CH 24

"Zeyi, are you quarreling with your brother again?" Grandma Song suddenly asked Lin Zixi after they finished eating dinner.

Young actor Lin thought about his gold master daddy, whom he had not seen for a month since coming back from B City, and replied uncertainly, "I really don't think so, but what my brother thinks... I don't know."

The old lady glanced at her ‘little son’ angrily, "You must’ve said something awful and made your brother very angry."

Lin Zixi was aggrieved, "Mom, the last time I saw my brother was when we went to B City…. Didn't you already know everything about that day? What do you think I’ve said to irritate him?" 

It was unknown whether Grandma Song doted on him, her little son, too much or whether she still remembered the dead Gu Zeyi subconsciously. A month ago, after learning that her son had almost had an aviation accident, the shocked old lady called Lin Zixi to go home and kept him there for three days. He was only let go after it was completely confirmed that he was fine and nothing would happen.

If The Legend of Concubine Ling that Lin Zixi was filming now had not been a drama produced by his Stars Entertainment and he himself, the first brother of Stars, had not been considered well behaved, he would have been scolded to death behind his back by the staff and his fellow actors for disappearing without a word like that—in any case, fans of the second male, Sun Yuwen, had begun to ridicule him openly and covertly for not being dedicated enough to his work.

During those three days, Lin Zixi made no less than ten phone calls to Gu Zecheng to ask for help, but the other party’s phone line was busy or no one answered the phone every time. Gu Zecheng never called him back either, let alone showed his face at home.

Young actor Lin knew then that his gold master daddy seemed to be avoiding him again for some unknown reasons.

If Lin Zixi was just a little depressed when Dad Gu suddenly avoided seeing him the first time, he could be said to be very depressed as well as puzzled now.

After the two of them had experienced such an accident together, they clearly could be regarded as best friends for life and death. Furthermore, the presence of Gu Zecheng, the father he could not acknowledge, had caused him to feel a deep attachment and a yearning for closeness which had been missing for the past 20 years.

As a result, the object of his deep attachment and closeness seemed to have lost his favorability towards him….

"This is simply unreasonable, ah!" After Lin Zixi returned to the hotel from Gu's house, he threw himself on the bed and roared in a depressed voice—even without Grandma Song asking, he himself had carefully and repeatedly recollected the day he went to B City with Dad Gu, but he still couldn't figure out where he had irritated his dad.

Young actor Lin buried his face in the pillow and lay corpse-like for a long time. Finally, he got up with a rising handspring and picked up his mobile phone to call his agent, Chen Yunyun.

"Sister Yunyun, is this year's Boshen Star Charity Night coming soon? I want to participate this time." As soon as the call was connected, Lin Zixi immediately got straight to the point.

Chen Yunyun on the other end of the phone was a little surprised, "It’s next Friday. But when Boshen invited you last year, you only donated money and didn't show up. Why do you suddenly want to participate this year?"

Because last year, he wanted to avoid Gu Zecheng, who was an attendee, while this year, he was in a hurry to find an opportunity to see if he could run into the other party…. Lin Zixi had this thought, talking at the same time, "Aren’t I Esther’s ambassador now? My way of thinking has changed a bit. I realize that it’s not bad to have more connections and resources in the fashion industry."

"It's great if you’ve figured it out yourself. Our company isn’t as rich and imposing as Fengcheng, able to invest in various big projects by themselves. It’d always be beneficial for you to stay at home less and go out to socialize more." Chen Yunyun said with some pleasure, "Leave this matter to me. It just so happens that you’ll be done with your role in The Legend of Concubine Ling next Thursday. So on Friday, I’ll find a stylist to give you a good look, which I guarantee will make you more beautiful than others then."

"I'm not a female star; what’s more beautiful, ah?" Young actor Lin was amused by his agent. After hanging up the phone, he felt a lot better and was also in the mood to post a selfie on Weibo to make his own fans happy too.

