Brother Dao Took the Entertainment Industry by Storm, Fans Beg Me Not to Kill Anymore

Chapter 741: The True History of the Yun Family's Rise

At Jingyou Entertainment in the Capital.

Yun Ziqi still had no idea that they were about to land in huge trouble.

But his current situation wasn't much better either—

"The investigation team from An City is already here in the Capital? How did they move so fast?"

After hearing the news, his face twisted in terror, and he began pacing anxiously back and forth in the office. "They won't find anything, will they?"

"Isn't that only natural? Those people from An City have been watching us all along. Now that the items are burned, if they took their sweet time getting here, that would be far more suspicious!" Yun Shen said with an impatient sneer. "And what about you? You're still trying to seize internal power at Jingyou while stirring things up online. What do you expect others to think?"

Yun Shen was Yun Ziqi's father, but their relationship barely went beyond blood ties—they weren't close at all.

Yun Shen was extremely promiscuous and had spent most of his years overseas, constantly surrounded by lovers. He certainly didn't lack for sons like Yun Ziqi.

Still, he had to admit that Yun Ziqi was the most accomplished of all his children.

Thanks to Yun Ziqi's glamorous public image as a celebrity, it had brought considerable convenience to the family. In recent years, the Yun family had also been making regular overtures to the authorities and investing back in China. Now, their corporate ventures in the country were thriving.

Even Jingyou Entertainment had become one of the oldest surviving entertainment companies in the Capital.

The only headache was that, due to some incidents from his early years, Yun Shen had lost a large portion of his shares in Jingyou. This left Yun Ziqi in a precarious position at the company. He had been desperately trying to leverage the "Imperial Enterprise" project to reclaim his lost interests and wrest back some equity.

But those were complicated side issues—let's set them aside for now.

The Yun family was facing no small predicament. Their life overseas as immigrants hadn't made things better. A significant chunk of their profits still ultimately circled back to China. But even so, after Old Master Yun's time, there was virtually no one left capable of propping up the family's legacy.

The remaining sons and grandsons were nothing but useless wastes.

The Yun family had no choice but to fall back on the old trade that had built their fortune in the first place—forgery.

—

In truth, it wasn't at all like the Yun family had claimed online. Their ancestors had no connection whatsoever to the bloodline of the Grand Imperial Palace.

One of their forebears had simply been an imperial artisan in the palace, renowned for his exceptional craftsmanship. He was fortunate enough to earn the favor of a noble patron, which allowed him to flee the Capital safely when war broke out. He made off with a large portion of his master's wealth and quickly escaped overseas to seek refuge.

But the journey was fraught with countless accidents and hardships. By the time they reached foreign shores, most of the property and antiques they had carried were damaged or lost.

Fortunately, at that time, collecting Chinese antiques and artifacts was all the rage abroad. So this Yun family ancestor made a decisive move—he used his skills to forge antique relics, crafting himself a prestigious identity as a palace-born noble. Relying on his firsthand experience within the imperial court, he swindled others into trusting him.

Their family must have carried some inherent talent for this trade. Their craftsmanship was beyond reproach—top-notch forgery skills—and they were incredibly lucky. For decades, they were never caught. Instead, they turned it into a thriving business, mingling forgery with artifact smuggling, operating outside the law, and dazzling the overseas market.

And so the Yun family established a foothold abroad. Old Master Yun learned the craft from his grandfather, immersed in it from childhood, inheriting this legacy.

Nearly a century had passed since then. In between, wars had ravaged both home and abroad, displacing countless people. So much had been buried in the river of time that very few people now knew the truth behind the Yun family's rise. Perhaps even many within the Yun family themselves were unaware.

Later, with advances in technology and the evolution of detection equipment, those forged items had nowhere to hide under the scrutiny of machines. The risk of exposure became far too high. So the Yun family abandoned that trade, pivoted to cleaning up their business, and followed other "patriotic businessmen" back to China to develop. They transformed overnight into ordinary returning entrepreneurs.

—If the story had stopped there, it would have been a truly legendary cat-and-mouse saga. Anyone who heard it would have had to admit that that Yun family ancestor was quite a figure in his time.

But if a family's foundation is built on such crooked, fraudulent wealth, can their descendants truly be expected to stick to honest, legitimate business?

So, when an internal financial crisis struck, the family's "craft" was resurrected. Many originally innocent members of the Yun family were dragged into it.

After all, to them, family was everything. One's honor was everyone's honor; one's loss was everyone's loss.

Using the smuggling route their ancestors had left behind, along with the fabricated identity and background they had spun overseas, and the antique samples Old Master Yun hadn't managed to sell off, they began testing the authorities' limits once more. They considered using official Chinese authentication as a stamp of approval to reinforce others' impressions, then started amassing wealth further…

As for those shady dealings, Yun Ziqi never participated himself.

His role in the Yun family was mainly to serve as a flashy public face. That way, a public figure wouldn't draw too much scrutiny and accidentally expose flaws or slip-ups.

So when Xiao He first met Yun Ziqi, he had been perfectly clean, nothing that caught Xiao He's attention.

But now, hearing that the investigation team had arrived and that if the truth came out, the entire family would face dire consequences, Yun Ziqi could no longer sit still. He was terrified of being implicated: "You should have pinned the blame on that Qian Wenhao! He already knew about it anyway—he definitely wouldn't dare to talk!"

To keep himself "clean," Yun Ziqi had never once asked about those matters.

Now that he saw the situation, he realized just how severe the problem had become!

"But the police aren't fools either!" Yun Shen let out a cold, mocking laugh. "You can't seriously expect Qian Wenhao to keep his mouth shut about everything."

Yun Ziqi fell silent.

"Anyway, I'm planning to go abroad for a while to lay low. You stay here, keep a low profile, and stop making big moves! This 'Imperial Enterprise' project is nothing but a hot potato for us now. The tighter you cling to it, the more mud you'll end up with."

Before leaving, Yun Shen remembered something and warned Yun Ziqi: "Oh, right. That agent you hired is utterly useless. She's been stuck on the Hot Search all day and still can't get off. Keeping such a waste around will only damage our company's reputation. Send her packing—tell her to go back where she came from."

Yun Ziqi curled his lip. He was thinking the same thing, but he didn't want to admit that the person he had specially headhunted couldn't even outmatch Liu Rulan. All he could manage was a grunt from his throat.

—

Meanwhile, back at the hotel, Xiao He was also considering his next move.

Aside from directly attacking Yun Ziqi himself, the Yun family's rhythm was actually quite easy to disrupt. Their luck lay entirely in the information gap—most people knew nothing about the Yun family's dirty secrets.

And in earlier years, people weren't as sensitive to such things, so no one bothered to bring it up.

But now, it was different. All it would take was a spark… The problem was how to light that spark. If he exposed things directly, the content was too sensitive and the Yun family would catch on too quickly. Plus, it might not have enough reach…

Xiao He stroked his chin, and suddenly, a brilliant idea struck him.