Gu Mengyang listened and raised his eyebrows.
After a moment, he nodded at Gu Zhiqi, "Okay, tomorrow we’ll go to Yueqi Village first, and the day after I’ll take you to the company for a tour."
Before Gu Zhiqi could say anything, he heard Gu Mengyang add, "These three are all artists who have been doing well in the company. I don’t know much about the other two, but that Zhou Qingyan, I know a bit about her. She’s currently causing a dispute over her contract and will soon no longer be with Mengyang Entertainment."
"Zhou Qingyan?" Gu Zhiqi raised an eyebrow upon hearing this.
"She’s an actress at the company. Her acting skills are very average, but she has a strongly loyal fan base and has been quite popular for the past two years." When he mentioned Zhou Qingyan, Gu Mengyang slightly furrowed his brows.
Zhou Qingyan was his mentor’s daughter.
After entering the entertainment industry, his mentor had asked him to take care of her, so he had the company sign her up. He even personally negotiated a few good resources for her, not really expecting her to bring much profit to the company.
At first, Zhou Qingyan’s performance was nothing remarkable.
But two years ago, she suddenly became hugely popular with a "koi fish" persona, and she soared to A-list status overnight.
With greater fame, her attitude changed as well.
After becoming an A-lister, she started demanding an upgraded contract.
When she first joined Mengyang Entertainment, out of respect for his mentor, he had already exceptionally offered her an S-level contract.
Now, she was actually expecting the highest, an SSS-level contract.
It’s important to know that though she had a lot of traffic, Mengyang Entertainment prioritized nurturing actors with real skills and talent. Zhou Qingyan lacked both, so Gu Mengyang didn’t agree to the contract upgrade.
When he refused to upgrade the contract, Zhou Qingyan started making a fuss about terminating it.
This had been going on for several days.
It wasn’t that he disagreed with the termination; rather, when he agreed, Zhou Qingyan refused to terminate the contract herself, leveraging her status as his mentor’s daughter and demanding unreasonable terms.
Of course, he wouldn’t agree, so the standoff continued.
As Gu Zhiqi listened to Gu Mengyang’s words, a touch of deep thought colored his eyes. He reached into his pocket, took out his phone, and searched for Zhou Qingyan in the browser.
She seemed indeed very popular; a search brought up numerous entries associated with her name.
"This one?" He showed the search results, an artist profile page, to Gu Mengyang.
"Chubby Chiu, target the hot entries related to her," Gu Zhiqi instructed.
"Okay~" Chubby Chiu cheerfully responded, then dived into Gu Zhiqi’s phone to begin searching for trending entries about Zhou Qingyan.
Soon, the phone’s screen filled with countless highlighted entries related to Zhou Qingyan.
The opinions on her were highly polarized.
The positive ones elevated her to the skies with terms like "fairy," "koi fish," "good temperament," "graceful and generous," "peerless beauty," and especially many entries claiming she was a koi fish.
The negative ones were the likes of "poor acting," "ugly," "nine years undetected," "plastic surgery freak," and "green tea bitch."
Gu Zhiqi’s beautiful eyes narrowed slightly. Then he raised his eyebrows and said to Chubby Chiu, "Target the ’koi fish’ entry and pinpoint the related events."
In no time, countless posts and microblogs with #ZhouQingyanKoiFish appeared on the phone.
Most were from Zhou Qingyan’s fans, seemingly with real-life stories about how their luck improved after following Zhou Qingyan, even winning the lottery.
Looking at these cases, Gu Zhiqi’s gaze grew deeper.
After selectively reading a few posts, he lost interest and put away his phone, then said to Gu Mengyang, "Let’s not go to Yueqi Village first. We’ll go to your company tomorrow."
"Your destiny has been stolen, and you’re even shrouded by some bad luck. I’m afraid your misfortune might rub off on me."