979 Internal Conflic
The impulsive netizens had long been accustomed to concluding cases on Weibo and pa.s.sing sentence on the cloud servers.
By the time Weibo had recovered its servers, the impatient netizens had already discovered that the data had been reverted by a few days and that all the data produced in the interim was gone. They became even more frustrated.
Everyone’s rage was blindly turned toward Prime Minister Tan’s entire family.
The active Weibo users who had been waiting all night began to dig up information on all the bloggers related to this incident.
The remaining process didn’t need Gu Nianzhi to step in since the truth was being unearthed by the netizens.
“Oh my G.o.d! Look at what I discovered?! Nearly all the fans of this blogger are part of the Internet Water Army!”
“Here’s the screenshot as proof. These accounts only follow the blogger and the official Weibo account for the First Lady’s company!”
“Could someone be purposely smearing Prime Minister Tan?”
“Smear, as if! I’ll show you how all these fake fans belong to this one company!”
“See that? It’s Mrs. Tan’s company!”
“Why is Mrs. Tan smearing her own husband? She even revealed herself too…”
“You’d have to ask Mrs. Tan about that.”
As a result, Cai Songyin’s Weibo account gained several million fans in a few hours. Countless questions were posted under her latest Weibo post.
Everyone was asking why she hadn’t gone ahead and divorced her husband if she hated him so much for cheating.
Since she had done such a horrible thing online thing, her husband’s political career would obviously be destroyed anyway.
By this time, the Cai and Tan families were preparing to have dinner in the private room of a restaurant. Everyone’s expression made them look as if they were wooden sculptures. No one spoke and no one moved.
Cai Songyin and Tan Dongbang had been privately chatting in the separate section of the private room for a long time now.
Tan Guiren and Cai Shengnan were following the latest updates online.
When they saw that the prime minister’s short video had actually been directly promoted by Cai Songyin’s Internet Water Army, they were flabbergasted and nearly speechless.
Cai Shengnan was the first one to react.
Just what on earth was going on?!
Just now, her auntie had vehemently claimed that the video was fake and that someone was framing them. She’d even asked Cai Shengnan to become the prime minister’s lawyer employed by the Ministry of Justice to represent them in the lawsuit. But in a blink of an eye, her auntie had become the one who’d tripped up her uncle!
So, how was she supposed to sue!?
Would she have to help her uncle sue her auntie?!
…
It only took about an hour and a half’s time for the short video to go viral. As soon as they could, Weibo shut down all its global servers and restarted with backup data copies.
In that hour and a half’s time, Tan Dongbang and Cai Songyin had been in the separate section of the restaurant’s private room, not coming out at all.
From the Weibo activity appearing on phones and the way the netizens were revealing all the Internet Water Army’s Weibo accounts one by one, everything pointed to Cai Songyin’s Internet Water Army company!
“You! It was actually you!” Tan Dongbang was absolutely livid. He raised his hand to slap Cai Songyin hard across the face. “You’re too vicious! How could you do something like this to me?”
Cai Songyin held her face, unable to believe her ears. “You’re saying I did this?! Tan Dongbang, you’re brainless! What good does it do me if I hurt you?!”
“Because you’ve hated me ever since what happened between me and Gu Yanran! I was even going to ask why you were so kind-hearted enough to forgive me in the end. You were just waiting for things to come to this! You want me to never recover from that scandal, don’t you?” Tan Dongbang thought that he could never live with Cai Songyin again.
Men were like that. Their love would never revert to its past purity once they’d been cheated.
And love without trust would cause a previously doting husband and wife to become strangers to each other.
Cai Songyin truly felt disappointed, but she was unable to tell him the truth.
After all, she was the one who’d created the plan to force Gu Nianzhi out and take advantage of Huo Shaoheng. Tan Dongbang certainly didn’t know anything about it.
Of course, things had already escalated to this point. The short essay she’d commissioned hadn’t appeared at all, so she wouldn’t reveal herself and give herself even more trouble.
“If I’ve hated you since then, then I should’ve just done nothing when you were impeached. Why did I need to do all this?! Didn’t you see that I also appeared in the video of the two of you! If I was the one filming it, then why would I appear on camera?! Do you always think with what’s in your pants?!” Cai Songyin refused to back down and rushed over to slap Tan Dongbang. “Not even my parents ever lifted a finger against me in my entire life. Tan Dongbang, how dare you hit me!”
Tan Dongbang felt a bit guilty when he was slapped by Cai Songyin. Now that she had slapped him too, it could be considered canceled out. Covering his face, he sneered, “If that’s not what happened, then how will you clear yourself from this? Cai Songyin, I truly underestimated you! That’s right, you’re the queen of media, the CEO who controls half the media world. You only have to lift a finger to crush someone to death. But I never thought that you would disregard the love between husband and wife by doing such a vicious thing to me!”
“Tan Dongbang, look at your own conscience, then look at your own brain! Are you saying this because the water in your brain has flowed into your heart?”
Cai Songyin glared fiercely at Tan Dongbang. “At a time like this, I must be being framed by someone else! You still won’t believe me? I already had Shengnan prepare. We must find the mastermind behind this and sue them to death! This is not the time for us to argue, so please put away your pettiness and overcome this hards.h.i.+p with me!”
