel just because she refuses to act alongside my baby."

Sam leaned over the mahogany desk, trying to stoke his mother's corporate anger. "This current album is her absolute last record under the contract, and her music tour wraps up at the end of the year anyway. Why not just force her to take the movie role since she brought it up on a live stream? Tell her the fans are demanding it."

Pam didn't answer immediately, instead picking up her smartphone and dialing a familiar number. "Hello Jean Jia, this is Pam Sun. Yes, I am calling because your client explicitly brought up the sequel movie she walked away from earlier... That is right, and now that she has stirred up the entire fan base online, what exactly is the Star Entertainment Group supposed to tell the public?"

Pam went quiet, listening intently to the manager's sharp response while Sam paced back and forth across the plush rug.

"Jia, we cannot simply cast a random man in the main lead when he has absolutely zero professional acting experience outside a single app commercial. My son was already promised that role... I know they had a minor disagreement in the past, but the matter was peacefully settled and he has behaved himself perfectly since... WHAT! You cannot do that, you are still legally bound under contract... Ah, it ends soon... Then let's discuss a renewal immediately."

After another ten minutes of increasingly tense back-and-forth negotiation, Pam finally hung up the phone, a thoroughly gloomy, dark expression settling over her face.

Sam immediately stopped his pacing, rushing back to the desk. "Mom, what did she say?!"

Pam sighed heavily, rubbing her temples. "Kate Kong wants to act again, but she explicitly stated she won't re-sign with our agency if I keep trying to force the two of you together. Sigh. This is exactly why I told you not to push her boundaries too far, Sam. Now salvaging her contract is going to cost us significantly more money."

Sam sneered, crossing his arms dismissively as his fragile ego flared. "She is just a single actress, mother. We don't even need her. I can easily find more raw talent for Star Entertainment Group than she ever brings in. Look at how I scouted Ana, right?"

Pam looked up at her son, her expression flat. "I would have hired Ana regardless, and I would have signed her for a fraction of the cost if you hadn't immediately slept with her. So no, you didn't find her, you just had a casual one-night fling with her. Because of your mess, I had to pay her far more than her actual industry worth. Kate, on the other hand, brings in millions of dedicated fans without even trying. She could literally release a pile of trash and the fans would line up to pay for it. If she leaves us and signs with one of the other big four entertainment groups, we are completely screwed. Especially if she goes to the Tang family block. They would easily fund a movie with their own Tang family members in the lead role just to spite us."

Sam blinked, his confidence faltering slightly as he tried to salvage his pride. "But mommy, you always said I had a natural talent for finding good actresses?"

Pam looked at her spoiled boy, suppressing the inner realization that any young man with money could find hot women. She forced a soft, coddling smile onto her face to soothe his feelings. "Of course you do, sweetie, but you are still very young. Just keep studying and focusing on getting better. More importantly, make sure you secure all the leading roles you can within the university theater club to build up your profile."

Glancing over at the digital clock on the wall, she began gathering her luxury handbag. "It is getting late, so let's head home before your father starts to complain. He is such a spineless man, Sam, so make sure you never act like your father."

Sam nodded eagerly, following her out the door. "Yes mother, I know he just wants to write scripts all day and that is a total waste of time. I am going to take over the entire company for you, I promise, mom!"

A short while later, the executive luxury limo hummed smoothly down the dark roads. As the vehicle turned the final corner leading into their exclusive neighborhood, both mother and son noticed something completely off about the night sky.

Pam leaned forward, her brow furrowing as she noticed a thick haze drifting past the tinted glass. "Driver, are you smoking up front?"

The electronic privacy window glided down silently, revealing the wide, panicked eyes of the driver. Ahead of them, a massive, brilliant column of orange light shattered the darkness of the estate grounds. "No Mrs Sun, I believe the mansion might be entirely on fire!"

The driver slammed on the brakes, bringing the limo to a sudden stop at a safe distance from the property line. Down the driveway, the man of the house stood alongside a handful of trembling household staff, all of them completely helpless as they watched the building transform into a roaring, roaring inferno.

Pam stumbled out of the car door, her heels sinking into the turf as she rushed toward her pale husband. "W-What happened?! Where is the fire department? Where are the police?!"

Her husband turned his head slowly, his face entirely devoid of color as the heat washed over them. "The cell service went completely dead out of nowhere, and the fire spread too fast. The internal sensors claimed it was a sudden short in the kitchen appliances, but the automated sprinkler system completely failed to activate. Only the main fire alarms went off in time to warn us to get out of the house."

Ring! Ring! Ring!

