New Times, New Hell

Chapter 44 - Performance Increases Slightly

Not only was Shen Wenrong an authority on history, he also loved spending time on the Internet. Consequently, he was somewhat of an Internet celebrity in the field of academia. Quite a few people followed him, which was also why so many netizens had sought him out to confirm whether or not what Shang Que had said was true.

Because of this, as soon as he posted his Weibo, it instantly got reposted onto the front page of popular posts. Netizens’ jaws all dropped. The comment section was filled with:【???????????】

Some people shouted in disbelief from the depths of their souls:【Professor, did your account get hacked?】

But Shen Wenrong very obviously valued Shang Que’s Weibo greatly. He hadn’t posted this out of the blue either, because soon after, he shared a very long post, listing all the criticisms Shang Que had made carefully and explaining them one by one.

After this long post, netizens finally understood why Shen Wenrong was so respectful of Shang Que, even to the point of publicly announcing he wanted to discuss in further detail with him.

The points that Shang Que had made on Weibo regarding the Southern Song’s people, customs, outfits, rituals, behaviors, etc. contained no mistakes. At most, some areas were still under consideration by academics so were being debated and thus didn’t have a final conclusion yet. But this didn’t prove that Shang Que was wrong; instead, it proved that his understanding was so deep that it had already touched upon things normal people didn’t understand, things that were still being examined.

Others were things that even historians hadn’t discovered yet, or things that had been hypothesized about with no further progress. Shang Que’s Weibo also mentioned some small details that, according to Shen Wenrong, could possibly help them break through this barrier and make some important new developments.

The aforementioned was also the reason that netizens couldn’t find any information on Baidu even after going through Shang Que’s criticisms one by one. The things he had brought up were too small and detailed that there would only be records of them in professional storage vaults, or only in the library at Diyang University. Even history majors, if they weren’t specializing in Southern Song history, might not have been able to be so clear about such intricacies.

After this long post, the scene of netizens angrily demanding Shang Que to apologize to the production team immediately changed. Drama fans and actor fans suddenly became silent, but netizens who weren’t scared of causing trouble weren’t willing to skip this opportunity to join in the fun.

【The one who mocked CEO for not being a professional historian before……Now a professional historian has given him the stamp of approval. What does that friend have to say at this moment?】

【I’m dying of laughter. Someone even bragged about how the scriptwriter had graduated from Minan University with a degree in history. Now look, Minan University’s reputation has been ruined】

【Hehe, I’ve been displeased about how much Old Dream fans were bragging about how serious their idol drama was. Overly bragging has caused issues now, see】

【Isn’t that so. Historical dramas having bugs aren’t an issue. The fans are the ones who blew this up】

The most tragic person in this entire event was the third male lead, Fang Mo. Since debut, he had always been one step under Qin Yuejian. Even his role was less important in the drama. Thus, there was anger in his heart waiting to come out. Finally, he saw Qin Yuejian stupidly helping a non-celebrity speak up; Shang Que had pissed off the entire cast of the drama. Besides, he had read all the netizens’ analyses and concluded that 80% of Shang Que’s Weibo was full of his own crazy ideas and bullshit. This was the reason he had so confidently taken this opportunity to step on Qin Yuejian.

He never could’ve imagined that the beautiful youth Shang Que, who had gotten popular because of a stupid video, had such a vast knowledge bank?

Within a short period of time, his comment section got attacked by netizens wanting to get some gossip. They very mercilessly used his own words to mock him:【Pretending you understand when you don’t is a taboo】

On the other hand, Qin Yuejian, who had previously been cussed to the heavens by drama fans, received an abundance of praise after the situation turned around. Netizens all complimented him, saying he was both humble and loyal.

But after this entire event, the person who received the most was Shang Que. He had originally gained a lot of fans, but they were all fans of his appearance. After this, netizens all sighed, so it turns out he doesn’t only have a nice face. He’s also a truly talented and educated person.

【Heaven really is too unfair. They gave CEO that face but also talent. Even worse, not only do I not have an issue with this, I seem to have fallen more in love with him……】

【This started because of his good looks, but I’ve fallen because of his talents. I’m declaring that CEO and I are locked!!】

Because of drama and actor fans’ incessant efforts, almost everyone on Weibo knew that From Today On I Will Be A European God was Shang Que’s account. Overnight, his follower count exceeded two hundred thousand, with signs of continued increase.

Not only so, for right after this got on the trending list, a netizen suddenly posted a video taken on the day of the Palpitating Youth livestream. In the video, it was clear to see that when Qin Yuejian had his accident, the person who had thrown out that very crucial rope was Shang Que.

