Chapter 83: The Managerial Crisis

In the past, Lu Chunqiu only worried when her artists couldn’t get work; now that Mo Fei’s schedule was packed, it was a different kind of happy trouble. She had already settled the rent with the owner of the apartment above Mo Fei’s and would soon move in to look after him more closely.

She also wanted to prevent him from causing any more trouble.

After seeing Mo Fei off, Lu Chunqiu dragged her exhausted body back to her tiny rented room. She lived in a small cubicle—back when Mo Fei was unknown, she couldn’t afford a better place. Now that his career was picking up, she was still saddled with debts, with no way to save a single cent...

Annoying.

She fished her keys out of her bag, and just as she was about to open the door, a voice sounded behind her.

“Sister Lu, are you really not going to take us with you anymore?”

Startled, Lu Chunqiu turned to see a plain-looking man standing behind her, head slightly bowed.

“Oh, it’s you.” Lu Chunqiu let out a breath. “Old Zhao, it’s not a question of me leading you anymore. You’ve seen it yourself—this era just isn’t into magic anymore.”

With the rise of short videos came an explosion of information. The secrets behind many magic tricks were laid bare, and props could even be bought online. Nowadays, if you wanted to make a name for yourself as a magician, you had to aim for grand spectacles or invent something new.

The problem was, they had neither the money to stage anything big, nor did Old Zhao have the brains to create new tricks.

If this dragged on, there’d be no future for any of them.

“Old Zhao, if you hadn’t insisted all these years, I wouldn’t have kept you on for so long,” Lu Chunqiu said earnestly. “But now it’s time to wake up.”

“Is it really me who needs to wake up, or have you just found another way out?” Old Zhao lifted his head, his eyes bloodshot.

He raised his phone; on the screen was a candid photo of Mo Fei. “He’s your artist, isn’t he? Now that he’s made it, you’re kicking all us old hands aside?”

Lu Chunqiu’s brow furrowed; her expression turned stern. “This is between us. Even without Mo Fei, our partnership was always going to end someday.”

Seeing the instability in his expression, Lu Chunqiu quietly became wary.

“What’s your hand doing?” Old Zhao’s gaze fixed on her hand, which she had slipped into her pocket. “Calling the police, or looking for help?”

Lu Chunqiu took a breath, about to talk her way out, but Old Zhao suddenly punched her hard in the face.

The blow was fierce and fast. She reeled back, slammed into the door, and a loud crash echoed through the hallway.

Her face throbbed with pain; her mind felt like a muddled paste. Old Zhao pulled a sealed plastic bag from his pocket, inside which was a damp handkerchief.

He pressed the handkerchief over Lu Chunqiu’s nose and mouth. Within moments, she went limp.

Old Zhao then took her phone from her bag, unlocked it with her fingerprint, and scrolled through her contacts. He sent a message to the director pinned at the top, saying she was feeling unwell and would take a day off. He then checked her recent messages with Mo Fei.

The glow of the screen illuminated his face; the jam-packed schedule stabbed at his heart.

For performers, a busy schedule isn’t scary—what’s terrifying is being completely ignored.

Old Zhao used Lu Chunqiu’s phone to send the same “taking a sick day” message to Mo Fei. Then he opened the door, placed her bag and phone inside, and finally dragged Lu Chunqiu away.

Some of the recipients didn’t pay much attention; others were confused.

Madam Qian replied with a simple “okay,” while Director Wang was puzzled—why would the agent of an actor, whose last job had ended and whose next had yet to start, ask him for leave? He assumed it was a mistake and ignored it.

Mo Fei stared at the screen, his face as if the sky had fallen.

‘What’s with that face?’ a thin line of a cat padded across his lap and sat down on the other side. ‘Is it the end of the world?’

“Worse than the end of the world. Sister Lu says she’s sick and taking leave.” Mo Fei frowned at his phone. “You don’t know because you came late, but in all the years I’ve known her, she’s never taken a sick day.”

“There was one time she had a fever of thirty-nine degrees but was still running around managing contacts. If a kind person hadn’t noticed she was unwell, she might have gotten brain damage.”

Something felt off to Mo Fei. “She was perfectly fine when she saw me home earlier.”

She’d even had time to scold him for eating spicy snacks in the car.

How could she suddenly be sick enough to take a day off?

Worried, he began putting on his coat. “I have to go check on her.”

The cat pawed at his clothes, ‘Take me too!’

Mo Fei scooped up the cat in one hand and grabbed a U-lock in the other, heading out in a hurry.

This time, instead of public transport, he hailed a cab.

Lu Chunqiu’s cubicle was in the city, better located than the old neighborhoods, but the traffic was worse. What would normally take half an hour stretched out to almost double that.

When Mo Fei finally reached Lu Chunqiu’s door and knocked, there was no answer.

He called her phone, but through the thin walls, he could hear a faint ringtone inside.

Could she have fainted inside?

In his panic, Mo Fei didn’t hesitate—he raised the U-lock and smashed it against the door several times. When he saw the handle bend, he stepped back and kicked the door hard.

With a bang, the door burst open.

The cat darted in first. By the time Mo Fei entered, it had already made a round of the room and reported, ‘No one here.’

Mo Fei stared at her still-lit phone on the sofa, his sense of foreboding deepening.

No one today ever goes out without their phone.

Especially not Lu Chunqiu, whose work depended on information—her phone might as well explode if it was ten meters away from her. She never let it out of her sight.

Now he knew for certain something was wrong.

Without hesitation, he dialed Officer Tang.

When the call connected, Tang’s voice was hoarse, as if woken from deep sleep. “Hello?”

“Officer Tang, it’s Mo Fei. I need to report a missing person—a woman has disappeared!”

At the word “missing,” Officer Tang was instantly alert; the rustle of fabric could be heard through the receiver. “Where? When did she go missing?”

“It can’t have been long. We saw each other two hours ago, but then she sent a strange message and vanished.” Mo Fei emphasized the key points. “Her phone and bag are at home, but she’s gone. She was almost abducted by traffickers before, but managed to fight them off.”

The implication was clear: her phone and bag left behind signaled something was off, and the strange message, combined with her past, suggested this could be a revenge act.

“Send me the address. I’m on my way.”

With that, Officer Tang hung up.