Right at that exact second, the sharp chime of Pam’s smartphone shattered the crackle of the flames. She yanked it from her bag, her breath catching when she saw the caller ID flashing on the screen: Fire Department.

She answered instantly, her voice rising in a desperate shriek. "Hello?! We need help immediately! My entire home is burning down!"

Instead of a dispatcher, a completely chilling voice came through the line. It possessed no identifiable gender or age, sounding like a haunting combination of multiple voices overlaid into a calm, mechanical register. [This is your first and last warning, Pam Sun. If you touch Rick Lee-Tang or anyone around him, the next thing to burn will be your son, Sam Sun. But he will survive his burning. Barely. Have a nice day, I will be watching you. Click... do do do...]

Despite the intense, scorching heat radiating from the burning mansion, Pam’s entire body went completely ice-cold. Absolute dread filled her chest.

She knew with absolute certainty that this was the work of the infamous Fire Birds, but a terrifying question gripped her mind: how could they have possibly discovered her and her son's private conversation so quickly?

Then, the grim face of Chuck Ben flashed vividly in her memory.

Her husband tapped her shoulder, pointing down the road as his phone screen lit up again. "The signal is back. I'm calling the emergency line now."

But looking up at the collapsing roof, everyone knew the structure was already way past the point of saving.

Sam rushed up to her side, stamping his feet in a full-blown tantrum. "Mom! What about all my personal stuff and my computer?! I had all of those special casting couch movies I made stored on the hard drive!"

Pam looked down at her phone screen to check the incoming call log, her heart stopping when she realized the screen showed absolutely zero recent history. It was as if the terrifying warning call had never occurred, looking exactly like a vivid hallucination.

Before she could process the fear, one of the primary servants stepped forward, addressing the young master with a shaking voice. "Young Master Sam, the investigators are going to say it was your computer that overheated and initiated the blaze. One of the maids went upstairs to retrieve a portable extinguisher the moment the alarm tripped, but the terminal had already melted through the desk. Not even the main circuit breakers would trip to cut the current."

Sam’s face twisted into pure, defensive rage as he glared at the woman. "No! I explicitly turned the entire system off before I left for school this morning! Don't you dare try to blame your incompetence on me! You're fired! Mommy, fire this useless woman right now!"

The sirens finally wailed in the distance, and the fire crew arrived to begin battling the unstoppable blaze.

Hours later, the preliminary forensic team officially confirmed that the high-end computer terminal in Sam's bedroom was indeed the source of the fire. Furthermore, a massive software glitch within the home’s smart system had completely locked down the emergency valves, preventing the sprinklers from throwing a single drop of water.

When questioned about the sudden communication blackout, the telecommunications provider insisted there had been absolutely no interruption in service within the sector. They simply suggested that a massive power surge from the electrical failure might have briefly scrambled the local transceiver signals.

Pam tried to frantically explain to the lead detective that the Fire Birds were directly involved in the destruction of her property. But as the police completed their perimeter sweep, they found absolutely zero suspicious tracks, vehicles, or individuals within a five-mile radius over the previous twenty-four hours.

The detective leaned back, looking at her with an increasingly skeptical expression. "Mrs Sun, why exactly do you believe an elite syndicate would target your home?"

Pam opened her mouth, but she found herself completely paralyzed. She couldn't provide a single concrete answer without exposing her son's illegal recording activities and their active plotting against a high-ranking noble affiliate. The only detail she could offer was that her son and a student named Rick had engaged in a brief verbal altercation earlier that morning.

The look of pity and annoyance in the detective's eyes made it abundantly clear that they officially viewed her as a mad, grieving woman grasping at straws.

Once the authorities cleared the area, Pam grabbed her sulking, man-child son by the jacket, dragging him into the shadows away from the remaining staff. Her voice trembled with pure, unadulterated terror. "Do not mess with Rick ever again! Do you hear me?! This was a direct execution by the Fire Birds. That boy has the power to wipe us off the face of the earth whenever he pleases. You will not interfere with him, and you will stay far away from anyone associated with him! Got it?!"

Sam looked at her with the exact same dismissive, arrogant eyes she had just seen on the police officers. He let out a mocking chuckle, completely missing the gravity of the situation. "Don't worry mommy, I won't do anything obvious to him, he-he. Besides, there is no way that Rick lame-ass could have possibly orchestrated something this massive so quickly, mom. I think you are giving that student way too much credit."

Slap!

