CH 19

The follower count was still rising at a crazy pace. Every time Ye Li refreshed the page, a frightening new number would appear.

Ye Li clicked on the only post on the account. He wanted to know why they had gained so many followers in just a single night. 

The comments on Weibo were all sorts of flattery and exclamations.

[Is this a living person? A real human being? How can a person look this good?!]

[Pick me, pick me, pick me!]

[Wuwuwu, this is the guy! I’ve been looking for him for so long, but Xingyao took him away.] 

[Why is there only one post? What’s wrong with the company, are they not gonna promote him? Do you not know how to do business? Begging you to come out and promote yourself!]

[My height is 180 cm, I was top of my undergraduate class, My family owns six properties, I’ll write your name on the deed, my wages can be yours also! If you tell me to go east, I definitely won’t head west.]

[Lmaooo, keep dreaming! You’re so shameless! Also, sorry, but don’t come out and embarrass yourself if you’re only 180 cm. My male god is half a head taller than you.]

[Actually, it’s not impossible for me to be on the bottom…]

[Don’t be delusional! Everyone, wake up! He’s mine, okay? Mine!]

Ye Li exited the comment section and glanced back at the trending list. He looked at the very first item.

#XieLuyuVarietyShow

Then, the second item. 

#GuQingchi

The following items were also related topics.

#XieLuyuCooking

#PunkStyleRuralTourism 

There was also another topic. The style of this trending topic was a bit different.

#XieLuyuMoveYourHandAwayRightNow

Xie Luyu and his fans had a kind of love-hate relationship. This kind of interaction was actually quite common for them.

But Ye Li still felt that something was weird here. He hesitated for a while but clicked on the topic anyway. 

***

The always-up-to-date Xie Luyu was also sitting on the sofa, scrolling through Weibo.

He sighed as he was scrolling.

“It really did go viral…” 

He clicked on each trending topic, going through them one by one.

The first one was Gu Qingchi’s hashtag.

“This hashtag’s pretty nice, simple and to-the-point.”

Someone had made a collection of Gu Qingchi’s best moments. It was a set of pictures and videos. Xie Luyu downloaded all of them, one by one, and put them in a special folder. 

After downloading them, he clicked into the folder to take a look at his collection.

A complete collection of Gu Qingchi clips from when he was working at the western restaurant, check.

A complete collection of Gu Qingchi clips from the variety show, check.

And then, that was it. 

Xie Luyu was a little skeptical.

“How come there’s only this much, it’s too little.”

As he was speaking, he cut back to the Weibo interface to look for more material.

Lf rkfqa atgbeut fjmt agfcvlcu abqlm ogbw rajga ab olclrt. 

Ktfc, tf mjeuta j uijcmf bo j mfgajlc tjrtaju.

#WlfOeseZbnfTbegLjcvCkjsElutaRbk

“Ytb, atfgf’r bcf bo wlcf abb.”

Pa kjr qgfaas tlut bc atf agfcvlcu ilra abb. Wlf Oese fcvfv eq bc atf agfcvlcu ilra fnfgs mbeqif bo vjsr, rb tf tjv ibcu rlcmf rabqqfv mjglcu jybea la. Dbat ubbv jcv yjv cfkr mbeiv yf gfujgvfv jr pera j ilaaif yla bo cblrf. 

Xie Luyu clicked into it without a single worry on his mind.

The first post was a video.

The video began with a hallway. It was filmed from a very sneaky angle. After watching for a bit, Xie Luyu finally figured out what the video was about.

It was from that night. Xie Luyu could still remember the events from that night. 

Every single detail was crystal clear.

Gu Qingchi was standing in front of him. His body was still a little wet.

Droplets of water were still hanging onto the ends of his hair.

Black pants, white translucent shirt, the buttons were open, the tie was undone and draped around his neck. 

The pants hung loosely around his hips, revealing a beautiful mermaid line.

Then, Xie Luyu started watching the video.

The video progress bar just started moving.

Gu Qingchi was walking forward and could be seen a little more clearly. 

The video was very clear, but it was a little hard to see from so far away. Even so, his beauty could be felt through the screen.

The more you watched, the more you couldn’t help but look forward to seeing him. You wanted him to get closer, even closer, so close that you could see every strand of his hair.

