Brianna White refused. It was just a single fever-reducing pill! How could it possibly be worth 150,000?!

Although the price of fever reducers had been driven sky-high, even from scalpers, a box of the medicine cost 20,000 at the very most.

Besides, Brianna White couldn’t come up with 150,000.

She was just a small-time streamer who usually co-streamed with people online, listening to their relationship problems and acting as a sympathetic ear and a place for them to vent.

Her streams usually only had a few dozen regulars who would occasionally give her small donations. She was by no means a high-income earner.

After the cataclysm, she stopped streaming to conserve electricity, saving what power she had for the air conditioner.

Brianna White only resumed streaming after the volcanic eruption caused the temperature to drop, making the air conditioner unnecessary.

After some negotiation, Brianna White offered to transfer 15,000 to Stagchaser to buy the pill.

Stagchaser agreed.

To her surprise, after Stagchaser took the money, he selectively edited their chat logs and posted them online. He claimed Brianna White was a gold digger who had spent 150,000 of his money while they were dating and would only pay back 15,000 after they broke up.

People were already idle, with high unemployment forcing many to stay at home.

Once the AC was no longer needed, everyone resumed their intense internet surfing, and the story quickly blew up within Stagchaser’s online social circles.

Everyone felt that Stagchaser had been wronged and prepared to launch an attack on Brianna White in his defense.

The day it happened, Brianna White had just started her stream when a mob of strangers suddenly flooded her channel. The moment they arrived, they started spamming the chat with insults, accusing her of betraying a man who truly loved her and telling her to go die.

Brianna White was completely bewildered. She was just a small, bottom-tier streamer; at most, a few dozen of her regulars would hang out and chat on any given day. She had never encountered a situation like this before.

Thinking there must be some misunderstanding, she patiently tried to explain. She even asked the people insulting her in the comments section if they had her confused with someone else.

But no one in the comments believed her. They just kept cursing her with the foulest language imaginable, calling her a whore and other unspeakably vile things.

No matter how Brianna White tried to explain, it was useless. She didn’t even understand what was going on.

On top of that, she had been in low spirits lately. The perpetual darkness had left her feeling increasingly depressed and anxious. So, she just ended the stream, planning to take a break for a few days.

This sent the online mob who had stormed her stream into a frenzy. They took her ending the stream as an admission of guilt, which only made them believe Stagchaser more.

With Brianna White offline, they lost their target. Their righteous fury, pent-up with nowhere to go, became unbearable.

So they began spreading the story across every social media platform, determined to make Brianna White infamous.

While spreading the story, they also created a ton of memes, like: "The human heart is darker than the sky," "Meet a gold digger, and 150k turns into 15k—your net worth instantly drops *to* 10%," and "A stock hitting its limit down is a 10% loss. A gold digger leaves you *with* only 10%."

Thanks to the "10% Girl" meme, what started in a small circle quickly went viral, trending on numerous platforms.

Seeing things escalate, Stagchaser started to panic. He knew he had fabricated the whole story and was afraid he wouldn’t be able to control the outcome.

So he quickly went public, telling the netizens to stop discussing it. He claimed he had already moved on and no longer wanted to pursue the 150,000.

To the netizens, this gesture only made them pity him more. They saw him as a rare, devoted soul, too kind-hearted to pursue the 150,000 he’d been scammed out of. Someone even dubbed him "Anworth’s Most Devoted Man."

His supporters grew, and many urged him to start a stream, promising to send him donations to make up for what the "evil woman" had cheated him out of.

Seeing an opportunity for profit, Stagchaser put on a pair of sunglasses and a mask and actually started a stream.

Netizens swarmed his stream. Even though most people were broke these days and the virtual gifts they sent weren’t worth much, the sheer number of donors meant it all added up. He made several hundred thousand in an instant.

As the donations poured in, and with Brianna White remaining silent, Stagchaser got completely carried away. He started making all sorts of ambiguous statements on his stream.

He not only solidified his persona as the deeply wronged victim but also started fabricating new rumors based on comments from his viewers.

In just one week, the story morphed from "Brianna White owed Stagchaser 150,000 but would only pay back 15,000" to "Brianna White demanded 150,000 from Stagchaser every month." It then escalated to "Brianna White cheated on Stagchaser, had a child with another man, and was demanding 150,000 a month from him for child support"...

The rumors grew more and more outrageous, and soon, major online influencers joined the farce.

Public outrage boiled over. Some netizens managed to dox her, digging up her phone number through her small channel and posting it online.

Furious netizens began to spam-call Brianna White. Some even sent death threats. They proclaimed that since it was so chaotic outside now, with thugs robbing and kidnapping people under the cover of darkness, they were going to crowdfund a bounty and hire some of those thugs to kill her.

The cyberbullying campaign continued for days. Brianna White’s later attempts to explain were useless. Perhaps driven to a complete breakdown, she jumped from a building in a suicide attempt.

Officer Tristan Tanner said with a grim expression, "The guy who started the rumor didn’t dare reveal his own location, so no one in our residential complex knew about any of this. Who would have thought it would blow up to this extent online!"

Melody Summers and Sophie Thorne were stunned. They couldn’t believe a single fabricated rumor could escalate to this point.

To the point where people were threatening to hire a hitman!

Melody Summers suddenly remembered there had been someone else at the scene. She asked, puzzled, "Then why did a man fall from the building with Brianna White? Who was the man that died at the scene?"

Officer Tristan Tanner answered, "That man was the owner of unit 6-801. His name is Luke Warren—the same person who, online, is the rumormonger Stagchaser. Security footage shows the two of them falling from the window of unit 6-702 together. We don’t yet know why Luke Warren fell with Brianna White."

’We’ll just have to wait for Brianna White to wake up and ask her.’

The three of them waited anxiously for a while longer before the doors to the emergency room finally opened.

A doctor in a white coat addressed the trio. "The patient’s condition has stabilized, and all her vital signs are normal. She was vomiting a lot of blood when she was brought in, so we suspected internal organ rupture. But strangely, our examination revealed no damage to her internal organs at all."

Hearing that Brianna White had been saved, the three of them finally breathed a sigh of relief.

But then the doctor’s brow furrowed slightly. He asked, baffled, "Are you certain she fell from the seventh floor directly onto concrete? Logically, no one should be able to survive a fall from that height. It’s a miracle..."

"The key thing is, the patient vomited so much blood, yet her internal organs are completely intact. There are no broken bones, just some scrapes and bruises. Some of the wounds have even started to scab over. Her constitution is just unbelievably resilient!"

Seeing the doctor’s suspicious gaze, Melody Summers’s heart clenched.

’It must be the Far Sea Secret Medicine I gave her,’ she thought. ’After all, Brianna really did vomit a lot of blood in the car. My clothes are still covered in large, darkening bloodstains.’

Melody Summers felt a surge of fear, terrified the doctor would discover something was amiss...