The sharp crack of her palm striking his cheek echoed through the courtyard. Sam stumbled back, his face twisting into a stupefied, shocked expression as his mother glared at him with absolute fury. "Do NOT mess with them like I just told you, you fucking idiot! They will literally kill you without a second thought! Do you understand me?!"

Although Sam quickly nodded his head to placate her rage, the stubborn, arrogant beat of his heart remained completely unchanged.

Meanwhile, on the thirty-ninth floor of the Velvet Tower, the quiet darkness of the advanced research suite was illuminated by a wall of high-definition monitors.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Lucy Shen’s fingers danced across the mechanical keyboard with blistering speed. The shifting code lines reflected cleanly off the lenses of her glasses, a brilliant, thoroughly satisfied smile adoring her lips as she finalized the digital counter-measures against the Sun family.

Every single corporate and personal account tied to their names was now deeply embedded within the banking watchlists for suspicious financial activity. Furthermore, every communication device registered to their family outside the tower walls had been successfully bugged, running her custom AI subroutine that quietly parsed and logged their real-time conversations.

She leaned back in her ergonomic chair, watching the data flow smooth out. "I will make sure to give Rick all of this juicy blackmail material, fufu. And I will personally distribute these hidden casting couch video files back to the victims so they know that little shit can no longer leverage threats against them. Hmm. Hell, I will even return that tramp Ana's tape to her. Maybe she can find a way to make herself useful to help my Rick."

After finishing up a few more tasks on her dashboard, Lucy leaned back in her chair and stared intently at the humming terminal, talking directly to her newly coded AI program. "I will let Rick upgrade you later. His otherworldly insights might make your architecture significantly better. Oh, our very first joint project. You will be like our shared baby or something, hmm?"

What Lucy was playing with was a highly advanced, proprietary AI program she had coded completely from scratch. It was designed to automatically filter through real-time phone calls, text logs, and messaging networks across the region, functioning exactly like the system Rick had expressed a deep interest in building back in the past. Lucy had been given years to develop and perfect things like this due to her long confinement, but now that she finally had someone working on her exact intellectual level, she could share her ideas freely.

"That is exactly what I will do. I will just call you Baby for now and let Rick rename you properly later, ufufu. As for that Sam Sun, I will let Rick deal with you personally when the time comes. But first, I have a very special, restricted military drug to use on you, you little shit. Your little wee-wee won't ever function again, fufu. It seems I know exactly how to utilize Ana Zi after all."

Down the road back inside the Lot 9 mansion, Jean Jia had just hung up her phone with Pam Sun, turning her head to address the thoroughly sulking Kate. "Stop being in such a grumpy mood, Kate. Rick only left the venue so quickly because of all the sudden, intense attention the fans were throwing his way. He simply wasn't prepared to meet you in that kind of public environment, but on the bright side, he still remembers you clearly and cares enough to tease you."

Kate puffed out her bottom lip to show her deep displeasure, crossing her arms tightly as she glared at her manager. "You explicitly told me to explain my identity to him exactly like that, so I did. It would have been significantly better to simply call him out for a private meeting, right?"

Jean shook her head firmly, rejecting the complaint. "Nope, it was definitely better to secure an unprepared, raw reaction from him. That way, you could easily see his true nature without any pre-rehearsed defenses. He remained mostly calm under pressure, and he made a very decisive, protective thought for you to not neglect your current job. Sure, you will have to track him down again later, but he will be at the New Years Eve Event for sure since Victoria will undoubtedly want him as her bodyguard."

Kate looked down at her lap, her expression shifting into a thoughtful look. "I think I should find out exactly where he lives and go talk to him directly. I think if we just sit down and share our pasts, we can completely rebuild our lost childhood friendship, right?!"

Jean’s eyes swam around as she ran through the logistical risks, quickly stepping in to temper her client's excitement. "Look, you can't just casually march down to wherever he lives, knock on his front door, and be like, hello! His current wives might not appreciate that at all. You know exactly where he goes to school, but if you show up on campus, a massive mob of fans will instantly swarm you, which is highly unsafe. At most, let us quietly secure his private phone number so you can call him. That is practically like being pen-pals again, right?"

Kate’s eyes instantly lit up at the suggestion, her cute head nodding rapidly in total agreement. "I want to know more about him. And what about last summer? He explicitly stated that he almost died. Did you manage to find out why?"

Jean nodded her head confirming the news. "It seems he had been brutally beaten by his own cousin's personal bodyguards and had passed out in an alley with a severe fever. His doctor wife, Hana, was the one to rescue him from the brink, and that was how they initially fell in love, I think. This is just the current rumor floating around from the gossipy household staff, though."