But when he logged in to Weibo, he unexpectedly found that his fans, whom always pretended to be well-behaved in front of him but actually had excellent fighting strength, were right in the middle of fighting with another star’s fans. Even among the few big fans who had mutual relations with him on Weibo, they no longer cooked chicken soup to pacify the fan circle; rather, they also took part in throwing shade at the other party.

Although young actor Lin knew that his fans could fight, he was a little dumbfounded for a while since he rarely had direct contact with their berserk state.

When his Esther endorsement was announced officially, it was quite calm. Why did it become a bloodbath after two weeks?

But as he ate melon and watched the battlefield with a three-point concern and seven-point gossipy attitude, he unexpectedly discovered that not only his fans were not fighting with Qiu Lianyi's fans, but there were even Qiu Lianyi's fans and many fans of other young actors and actresses who were helping his fans fighting the other party. They tore into the other party on the hot search and outside the circle, and they tore into some insiders in the industry whom posted on Weibo to add insult to injury.

All of this was only because the other side on the battlefield was Mu Zhongran’s fans.

Lin Zixi seldom disliked anyone in the entire entertainment circle, but he particularly despised Mu Zhongran.

Mu Zhongran made his debut much earlier than Lin Zixi, but he had always been unknown. It was only after he changed his agency in the past two years that he became popular by relying on fake persona and navy marketing. Moreover, this persona was a copycat of young actor Lin himself, and that marketing was also done by touching porcelain and stepping on various popular young actors.

What's even more important was—if your endorsements and TV dramas were preempted by the same person for less than one-tenth of your price in half a year, you would definitely despise the other party too.

Although Chen Yunyun, who had worked together with Mu Zhongran's agent on one occasion, already said, "This person is a little clever in trivial matters, but he’s short-sighted, and his character isn’t very good. Don't look at him and Mu Zhongran being so full of themselves after their success now. One day, they’ll eventually come to ruin." Lin Zixi never expected this one day to actually come so quickly.

And it's a little inexplicable.

He said it was inexplicable because the factor leading to this unprecedented fan war was actually the fans of LianXi Fufu discovering some time ago that the masterpiece in their fandom, a fanvid titled ‘Persuading the Lord to Take Pity on the Man Before Your Eyes’, was deleted from the website without any warning.

Not waiting for the LianXi fan circle to boil and explode, soon, all fanvids of this CP with driving-a-car plot were basically deleted or taken off the shelves for review from every video website. Within a few days, even RPS fanfics of the two of them that contained meat had also been shot down one after another. Except for the ones published on small private websites, almost the rest that were on Tieba, Weibo, and Lofter had been deleted without any crumbs left.

Although those clear water fanvids and fanfics had survived this catastrophe, who could be satisfied just by drinking water? Meat was the spiritual pillar that the greatest majority of the masses most thirsted for.

Thus, after discovering that this ‘clean internet’ operation was only aimed at LianXi Fufu CP and other stars’ fandoms were all fine, LianXi fans completely exploded. Not only did they believe that their fandom had been reported by a certain opponent, they also vowed to find the ‘murderer’ and took revenge for those spiritual pillars that disappeared.

Coincidentally, because a TV series starring Qiu Lianyi and Mu Zhongran as the third male was about to be aired at this time, Mu Zhongran's team began to warm up in advance and hyped up the ‘YiRan Fufu (Qiu Lianyi/Mu Zhongran)’ CP. They even paid some people to make fanvids and write fanfics, intending to create a kind of "there are candies and masters in this fandom, why don’t newbie fans quickly climb the wall to eat candy" atmosphere.

However, it was not sure whether these people did not get paid enough, or whether they just took offense at young actor Lin. Among the fanvids and fanfics that YiRan CP spent a large amount of real money on, there were surprisingly many of them that turned out to be plagiarized works. Moreover, the area that had been particularly hard hit by ​​plagiarism was LianXi CP fanworks, and some of them were those deleted driving-a-car fanvids and fanfics from LianXi fandom—even including that genuine masterpiece of the fandom, ‘Persuading the Lord to Take Pity on the Man Before Your Eyes’, which died in battle earliest.

