Searching for Treasures in the Clouds

The waitress was only a 23-year-old girl. How could she have experienced such a thing? How could she bear such humiliation? Tears immediately flowed from her eyes. She tried her best to suppress her crying and kept apologizing, "I'm sorry, Mr. Jiang, I'm sorry..."

Mr. Jiang moved his hard leather shoes to the head of the waiter. He looked at her jokingly and said, "Little girl, if you can't do such a small thing, what else can you do? When you cut the eggplant, don't you measure the angle before cutting? Don't you know how to test the humidity in advance? What is this thing you brought me?"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." The waiter's voice was forced to be muffled because his face was pressed down and the space for speaking was too narrow.

"It's not like I haven't given you clear tasks and requirements. How could you still do this? What? Are you going against me?" Mr. Jiang said with a sullen face.

"No, Mr. Jiang, I don't dare..."

The others at the scene watched in silence, not daring to say anything or make any unnecessary expressions, but Director Ma couldn't stop shaking. He felt a strange sensation in his lower abdomen and crotch, which made him tremble even more, and he clamped his legs together. The external environment and physiological shock made his brain go blank, and the words he wanted to say just now, the history of ink painting, all disappeared completely.

There was only one thought left in his mind: he was finished.

In this grand ceremony, he was one of the people who received benefits and assisted the winners of Han Country to blur the cultural origins. The chairman and vice chairman did not know about this because he and some other people who took on the same task with him did it without the knowledge of the two chairmen.

Now, he has directly offended three parties.

Mr. Jiang stepped on the waitress with his foot and trampled her with the sole of his foot before moving his foot away. Assistant Lan Youde, who was standing nearby, saw this and ran to her as fast as he could and reached out to pull her up. The moment he pulled her up, he raised his hand and slapped her hard.

"You idiot, you have no brains. You can't even do this. Get out!"

As he said this, he rudely pulled the waiter out and said, "Mr. Jiang, I will take this idiot away to teach him a lesson and replace him with a waiter for you."

The waiter and the assistant left, and everything returned to calm. Director Ma didn't know whether he should continue what he had just said before being interrupted. He was afraid that he would make more mistakes if he spoke too much, so he chose to remain silent, praying in his heart that someone could make the choice for him.

However, it didn't happen, and Mr. Jiang spoke again.

"Director Ma, why don't you say anything?"

Outside the lounge,

Yu Ru and Sister Shan came to the backstage of the stage and rested in a corner. There was no one backstage at the moment, and when they came over, they greeted the staff, who specially cleared out the irrelevant people and let them rest here temporarily.

Yu Ru was so exhausted that she couldn't bear it anymore, so she sat on a chair and leaned on Sister Shan's shoulder to sleep. Sister Shan was observing the surroundings to prevent any criminals from approaching or people with bad intentions from peeping.

It was quiet here, and any noise could be easily heard. After a while, there were a few soft sounds of high heels hitting the floor at the entrance. Sister Shan suddenly raised her head and looked towards the entrance.

The two who came over were the three teachers that Yu Ru had thanked during her speech. They came to Sister Shan and saw that Yu Ru was leaning against her and looked completely asleep. Qu Shengyin lowered his voice and asked Sister Shan: "Hello, is Yu Ru asleep? How long has she been sleeping?"

"Yes, it's been a while. May I ask who you are? Is there anything I can do for my boss?" Sister Shan asked the three of them.

"We are Yu Ru's instructors for this competition. There's nothing much to say, we just want to say a few words to her." Qu Sheng introduced.

The backstage was very spacious and open, so even the smallest sound was still a little loud. After Qu Shengyin finished speaking, Yu Ru woke up by herself. Seeing Qu Shengyin and Chen Shuyun standing in front of her, she subconsciously stood up immediately, even though her mind was in a mess.

Qu Shengyin turned his head and looked around, then took a step forward to approach Yu Ru and asked in a serious tone, "Yu Ru, what's wrong with you? Why did you change your speech? I remember the original focus was not on ink painting, right?"

Yu Ru rubbed her eyes to wake herself up, [Yes, I changed it temporarily.]

Her speech was polished by Qu Shengyin, and the latter part was revised by herself after she learned that the bronze medalist was a Han Chinese. In fact, the source of her design inspiration was not the ink painting, but she said it just to respond to the bronze medalist.

After demonstrating, she looked at Sister Shan and asked her to translate.

Sister Shan understood what she meant immediately, and she said, "Teachers, the boss means that she made some last-minute changes to the manuscript."

"Why do you want to change it? Wasn't the original one good? And it could better highlight the key points of your design." Qu Sheng asked.

[That bronze medal winner plagiarized our culture, I couldn't stand it, so I changed it. Teacher Qu, I'm sorry, you took the trouble to help me polish the manuscript, but I ended up stripping away the essence you gave me.] Yu Ru's face was calm, but with a bit of guilt.

As soon as she finished her gestures, Sister Shan helped translate.

After listening to Sister Shan's translation, Qu Shengyin and Chen Shuyun looked even more anxious, but they felt helpless about it.

Chen Shuyun said earnestly: "Yu Ru, the Han countryman's words in this situation are not just plagiarism. How can an individual have the courage to do this on our territory? It must be someone's instructions. You are too reckless today and will offend people."

"Yes, Yu Ru, we are also very sad about cultural theft, but if we want to speak out we can do so in other places. There are so many people here today, many of them are powerful, it is really inappropriate for you to do this." Qu Shengyin held Yu Ru's shoulder with one hand, feeling a little emotional.

"We know you have good intentions, but people are afraid of being exposed, and dragons are afraid of being exposed. What you said clearly shows that you are going against the people behind the scenes. You have made them lose face, so how can they let you go? People, no matter what you do, try not to be the first bird to stick out. We must be restrained and keep a low profile to prevent the enemy from spying on us. Do you understand? It's right to defend the glory of the motherland, but the prerequisite is that you have to protect your own life. Otherwise, you will be knocked down as soon as you show up. How can you accomplish what you want to accomplish?"

Qu Shengyin is already over 40, approaching 50, while Chen Shuyun is even older, approaching 60. Fu Lingwei, who is not here yet, is also in her 40s. The three teachers are not young, and looking at the gray hair looming on their temples, Yu Ru feels ashamed of what she is about to say, and cannot bear to say it.

At this moment, she was more silent than ever, and her two hands, the only ones that could become her voice, also fell silent.