UCS Chapter 124.1

\#Shocking — The Award-Winning Mr. Xiao

\#Too Hot To Handle? Xiao Yusheng’s Extreme Seduction of Handsome Police Officer

\#Award-Winning Mr. Xiao Allegedly Has Performance Issues, Takes Medication for Stimulation

In the dead of night, news about Xiao Yusheng surged simultaneously onto the trending list and stayed there.

Xiao Yusheng’s fame was immense. The night owls who were still awake clicked into the topic without a moment’s hesitation. Many of his fans were actually smiling as they clicked, expecting to see what fabrication a clickbait account had cooked up this time.

[It’s the start of spring. Clickbait accounts have to hit their targets. Understandable.]

[What can you expect when our film emperor is this famous.]

[These accounts really have nerve — wait, could this be a behind-the-scenes clip someone took on set without permission?]

Yet when they opened the video, every one of them was stunned.

In the footage, Xiao Yusheng was draped against a man, cheeks flushed pink, eyes languid and alluring, fingers hooked into the man’s collar. Anyone with eyes could see what Xiao Yusheng was after.

The video was obviously taken covertly, and was in infuriatingly high definition, high enough to make out the teardrop mole at the corner of Xiao Yusheng’s eye with perfect clarity. There was no angle from which anyone could try to argue it was not him.

After all, this was the face universally acknowledged, inside and outside the industry, as a bone-deep natural beauty that no cosmetic surgery could replicate.

Every social media platform erupted at once. Countless people were woken by phone calls while still in bed and crawled up to follow the story.

[What the hell what the hell what the hell! Am I still dreaming?!]

[That really is Xiao Yusheng! How did he end up like this? This is nothing like how I imagined him. Could those clickbait accounts have actually been right and he took something?]

[Is this a scene from a film?]

[I don’t think so. In the video Xiao Yusheng is clearly already reacting.]

[Everyone calm down. There is a possibility the film emperor was set up. With his looks and standing, what kind of partner couldn’t he find if he wanted one? He is a serious actor, he doesn’t depend on a girlfriend’s fanbase. He can date whenever he wants. I think it is more likely someone was after his looks and drugged him. You all know how filthy the entertainment industry is.]

Some went into furious damage-control mode. Some began feeling sorry for him. Some were like gleeful thieves in a melon patch, jumping around and gorging themselves on the drama.

Within ten minutes the topic was pulled from the trending list and the video was taken down. Yet Xiao Yusheng’s company issued no statement of any kind, which finally turned everyone’s attention to the word “handsome police officer” in the trending terms.

[Police officer? How can anyone tell he’s a police officer? He isn’t wearing a uniform.]

[Is there footage showing his face? It doesn’t look like his face was captured.]

[Previous commenter, the whole video never shows his face. I’ve watched it eight or nine times and I still can’t tell he’s a police officer either. But one thing I will say, this person’s physique is genuinely outstanding. Broad shoulders, narrow waist, long legs, well-muscled but not overdone. I’m practically drooling. He is absolutely on par with the film emperor, if not more.]

[Stay on topic. How are the paparazzi so sure this is a police officer? Could this actually be the film emperor being drugged, and he had no choice but to call the police, which is how the footage got taken?]

[Ha, maybe Xiao Yusheng got caught running an illegal operation.]

The internet was in an uproar, public opinion fermenting wildly, while Xiao Yusheng’s company remained as silent as a tomb.

As it happened, the key personnel at Xiao Yusheng’s company had already been swept up in one fell swoop.

…

“Captain Gao, I apologise. We were too slow. We didn’t expect this one to still have something up his sleeve.”

Gao Shi shook his head. “It’s fine.”

He had not expected either that his son and the Daoist would handle things so well, letting Xiao Yusheng reap what he had sown and get knocked out by his own drug.

He had still been working out how to make the arrest when things conveniently resolved themselves.

However, an unexpected complication did arise. The drug was not only a sedative. After a brief period of unconsciousness, Xiao Yusheng began to feel a burning heat spreading through his body.

Had Gao Shi been there he would have had Xiao Yusheng cuffed immediately, but the ones present were Gao Gusheng and Ying Bujie. Neither of them had any knowledge of this particular drug and assumed it was an ordinary sedative. As a precaution, they had poured the entire remaining cup down Xiao Yusheng’s throat, and Gao Gusheng had volunteered to tie him up.

And so when Xiao Yusheng came to, he was facing the effects of ten times the normal dose.

The overwhelming drug effect, combined with his experience with knots, allowed him to wriggle free of the improvised rope made from twisted bedsheets with ease under the influence of his inflamed senses.

He instinctively began searching for Gao Gusheng’s presence.

However, by sheer coincidence, Gao Shi had arrived on scene with his team at exactly this moment. Gao Gusheng ran out to meet him and was picked up by the scruff of his neck and passed to Ran Qiu by Gao Shi. Xiao Yusheng therefore immediately fixed his sights on Gao Shi.

…And was taken down on the spot by Gao Shi.

Only heaven knew how much self-control Gao Shi exercised to stop Xiao Yusheng from losing a vital asset on the spot.

