Inside Dormitory 228:
"What the hell? Some son of a bitch is spreading rumors about my brother!" Qin Huai's angry voice rang out.
When they got back to the dorm, Qin Huai had planned to browse the campus confession wall to see if any girls had posted confessions for him. Not only did he not see any, but the entire confession wall was filled with posts about Ye Qiuli!
"I think there's only one possibility. Think about it—Ye Qiuli wasn't on the confession wall all day today, and suddenly he's all over it tonight! And of all things, it's packed with this much negative stuff," Li Nuo analyzed, routinely pushing up his glasses.
"Are you saying it's because of Jiang Ran?" Qing Ke realized immediately.
That was it! Why hadn't he thought of that? Too many people had their eyes on Jiang Ran! It definitely had to be because Ye Qiuli got too close to Jiang Ran today!
"So you're telling me all these smear posts about me are purely because I sang a song with Jiang Ran today?!" Ye Qiuli asked in disbelief.
He had wondered if it stemmed from the strange illness he suffered from, but it had never crossed his mind that Jiang Ran was the reason!
"By the way, Ye Qiuli, were you actually a young master of that Ye family?" Qin Huai asked, pointing at one of the posts.
There was a trending post on the confession wall stating that Ye Qiuli used to be the eldest young master of the Nansheng Ye Family, but a few years ago it was exposed that the true young master was someone else. The post claimed that Ye Qiuli had usurped the real young master's identity for over a decade and had even plotted to harm the real heir, which led to him being cast out of the family. Qin Huai actually seemed to have heard of this Nansheng Ye Family before.
"Uhm..."
"That part is true, but I didn't plot to harm him! He was the one who threw me out!" Ye Qiuli spoke up after a brief silence.
He didn't even know how to explain it; to this day, he still didn't know why he had been driven out of the Ye Family.
"Holy cow! You really are that fake young master from the Nansheng Ye Family?!" Li Nuo asked, utterly shocked.
Although his family was based in Modu, he had heard the name of the Nansheng Ye Family through his family's business networks. Ye Changsheng was the richest man in Nansheng, and the Ye Group under his command spanned the entire globe! You could see the shadow of the Ye family in every industry imaginable.
"Can you hear yourself talking? Who cares about some Ye Family! Come to Kyoto and they're nothing more than small potatoes!" Qing Ke glared at Li Nuo as he spoke.
He wasn't putting down the Ye Family just to make Ye Qiuli feel better; it was simply because the Ye Family was nothing more than an upstart, completely incomparable to old-money families whose lineages spanned generations. The family behind him had genuinely taken part in the Long Kingdom's war of resistance and had even made monumental contributions to the founding of the nation!
"It's fine, Qing Ge! I really don't look like a young master anyway!" Ye Qiuli smiled with resignation.
His roommates still cared far too much about his feelings. He had already endured plenty of cold mockery and sarcastic remarks over the years, and he could honestly say this wasn't even the first time he'd been the target of rumors on a school confession wall! That was why, even with such an incident blowing up tonight, his heart didn't fluctuate much. Campus gossip like this didn't need to be managed; in a few days, nobody would even remember it.
"How can this be fine! Your Qing Ge here just can't stand this kind of rumor-mongering garbage!"
"Just wait and see, within half an hour I guarantee there won't be a single word left on that wall about you," Qing Ke said, tapping away on his phone as he sent a message.
"You don't need to go through the trouble, Qing Ge!" Ye Qiuli looked at Qing Ke and said.
He truly didn't want to trouble Qing Ke by pulling strings over such a trivial matter just to help him out.
"It's no trouble at all! We're brothers in the same dorm! Don't let me find out who started these rumors, or I'm going to beat them to a pulp!" Qin Huai flexed the muscles on his arm and said fiercely.
"Qing Ge, you don't need to help anymore! The confession wall has been taken down! Even the account is gone!" Li Nuo suddenly yelled, staring at his phone.
"What? Let me see!"
"What the hell? Who has that kind of pull? Could the school have stepped in?" Qin Huai searched for the confession wall account, only to find a notice stating the account had been banned, leaving him in utter disbelief.
The four of them sat around in a circle, staring blankly at one another.
"There's no way the school would interfere in something like this. Even if they did intervene, they wouldn't ban the account!" Li Nuo analyzed.
"Could it be?!"
After racking his brains, Qing Ke suddenly had the most unlikely yet most plausible name pop into his head.
"Jiang Ran!" Qing Ke and the other two shouted in unison as they looked at Ye Qiuli.
"Seriously, Ye Qiuli, what on earth is your relationship with Jiang Ran?!"
"Jiang Ran never pays attention to this kind of stuff!"
"I don't know! I... could it really be? Why... why would she help me?!"
Ye Qiuli had considered Jiang Ran, but it obviously seemed impossible. He refused to believe a cold, aloof person like Jiang Ran would ever lend him a hand.
Just as the group was still in the middle of a heated discussion, the phone sitting on the desk suddenly lit up!
[Raise a Fox: I took care of the confession wall issue. The mastermind behind it is your younger brother, Ye Aotian!]
"And you still say you have nothing to do with Jiang Ran! Isn't this Jiang Ran's WeChat?! My goddess! I haven't even managed to add her on WeChat!" Qin Huai stared at Ye Qiuli's phone, his throat tightening.
Jiang Ran's WeChat ID had long since been exposed, and this ID and profile picture were unmistakably hers!
"We only added each other because we had to split the lyrics for our performance today. We don't have anything going on, we haven't even chatted. If you don't believe me, look!" Ye Qiuli unlocked his phone with a helpless expression and showed them his completely blank chat interface with Jiang Ran.
He had no idea why Jiang Ran would help him deal with the confession wall issue. Perhaps she just thought he was pitiful!
"I think rather than focusing on that, we should be paying attention to the last part of Jiang Ran's message! Ye Qiuli, do you have a younger brother?"
Li Nuo asked with a rather strange look on his face.
"I don't have a brother, but I know who she's talking about!"
"Who?"
"The true young master of the Ye Family! Ye Aotian! He's a few months younger than me, but we have no blood relation!" Ye Qiuli said through clenched teeth.
He genuinely never expected that the mastermind behind this whole mess would be Ye Aotian! Even after he had left the Ye Family, Ye Aotian still refused to let him go!
Back then, Ye Aotian had talked to him, claiming that as long as he left the Ye Family, they would never bother him again. Now that he had truly left, Ye Aotian had gone back on his word.
"Screw that bastard! Even if Ye Qiuli left the Ye Family, he was still his nominal older brother after all!" Qin Huai's chest heaved violently with anger.
"Don't be impulsive, Qin Huai. This matter can't be solved with violence! Wait until I have someone dig up some dirt on this guy first! When that time comes, we'll give him a taste of his own medicine!" Li Nuo patted Qin Huai on the back, his voice ice-cold.
He absolutely would not stand for anyone bullying his new friend, Li Nuo!
"Look... Qing Ge, Qin Huai, Li Nuo, don't be rash. The problem is already resolved now, so please don't trouble yourselves any further over this! I don't want to have anything to do with Ye Aotian anymore," Ye Qiuli said sincerely.
He truly didn't want to burden others with his personal problems, nor did he want his feud with Ye Aotian to ruin the friendships he had so hard-won.
Ye Qiuli's emotions were a tangled mess.
His mind felt dizzy.
He had that frustrating feeling of having strength but nowhere to apply it—clearly he was the one who had been wronged, yet he didn't dare to strike back.