Under such circumstances, could LianXi fans not regard YiRan CP (or Mu Zhongran's team) as the mastermind behind the scenes?!

The animosity from the CP’s partner being robbed coupled with the hatred from getting reported made LianXi fans, whom could be called an evil cult in the entertainment circle based on their fighting strength, dispatch all their troops to fight the ‘mastermind behind the scenes’ to death.

At first, Mu Zhongran's team was still able to suppress this wave of onslaughts by relying on their powerful naval force. But coincidentally, some of his BL fans who were ignorant of current affairs actually cursed Lin Zixi himself because of this matter….

As a result, young actor Lin’s fans, who had been eating melons and watching passively from the sidelines, joined the battlefield conveniently—if Chen Yunyun had not told the big fans to stop them, they would have already waged war with the other party for hundreds of rounds for the previous copycat, stepping on, and preempting incidents. 

After Lin Zixi's pure fans took part in the fanwar, Qiu Lianyi's pure fans soon joined the battlefield—Lin Zixi pondered and guessed that Qiu Lianyi's fans might be afraid that the other party would really market the YiRan Fufu when the TV series aired, so they had to snuff out the first signs of this dog skin plaster in advance.

And then, fans of other actors/actresses, who were disgruntled and vengeful having been offended by Mu Zhongran's team, all ended up participating in the war—long Weibo posts were written, black material went around, and complaints in the comments under various entertainment news were made. It really made Mu Zhongran, whom took the wrong road to reach the top, feel the meaning of ‘one party is in trouble, and the others like it’.

By the time Lin Zixi finished eating melon of this fan war, it was almost two in the morning.

He thought about it for a while and eventually sent a WeChat message to Chen Yunyun: "My fans are fighting with Mu Zhongran's fans. Do you need me to cook chicken soup on Weibo to cool them down?"

It was already so late, yet his agent actually hadn’t slept either and replied to him in seconds: "Don't interfere with this matter. I didn't tell you about this because you’ve been busy with filming recently. It's stopped being as simple as grudges between fan circles this time. With this lesson, as long as their brains haven’t completely broken, I think they won’t dare to step on you again rashly in the future.”

This was actually a good thing, and young actor Lin was relieved, but he still has a question: "Do you think... it’s really his side who asked someone to delete LianXi CP’s fanvids and fanfics?"

"It shouldn't be, because doing such a thing doesn't benefit his side. Also, I’ve contacted several websites, and they all said that the Network Supervision Department has listed the keywords and pointed out clearly that they should delete videos and articles with titles containing the words 'LianXi' together with 'meat', 'driving a car' and 'R18'. So, although some of the works have these contents, because they don’t have those words in the title, nothing happens to them…. Anyway, the matter this time is quite strange. I’ve already asked someone to knock some sense into LianXi fans, making them keep a low profile, drive less cars, and so on these days." Chen Yunyun sent quite a long reply. Then, after she and Lin Zixi bid each other good night, she ended her work and went to bed.

And Lin Zixi secretly rejoiced while washing his face and rinsing his mouth, rejoicing that LianXi CP got caught in the ‘eradicate pornography and illegal publications’ operation.

He let the cat out of the bag in front of Gu Zecheng last time. Just in case one day his dad was curious and wanted to find out about LianXi Fufu, and then the search results were full of pornographic and violent contents…. Young actor Lin thought of this situation and felt a headache.

Fortunately, fortunately.

TL’s note:

鸡汤 (jī tāng) = lit. chicken stock/soup; fig. words that sound reasonable and tell people about the beauty of the world and the infinite hope for the future, but they are actually useless, just to provide people with some psychological comfort

拉踩 (lā cǎi) = lit. to step on; fig. fans comparing their idols with another star and elevating their idols in a way that demeans other stars

肉 (ròu) = lit. meat, flesh; fig. pornographic content

清水 (qīng shuǐ) = lit. fresh water, drinking water, clear water; fig. without pornographic content

Due to RL, I'm taking a short break. Next chapter will be posted on Monday, July 18, 2022.