At the awards ceremony, her husband of three years, Pei Yan, wore the cuff links she had given him and let the cameras believe he was single. The whole internet accused Shen Zhixia of chasing clout, while Xu Qingqing used the character notes Shen had written to promote her own ship. Shen Zhixia neither cried nor made a scene. That night, she took off her wedding ring. The next day, she gathered up the lawyer, the recordings, her script annotations, version history, and meeting minutes. Pei Yan’s most iconic lines were ones she had stayed up all night revising. Xu Qingqing’s new drama character was lifted from an original document Shen had shared three months earlier. When the studio tried to paint her as a madwoman, she posted the evidence piece by piece until it hit the trending charts. Later, the actor’s carefully crafted image came crashing down, and the rising star was exposed for plagiarism. Only then did everyone realize that the person kept backstage for three years was the one who had brought them into the spotlight. This time, Shen Zhixia’s name was on the first line of the contract.
