Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Eight: Two Paths—Tell Me or Cooperate. You Choose! Hua! First of 26

Deng Tiang and Wang Yuning did not keep Wu Xiang waiting long. Yu Baimei, Ning Caishen, and that Mico soon arrived at the temporary office on the third floor, and Wu Xiang received them in a moderately sized conference room.

"You fellows have traveled a long way, forgive me for not welcoming you from afar. I am Wu Xiang. Would the few of you care to introduce yourselves?"

In this setting, Wu Xiang showed not a shred of tension, acting almost as if the three men before him were not creditors coming to collect a debt, but rather three old friends.

"Wu Tao, Yu Baimei!"

"Chen Wanning, Ning Caishen!"

"Wang Shaoxiong, Mico!"

All three of them carried a strong aura, genuinely resembling debt collectors.

"Please take a seat, gentlemen. Tell me, do you think we need to bring in any lawyers or the like to act as witnesses?" Wu Xiang's attitude remained quite pleasant, establishing his stance right from the start: 'I am afraid of nothing.'

"No need. We are here today to deal with you directly. If you admit to plagiarism and pay the compensation according to our demands, then we can settle out of court. If you refuse to admit it, we will fight you to the bitter end. We are barefooted and have nothing to lose, while you are wearing shoes. We are ready to risk it all at any moment—it's entirely up to you."

Clearly, the three had already strategized beforehand. Although they came as a trio, the one doing the actual talking and calling the shots was likely this Wu Tao, Yu Baimei.

"Hahaha..." Wu Xiang laughed. In truth, this fellow had wanted to laugh from the very beginning. The people before him were destined to become well-known domestic screenwriters in the future. Of course, right now they were merely internet writers, and this could be considered their attempt to protect their rights. Should he cut them some slack?

"Don't think that just because you're laughing with such confidence, we'll be scared of you!" Ning Caishen chimed in at that moment.

"Exactly!" Mico added a supporting remark.

"Alright, I'll stop laughing and talk to you gentlemen about something serious." Wu Xiang put on a rather stern expression. "Why are you so confident that barefoot people like you can take down someone like me who is wearing shoes?"

"Why shouldn't we be confident?" Yu Baimei, clearly the more articulate one, said, "The beginning and the ending of that play of yours, *Cuihua, Serve the Pickled Cabbage!*, are a complete plagiarism of our *Net Bug Diary*. What else is there to say?"

"Is there really nothing more to say?" Wu Xiang countered with a smile.

"Do we even need to say more? It's blatant plagiarism! Are you just going to quibble and twist the facts?" Yu Baimei was furious; Wu Xiang's expression was as innocent as could be.

"Very well, let's not argue about whether it needs to be said or not—that's pointless." This fellow Wu Xiang was quite wicked. Even though he was the one who had brought up the topic, he pressed on, "Let me ask you fellows, do you even know the definition of plagiarism? Do you know the national copyright law? Have you ever studied how it determines what constitutes plagiarism?"

"Don't assume we don't know the law! We studied it thoroughly before we came! You plagiarized, and that's that!" Yu Baimei declared that they had made ample preparations.

"Fine. Since you understand the law, let me break it down for you. First of all, what is inside your web novel? It's all spoofs, right? You spoofed me, and I accepted it. You spoofed *The Matrix* and other recent hit movies, and none of that is a problem. You admit to this, don't you?" Wu Xiang actually posed such a question.

"We admit it!" Yu Baimei and the others naturally had to admit it, because that was precisely what their web novel was—a spoof of various things, including Wu Xiang's *First Intimate Contact*.

"Good! Since you admit it, then regarding your claim that the beginning of *Cuihua, Serve the Pickled Cabbage!* plagiarized you, let me ask: does your novel feature a grown man dressing up as a woman and posing flirtatiously?" The scene Wu Xiang was referring to was Deng Tiang's subversive performance.

"This..." Of course, that did not exist; the novel had no such scene. Yet Yu Baimei and the others knew in their hearts that while the plot was roughly similar, it certainly did not involve a man dressed as a woman.

"So that segment isn't there, is it? But our play can actually be seen as a spoof—a spoof of your novel. Please note a key detail: the play didn't just spoof you, it also spoofed me. That's right, you first spoofed my work, and then this play once again spoofed my work. And since you were free to spoof my work as well as others, why does this play spoofing your novel suddenly become plagiarism?"

Such a chaotic speech! Trying to make sense of it was truly no easy task. Yet as soon as Wu Xiang finished these words, cold sweat began to bead on the foreheads of Yu Baimei and his two companions.

If they could spoof others, then others could certainly spoof them as well. This was the classic principle of 'magistrates are allowed to burn down houses while ordinary people are forbidden even to light lamps.' But somewhere in here...

They vaguely felt something was wrong with this logic, yet for the moment, they couldn't quite pinpoint what the flaw was.

"What about that part at the end, then?" Yu Baimei was unwilling to be dismissed so easily.

Wu Xiang's reply was simple: "Also a spoof. Or is the scene in the play an exact replica of your novel?"

Hearing this, Yu Baimei finally understood. He shouted loudly, "You cannot confuse a spoof with plagiarism! They are completely different things!"

