Chapter 82: Exposed
Verse, real name Zhang Wei, formerly known as Zhang Xiaowei, once competed in Rap of China, but only made it to the Top 60.
Zhang Wei’s rap skills were average at best, but his luck was pretty good—
A mosquito-pitched version of his new song went viral on Douyin, and just when GreenFruit and Douyin were in their honeymoon phase of cooperation, he landed the role of rap mentor on Starlight.
It looked like his career was taking off.
But, just like those internet celebrities who got famous from “candid photos,” he became a nouveau riche with both fame and fortune—and mistook the luck that heaven had given him for his own strength.
Mo Li took a deep breath: “…”
The good news: her resignation paperwork was already in process.
The bad news: it wasn’t done yet, so for now, she was still Zhang Wei’s manager.
She opened Puppet on Strings, which Zhang Wei had released behind her back. With every line she heard, Mo Li’s vision went dark.
It happened so many times it was like watching a slideshow.
Forcing herself to finish the entire song, she could only laugh bitterly at herself.
The whole track was full of sloppy plosive bursts and random, nonsensical English words. The delivery was downright unpleasant, but even that wasn’t the main problem—it was the lyrics.
How did he even dare write this?
Yue Zhaolin was indeed the “royal” the show used as a sacrificial lamb—but that was in the past.
Starlight was already on its eighth episode, and the third round of pay-to-vote was about to start. At this point, reporting “traffic over quality” or “manipulating public opinion” was useless.
Capital would do everything it could to protect the show.
Mo Li nearly lost it. “Do you even realize that once this song is out, you’re not making trouble for Yue Zhaolin—you’re making trouble for capital?!”
Verse: “I know. I’ve been backed into a corner. No work, can’t even afford to eat. I can only go all out—it’s the struggle of a trapped beast!”
—Ever since Verse’s hired water army was exposed, he was barred from attending the finale night. The two other music variety show guest appearances he’d lined up vanished, and a music festival gig was gone too.
This was the “dead end” Verse was talking about.
“…”
“You’ve acted so well you’ve started believing yourself.”
Verse: “…What did you say?”
Mo Li gave a cold laugh. “Last year you were still doing bar residencies, writing lyrics for Douyin influencers, and thanking the heavens if you got to perform at a crowded live house.”
“And now only music variety shows and festivals are worthy of you, is that it?”
Capital’s suppression of Verse amounted to nothing more than cutting him from those shows; as for underground competitions or live houses, those people wouldn’t even waste a glance on him.
So Verse saying he had no work? Couldn’t survive?
Utter crap.
Ever since Mo Li became his manager, she knew perfectly well he was earning plenty.
“‘Struggle of a trapped beast,’ huh? Be honest—your real reason for dissing Yue Zhaolin is that your character arc in the third public performance flopped, and now you’re lashing out in humiliation, right?”
“You—!”
Mo Li was exhausted from dealing with the “brilliance” of stupid people. “Is your brain just for decoration? Can’t you try using that pig brain of yours for once?”
“When Yue Zhaolin’s ‘sacrificial lamb’ storyline gets exposed, who’s the first to take the hit?”
The fans would only feel sorry for Yue Zhaolin, and then indiscriminately fire at everyone else.
Verse forced himself to stay calm. “I’m prepared. Whatever happens, let it come at me.”
Mo Li closed her eyes: “…”
He still didn’t get that the first to take the hit would be the production team? At most, he’d just be collateral damage. And he actually thought being cursed at counted as clout, trying to ride the wave of infamy?
Verse clicked his tongue, pulled out his phone. The Weibo post he’d made was already completely overrun by fans controlling the comments section.
[Awful] — 60k likes
[A hopeless illiterate trying to rap. Even my third-grade little sister knows you need to add an “s” after “say” when it’s third-person singular.] — 50k likes
[Maybe the “s” is just silent.] — 47k likes
[What’s he even rapping about? First it’s soulless puppets, then it’s capital’s marionettes, then aiding the wicked. Who exactly did Yue Zhaolin help, that you need to be “ab*sed” for it?] — 45k likes
[I hate drama that smears people. If it weren’t connected to Yue Zhaolin, I wouldn’t even have clicked in. Now my ears are workplace-injured for the day—thanks a lot.] — 41k likes
Verse cursed under his breath: “Brain-dead fans.”
