An Qiuyan knew that with public opinion turning, it would be impossible to smear Jiang Ling further. Still, she was deeply resentful.
"You got lucky this time. Just you wait. I've been saving my ultimate move, and once the time is ripe, I'll make sure you're ruined and never get back up!"
...
Everyone understood the donation screenshots.
However, the video of an empty subway carriage left some netizens utterly bewildered, unable to make sense of it for a long time.
"What's the point of this video? I don't get it."
"For two yuan, I got the subway company to charter a private train for me. Is there such a good deal?"
"Yeah, subways are known as luxury cars, with construction costs no less than a hundred million per kilometer. Last time my idiot colleague was flaunting his new Mercedes in front of everyone with the car keys, I shot back: 'I take a ten-billion-dollar subway to work every day. What are you so smug about?'"
"Judging by the carriages and stations, if I'm not mistaken, the subway in the video is the notoriously empty Line XX in Modu, the one leading to the suburbs. After ten o'clock, it's deserted. Two yuan can indeed charter a subway car."
"Oh, I get it. Jiang Ling posted this video to tell us that some things are not as simple as they seem. Just like this subway, even though it cost so much to build, two yuan can charter a whole train."
"Subway operating hours and schedules are fixed and do not change based on passenger numbers. One person is one trip, and so are a hundred or a thousand people. The cost is fixed. Therefore, we cannot deny Jiang Ling's effort and the hard work of her team just because the drama she took had only five seconds of screen time."
"That's right. My brother works in the entertainment industry, and he once told me that every star has a fixed appearance fee, just like an employee's base salary. Even if the company's equipment fails and the employee can't work for a single day that month, you still have to give them their base salary."
"According to current market rates, the basic appearance fee for a first-tier artist, regardless of screen time, is ten million yuan. Jiang Ling is a platinum artist, surpassing first-tier artists, so her quote should be double that of ten million, making fifteen million yuan not an exorbitant demand."
"Jiang Ling only took the most basic appearance fee, and the actual amount she received was only five million, which she donated entirely. Who the hell leaked this to slander her like this?"
"There should be a limit to smearing someone. Using the sensitive topic of sky-high acting fees to incite ignorant netizens to curse a twenty-year-old girl is truly malicious and venomous!"
"And those unscrupulous marketing accounts, knowing full well that Jiang Ling's actual take-home pay was only five million, wrote it so exaggeratedly, taking things out of context and wishing the world would fall into chaos. Don't they know that 'gossip can kill a person's reputation'?"
The reputation of celebrity artists is not built on a pretty face but on solid acting and high-quality works.
After all, the saying goes, "Golden cups and silver cups are not as good as the good reputation of the common people."
Although Jiang Ling has not been in this parallel world for long, her output of works has been immense. In two years, she has produced six works, each role distinct and her acting superb.
Moreover, several of her roles have left audiences with lingering emotions. Thinking of the characters in the dramas, people easily blur the lines between the character and the actor, feeling sympathy and understanding for the real-life performer, even actively helping to vindicate her.