This was truly the correct way of handling the situation.
As angry as Tan Dongbang felt, he needed to suppress it. “Fine, let’s go home and have someone investigate this matter. Then we’ll begin the lawsuit.” Tan Dongbang didn’t want to go crazy anymore.
Rubbing his gloomy cheek, he quickly walked out of the separate section of the restaurant. Cai Songyin followed after him.
As soon as the couple walked out of the separate section, they immediately put on calm smiles. Their expressions changed very quickly.
“Mummy! Daddy! Are you guys okay?” The extremely worried Tan Guiren rushed over. “What’s going on? Are the things that were posted online true?”
“Of course it’s fake. Your daddy and I were framed by someone else. This person wants to harm us,” Cai Songyin replied calmly. “Don’t be afraid, we will handle this matter.”
Standing before the Cai and Tan families, Cai Songyin made a promise to everyone. “Today’s incident was purely an accident. We will now be returning to investigate this matter. Please help yourselves to dinner, we are leaving now.”
Cai Songyin brought Tan Guiren and Cai Shengnan outside.
Tan Dongbang was the prime minister. He had the national Secret Service personnel protecting them whenever he went, even if it was only a family gathering.
But as soon as they stepped out of the restaurant, they were immediately surrounded by the reporters who had rushed over.
All sorts of cameras and phones were pointed in their direction. Microphones of all sizes extended toward them.
“Prime Minister Tan, may I ask what was going on in the short video that went viral on Weibo today?”
“Mrs. Tan, we heard that the links were promoted by your company. What’s the meaning of this?”
Under the pitch-black night sky, the street lamps glowed a dim yellow. As soon as Tan Dongbang saw the reporters, his image on the reporter’s camera equipment looked like it had when he’d been campaigning for the election.
Standing ramrod straight, he replied with elegance, “I already know about today’s incident and am about to rush over to hold a meeting with the Cabinet. I can guarantee to everyone that I will find the mastermind behind this incident and bring him to justice!”
The reporters heard the hidden implication and immediately peppered him with questions. “Prime Minister Tan, you’re saying that someone is framing you? But that video has been circulated before and you never questioned the video’s authenticity.”
Of course he hadn’t questioned it. Tan Dongbang hadn’t appeared in the video at that time, so why would he deny it? Would he give himself more trouble?
While Tan Dongbang internally cursed the reporter in question for being a total idiot, he got into his bulletproof car with a smile.
The Secret Service security personnel immediately pushed the reporters away. “Please move aside everyone, please allow Prime Minister Tan’s car to leave.”
Cai Songyin didn’t say a thing the entire time as she followed Tan Dongbang into the car. Tan Guiren wore huge sungla.s.ses and kept her head down as she followed Cai Shengnan.
The car quickly drove away, leaving the throngs of reporters behind.
Tan Guiren turned around and removed her sungla.s.ses. Rubbing her eyes, she sighed. “Mummy, who could be so terrible? They are too horrible. We must sue them!”
Cai Shengnan snickered and patted Tan Guiren’s head. “Cousin, you really have been protected too well by auntie.”
“What is it? Did I say something wrong?”
“This incident isn’t that simple.” Cai Shengnan’s smile faded. “From the information available online, we don’t even know who the mastermind is. How would we sue them? Who would we sue? The air?”
“Mastermind? Could it not be the blogger who uploaded the video?” Tan Gurien asked in confusion.
Cai Songyin quickly said, “My a.s.sistant already investigated this. The blogger said his account was hacked. This was a hacker’s doing.”
“Mummy, even you don’t know who framed us?” Tan Guiren balled her hands into fists. “These people are too horrible, we can’t let them off!”
Tan Guiren wanted to vomit at the thought of the disgusting video. Luckily, her cousin had covered up half the phone at the time, so she couldn’t see her father clearly. All she’d seen was Gu Yanran’s pale skin…
In Tan Guiren’s heart, her mom Cai Songyin was fully capable of anything.
Even when her father had been impeached by the Senate, she had been able to help him overcome the challenge. This certainly wouldn’t be an exception.
However, Cai Songyin only wanted to cry. Where would she go looking for the mastermind at a time like this?!
Cai Shengnan understood people and the real world better than Tan Guiren, so she took out her phone and said to Cai Sonyin, “Auntie, a computer expert must be involved in this incident. We should find a computer expert to investigate this.”
“Right, right, right! A computer expert! We must find a computer expert to help us!” Tan Dongbang nodded quickly. “Shengnan, do you know anyone in that field?”
“There must be computer experts in the Cabinet’s Ministry of Information Technology,” Cai Shengnan reminded Cai Songyin subtly. “How about we have uncle speak with the Minister of Information Technology?”
Cai Songyin agreed quickly, “What a great suggestion! Dongbang, go ask the Ministry of Information Technology to bring over a few computer experts. Have them investigate properly what on earth is going on.”
Tan Dongbang called the Minister of Information Technology once again.
However, the Minister of Information Technology immediately told him, “Prime Minister Tan, it’s not that I don’t want to help you. The problem is that Weibo restarted its data backup copies using data from a few days ago. Even if we have computer experts investigate this today, they won’t be able to find any information now.”