But it stopped there.

Xie Luyu pushed open the door to the balcony, and the two happened to run into each other. 

Then, Gu Qingchi stopped.

Xie Luyu got closer and closer to the camera and smiled mischievously. He looked like a ruffian with his villainous kind of aura.

He was so close that you could almost smell the tobacco on his breath.

Then he smiled at the camera, and, while the audience was still a little stunned by his smile, he unhesitatingly covered the camera with his jacket. 

The video suddenly came to a stop.

The beautiful person they were about to see was gone!

The comment section was full of comments saying “Xie Luyu, move your hand right now!”

But most of them were actually Xie Luyu’s fans. 

Gu Qingchi only appeared in the video for no more than ten seconds. Plus, he was pretty far from the camera, so there weren’t many face-cons under this post.

The fact this topic squeezed into the trending list was pretty much all thanks to Xie Luyu.

Xie Luyu had a huge number of fans. They were made up of two types of fans. The first type were the long-time fans who had been following Xie Luyu for years. They were generally rather calm and laidback.

The other type were the newer fans. They tended to be younger, and their fighting strength and engagement was super high. They bordered on extreme. A single disagreeable comment could set them off. 

However, none of them were able to out-argue Xie Luyu. Xie Luyu could scold them for an entire day without using a single swear word.

Typically, as soon as they started making trouble, they would be put back in their place by Xie Luyu, so they weren’t too reckless.

There was a bit of a pipeline between the two types of fans.

After a while, those new fans would also become long-time fans and adapt into their laidback style. 

When Xie Luyu had dating scandals, they would reply with “hahaha”. When there were rumors of Xie Luyu not getting along with another celebrity, they would reply with “hahaha”.

No matter what the tabloids said, they would just reply “hahaha” like a melon-eating passerby. If you only looked at their comments, you wouldn’t have even been able to tell that they were fans.

There were only a few people interrupting the spamming going on in the comments.

[Xie ge actually went on a variety show? Tell me, which direction is the sun gonna rise from today?] 

[Aaaaah, did Xie ge get even more handsome?]

[Xie ge is still the same old Xie ge. As usual, he doesn’t look like he’s up to anything good.]

However, for the most part, most of the comments were spamming “Xie Luyu, move your hand away right now!”

Xie Luyu looked at the uniform comment section and scrolled down. He was very grateful that he had reacted quickly to the situation at the time. 

As he sighed, he gave himself a pat on the back.

“What a bunch of hooligans, look at their immoral behavior. It’s a good thing I’m a quick thinker. Otherwise, these brats would’ve gotten to see more than they should have.”

He huffed a breath at his nonexistent bangs.

“It’s a hundred years too early for these brats to try and go against me.” 

***

Ye Li had also finished watching the video. As an agent, his instinctive reaction was that they could make some noise with this.

However, he quickly dismissed this idea. Xie Luyu’s fans usually seemed happy-go-lucky and laidback, spending all day trading barbs with their idol.

But, when it came down to it, they were a united front. Xie Luyu had the guts to say anything when he opened his mouth. So long as Xie Luyu said the word, they would be the first to rush out. 

Gu Qingchi’s momentum was already very good. He had even accumulated a good number of fans to set his foundation. Even though most of them were just face-cons, they were all active fans, very, very active.

There was no reason to go and find trouble for themselves.

Plus, a lot of the popularity that Gu Qingchi earned this time was thanks to Xie Luyu.

It sure was easy to ride on someone else’s coattails. Since this was the first time, it could be said that Xie Luyu had helped them out on his own initiative. However, it would be rude to try and take advantage of him a second time. 

Better to stop while you’re ahead.

Once Ye Li thought things through, he gave Gu Qingchi a call.

His previous experience told him that he needed the both of them to be on the same page.

“There’s nothing going on between you and Xie Luyu, right?” 

Gu Qingchi seemed to have just woken up. He slowly started speaking.

“There’s nothing.”

“That’s good. He’s on a different career path than you are. Although it’s nice to rely on someone else, it’s still better to just take things step by step.”

Ye Li was subtly dropping hints. 

Gu Qingchi hummed in response. Finally, he responded very seriously.

“Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen, especially not with Xie Luyu.”

Ye Li smiled.

