Before boarding the plane, Cheng Liu received a message from her team in Shenyin Technology saying that Mingtai had pushed a notification to the car system: as long as the car owner started the car, he would see this pop-up window message.

“They moved so fast?” He Bai was surprised.

Cheng Liu didn’t say anything and showed him the messages on her phone.

He Bai took it and clicked on the picture. When he saw the notification pushed by Mingtai, he couldn’t help but frown, “They are pushing all the problems on to us.”

In the notification pushed by Mingtai, they shied away from all responsibilities and put it all onto Shenyin Technology. They became a sincere company that discovered problems and notified users in a timely manner.

Cheng Liu took back her phone and said expressionlessly, “The press conference will continue as usual. Let’s find someone to release the recording and ensure it gets popular online.”

The tone and positioning of this push notification from Mingtai was not unexpected, and Cheng Liu was mentally prepared.

At this time, the plane boarding announcement had begun. The two of them walked to the plane. As soon as He Bai sat down, he began to work on the content of the press conference.

There was no need to release the content of the recording in a formal occasion such as the press conference. The press conference will mainly state that Shenyin Technology and Mingtai Automobile had stopped cooperating some time ago. It would also reveal that certain departments of Mingtai Automobile did not abide by the contract and stole Shenyin Technology’s autonomous driving technology without authorization.

Since learning of Mingtai Automobile’s launch of its new system, Shenyin Technology has responded quickly. Once the press conference ended tomorrow, Shenyin Technology would be completely separated from Mingtai Automobile Company.

But no one expected that something so disastrous would happen so soon. 

Cheng Liu was on the plane when the car accident happened, and her phone was in airplane mode, so no one could contact her for instructions.

Within the three hours it took for her plane to land, things had fermented very quickly.

When Cheng Liu got off the plane, she found countless missed calls on her phone, and the WeChat message showed 99+. It was the first time she had seen such a situation. She frowned and opened WeChat directly.

Next to her, He Bai received a call as soon as he turned on his phone. While listening, he said to Cheng Liu, “President Cheng, look at the hot search, something happened.”

Cheng Liu turned around and heard what he said. She logged out of WeChat and clicked on Weibo. She saw the hot title #Shenyin Technology serious technical defect caused a family of 3 to crash and die in a car accident#

There was also a dark red word ‘explosive’ at the end.

Cheng Liu stared at the second half of the title for a long time before clicking on the hot search to read the content.

The most popular Weibo post was a video from a dashboard camera. A Mingtai car in front was driving smoothly on the road but suddenly crashed into the railing. The front of the car was deformed immediately upon impact, then bounced out, rolled over the fence, and fell of a cliff.

The time on the dashcam video showed 15:24 on April 18—which was the time the accident occurred this afternoon. At this time, Mingtai Automobile has not yet sent the push notification.

He Bai hung up the phone and said to Cheng Liu with some difficulty, “H City police have confirmed that a family of three was killed.”

The two stood in silence in the crowded airport.

“I should have discovered it earlier.” Cheng Liu suddenly said.

He Bai held the phone tightly and finally could only say, “This is an accident caused by Mingtai, and we have dealt with it as quickly as we could.”

He looked at Cheng Liu’s profile and wanted to comfort her.

Cheng Liu, however, had already settled all her emotions and said calmly, “Send someone to City H to wait for the accident appraisal report to confirm the cause of the car accident.”

He Bai was stunned and hurried to comply.

Cheng Liu raised her phone and glanced at the time, 19:43.

Less than five hours have passed since the accident, and it has already become a trending topic. Quite obviously, someone was deliberately working behind the scenes to push this, pointing the finger at Shenyin Technology.

“Let’s go to the company,” Cheng Liu said to He Bai.

“Okay,” He Bai agreed. They went to the parking lot and drove out.

After Cheng Liu got in the car, she lowered her head to check the source of the original video.

At 15:31, seven minutes after the accident, the owner of the car driving behind posted the video of the accident on their social platforms, which received thousands of shares.