"I admit that a spoof is a spoof, and plagiarism is plagiarism. But did this play truly plagiarize? It was merely spoofing your novel. Very well, if you claim otherwise and insist it is plagiarism, then you must provide evidence. You can't just point to similar lines or shared elements—like character names—and cry plagiarism. Spoofs use the same names too, don't they?" Wu Xiang's twisted logic was formidable indeed.

"Wrong! You are deliberately turning black into white!" Yu Baimei was so angry his nose was crooked.

"I am doing no such thing; I am an honest man. If you feel what I'm saying is wrong, then we can take this to court. However, I must ask: have you gentlemen prepared the money to hire lawyers? Gathering evidence and seeking appraisals for a case like this will take quite a long time, I imagine. Besides, I am also a victim here—shouldn't I also have the right to file a counter-suit against the three of you?"

After finishing, Wu Xiang felt he was utterly shameless and thoroughly insidious. He truly possessed the potential to play a villain.

"You... you..." Yu Baimei was left speechless. How could the three of them afford to hire a lawyer? They might manage to drag someone in temporarily, but if it came to a prolonged legal battle, they simply lacked the stamina to endure it.

At this point, Ning Caishen spoke up: "Wu Xiang! The three of us used to respect you. After all, you are the founding pioneer of web novels. We never imagined your character would be so utterly despicable!"

This was a harsh rebuke, but Wu Xiang remained entirely unbothered. "I am merely discussing the matter on its merits. Besides, if you were standing in my shoes, you would say the exact same thing. It's completely normal."

Wu Xiang continued to display his thick skin, but the three men were reaching their breaking point.

"What do we do now?" Mico wanted to consult the other two, but his voice sounded rather faint and hesitant.

"Damn it! Let's fight him to the death! I refuse to believe there's nowhere left in this world to get justice!"

"That's a bad idea. We probably can't win against him. This fellow has money and power, and the lawyer he hires will definitely be better than ours. I've seen that in movies—lawyers are all scoundrels who speak for whoever pays them, regardless of right and wrong. A formidable lawyer can even help a villain escape the punishment of the law."

"Wu Xiang!" Yu Baimei, his mind swimming from his companions' words—though they spoke the truth—found the bitterness simply too much to swallow. "Even if we can't bring you down in court, we still have a bit of a reputation online! We will write about our experience and post it on the internet. By then, countless people will be pointing fingers at you behind your back!"

This was a ruthless move—it was an attempt to smear Wu Xiang's reputation, forcing him to submit through public pressure. But would Wu Xiang yield?

"Hahahaha..." Wu Xiang laughed in a way that genuinely carried the flavor of a grand villain. "You have reputations on the internet, and so do I. As you just said, I am the founding pioneer of web novels. When the time comes and I wage a war of words with you online, who do you think the netizens will believe?"

Oh, dear lord! That tactic didn't work against Wu Xiang either!

"You are truly vicious!" Ning Caishen, utterly out of options, could only hurl an insult to vent his frustration.

"Let's avoid name-calling. We are all civilized people here, aren't we?" Wu Xiang's attitude was enough to drive the three of them to an early grave.

"You..." They could only grind their teeth in fury.

Seeing that things had reached this stage, Wu Xiang figured it was just about right. He said, "Gentlemen, don't be so angry. Regarding this matter of *Cuihua, Serve the Pickled Cabbage!*, even if you managed to defeat me in court, and even if you successfully ruined my reputation online, you wouldn't gain any significant benefits. At most, I'd pay you a bit of compensation, and honestly, such a paltry sum is truly meaningless."

What a pretentious thing for Wu Xiang to say! Although he appeared wealthy, his upcoming film city project was so vast that he actually didn't have much spare cash on hand.

"What do you mean?" Yu Baimei caught the underlying hint.

"Nothing special. Since we've met through conflict, I've been thinking: since things have come to this, why don't we cooperate?" Wu Xiang finally cast out his bait.

"Cooperate?" All three understood the implication now.

"That's right—cooperate! The few of us all write things on the internet, right?"

"That's correct."

"In that case, do you think there is a future in writing things on the internet?" Wu Xiang posed another question, spelling his intentions out quite clearly.

"You mean..."

"My meaning is that the few of us can unite a group of internet writers, build a website of our own, and establish our own literary platform!"

"This... can this actually work?"

Could it work? Of course it could!

"It is bound to succeed!" Wu Xiang declared with utmost confidence. "The internet will change many human habits. In the future, people's demand for paper books will decline because this new reading model of online reading will become immensely popular. People will be able to bypass stacks of heavy books through various channels like computers and mobile phones. Just imagine: any ordinary phone could hold all the books in the world, and you could find whatever you want to read through a search engine. What kind of lifestyle would that be?!"

Wu Xiang was envisioning the future, but in truth, he knew this future intimately—it would become a reality before long.

"Can it really be like that?" The three of them simply could not fathom it, as it far exceeded their comprehension.

"Even if it doesn't turn out that way, you have nothing to lose. I plan to invest two million, and the three of you can hold fifty percent of the shares as free equity. That's worth far more than the compensation you demanded this time. What I want is—"

Before Wu Xiang could finish, Yu Baimei interrupted him.

"You're going to build a website with two million?"

"No, I am using two million to capitalize an association. Its name will be the 'Chinese Magic Fantasy Union', and once you invest your reputations into it, we will then build the website. I hope to rename it: Qidian!"

Qidian? Dot-Mother?!