Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
There had been a lot of big shots back then, and the most famous author was “Zhu Ge,” but everyone also knew Father Wang’s pen name, “Wang Situ.”
Back when he came up with this name, Father Wang actually hadn’t thought much about it, and had no idea at all that there was a guru author online called Zhu Ge. Hence, as soon as he started using this pen name and published his novel, Zhu Ge’s fans bombarded him.
They felt that Father Wang was taking advantage of Zhu Ge’s popularity as well as declaring war on this guru.
At the time, because of the clash in pen names 1 , Father Wang’s first book drew a huge wave of attention. These trolls started reading his book, but in the end, they suddenly became his fans.
Not only wasn’t Father Wang suppressed, this conversely helped promote his new novel.
And so, bad blood was born between them.
In short, Zhu Ge back then was a famous guru online backed by innumerable fans, including countless wealthy users who spent lavishly on all sorts of gifts all day long. For a time, there was even a rumor that Zhu Ge was a veteran author from the same generation as the Five Rebels of the Central Plains 2 , and that this “Zhu Ge” was just a newly-created alternate ID.
Reasonably speaking, big shots naturally wouldn’t take notice of newbies like Father Wang. Their number of fans weren’t on the same level, and Zhu Ge didn’t care at all at first.
But all of a sudden, Father Wang’s novel started to perform well.
Instantly, all the veteran guru authors fell silent in the face of the battle for a new “Best Author” at the end of the year.
What they feared the most every year was none other than a newbie taking the top spot, and a formidable one at that. For a time, many people wondered who was backing Father Wang, or if he had some connection to the owner of the novel website, or if he himself was rich and had paid for his novel’s stats.
But Father Wang’s book Wet Nurse really was popular, and the number of comments it received at one point even overtook those of veteran gurus.
Sometimes, the number of comments was a critical factor in verifying whether a serialized novel was popular or not; in this respect, Father Wang was near invincible.
Apart from this, the number of gifts which Father Wang’s novel received was at an unprecedented high, and Guru Zhu Ge instantly panicked.
In a crisis, how did veteran gurus round up all their fans to obediently cast monthly votes in support?
In many cases, a lot of authors chose to sell sob stories…
For example, there was someone who claimed that their girlfriend ran off with someone else (actually not), and he was so heartbroken that he would kill himself if he didn’t get monthly votes.
Or as another example, someone called Kuxuan acted cheeky online every day, saying that he broke his legs… what was tragic was that no one bought what he was selling…
Authors selling sob stories was thus a standard method and the typical marketing strategy…
But in many cases, this still depended on the people involved; only gurus could use this method, while no one would care about ordinary authors at all.
Both Super Chen and Wang Ling were four that year, and Wang Ling had only heard about what Father Wang had gone through back then and hadn’t experienced it for himself. However, looking at the current timeline in this memory, it seemed to be during the period of competition between Father Wang as “Wang Situ” and Zhu Ge.
That night, Wang Ling knew he would be watching something good.
…
The next day, Father Chen arrived very early, but he wasn’t in good spirits. He canceled classes for the whole day and arranged for them to be continued at a later date.
Wang Ling was inside Wang Xiaoling’s body; Wang Xiaoling and Super Chen were clearly a little bewildered, and didn’t know what Father Chen was doing.
Later, a group of people arrived at the dojo. They also didn’t look like they were in good shape; each one of them had dark circles under their eyes, and they looked like they had returned from a smoke-laden battlefield. Super Chen knew there most likely wouldn’t be any classes today; it looked like Father Chen had arranged for other people to come and prep for something big in the dojo.
A total of five people showed up, each of whom had a bag over their shoulder. When they arrived at the dojo, they took off their shoes at the entrance and carried their bags inside.
Inside the dojo, Father Chen had already prepared a few tables.
The five of them each placed the bags on the tables, took out several sturdy laptops, and plugged in the network cables. They sat down in front of the tables and logged online, ready to start work.
“Everything ready?” Father Chen gazed at them.
“Reporting to Chief Chen! Everything is ready!” the five said in unison.
Super Chen, who until that point still didn’t know what was going on, then saw these people click open the homepage for Let Go of That Wet Nurse , and instantly understood.
Super Chen: “Dad, you’re doing this for…”
Father Chen: “That’s right! It’s all for justice!”
Wang Ling: “…”
Super Chen: “…”
Father Chen knew he couldn’t hide it, and thus spoke honestly. “Son, you probably know that your dad has been reading this book called Let Go of That Wet Nurse all this time. Last night, in the competition for rankings, another guru called Zhu Ge played the sob story card. His monthly votes have now completely surpassed those for Wang Situ’s novel. As the chief of Wang Situ’s fans, your dad is going to do battle for him today!”
Super Chen: “Fan chief?”
Even Wang Ling was taken aback when he heard this; he had just thought that Father Chan was a regular reader, and never ever expected him to actually be the chief of Wang Situ’s fans…
Wang Ling was now imagining a scenario.
Right now at No. 60 High, it was Grenade-Throwing Senior Immortal who attended the parent-teacher conference on Father and Mother Wang’s behalf…
If Father Wang really attended the meeting in person and happened to run into Father Chen, their interactions would be just like a fanmeet!
“Fan chief means the leader of the fan group. In order to win more monthly votes for Guru Wang Situ, I, your dad, am prepared to use all the money I’ve stashed away,” said Father Chen. “I and these five uncles, who are leaders of sub-groups, have been busy since last night preparing for today, when we will help Guru Wang Situ climb up the rankings.”
“…”
“So far, including my stash and the funds raised by the big fans, we have a total of two hundred thousand.”
“Two hundred thousand…” Super Chen was amazed.
That was a pretty huge sum of money.
Although Super Chen was only four years old, he already had a concept of numbers since he would count his New Year gift money every year. He would get ten thousand each year… so two hundred thousand was equal to a total of twenty years’ worth. When he thought this, Super Chen felt that this was an incredibly huge amount.
Monthly votes were cast via online red packets which cost five yuan each.
Taking the unscrupulous route like buying the votes in bulk from someone who dealt in marketing data would be cheaper, but this would be rigging the votes.
Father Chen and these fan group leaders had been busy since last night until now because they had been discussing how to climb up the rankings today.
Two hundred thousand.
In the end, they decided to do everything through red packets.
But in fact, this was just the beginning of the war for a new Best Author and monthly votes.
It was also this very war that completely opened the gateway to the art of language for Super Chen…
