70: Chapter 70: A Legal Blogger's In-Depth Analysis – They Are Extortionists

The surveillance footage from the Dali music shop and the video from Banxia Bar became the root cause keeping the entire Chinese internet awake tonight.

No matter if you searched for advanced mathematics materials or recipe tutorials,

the moment you clicked on them, it was all the exact same scene.

An acoustic guitar with a broken third string, its soundboard pounded like a bass drum, as desolately ethereal chords ripped through the night sky.

It went viral across the entire internet, impossible to suppress.

Countless music critics wrote articles through the night with a single overarching message: This is a deserving genius; depriving him of the right to touch musical instruments is a crime against the aesthetic sensibilities of all humankind.

But after the emotional outburst, the cold reality still lay ahead for everyone.

He didn't dare to show his face.

The penalty of fifty billion won for breach of contract, along with the threat of implicating and banning his junior fellow Trainees like Lu Han and Zhang Yixing, bit down on his throat like a venomous snake.

Just as netizens were feeling a deep sense of powerlessness, a piece of news exploded out of nowhere across all major social media platforms.

[Lawyer Luo is back streaming!]

That legal influencer with five million followers, whose account had been brutally banned for forty-eight hours just for explaining why non-compete agreements are invalid: Lawyer Luo.

At this moment, his figure blatantly appeared in the homepage recommendations!

It wasn't his personal account.

Instead, it was an official legal outreach media network live room with a golden V certification.

The channel logo in the top left corner of the stream was so unyielding it made people gasp in awe.

Just one minute after going live, two million people flooded in.

...

Seoul. SM Entertainment Headquarters.

Kim Young-min kicked over the coffee table in front of him, glass shattering all over the floor.

"Ban it! Go and ban this stream for me!"

Lee Sang-hyeok stood to the side, face pale: "President Kim... we can't ban it."

"Why!"

"That's a network account belonging to an official Chinese institution." Lee Sang-hyeok's lips trembled violently. "The bot army company we hired just sent two reports, and their own servers were directly wiped out by the domestic Honker Union. The PR Director for the China region said... if we take any further action, they don't rule out filing a cross-border charge against us for interfering with judicial justice."

Kim Young-min's vision went dark, and he collapsed weakly into his leather chair.

...

On the screen,

Lawyer Luo was dressed in a neat white shirt.

Sitting to his left was a grey-haired professor from China University of Political Science and Law, and to his right was the chief partner of the country's top Red Circle law firm.

This lineup was practically the Avengers of the legal world.

"Two days ago, my account was abnormally banned." Lawyer Luo pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses and looked directly into the camera. "It seems that piece of garbage paper poked a raw nerve with certain multinational capital."

"Today, we won't waste words on arguments; we will stick purely to legal principles."

"The entire internet is weeping for that young man named Su Chen. Everyone is heartbroken over that fifty billion won and ten-year shackle."

Lawyer Luo picked up the reprinted Chinese-Korean bilingual Non-Compete Agreement from the table and slammed it down.

"I want to say one sentence to three hundred thousand, or even thirty million netizens."

"Stop crying. This agreement is too stiff to even use as toilet paper."

[Is that true, Teacher Luo?]

[What's wrong with it?]

[Does that mean we can use this to sue them?!]

[F*ck, fooling our genius for so long with a piece of toilet paper—this is disgusting.]

[Calling it atrocious doesn't even cut it, it's revolting.]

[Teacher Luo, quickly explain where the problem lies so we'll have more confidence for the battles ahead.]

[...]

Lawyer Luo didn't mince words and raised a finger.

"First, the duration is illegal. I don't care about the laws of South Korea. Since the place of contract performance and the worker's nationality are in China, it must be governed by China's Labor Contract Law. The statutory maximum non-compete period cannot exceed two years. It says ten years? Writing a hundred years wouldn't matter either. On a legal level, Su Chen has been completely free since three years ago!"

He raised a second finger, raising his voice.

"Second, breach of contract came first! A non-compete agreement is a bilateral contract: if it requires the employee not to work, the company must pay financial compensation on a monthly basis. Everyone has seen his timeline—raising pigs, farming, hauling bricks, teaching dance lessons for 120 yuan a session. Has SM Entertainment paid him a single cent in compensation?"

The Red Circle firm partner on the right leaned into the microphone and added in a deep voice: "According to the Supreme Court's judicial interpretation, if the employer fails to pay financial compensation for three months, the worker has the right to unilaterally terminate the agreement. In other words, starting from a certain day five years ago, this deed of indentured servitude automatically became void!"

These few sentences made millions of viewers across the internet feel their scalps go numb.

