Cheng Yao shuffled over stiffly and handed the materials to Bai Xingmeng, so utterly stunned that she’d forgotten how to act like she wasn’t stunned.
It was Qian Heng’s voice that finally pulled her back to reality.
“Based on the materials and recordings you provided, there are a few details I need to confirm with you.”
“Your ex-husband Xu Jun founded Junchi Pictures on March 18, 2017, after returning to China. But the two of you didn’t officially register your marriage domestically until April 5, 2017.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Right. That would make Junchi Pictures Xu Jun’s premarital property.”
“But we already registered our marriage in Las Vegas on March 2, 2017. Xu Jun said Junchi was a wedding gift to me, to celebrate our marriage.” Bai Xingmeng looked confused. “For a foreign registered marriage like ours, as long as it satisfies the domestic Marriage Law — both parties single, of legal age, no prohibited circumstances — doesn’t the state recognize it? Besides, we held a secret wedding ceremony in Las Vegas too. No one back home knew, but I have it on video, and I already gave you that material.”
Qian Heng smiled faintly. “Registering a marriage abroad doesn’t automatically make it valid here just because it satisfies the Marriage Law. For a marriage registered overseas to be legally recognized domestically, you need certification from the local government, followed by authentication from the Secretary of State, and then authentication from the Chinese consulate or embassy in that jurisdiction. Only after that authentication is it legally valid. You only registered the marriage in Las Vegas — even with a ceremony, without that authentication process, it isn’t recognized domestically.”
Bai Xingmeng lowered her head, her expression obscured in shadow, hard to read. “Someone like Xu Jun, who lived in America for over a decade — is it even possible he didn’t know that?”
“Mm.”
“So it really was calculated.” Bai Xingmeng looked up again, smiling with a kind of bleakness. “Before he met me, he had no connections in the entertainment industry whatsoever. After we married, because Junchi Pictures felt like the crystallization of our love, I wanted so badly to help that company get a foothold in the industry. Openly and behind the scenes, I used every connection I had to bring in investment for Junchi, to broker deal after deal. Even for the marketing and promotion of the films once they were finished, I shamelessly called in favors from everyone I knew… And it turns out none of it had anything to do with me at all.”
…
Listening to Bai Xingmeng lay her heart bare like that, Cheng Yao — as a fellow woman — felt deep sympathy. A love, a marriage, gone — only to discover that every sweet word behind it had been calculation dressed up as devotion. Who could stay unmoved by that?
But Qian Heng remained entirely unmoved. Stone-faced, he cut off Bai Xingmeng’s reminiscing with cold detachment.
“Do I need to remind you what my hourly rate is?”
“…”
Bai Xingmeng froze. The manager who’d come with her said reflexively, “It’s fine, we’ll pay for this time.”
“Money has a price. My time is priceless.”
Qian Heng said coolly, “Feelings are the most useless thing there is. Xu Jun deceived you — condemning him morally accomplishes nothing. All the sympathy in the world won’t change a single fact.”
Cheng Yao trembled inwardly. Her boss’s chronic case of toxic masculinity was clearly terminal — here was a gorgeous woman practically in tears in front of him, and he remained utterly unmoved, even lecturing her on top of it…
“Right now, what I need is for you to focus on the case and extract useful information, so we have a clear direction to trace the assets he’s concealed.” Qian Heng’s manner was cold and imperious, yet what he said was so reasonable that Cheng Yao found herself unable to argue with a word of it.
“I know you’re not willing to just let this go. You want him to pay a price. Well, since what he loves most is his career, his money, his company — then that’s exactly where we’ll make him bleed.”
As if snapped awake by Qian Heng’s words, Bai Xingmeng nodded, finally shedding her earlier self-pity, and began focusing on answering his questions with full attention.
The hour-long meeting that followed had no room left for small talk. Qian Heng pulled out the list of questions Bao Rui had already prepared for him and worked through the financial details of the marriage one by one, while Cheng Yao could barely keep up taking notes.
She had to admit — however outrageous Qian Heng’s behavior could be day-to-day, the moment he switched into work mode, he was almost frighteningly professional.
Despite being a celebrity with real star power, Bai Xingmeng didn’t get upset even after being lectured by Qian Heng — in fact, after the meeting, she had her manager broach the subject of a long-term legal retainer with him.
Cheng Yao stared, dumbfounded. “Does Bai Xingmeng have some kind of masochistic streak? I genuinely thought after the way you talked to her she’d want to fire us and find another lawyer — she’s a star everyone else fawns over!”
Qian Heng glanced at her, insufferably smug. “Once you become irreplaceable in a given field, it doesn’t matter how bad your attitude is — if your professional skill is unmatched, everyone else just has to adapt to you.”
So he does know his own attitude is bad, Cheng Yao thought, somewhat consoled — at least he’s self-aware.
“But honestly, the way you naturally pulled her out of that self-pity spiral just now — that was actually pretty clever.”
Qian Heng raised an eyebrow. “When did I ‘save’ her?”
“Just now — telling her not to wallow in a failed relationship and instead get up and fight, to give us more to work with so we can win her a bigger share of the assets!”
Qian Heng gave her an odd look. “You’re overthinking it. I was harsh with her purely for my own sake.”
Cheng Yao: ?
“I signed a contingency fee agreement with her. So the outcome of the case directly affects my income.” Qian Heng pressed his lips together. “I only care about my own money. I don’t care whether she’s pulled herself together or not, whether she’s wallowing, whether she ends up jumping off a bridge or slitting her wrists someday. Understand?”
