Entertainment: A song that brought his deceased wife back to life.

Ma Dongteng waited for three days.

In three days, the hashtag "#MingyueQingfengHypocriticalMask" surged from the top three to the top spot on the trending topics list, with the hashtag exceeding 900 million views. The comments section was a chaotic mess of paid trolls and genuine opinions, making it impossible to distinguish between scripted and heartfelt statements. The BBC Asia Pacific even aired a 15-minute special, roughly translated as "The Charity Controversy of a Chinese Pop Singer – Genius or Fraud?"

The accompanying image is a screenshot of Xu Qing's profile during an interview, showing his hands wrapped in tape and his eyes bloodshot. The angle is tricky, making him look like a down-on-his-luck gambler.

When Luo Qianyu saw this news, she almost smashed her phone through the coffee table.

"Are these bastards blind? Can't they see the blood on your hands? Can't they see you didn't leave a single penny?"

Xu Qing lay on the sofa flipping through an outdated copy of "Acoustics Monthly" without even looking up.

"They saw it. But they thought it was a performance."

"fart!"

"Are you done yelling? If you're done, go bring the laundry in from the balcony, it's going to rain."

Luo Qianyu's chest heaved with anger, but she held back.

Because she noticed that Xu Qing's fingers, which were turning the pages of the magazine, hadn't moved a single page.

He is waiting.

At 1:17 a.m. on the fourth day, Ma Dongteng called.

"Three days should be enough, right? I'm about to burst from holding it in."

Xu Qing switched her phone to speakerphone, casually placed it on the coffee table, and continued to lean back on the sofa with her eyes closed.

"Send it."

Two words, light and airy, like a chess piece tossed out.

Forty minutes later, the official Penguin Music account posted a long Weibo post. There was no fancy formatting, no sentimental captions, only a link to a PDF file audited by a professional accounting firm, and a cold, impersonal introduction:

The complete audit report on the Qinghe Education Foundation's domestic public welfare projects over the past five years is now being made public. The following data has been verified by an independent third-party auditing firm, and any media or individual is welcome to review, verify, and supervise it in accordance with the law.

The document has a total of 437 pages.

The first thirty pages are an overview.

Since its establishment, the Qinghe Education Foundation has fully funded the construction of 127 Hope Primary Schools in remote mountainous areas across China, covering the Southwest, Northwest, and Northeast regions. Each school is accompanied by detailed site selection analysis, construction progress photos, completion and acceptance reports, and a list of teachers.

Pages 31 to 200 contain a detailed breakdown of the grants received year by year.

The total number of impoverished students receiving financial aid is 37,412.

Each name is followed by the year of enrollment, family situation assessment, and amount of financial aid, line after line, densely packed.

Pages 201 to 350 contain donations for infrastructure: teaching equipment, library collections, school uniforms, lunch subsidies, and rural teacher training funds. The last 87 pages contain a follow-up report of tens of thousands of words, recording the whereabouts of some of the assisted students after graduation.

Some went on to university. Some became rural teachers, returning to the Hope Primary School they once attended. Some became nurses, working at the county hospital.

The last page of the report bears the foundation's official seal and the auditing firm's seal across the seam.

The list of investors only has four characters: Bright Moon and Gentle Breeze.

Luo Qianyu looked at the numbers after the total donation amount three times before she was sure she hadn't miscounted the decimal point.

She shoved her phone screen right in front of Xu Qing.

"You said you only had 312.7 yuan left in your card and donated all the money. I thought you were exaggerating."

Xu Qing opened one eye, glanced at the screen, and then closed it again.

"No exaggeration. Three hundred and twelve dollars and seventy cents, I remember that number very clearly."

"Then what will you eat and drink?!"

"Don't you cook every day?"

Luo Qianyu's eyes instantly reddened. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. She grabbed a cushion from the sofa and smashed it hard against his face, then lunged at him and buried her face in his chest.

Xu Qing groaned as he was hit, then reached out and put his arm around her waist without moving.

Weibo exploded.

"Four hundred and thirty-seven pages? Four hundred and thirty-seven pages? If I printed them out, they could circle my living room three times!"