Things had been a blur that day, and Shang Que had been standing near the back. Amidst the panic, the Big Eye Livestream cameras hadn’t caught anything related to this. After the issue had gotten on the trending list, Big Eye only wished for it to go away sooner, so didn’t make any additional explanations.

But an unknown person had coincidentally filmed this scene. Now, even Qin Yuejian’s fans who were still unimpressed had nothing left to say.

After Qin Yuejian’s announcement, most of his more extreme fans had unstanned. Those that remained were more reasonable. Since the turnaround in the history controversy, Shang Que had gained a large amount of new fans. These fans had a very good impression of Shang Que, so got together and made a hashtag for Shang Que as a way of apologizing.

When Yu Zhengdu saw that hashtag on the trending list, he fell over laughing.

Yu Zhengdu:【Xiaokui, you’re both beautiful and kind!】

My broke-ass Boss:【I’ve remembered all of their ID’s. I’m waiting for them to die to get my revenge】

Yu Zhengdu:【Calm down calm down】

Yu Zhengdu:【Hahahahahahahahahahaha】

My broke-ass Boss:【…………】

At the same time, Kang Jin in the company’s group chat:【Boss got on the trending list again!!!】

Kang Jin:【Boss, you’re the pride of the Underworld!】

Shang Que:【You, wage deduction】

Kang Jin:【Why!!!!!!!!!!】

The hashtag that Qin Yuejian’s fanclub had made for Shang Que was #CEO, both kind and beautiful#.

Aside from the people paying their respects to Shang Que in the comments section, there was also a group of fans attracted by his looks screaming:【Husband, mommy loves you!】

This made netizens who had clicked into the tag but didn’t know what was going on suddenly think that they had accidentally walked into some large-scale ethics debate.

……

The changes online caused all of Luofeng’s employees to become bewildered. Everyone had originally been using their own accounts to help Boss argue with netizens, but who would’ve thought that only mere days later, all the comments suddenly changed. This rendered all ten pages of cuss words on their Word documents useless; they had nowhere to vent their anger anymore.

Eventually, a coworker sent a screenshot of the comments section under Shang Que’s Weibo to the group chat, terrified:【So do these people actually want to be Boss’s wife or his mom?】

The chat:【……………………Frightened.jpg】

Qu Guangzhao:【Whether they want to be his mom or wife isn’t important. What’s important is that they’ve all come to follow our official Weibo account】

Qu Guangzhao:【[Screenshot]】

The screenshot Qu Guangzhao had sent was that of the follower count for “Amazing Future”, the Weibo account of their subsidiary company. Right now, it had already surpassed fifty thousand. Though this wasn’t very impressive when compared to other Big V Weibo accounts, for a newly starting company with no attention from the general public, this was quite impressive. Not to mention that these were fresh and active fans, the kind with no zombies included.

Without a doubt, these were fans that Shang Que had garnered.

As Shang Que’s reputation got better and better, some management companies and program producers got in contact to ask if Shang Que had any intention to enter the entertainment industry. However, Shang Que didn’t even ask what benefits they were offering before directly rejecting them.

Things had seemed alright when he had watched fandoms tear into each other on Weibo, but now that he had been dragged into a fight and been forced to experience it, Shang Que firmly believed that the entertainment industry was full of dangers.

As a ghost who refused to admit defeat during online arguments, in the time before Yu Zhengdu agreed to develop an argument program for him, he would absolutely not have any inclination to enter the entertainment industry. He wasn’t even willing to attend any public events again.

Who knew that he originally only wanted to go step on some water balls, but what ended up happening was that his Weibo account got exposed. Because of this, he had to go open another fake account. Otherwise, he wouldn’t even be able to happily complain about his dramas anymore.

A little event happened after all this. Professor Shen Wenrong called the company several times, hoping to invite Shang Que to attend their scholarly discussions. However, he got rejected by Shang Que every time with a very simple reason: I’m too old. I don’t remember that many things very clearly anymore.

Shen Wenrong who received this reply thought of his own age: ………Why did he feel like he somehow got mocked by Shang Que!

But though Shang Que rejected him, Shen Wenrong would still continue to incessantly pester him with emails asking about certain topics related to the history of the Southern Song Dynasty. When Shang Que occasionally opened one and happened to remember something about the question, he would reply. This process would then repeat.

For Luofeng, there was another accidental breakthrough. Not long after this trending topic incident, their company’s jade stones received a few new orders. After investigating, they realized that these were all bought by Shang Que’s fans. These girls had no idea what the jade was used for; or, to put it more accurately, didn’t care. For them, the most important thing was that they were supporting their idol. This was very characteristic of fandom culture.

Only, in the beginning, everyone thought that the sales brought in by fans would only be temporary. After all, though fans were passionate, they were a very ruthless group. When it really came to climbing walls, they were faster than anybody else. But who would’ve thought that these people would be one of the main reasons that their company’s sales performance increased.

