The air on the red carpet outside the theater was thick with a suffocating, tense anticipation. The steady, rhythmic clicking of high-speed camera shutters had reached a frantic, deafening crescendo, and the blinding white strobe of hundreds of flashbulbs illuminated the rainy evening in a continuous, stuttering glow.
The media personnel, high-profile investors, and celebrities huddled behind the plush velvet ropes were practically vibrating with excitement. They were waiting for a breakdown.
The scandalous, deeply suggestive insinuation dropped by Xie Changheng—the fiercely reclusive and vastly wealthy heir of Royal Holdings—was a narrative weapon designed to instantly ruin reputations, shatter a high-society engagement, and tank corporate stock prices by the time the morning trading floor opened.