But the stone in their hearts hadn't completely settled yet.

Bullet comments crazily spammed the same line: [What about the collective punishment then! That paper said it would implicate Zhang Yixing and Lu Han!]

This was also the fundamental reason why Su Chen would rather remain anonymous than dare to play the guitar out in the open.

It didn't matter if he suffered himself, but he was afraid of ruining others.

Lawyer Luo looked at the bullet comments, a flash of mockery passing through his eyes.

He looked at the grey-haired CUPL professor on his left.

The old professor took the agreement and scoffed.

"Utterly absurd."

The old professor's voice wasn't loud, yet it resonated forcefully.

"In modern jurisprudence, there is a fundamental principle called the 'privity of contract'. A contract signed between you and a company can only bind you and the company. Dragging a third party in as a punishment condition is called collective guilt! It is feudal dross that was abolished long ago back in the Qing Dynasty!"

"SM Entertainment wrote in the contract that if Su Chen breached the contract, they would terminate and ban the same batch of Chinese Trainees."

The old professor slammed his hand onto the table, making a dull thud through the microphone.

"Using the legitimate rights and interests of third parties as hostages to intimidate and extort Su Chen into surrendering his legitimate copyright and labor rights—this is not a contract dispute."

The old professor looked directly into the camera.

"Under our country's criminal law, this is a textbook case of suspected extortion!"

As soon as these four words came out, the live room of two million people blew up completely.

[Holy sh*t!!!]

[Extortion! It's a criminal case!!!]

[I knew these vampires were up to no good! They're a damn criminal syndicate!]

[These SM bastards committed extortion in China! Carry out a cross-border arrest!]

[Fifty billion, huh? Banning people, huh? Let's see how many years your executives will spend rotting in prison!]

[Incredible! So God Su didn't breach the contract at all! He's the victim!]

[...]

Extortion!

It wasn't Su Chen who breached the contract.

It was SM Entertainment committing a crime!

Lawyer Luo took the microphone to make the final summary.

"In summary:"

"Not only does Su Chen not have to pay that fifty billion won, and not only does he not need to live in fear of dragging down his compatriots,"

"On the contrary, as long as he steps forward, our entire legal team will represent him free of charge to file a countersuit against SM Entertainment!"

"To reclaim five years of financial losses! To recover copyright fees for all hit songs like 'baba'! And to pursue criminal liability against the executives who forced him to sign back then for suspected extortion!"

The live stream screen was completely blanketed with dense comments of [Bring Him Home].

All the frustration, all the resentment, all the powerlessness—

—vanished into thin air at this moment!

He was the victim.

He was the creditor who had been intimidated by evil forces for five years!

...

Lijiang.

The winding mountain road at the foot of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.

The Buick van was parked by the side of the road.

Inside the vehicle, A-Li turned the phone volume to maximum, and the voices of Lawyer Luo and the old professor echoed through the interior.

Yan Yu tightly covered her mouth with both hands, tears pouring out uncontrollably.

This time it wasn't heartache, but ecstasy.

Brother Cai slammed his palm onto the steering wheel, making a sharp, loud slap.

"Did you hear that?! That's called suspected extortion! Those bastards not only have to cough up the money, but they also have to rot in jail!"

A-Li was so excited in the back seat that he kept punching the chair: "That's what you call justice catching up! Damn it! I want to shove this stream right into Su Chen's ears right now!"

Yan Yu wiped her tears abruptly.

In her mind appeared that lonely figure in the surveillance footage of Banxia Bar.

That was his trajectory over the past three days.

He didn't understand the law.

Or rather, in the heart of this young man in a foreign country back then, he simply didn't dare to gamble. If he lost the gamble, his junior fellow Trainees' futures would be gone.

He preferred to keep this risk buried deep within himself, using his rough hands to haul bricks and repair cars, counting away five long years day by day.

"He doesn't know..." Yan Yu's voice trembled, before she suddenly raised her voice, "He definitely doesn't know this agreement is just garbage paper!"

"Brother Cai! Drive!"

Yan Yu's eyes shone intensely bright.

"He just left Banxia Bar at eleven today. He has no transportation, so he can't have gone far."

"Search every inn, every homestay in the Ancient Town—even the benches under bridge archways! Turn everything upside down for me!"

The van let out a roar, tires screeching against the ground as it sped off toward the Ancient Town of Lijiang.

Yan Yu gripped her phone tightly.

She opened the back end of Douyin; her previously banned account had returned to normal.

The top ten hot search list was filled with trending terms about Lawyer Luo's stream.

She quickly posted a text-only update:

[The shackles are broken. Searching the Ancient Town. Tonight, we bring him back into the light.]