***

Gossip forum:

Title: Poisonous, my dad who previously yelled at me for buying CEO’s jade stone just bought Amazing Future’s entire health checkup package for our entire family……

Main floor: Floor owner is a fan of CEO’s face. Because I was trapped in CEO’s devastating beauty, unable to escape, I secretly purchased a jade stone from Amazing Future. But, I accidentally let my dad see the price (everyone understands Amazing Future’s prices). My dad scolded me for a long time and stopped giving me allowance for two months. I never expected that one day after returning home from school, a few extra people would be in my house. After asking, I found out that they were Amazing Future’s employees. My dad suddenly! suddenly! bought Amazing Future’s health checkup for the entire family without telling anyone. Those people were at my house to do the checkup……

Floor 1: ????????? Floor owner’s story has caused me a great shock.

Floor 2: Being able to afford CEO’s jade with your allowance……Floor owner’s family is rich, appraisal complete.

Floor 3: What did floor owner do to her dad?

Floor 4: Wow, envious. Can floor owner share her experience? I want to own a jade from CEO too, but I really can’t afford it. I urgently need a same-brand father……

……

Floor 233: Where’s the floor owner? Running away after pretending to be hot shit. Hurry and come back to explain the situation clearly!

Floor owner: I’m back, I was just doing the checkup……The situation is like this. A few days ago, I accidentally left the jade in my dad’s car. Coincidentally, my dad’s been in a bad state lately, kind of confused all the time. And then he saw the jade and picked it up……I first need to clarify, all of the following was said by my dad, not me. Apparently, when he picked up the jade, he suddenly felt his confused mental state that had lasted several days disappear. More strangely, for some reason at the time, he had been driving a little crookedly. He almost drove straight into the lake. Because of the jade, he immediately became alert and hurriedly stepped on the brakes, barely managing to avoid death.

Floor owner: In the beginning, my dad was still suspicious, not completely believing. He’s old and sly, so went to recommend it to some of his collaborators. Who knew that his collaborators would suddenly purchase Amazing Future’s entire service package and turn around to strongly recommend Amazing Future’s health checkup to my dad. So……

Floor 236: After reading the main floor, I thought this was going to be a story of how a fangirl outwitted her dad in a battle of intelligence. I never expected it would take this turn……

Floor 237: To be fair, although I’m a fan of CEO’s face, the products of CEO’s company still give me a slight sense that I’m about to be scammed. After seeing floor owner’s post, I kind of don’t know what to say right now.

Floor 238: Wait, floor owner’s family really didn’t get scammed?

Floor 239: Upstairs’ words don’t make sense. According to floor owner, from buying the jade stone to purchasing the health checkup, their family took the initiative themselves. It’s not like someone from CEO’s company advertised it to them. This can’t even be considered scamming?

Floor 240: I didn’t dare to post before, since I feared everyone would think that I had lost my mind because of a handsome appearance……Actually, after buying CEO’s jade, I also felt that my mind cleared and my luck got better. I thought it was just a placebo effect.

……

Floor owner: Poisonous, my dad has already completely become Amazing Future’s fan!!!! After finishing the checkup just know, he thought that Amazing Future’s results were super accurate. Right now he’s calling all his other friends to recommend it to them!! To be honest, though I bought the jade stone at first, I still need to say. My dad’s current state is no different from those old men who want to buy health products……

Floor 331: ……………………Speechless. I’ll just wish floor owner a happy new year in advance.

Floor 334: If not for the fact that floor owner has an old ID, I would start to suspect for her to be part of the Internet Navy for “Amazing Future”.

Floor 335: Wow, I was originally hesitant about whether or not to buy it, because although I really like CEO’s face, CEO’s jade stones are really quite expensive. After seeing what you’ve said in the tower, I’ve gathered enough courage to place my order.

Floor 336: Calm down upstairs. What’s there to believe about this stuff?

……

For a long time afterwards, similar posts and comments would appear periodically on forums and Weibo. Though many passersby remained suspicious about this, several others were still influenced by them and went to get their own understanding of Amazing Future’s products. Unintentionally, they brought in a lot of sales.

Though Shang Que had developed an inextinguishable prejudice against the entertainment industry and trending topics list after this incident, for the development of their company, he still posted on Weibo from time to time. He mainly replied to netizens’ questions about the Song Dynasty; because of his overly impressive professional ability, almost as soon as he went online, he would gain the opportunity to interact with Shen Wenrong and other respected academics. Thus, he attracted a lot of new fans too.

But of course, posting pictures attracted the most fans.

Materialistic netizens were very honest.

***

Time flew by quickly. By July, the Life and Death Accounts prototype system was finally released.