Kate tilted her head, her brow furrowing in confusion. "Rick is so incredibly good at fighting, so why would he ever let himself get beaten like that?"

"My best guess is that he did it to protect his sister and his close friends from getting targeted by the family block. Also, it might have been because he had already planned a massive, calculated revenge sequence against his bully, so he purposely played the pig while secretly being a tiger. He just acted weak to lower their guard."

Kate’s eyes looked incredibly firm, a wave of absolute confidence washing over her face. "That is exactly right! Rick was amazing even back when he was only ten years old, while I was still completely naive. He was a highly skilled actor even back then. Even though he still calls me an idiot girl, he always cared deeply about my feelings. You saw how he patted my back, handed me his handkerchief, and he even gave me back the envelope. That says he still cares about me."

Jean smiled, glad she had finally managed to pull Kate completely out of her depressing funk. The trick nowadays was simply to compliment Rick for something, and Kate would instantly bounce back.

Of course, both women would have facepalmed into eternity if they only knew that Rick lived exactly two luxury houses down the street from them...

Meanwhile, Ana Zi was sitting inside her own luxury apartment, scrolling through her private email terminal to see if her manager had logged any new production work for her.

Like many popular actresses and high-profile actors in the industry, maintaining multiple hidden identities online allowed for a small shred of personal freedom away from the prying press. But a brand-new notification that had bypassed her security and landed directly on her manager's secure email service caught her eye.

[Sender: Nephew-Hunter]

[Topic: Casting Couch]

Ana stared at the bizarre sender name, hesitating for a long moment before opening it. But the explicit nature of the topic made her believe it was a real threat, and pure curiosity finally forced her to click the link. Inside was a video file she knew all too well, accompanied by a cold statement that read exactly like the blackmail she had become accustomed to by now.

[Sam Sun has lost all of his movies that I now hold. I don't care about you or your body, so do one job for me and you will be free of this video and get revenge on Sam Sun, what do you say? Reply if you are interested. Or if you don't, Sam Sun will get his movie back.]

Ana gasped, slamming her hand onto the desk in a flash of sudden rage. "Well fuck! That little bastard really did not delete the file after all! He was planning on using it to force me to have sex with him again, wasn't he?!"

Filled with a mix of fear and curiosity, Ana quickly typed out a response and hit send. To her absolute horror, a reply materialized in her inbox faster than she had ever seen a human type.

[What do you want?]

[Good to see you are decisive. All I want you to do is pour a bit of medicine into his drink. It won't hurt him or his health, but he will no longer be able to take you to the casting couch again, interested?]

Ana’s fingers flew across the keyboard, her heart pounding against her ribs. [How can I trust you?]

[You can't, but I am female, so I have no interest in anything you have. I don't even care about your identity. I only want Sam Sun to live life worse than death for targeting my World, get me?]

Ana swallowed hard, looking at the screen. [This is all you want from me, nothing else?]

[You are useless to me other than a person that can deliver my Justice, so yes or no?]

Ana gripped the edges of her desk, her expression hardening as she came to a decision. [Yes.]

[Outside on your patio, my drone has dropped off a small case with a thumb-sized vial in it, just pour the whole content-into wine or another beverage, make sure he drinks it all, that is it. I will know if it works, and when it does, your video will not exist in this world.]

Before she could even type a confirmation, the entire email interface blinked. To her utter surprise, every single line of history coming and going from the sender was just completely gone, scrubbed entirely from the server logs.

Ana stood up, tightly wrapping her robe around herself as she unlocked the sliding glass doors and walked out onto her cold patio. There, sitting right in the center of the small outdoor table on the tenth story, was a tiny, unmarked black box exactly as described.

She picked up the container, her eyes frantically scanning the dark night sky, but she couldn't spot a single trace of a drone or any movement around her high-rise apartment. She rushed back inside, sliding the doors shut and throwing the heavy locks.

Once safe inside the warmth of her living room, she popped the latch on the tiny box to inspect the contents. Inside rested a thumb-sized vial filled with a substance that looked exactly like clear water, though the metallic container it was housed in looked incredibly futuristic and advanced. Ana closed the lid firmly, slipping the box down into the secure compartment of her purse before sitting on the couch to map out her approach.

After a long while, she nodded to herself, a cold smile forming on her lips. "I am thinking way too hard about this. The guy is completely stupid, so simply asking him to come over for a private drink right here is perfectly fine. Trying to slip it to him anywhere else in public might get me caught on security footage. That is the plan. He won't reject a private date with me."

And right at that exact moment, Sam Sun was about to walk straight into a grown man's worst living nightmare.