Chapter 14
The next day was a holiday, and Zhang Yang took Ke Yao out to play for the whole day.
Ke Yao’s birthday wish was truly heart-wrenching. Who could stand being cooped up at home all day?
Zhang Yang bought several bags of potato chips for Ke Yao and also introduced him to bubble tea and hot pot for the first time. His uncovered half-face was occupied by a big smile, curious about everything and enjoying every moment. He was ecstatic, like a child.
Zhang Yang was also happy. She realized that exposing Ke Yao to different environments was beneficial for his “growth.” In just one day, he absorbed more knowledge than she could teach him in a week.
As they walked along the pedestrian street, Ke Yao suddenly stopped in his tracks and looked at the large LED screen on the square.
Zhang Yang followed his gaze and saw that they were playing an advertisement for Sheng Shi. She immediately felt a bit nervous. Ke Yao knew he was a clone of Sheng Shi, but he didn’t understand the significance of cloning, and no one would tell him.
In Ke Yao’s world, everything was meant to be this way.
But as knowledge grew, clone people would inevitably question their existence, so periodic resets were necessary.
“Sheng Shi…” Ke Yao murmured.
“What do you think about Sheng Shi?” Zhang Yang asked cautiously.
“He might be my brother,” Ke Yao said.
Zhang Yang was taken aback. “Why would you think that?”
“He looks exactly like me, but I don’t know him, so he must have been born before me,” Ke Yao said with a logical tone.
“Well… maybe,” Zhang Yang couldn’t explain the complexities of cloning to Ke Yao, and even if she could, she wouldn’t.
“It’s strange,” Ke Yao continued.
“What’s strange?”
“Sheng Shi, me, and Ke Shun, we all look exactly the same. But Ke Yu is different from us, and the younger brothers who were born later are even more different. It’s so strange,” Ke Yao said.
Zhang Yang was shocked. “Ke Shun looks exactly like you?”
“Yeah.”
“And he’s also 100%…” Zhang Yang suddenly broke into a cold sweat. How many 100% customized products did the company create? And who did they sell them to? This despicable human trafficking company, how many immoral things have they done?
“Fei Yang,” Ke Yao asked with a perplexed and disappointed tone, “why can so many people see Sheng Shi, but I can’t be seen by anyone except you?”
Zhang Yang’s heart tightened, feeling sour. She pursed her lips, unsure how to answer.
Yes, it’s unfair. Unfair to Ke Yao, unfair to Sheng Shi. The existence of clone people is a tragedy created by humans.
After returning home, Ke Yao was still recounting all the new things he had experienced that day, all the knowledge he had gained. He was much livelier than usual. Zhang Yang wanted to take him out more, but today’s outing had already cost over four hundred yuan, which made her reluctant.
After taking a shower, she climbed into bed and finally had time to play with her phone. It was then that she realized there had been a commotion in the group that afternoon, and someone had left. The person causing the argument and leaving the group was the die-hard fan who was extremely dissatisfied with Sheng Shi’s response to Yue Chen Guang’s birthday wishes. Her name was Biscuit, and she was an underground member of the Sheng Wang Mansion. She had once posted on Weibo showing off her photography equipment worth over two hundred thousand yuan.
There were too many messages to read, so Zhang Yang directly asked the smaller group for details.
Er Guan: What else could it be? She’s just too sensitive.
Jing Yiyi: She started a fight on Weibo, and CPF fans attacked her all day. Then Mushroom asked her to mute herself, and she exploded and caused a big argument.
Zhang Yang:…
Er Guan: It’s not Brother’s fault. Doesn’t he have a team managing his Weibo account?
Jing Yiyi: Even if it’s the team, they’re still disgusting.
Zhang Yang: It’s indeed disgusting. I understand her to some extent, but there’s no need to explode like that.
Er Guan: It’s the fault of both the idiots and the doomed ones.
Er Guan: She’s so damn calculating. She even said lines in English.
Zhang Yang: What line?
Er Guan: Don’t you know? The line “Bro, happy birthday” is a line from the drama.
Upon hearing this, Zhang Yang seemed to have some recollection. She wasn’t a fujoshi, so naturally she didn’t pay attention to the BL couple in the drama. Moreover, the drama had only aired a few episodes before they started preventing explosions and constantly released official statements criticizing Yue Chen Guang, which made Zhang Yang dislike his character so much that she fast-forwarded whenever he appeared. How could she remember the lines?
Jing Yiyi: The scene following that line is a big fight between the brothers, and it’s very famous in the fanfiction community. No wonder the fans went crazy and started vomiting.