Xiao Yusheng, lost in his drug-induced haze and completely oblivious to what was happening, kept trying to press himself against Gao Shi even while being restrained, like a stubborn plaster that would not come off.

“Student Gao, have you grown taller?”

“I liked you before. I like you now too.”

“But the way you were before, just small enough to fit perfectly in my arms.”

Gao Gusheng: Who the hell are you calling short?!

Ying Bujie: …Let go of him!

Gao Shi, expression black as thunder, took the handcuffs in the midst of the chaos and got the man fully restrained.

It was at precisely this moment that a paparazzi photographer snapped them.

Xiao Yusheng meant traffic and bonuses. Countless paparazzi had tried to track down where he lived. This particular one had finally narrowed it down to a rough area and had not expected to capture such explosive footage today. He nearly passed out from excitement.

But this was a police arrest scene. Would he get taken in with the rest of them if he was caught?

On the other hand, this was an exclusive front-page scoop. The money from this single story would keep him comfortable for half a lifetime.

The paparazzi decided not only to publish the story but, in his greed, to keep filming and see if he could also capture whatever had brought the police to the door in the first place.

It was this greed that got him caught on the spot.

Gao Shi glanced briefly at the trending list, then closed his laptop.

Rather than anger, what he felt was something closer to this: if only the video had not been posted at this particular moment and had instead been held until everything was settled and released together with Xiao Yusheng’s verdict, he might have happily had his whole team give it a collective thumbs up.

Though there was no need to worry about the early leak tipping off Xiao Yusheng’s associates and allowing them to flee.

Acting on his earlier suspicion, Gao Shi split into two teams with Ran Qiu. Ran Qiu went straight for Xiao Yusheng’s computer while Gao Shi used a data cable to connect Xiao Yusheng’s phone directly to Star and began searching for hidden files.

In Xiao Yusheng’s secondary account, Gao Shi found a contact whose entire conversation history had been deleted. Star’s analysis confirmed that this contact was Xiao Yusheng’s manager, Yu Xi.

Connecting this to the woman in the red coat who had entered the garden with Xiao Yusheng, Gao Shi compared Yu Xi’s build with that of the woman in red, and immediately ordered Yu Xi’s arrest.

Yu Xi, who had been frantically trying to figure out how to get Xiao Yusheng out of trouble, was swept up and sent to the station along with him.

Both suspects were now in custody. What remained was the question of gathering evidence. The criminal investigation team had already begun a thorough search of the villa inch by inch, while Ran Qiu on the other side gave a violent start. “Chief! Get over here!”

Gao Shi leaned in and nearly had the breath choked out of him by the wall of bloody imagery filling the screen.

The hidden folder was packed with videos.

The man in the footage was dressed in a white isolation gown, white surgical rubber gloves stretched tight over his fingers, with an unspeakable quality about him.

In front of him lay a woman in a deep sleep.

Gao Shi’s pupils contracted sharply.

This woman was unmistakably the female celebrity who had been driven out of the entertainment industry after a manufactured controversy with Xiao Yusheng, and had since vanished without trace.

In the video, Xiao Yusheng’s scalpel moved with a slight, precise motion, and slowly severed the sleeping woman’s foot at the ankle.

Blood surged instantly.

He appeared entirely unmoved. The movements of his hands were as practised and fluid as a master chef at work, clearly rehearsed countless times.

Xiao Yusheng washed the severed foot carefully, then processed it, and ultimately preserved it as a specimen in a display case.

At the end of the video, the camera focused on the finished specimen, presenting it to the viewer like any craft-making programme showcasing its completed product.

The woman herself, like fruit peel discarded once the fruit had been eaten, held no further interest.

There were many more videos like this. Not only people, but animals. Gao Shi even saw more than one version of “Edward.”

Xiao Yusheng, whose face was never visible in the footage, had fashioned one piece of “art” after another using blood.

Gao Shi gave the order in a cold voice. “Check the villa for hidden passages.”

He had previously intended to use the celebrities who had clashed with Xiao Yusheng and subsequently disappeared as a starting point to investigate him. That line of inquiry had recently been developing, and it was now almost certain that every one of those departures from the industry was connected to Xiao Yusheng.

Some of them had never even had any intention of riding Xiao Yusheng’s coattails to fame, yet had inexplicably found themselves on the receiving end of mass public condemnation through manufactured trending topics, and eventually faded from the industry under the pressure.

At first Gao Shi had only assumed Xiao Yusheng was using this method to pre-emptively eliminate rising talents who might pose a threat to him. But as the investigation continued, it became clear that was not the case.

Because most of these people had gone completely off the grid. The smaller number Gao Shi had managed to trace had all disappeared.

So this was where they had ended up.

At this very moment, the phantom visions before his eyes flickered and shuddered, then, like a dying struggle, coalesced into one final image.

In the centre of a grand hall, bright and spacious as a gallery, Gao Gusheng lay like a figure of martyred suffering, bare, placed inside a crystal coffin lined with rose petals. Sunk in deep unconsciousness, the rise and fall of his chest was barely perceptible. His body was cold. He looked like a corpse.

Xiao Yusheng stroked his face with obsessive reverence.

“Too beautiful. A flawless work of art.”

“Compared to you, everything I have ever made before was nothing but aphids gnawing at leaves.”