During this period, all the comments were focused on the people in the car. Some said that the car owner was not good at driving, while others suspected that the car owner had dozed off or was perhaps drunk.

At 16:45, several marketing accounts began to guide the topic, leading to the possibility that Mingtai Automobiles had quality problems, but the popularity and engagement was extremely low.

A few minutes before this, Mingtai had just pushed a notification, blaming Shenyin for the vulnerability of the new system.

At 17:59, a large number of marketing accounts suddenly appeared, pointing the finger at Shenyin Technology, which had been cooperating with Mingtai, and attached screenshots of Mingtai’s push notifications.

At 18:52, the figure of Mingtai Automobile Co., Ltd. gradually disappeared from discussion, and all subsequent marketing accounts were completely denouncing Shenyin Technology for serious technical defects.

By 19:05, the topic related to Shenyin Technology ranked first in all the hot searches.

Cheng Liu turned off her phone and leaned back in the rear seat of the car. She raised her hand to press the bridge of her nose, and then silently looked out the window.

“Senior sister…” He Bai looked at Cheng Liu through the rearview mirror in the car and said, “We have stopped cooperating with Mingtai, and the new system was not launched by us. We will naturally explain it clearly when the press conference starts.”

Cheng Liu looked away from the car window and said calmly, “Mingtai just handed everyone a knife.”

At the beginning, someone was only targeting Mingtai. At this time, those marketing accounts should have been instinctively instigated by Mingtai’s competitors just to take advantage of the situation. 

As a result, it just happened to coincide with the notification pushed by Mingtai—and Shenyin Technology that had been named in it was immediately dragged into the spotlight.

That’s why a large number of marketing accounts suddenly exploded the matter. Of course, Cheng Liu believed that Mingtai must have contributed a lot afterwards.

But the meteoric rise of Shenyin Technology has affected the interests of a lot of companies. If this matter was not handled properly, it would inevitably attract a bunch of sharks smelling blood, and everyone would take a bite out of Shenyin.

“The press conference will be postponed to tomorrow afternoon,” Cheng Liu suddenly said to He Bai. “No, it will be postponed to tomorrow evening.”

“Tomorrow evening?” He Bai was puzzled, and he suggested, “Why don’t we change it to today? I can ask the media to come over right now and we can clarify the matter with Mingtai first. We still have the recording in hand.”

“No, I still have things I need to do.” Cheng Liu leaned her elbow on the car door and raised her gaze, saying, “At this point, the matter with Mingtai is already secondary. Those people working behind the scenes want to use this matter to suppress Shenyin.”

If It’s Wrong, Then It’s Wrong translated by Maela @ whitemoonlighttranslations.com

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T/N: Having read sooooo many c-novels, this was the first time I actually took the time to understand the difference between WeChat and Weibo. At some point I actually thought they were the same, just that one was the English translation of the other. My bad 😂

Weibo is similar Twitter; it’s a microblog where you can share short posts and have trending topics. 

WeChat is a messaging app that grew up to become a social media platform, and then took steroids and gobbled up the rest of the neighborhood. Cheng Liu uses it to send red envelopes to Wang Hongyang and show off her lovey-dovey moments with Ji Chaozhou to her cadre of middle-aged big bosses. It has e-wallet for financial transactions, a shopping platform, food delivery, car booking, movie tickets, etc. 

WeChat is massive—1.3 billion active users monthly. But Weibo, although having a smaller market share, is where topics trend and get spread fast, and it’s more popular with  the younger demographics. 

If you’re enjoying my translations, do consider buying me ko-fi and get access to advance chapters as reward. Thank you for your support! ☺️
Chapter 51.2 — Day 18: Suppress
Chapter 52.1 — Day 19: Guiding Public Opinion
Chapter 52.2 — Day 19: Guiding Public Opinion
Chapter 53.1 — Day 19: Wristwatch
Chapter 53.2 — Day 19: Wristwatch