“…”
“Keep your distance from your clients, and stay close to the case. In the end, you’ll find it’s better for everyone that way — for the client, and for you.”
“So what’s the contingency rate on this one?”
“Twelve percent of anything up to fifty million yuan recovered; twenty percent of anything above that.”
A contingency fee arrangement meant the lawyer didn’t take a fixed fee, but instead charged a percentage — negotiated in advance — of whatever amount was ultimately recovered for the client. Of course, to hedge against total loss, lawyers could also structure a partial contingency, requiring the client to pay some fixed amount upfront, with the rest calculated by percentage depending on the outcome.
Under this model — whether partial or full contingency — the lawyer’s motivation was maximized, since the more they won for the client, the more they earned themselves. But if the case was lost, or the judgment couldn’t be enforced, the lawyer got nothing at all — hence the name “contingency,” since the payoff was contingent on the outcome.
“Wait!” Cheng Yao suddenly remembered something. “Aren’t marital cases prohibited from using contingency fees, since they involve personal status matters? I’ve even seen cases where a contingency agreement got challenged in court and ruled invalid…”
“Post-divorce redivision of property is allowed.” Qian Heng gave her a dismissive glance. “The reason contingency fees are banned in marital cases in the first place is to prevent a lawyer’s profit motive — wanting to divide up more assets, wanting a bigger fee — from becoming an obstacle to reconciliation between the parties.” He pressed his lips together. “But in Li Yan’s case, the relationship has already broken down and the divorce is finalized. After the divorce, she discovered the possibility that he’d concealed assets — there’s no possibility of reconciliation here at all. The entire dispute is purely about property division, with nothing to do with personal status. Given how difficult it is to gather evidence and enforce judgment on jointly-held assets, this requires a huge amount of work from the lawyer. With the client’s agreement, contingency fees can apply here, taking a percentage of whatever’s recovered as compensation. It’s entirely reasonable.”
Cheng Yao suddenly understood. So that’s how it worked!
“And besides, the current trend is toward gradually opening up contingency fees in marital cases generally. Guangdong Province has already lifted the restriction outright.”
“In any industry, it’s never the complete novice you have to worry about — it’s the half-informed dabbler like you.” Qian Heng checked his watch. “Just explaining this basic stuff to you has wasted ten precious minutes of my life.”
“I…”
“Stop.” Qian Heng cut her off. “Do me a favor from now on and don’t ask me these idiotic questions. Ask again and I’ll dock your pay.”
“…”
“Bao Rui’s leg wound got a little worse this afternoon, so he still hasn’t finished his investigation into Xu Jun’s companies. You’ll take over. Tomorrow morning I want to see a clear, viable direction for the investigation.”
“Huh? Okay!”
Cheng Yao answered, then reflexively kept waiting for his next order.
Qian Heng flipped through some documents for a moment before seeming to remember Cheng Yao was still in the room. Without looking up, he simply waved her off. “That’s all. Dismissed.”
“…”
Cheng Yao thought that even her emergency heart pills probably couldn’t save her now — her boss’s toxicity levels were off the charts; she felt like she was actually suffocating.
She spent the entire afternoon continuing her research based on the materials Bao Rui had compiled. Xu Jun’s corporate structure was enormous and complicated. It took her ages just to sketch out a chart of the holding relationships, and she was still completely lost on where to even look for concealed assets.
Within Tuantuan Online’s corporate network, there were indeed affiliated companies and subsidiaries established during the marriage — but to begin with, there were simply too many of them, in a tangled mess, and each one was either barely profitable or outright running losses, which was exactly why, in the original divorce proceedings, Bai Xingmeng had only received a very small share of the marital assets.
Cheng Yao took the firm’s letter of introduction and ran to several branches of the Administration for Industry and Commerce, pulling internal records for Xu Jun’s various companies, including Tuantuan Online itself. Pulling company records, in truth, required no skill whatsoever — it was pure legwork. And in this bitter, rain-lashed November weather, Cheng Yao trudged through wind and rain every single day; her neatly pressed work outfit was ruined within days, her pant legs caked with mud and water, her face chapped raw with two patches of windburned “high-altitude red.”
But no matter how much hardship and exhaustion Cheng Yao endured, a man like Xu Jun — who’d even calculated the timing of his marriage that precisely — was never going to leave such an obvious trail. The corporate records at the Administration turned up no useful clues whatsoever. Cheng Yao, meanwhile, caught a cold, and even ran a fever.
Still, Qian Heng’s words had stirred something in her, and that night, back home, she blew her nose in a fog and buried herself back in research in her room.
Unfortunately, after hours of digging, she still had no leads at all. It was right then that Qian Heng, having worked late at the firm, came home and opened the door.
Cheng Yao thought it over and decided that recognizing the moment was the mark of wisdom — she’d turn to Qian Heng, her cheat-code-level outside resource, for help.
“Boss…”
“No.”
“…”
Qian Heng glanced at her. “Don’t bring me your idiotic questions.”
“…”
Cheng Yao choked back a retort and pushed on. “I just wanted to ask…”
“You said it yourself — here, we’re just roommates who happen to share an apartment. This isn’t work hours; don’t come to me with work questions.”
“But you also told me to make the most of this month living together, so I thought…”
Qian Heng raised an eyebrow. “Who’s the boss between us?”
“You are.”
“Then what I say goes. Now — turn around, go back to your room.”
“…”
“Wait.” Qian Heng’s expression stayed flat. “Also — I stayed up until two working on a case last night, so I’m going straight to bed now. I expect absolute quiet.”
Fine, boss, whatever you say — but you’d better pray you never end up in my hands someday!!!