He kept scrolling, looking for comments from male fans. If anyone mentioned Yue Zhaolin by name, he planned to reply with a cryptic “keep real.”
Verse kept scrolling—until suddenly, his expression froze like he’d seen a ghost. He shot to his feet, nearly knocking over the water glass on the coffee table.
[Found a news report from 2023. It’s censored, but the more I look at it, the more familiar it seems. Is this hit-and-run suspect surnamed Zhang… you, Zhang Xiaowei?]
[Didn’t people always say not to leave traces? This Twitter account is yours, right? Looks like it’s got some illegal content in there. @ChinaInternetPolice]
[I saw someone break it down—turns out the only song you’ve ever had go viral was plagiarized. Want to come take a look yourself? @MusicEnthusiast]
“Impossible…”
Zhang Wei was in disbelief.
How could these things still get dug up? He’d clearly smoothed it all over. If this blew up, he really would be done for!
[So, are you going to play dead or respond? I think you’d better say something—after all, aren’t you the one who loves barging into livestreams to force people to respond?]
[Real name Zhang Xiaowei, but you went out of your way to change it to Zhang Wei. Honestly, the character “Wei” is wasted on you—petty-minded and as dumb as a pig.]
[Yue Zhaolin actually picked you for the third public performance, but you were the one who pushed it away. So what’s with this tantrum now? Are you secretly in love with Yue Zhaolin?]
How did this get exposed too?!
Zhang Wei’s brow twitched. He quickly searched the keywords on his phone, suspicion written all over his face. “Could it be Xingqiong making a move?”
“……”
Mo Li stared at him with dead-fish eyes.
“Don’t bother looking. It’s definitely the production team’s pet marketing accounts leaking it.”
“You pretty much just exposed the whole ‘Yue Zhaolin was never a real royal pick, just a sacrificial pawn’ thing—but the fan circles haven’t caught on yet.”
Since the fans hadn’t made the connection, the production team had to act first—before they did. They were steering the reason for Verse’s diss toward the song selection for the third public performance.
The show’s PR team was sharp. This move had a high chance of working, since Verse and Yue Zhaolin’s conflict had started over song choice.
There was at least some “evidence.”
Whatever the method, as long as they could divert the fans’ attention, it worked. And as for Verse—a rapper with no real footing—well, if he got sacrificed, so be it.
Mo Li didn’t bother saying more. She just made a mental note to push her resignation paperwork along.
She might have the title of “manager,” but Verse’s true “confidant” had always been his cousin. Mo Li was just grateful he’d never treated her as one of his own.
Before leaving, she glanced at her phone again. The hot comments didn’t mention “fake royal” at all.
She sighed. Anyone who knew the inside story could tell from Verse’s lyrics what he was talking about. But the fans—still kept completely in the dark—were almost pitiful.
The production team thought so too.
Just when they were certain they could smooth things over this time by sacrificing Verse, waiting for the storm to pass, Yue Zhaolin’s largest fan support site made a move.
On Weibo, Bilibili, Douyin—across all platforms—they released an analysis video.
The title was simple:
“Fake Royal, Real Sacrifice: The First ‘Sacrificial Royal’ in Talent Show History—Yue Zhaolin”
…
Opening the video, the first thing shown was a line of white text on a black background:
[This video is jointly produced by @TideAndMoonCandyShop @MoonAnti-BlackSquad @StarMoonSupportBlog @MoonScissorhandsSquad, among others.]
Then came a warm, steady voice:
[Hello everyone, this is Moonlight-wishing, a Yue Zhaolin support account.
I’m sure everyone has seen the trending topic about Puppet on Strings, the song written by rap mentor Zhang Wei. The target of the diss in this song is Yue Zhaolin.
Like all of you, I wondered—what kind of conflict could arise between a trainee and a mentor that would make the mentor release a diss track aimed at the trainee?
Later, I came across an exposé—
In the song selection for the third public performance’s mentor-collaboration stage, Zhang Wei refused Yue Zhaolin in order to craft his own image. Unexpectedly, Yue Zhaolin wasn’t bothered and simply chose someone else.
After that, the two held a grudge.
At first glance, this explanation sounds plausible. Given Zhang Wei’s lyric-writing skills, this possibility is actually quite high.
But thinking about it more carefully—something doesn’t add up.
Because the song selection happened several days ago, and they only recorded the third public performance yesterday. Which means there was a whole week between the song selection and the diss.
