Chapter 6 — Yin-Yang Contract

Angel’s legal turmoil exploded across the internet, transforming into an unprecedented media bombshell. A surprise tax audit conducted by the revenue bureau moved with swift, ruthless efficiency, laying bare an entire web of deliberate tax evasion orchestrated by the studio bearing her name. The sheer magnitude of the embezzled sums was staggering, and the methods used were brazen to the point of nausea. Almost simultaneously, the police released an official statement confirming that Angel had been taken into criminal detention under heavy charges of blackmail, violation of privacy, and a laundry list of related offenses. In the blink of an eye, cyberspace erupted in a tempest of fury. The comment section beneath Angel’s verified social media accounts utterly collapsed; loyal fans fled in droves, anti-fans swarmed like locusts, and outraged netizens demanded immediate justice. Her historical scandals—artificially inflating her value, stealing coveted roles from peers, and viciously bullying industry newcomers—were dragged back into the light one by one, serving as the final straws that crushed her once-glamorous career.

Before long, an insider leaked a devastating detail: the victim whom Angel had blackmailed using intimate photographs of her breastfeeding was, in fact, her own sister-in-law. Public opinion detonated completely. She is inhuman! Using a nursing mother's private photos for blackmail? Is that something a living person would even do?! That brother of hers is a piece of work too, isn't he? His own wife bullied his sister, yet he had the nerve to say, She's under a lot of pressure, just give way to her a little bit? Peak idiocy or what? I genuinely pity the younger sister, trapped and drained by such a blood-sucking family. Truly the worst luck imaginable! Well done! With scum like this, beating them down so hard they can never stand up again is the only true justice!

The tide of public sentiment shifted overwhelmingly in my favor. The breastfeeding photograph—the very weapon Angel had planned to use to utterly ruin my reputation—was instead transformed into ironclad proof of her utter lack of humanity, earning me nationwide sympathy and staunch support. Angel’s career was officially obliterated. Every single brand associated with her instantly issued statements severing all ties. The television dramas and films in which she starred were either digitally recast or shelved indefinitely. Her studio, unable to shoulder the astronomical tax penalties and breach-of-contract lawsuits, rapidly declared bankruptcy and liquidation.

As for Thac—functioning both as Angel’s husband and the nominal shareholder of her studio—he naturally could not escape unscathed. He was not only legally bound alongside Angel to bear the colossal financial restitution, but he was also forced to shoulder the crushing debts left in the wake of the bankruptcy. He eventually came looking for me. That day, he waited outside my front door, having seemingly aged a decade overnight. His face was covered in unkempt stubble, his eye sockets deeply hollowed out, leaving no trace of his former arrogance.

Van...

His voice was raw and hoarse as he called out to me. I did not break my stride, walking straight past him as if he were nothing more than thin air.

Van, I was wrong. Can you please forgive me this time?

He scrambled after me, his fingers clutching desperately at my sleeve. Angel has already been sentenced; she has paid for what she did. We are brother and sister by blood, you can't possibly treat me like this!

I violently shook his hand off, my cold gaze locking onto his haggard, wretched face. Brother and sister by blood? When you demanded that I yield to Angel just because she wanted my home, did you remember we were blood? When you stood by and watched her try to steal the house our parents left me, did you ever care that we were brother and sister? Thac, it was you—you yourself—who decided you no longer wanted this sister.

His face instantly drained of all color, his lips trembling violently, utterly incapable of forming a single word.

I... I just loved her too much... he stammered pathetically.

That is your own cross to bear.

I cut him off sharply. Your love should not be paid for with my suffering. Your debts—do not ever expect me to shoulder them for you.

Leaving those final words hanging in the chill air, I turned, stepped across the threshold, and firmly shut the door behind me. From outside, the muffled sound of his desperate weeping echoed into the hallway. I did not look back. Because from the very moment he chose to condone Angel's atrocities, the bond of kinship between us had already perished.

Angel’s final verdict was officially handed down. Pushed down by the weight of attempted blackmail, invasion of privacy, and severe, systematic tax evasion, her sentences were combined into a definitive term of thirteen years behind bars. Once a celebrated starlet basking in the glow of a blindingly bright future, she had plummeted straight into the abyss at the very zenith of her fame. This conclusion offered a profound, visceral sense of vindication.

As for Thac, he vanished entirely from my sphere of existence. Chu Nien later mentioned that due to his insurmountable mountain of debt, he was hunted relentlessly by creditors everywhere he went; his home and cars were seized and auctioned off to the highest bidders. In the end, he was forced into a nomadic existence of desperate flight, scraping by through grueling odd jobs. On one occasion, while he was working as a common porter on a construction site, an old acquaintance recognized him, snapping a photo that once again set the internet ablaze. In the picture, his skin was weathered and darkened by the sun, his frame emaciated, his face carved with the deep trenches of hardship, and his eyes completely hollow—retaining not even a ghost of the arrogant young master of the Lam family he once was.

I merely glanced at the image for a fraction of a second before closing the page. Do I pity him? Perhaps. But all of it... was entirely his own choice.