“I just knew you’d understand what I meant. If you get in a relationship, remember to report it to me. Although, I would recommend you not get in one at all.” 

Ye Li simply laid everything out and explained to Gu Qingchi.

“I’m not trying to target you. I just really don’t feel at ease about newcomers. You know, the industry’s never really been able to stop those kinds of practices.”

Ye Li didn’t speak to Gu Qingchi in detail, but he could infer. Sugar daddies and sugar babies, the industry had no shortage of this kind of thing.

“Look at Xie Luyu. He’s a movie emperor, an important person in the industry, young and promising, and he’s attractive too. You can get a ton of publicity just by sticking with him, super easy. There are lots of people who have gotten a taste of that publicity and a lot of people who are tempted by it.” 

He earnestly advised Gu Qingchi. Gu Qingchi had a lot of promise. He didn’t want to mess this up.

“But even after so many years, Xie Luyu’s still fine and dandy but those stars that tried to mooch off of him are all gone. Xie Luyu isn’t someone to be messed with, so it would be better stay further away.”

Gu Qingchi listened diligently and hummed in response. He also thought this. Even though Ye Li couldn’t see it, Gu Qingchi nodded.

“I’ll stay away.” 

He sounded very obedient.

Ye Li was very satisfied. He was super lucky to have gotten such a worry-free artist.

Then, he hung up the phone and continued to scroll through Weibo. Every once in a while, he would glance at the follower count. The number of followers had been steadily increasing, giving him a sense of achievement.

As he was scrolling, he suddenly realized that something wasn’t quite right. He carefully looked through the comments and discovered that Xie Luyu had followed Gu Qingchi. He even sent out a very succinct Weibo post. 

Very polite, well-behaved kid. @GuQingchi

The comments under it were a uniform wall of spam.

[Sorry, I’m gonna stan him instead!]

This single comment had been spammed several hundred times. Xie Luyu fans liked acting like this. It was as if they were clocking in for work or something. They were clearly all active fans, yet they acted as if they were a water army. 

It took a lot of scrolling to find any other comments.

[Today’s Xie ge sounds like a fake.]

[Can’t believe Xie ge is also able to act normally.]

[Xie ge, blink twice if you’ve been kidnapped!] 

[Xie ge, tell me, are you the sugar daddy or the sugar baby?]

[I checked it out for you guys, Xie ge is the sugar daddy. Don’t ask me how I know, just look at the face. Also, I wanna ask, Xie Luyu, what do you have that I don’t?! Wuwuwu, I’m so jealous!]

Ye Li put his phone down, a little confused.

He had already decided not to try to cook up publicity, so why was it that the publicity made its way over to him anyway? 

It wasn’t strange for an established artist to help out a newcomer from the same agency, but it’s different if it’s Xie Luyu.

Ye Li fell deep into thought about what it was that Xie Luyu was trying to do. After thinking and thinking, it seemed that anything was possible with Xie Luyu.

As for the netizens’ jokes that Xie Luyu was interested in Gu Qingchi, it wasn’t very likely. Ye Li immediately crossed out that possibility.

It was most likely that Pan Xiaocheng saw that Gu Qingchi was a promising newbie from the same company and wanted to foster a good relationship. 

However, it was still a little weird. Pan Xiaocheng was very good at handling things. What happened today, to summarize in a word, was alright but it wasn’t really necessary.

Ah, forget it. Anyway, the current growth trend was pretty good. Ye Li refreshed the page again. The number of fans had reached 450,000.

What a terrifying growth rate.

*** 

Pan Xiaocheng was also scrolling through Weibo. Everyone in the entertainment industry had at least a little bit of an internet addiction, and Pan Xiaocheng was no exception.

Of course, someone as addicted as Xie Luyu was still rather rare.

As he was scrolling, he received a Weibo notification from a special following.

Pan Xiaocheng’s heart immediately skipped two beats. 

The only account he had given a special following was Xie Luyu. Usually, Xie Luyu’s Weibo was managed by his team. Anything posted to the account had to go through him first.

Because of his previous record, Xie Luyu had already been confiscated of his right to post to the account.

Unless Xie Luyu secretly changed the password back again.

He was shaking with fear as he opened the notification. When he finished reading the post… 

?

Did his account get hacked?