Chapter 181 All Minor Matters
Sophia opened the news link Joe had sent her. The first thing she saw was a bold, glaring headline:
[Unlicensed Medical Practice Causes Two Deaths, Illegally Seizes Land from Poor Families, Servant Exposes Femme Fatale's True Colors!]
The first image showed two coffins.
The coffins weren't covered. Inside were two elderly people dressed in burial garments. Sophia vaguely recognized them as the two oldest residents of Rain Village.
Standing beside the coffins were several middle-aged and younger people. Though she'd never met them, she remembered village chief Parker Gonzalez mentioning that both elders' sons lived in the city and rarely returned to Rain Village after getting married. They were even hard to reach by phone.
What made Sophia frown was the next image.
It was a photo of her from when she'd recently returned to Rain Village.
She'd worn all black to pay respects to Mira, making her look particularly cold and heartless, but her face was pixelated.
The photo had been converted to black and white, with "Femme Fatale" written above her head.
Scrolling down, there were more photos of her treating the two elderly people in the past. From the angles, they were all secretly taking shots.
Without exception, her face was pixelated in all of them.
The article began by describing how kind the villagers had been to Sophia. Two years ago, when she came to Rain Village, the villagers took pity on herand let her live there. She claimed to be a doctor, and since the nearest hospital was over two hours away by car and the village wasmostly elderly residents, they asked her to treat them after learning she had medical skills. They paid her each time and treated her very well.
In the middle was a video of Tammy tearfully complaining. She said she had taken pity on Sophia as a woman living alone and had voluntarily cooked for her and watchedher child, only asking that she treat the villagers well. She also said that in the second year after the child was born, suspicious cars kept showing up in the village, with many strange men showing up in the middle of the night to see her, then sneaking away from Sophia's house at dawn, looking disheveled.
Further down, Sophia's residence in Rain Village was exposed. Though the house wasn't particularly luxurious in design, it was quite grand compared to the neighboring houses.According to Tammy, these men had paid to build this house for her, and after the men started coming, Sophia stopped treating villagers unless they could pay a large amount of money.
Throughout the article, the image painted of Sophia was that of a morally corrupt woman who brings misfortune.
At the end was another video of Tammy.
"When I accidentally found out she didn’t have a medical license, I advised her not to do these things.Who knew she would have her man throw me out? I still have lasting effects from it."
Tammy rolled up her sleeve, showing old scars from domestic violence that shetwisted into injuries caused by Sophia. Then came the deaths of the two elderly people, which she blamed on Sophia.
"She’s not from Rain Village, but she took the largest plot of land at the village entrance to build a three-story house that blocks sunlight from reaching our home.I want to report her for illegally occupying land and practicing medicine without a license, causing the deaths of two elderly people. I believe justice won't let these two elders' deaths be in vain!"
After this video were videos of the two elders' family members crying.
They knelt in front of the old house, loudly denouncing, "This woman is so powerful, —if her photos weren’t pixelated, they couldn’t even be published! We’re begging society to give my father justice!"
In an instant,
the internet started frantically searching for information about Sophia.
Previous videos and photos related to Sophia had already become blocked content under William's orders.
Shortly after Sophia finished reading the article, the platform banned it, which immediately ignited public outrage online.
In just over ten minutes, there were tens of millions of views.
Search volume and attention kept increasing.
[Are online platforms now exclusive to the privileged class? Good thing I took screenshots. We absolutely can’t let this evil woman find someone to marry,or our parents could become the next victims!]
[Remember Big Pear's video from before? Let me secretly tell you, this femme fatale is that mistress (confirmed).]
William had already learned what happened from Tony. He turned to Sophia and said, "Let me handle this."
Sophia replied, "No need, I can handle it."
As she spoke, she had already organized everything in her mind. The first step was to check Tammy's finances.
She messaged Rat first: "Check all the account transactions of Tammy's relatives, especially her maiden family and her son."
Rat was a former hacker. There was no information online that he couldn’t find.
He had always been her ace in the hole.
Not long after Sophia secured the Redwood Resort land, this incident broke out. It all seemed too coincidental.
And with just Tammy’s abilities, she couldn’t have stirred up such a big storm. There must be someone else manipulating public opinion behind the scenes.
Since this was aimed at her, naturally, she should solve it herself.
Second, she had people at the Rain Village villa check on Parker’s situation. If her guess was right, for Tammy to dare lie so brazenly, Parker had most likely run into some trouble.
Rain Village was the last village in the country to get road access, and land ownership certificates were different from other villages—all registered in Parker's family ledger, with villagers having no proof documents.
As long as Parker was okay, Tammy’s lie about her maliciously occupying village land would naturally fall apart.
As for practicing medicine without a license, that wasn't hard to explain. She just needed to produce the relevant certificates to shut netizens up.
Those two elderly people in their nineties—she'd examined them. Living to that age was already their limit.
What should have been a natural passing had now turned into this mess, and their family members deserved much of the credit.
The thing was... these seemingly scary rumors weren't hard for her to resolve now. They were all small matters.
So what exactly was the other party's goal?
Just then, William's work phone vibrated again.
It was a message from Molly.
She'd sent William explanations and proof from the male celebrity Marshall and others from Sophia's previous livestream incident, regarding Sophia practicing medicine without a license.
Molly continued messaging, asking, "Mr. Smith, should I send these to the media to explain for Ms. Johnson?"
William's eyes darkened, and he didn't answer.
During Tony's phone call to him, Molly had already collected counterpoints to the article and told William she'd sent people to Rain Village to find Parker, as he would surely know about the land situation.
Overall.
She was an extremely responsible yet clever female secretary.
Everything Molly had done aligned with the points Tony had praised about her work ethic to William.
William's furrowed brow gradually relaxed.
He glanced at Sophia, who was still methodically arranging matters, then looked down and sent Molly a message.