Isn’t that time gap a little too long?
So, sensing that something wasn’t quite right, we went back to examine the lyrics written by Mentor Zhang Wei and pulled out a key passage:
“Once mocking the puppet masters behind the scenes, Yue Zhaolin—who struggled not to be a marionette—forgot the road he came from, and became capital’s puppet on strings.”
Everyone knows Yue Zhaolin has always been called “royal.” So how could there be any talk of “struggling” against anything?
Although Mentor Zhang Wei’s wording is incoherent, he is a mentor on Starlight and has close access to the trainees.
So in this little “summary” of his, perhaps part of it is actually true.
Which part?
By reasoning from the given conditions, we can conclude—perhaps from the very start, Yue Zhaolin was never actually “royal.”
With that conclusion in mind, looking back at past events, certain things that had long puzzled Tide suddenly made perfect sense.
Take Yue Zhaolin’s first big breakout at the Zhaozhou Music Festival—he was widely criticized for “stealing Actual’s camera time.” Would his agency really not know such an arrangement would get him flamed?
Of course they knew.
Even if they wanted to promote a newcomer, arranging a proper stage for Yue Zhaolin at Zhaozhou Music Festival shouldn’t have been hard for Xingqiong, right?
So why didn’t they?
Because everything was done to build the image of “Yue Zhaolin is royal.”
In the pre-recut version of the first episode, why did Yue Zhaolin have only thirty seconds of screen time? Why, when it was clearly him singing, was the camera given to Fu Xunying instead?
Among all the trainees in Class A, only Yue Zhaolin’s theme song focus cam received no mentor commentary.
During the first public performance song selection—which took place while Episode 1 was airing—several trainees made a point of showing, on camera, that they wanted to avoid Yue Zhaolin.
But by the second public performance song selection, enthusiasm toward him was suddenly high.
Was it a song choice problem?
No—it was a people problem.
From the timeline, the turning point in the trainees’ attitudes happened between the first and second public performances—right when Episode 1’s re-edited version aired.
And as everyone knows, in a closed-door survival show, someone is always sneaking a phone inside.
When Yue Zhaolin had little screen time, the other trainees avoided him; when his screen time increased, they started flocking back.
That shift shows that, earlier on, the program didn’t give him the kind of privileges a “royal” should have.
Things like multi-angle camera coverage or multiple microphones—obvious perks—were missing, and that absence led the trainees to misjudge his standing.
So why, if he was “royal,” did he not receive those perks? Because he was just a tool for the program to draw traffic, meant to be discarded once used.
By now, you can probably guess—at the start, Yue Zhaolin had been handed the “sacrificial royal” script.
The early “stealing Actual’s music-festival camera time” incident was just foreshadowing for that script.
But the show’s plummeting viewership forced the production team to pivot.
In every performance and behind-the-scenes clip afterward, there were always several royals around him—his role shifted from “sacrificial royal” to “mutual-benefit partner.”
If the production hadn’t changed course, what would have happened to him?
A brief blaze of popularity, coupled with relentless online ab*se accusing him of being unworthy of his position.
And in fact, even now, the labels “royal” and “stepping on seniors to rise” are stuck to his name—they’re already reasons people insult him. The fan anti-black team deals with hundreds of report pages daily, wading through vile nicknames and fabrications.
Even if he were later eliminated from the show, this would remain his indelible “original sin.”
Maybe the company could whitewash him—but sorry, that’s just unacceptable.
Moreover, the company and the production team let Yue Zhaolin, this “fake royal,” pave the way for several “real royals.” Please forgive us for being unable to understand—and unwilling to try.
After rewatching all eight episodes, we are once again certain that what we love is Yue Zhaolin, who puts his all into every stage performance with seriousness and respect.
So this time, it’s our turn to go all out.
With the third round of voting approaching, this should have been the time to gather our strength.
Perhaps the power of fans cannot shake a mountain, but we still want to be a little whimsical and give it a try—
Therefore, in this joint decision by multiple fan sites, starting from April 21, 20XX, we will completely stop spending money on the show.
Tide has a good memory and has never forgotten the derogatory nickname “Lao Sheng,” which arose from accusations that he stole a senior’s stage.
When Tide first entered the fandom, just seeing those two characters in anti-black posts would make their heart seize.
So, why should we endure it?]