"One hundred and twenty-seven schools... My God, is this something one person could do?"

"Thirty-seven thousand children! You call this hypocrisy? Then what is true kindness?"

"I followed the crowd and criticized it before, but if you gave me a knife now, I could stab myself three days ago."

The trending topics changed so fast it was dizzying. The hashtag "Mingyue Qingfeng's hypocritical mask" plummeted from first to seventeenth in forty minutes, replaced by "Qinghe Foundation's 127 Hope Primary Schools" and "Mingyue Qingfeng's cumulative donations," which jumped directly to the top two spots.

An hour later, Xinhua News Agency reprinted the full audit report by name, with only one comment: "Great love knows no bounds; actions speak louder than words."

Following closely behind, CCTV News' official Weibo account, People's Daily app, Guangming Daily, and China Youth Daily all relayed the news as if they had agreed to do so.

Two hours later, the marketing accounts and influential figures who had participated in the smear campaign a few days earlier were collectively banned by the platform for "spreading false information and maliciously guiding public opinion." A total of 47 accounts were wiped out overnight.

The comments section on Weibo has turned into a large-scale confession scene.

Ma Dongteng sent Xu Qing a WeChat message with only one word and one punctuation mark: "爽" (shuang, meaning awesome/satisfying).

Xu Qing replied with four words: "Don't be so happy yet."

Ma Dongteng's smile froze on his face.

"What do you mean?"

"Marcus isn't an idiot." Xu Qing slowly typed on the screen, "If he can't hit me head-on, he'll change targets."

"Who should we replace them with?"

Xu Qing did not reply.

He doesn't need to reply.

The answer is obvious.

If Deep Sea Capital can't touch Mingyue Qingfeng, then it will target the person Mingyue Qingfeng cares about most.

The following afternoon, the first wave of online trolls swarmed across various platforms like locusts.

This time, the rhetoric changed. They wouldn't touch a single hair on Xu Qing's head again.

"To be fair, Xu Qing is truly amazing. But what about Luo Qianyu? Without Xu Qing's arrangement and production, what is she?"

"Who arranged the music for the episode 'Bubble'? Who arranged 'Tornado'? Xu Qing. If you cross Xu Qing's name off, what's left on Luo Qianyu's report card?"

"Stop exaggerating, okay? This is just a karaoke contestant who was practically dragged along by Xu Qing. You guys listen to this, which song didn't Xu Qing protect from beginning to end?"

"Xu Qing is a genius, that's true, but Luo Qianyu is just the microphone-holding tool next to the genius."

The comments section was flooded with coordinated, rhythmic replies, all so neatly phrased that they looked like they were mass-produced from the same set of scripts.

Luo Qianyu sat on the bay window in her bedroom, scrolling through all the comments.

One by one, not a single word was missed.

She didn't cry, nor did she smash her phone.

When Xu Qing pushed the door open, he saw her sitting cross-legged on the windowsill, her phone lit up, and the expression on her face was indescribable to him—not anger, not grievance, but something deeper and colder.

Like a person standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down into the abyss, their eyes suddenly becoming unusually calm.

That calmness made Xu Qing more uneasy than crying.

"Luo Qianyu".

She looked up and smiled at him.

That smile was clean and crisp, the curve of the corners of the mouth was just right, and even the eyes were curved.

But Xu Qing had seen people all his life, and he knew.

This kind of laughter only comes after making a certain decision.

"It's nothing." Luo Qianyu placed her phone on her lap, her tone unusually light. "I'm hungry. What do you want to eat tonight?"

Xu Qing leaned against the door frame and watched her for a long time.

"What do you want to do?"

"Cooking, what else?"

"I wasn't asking about dinner."

Luo Qianyu paused for a second, then grinned, jumped off the windowsill, and hopped barefoot past him on the floor.

"You're overthinking it, Teacher Xu. What can I do? I'm just a karaoke enthusiast."

The last syllable was so soft it was almost inaudible.

But Xu Qing heard it.

He stood there, his brows slowly furrowing.