Zhang Yang was also angry and exclaimed, “Damn, such a scheming woman, a true master of schemes!”
Er Guan: She’s shameless to the extreme. It takes a special kind of audacity to behave like that.
Zhang Yang was starting to understand Biscuit’s anger more and more, but she also felt that Biscuit had gone a bit too far.
She specifically went on Weibo to take a look and saw that Biscuit had posted numerous angry tweets on her alternate account. Yesterday, she had shown some restraint, but today she started using foul language. It seemed like she was really furious.
She wasn’t close to Biscuit, so she didn’t pay much attention. However, the next day when she woke up, she saw someone in the group chat saying that Biscuit had unfollowed and criticized Yue Chen Guang.
Biscuit used her main account, “Sheng Wang Fu,” which had 600,000 followers, to post a long statement expressing her long-standing disappointment with Sheng Shi and his team. Because she had been on the front lines and had seen the team and Sheng Shi himself countless times, she knew many secrets. This statement immediately caused a significant stir in the fandom.
In her statement, she mentioned how the Sheng Shi team manipulated fans with the help of big fans, how staff members took bribes and sold information, how fan clubs and several big fan sites profited by exploiting fans, and how Sheng Shi privately communicated with fans, flirted with female actors, and engaged in casual relationships.
In the second half of the statement, Biscuit began to talk about her and the fans’ dedication. She mentioned that she still had a hundred magazines featuring Sheng Shi lying around in her rented house, which no one wanted even as toilet paper. She said she once bought fifty cases of Sheng Shi’s endorsed drinks and gave them away everywhere. Her colleagues mocked her behind her back, calling her crazy. She mentioned that she owed over 70,000 yuan on her credit card and couldn’t pay it off, and she even emptied her pockets to celebrate Sheng Shi’s birthday, to the point where eating became a problem this month. She did everything for the sake of giving Sheng Shi the biggest face, and yet Sheng Shi only took 46 minutes to reply to Yue Chen Guang’s birthday wishes, which hinted at a BL relationship, causing the CPF (fans shipping a same-sex couple) to go wild and slapping them, the true fans, in the face. She said that if Sheng Shi had just left Yue Chen Guang hanging for a few hours before replying, it wouldn’t have broken her heart.
That Weibo post’s likes, comments, and shares skyrocketed, quickly making it a hot topic. The comments section was filled with insults, pleas to delete the post, agreement, and people spectating, creating chaos.
Zhang Yang was so angry that she couldn’t eat her meal. She had heard some of the rumors before, but they were half true and half false, and she didn’t know whether to believe them or not. However, she would never easily believe any accusations against Sheng Shi. She hated that Biscuit unfollowed him, but why did she have to criticize him? It was simply madness.
Someone in the group tried to persuade Biscuit, but unfortunately, it was in vain. Biscuit was truly not holding back.
Over the next two days, Biscuit’s Weibo posts were like heavy hammers. She posted dozens of unedited photos of Sheng Shi. Despite Sheng Shi being a top-tier handsome guy, he couldn’t always look good from every angle and in every situation. These photos didn’t have much impact on true fans, but they provided material for mockery for the antis and bystanders.
She also shared some evidence supporting her claims against Sheng Shi and his team. Some of the evidence seemed plausible, while others had reasonable arguments against their authenticity. They were solid proof in the eyes of the antis, juicy gossip to the bystanders, but all just rumors for the fans.
At the same time, the anti-fan groups mobilized and released a compilation of eight doxing incidents involving Sheng Shi’s fans over the past three years. It even led to one person attempting suicide, and incidents of online violence were widespread.
Only a few days ago, the country had just issued regulations to regulate the online ecosystem, including prohibiting doxing. Discussions on online violence and doxing were highly active at this time, and causing such a big uproar was like walking right into a trap.
Zhang Yang kept receiving instructions from the group and took control of her own group. At the same time, she tirelessly appealed on Weibo, organizing fans to refute the rumors and win over the public’s perception. But the situation was difficult to calm down.
Sheng Shi’s studio released a statement strongly opposing online violence and doxing, calling for the purification of the online ecosystem, and condemning the rumors about Sheng Shi and his team, reserving the right to take legal action against them.
In principle, as long as there were no real and undeniable evidence like photos of the star holding hands or kissing someone, fans could find ways to wash away the accusations, especially since Biscuit’s accusations of Sheng Shi having casual relationships lacked substantial weight. Furthermore, doxing and online exposés were the actions of fans. So far, this wave of turmoil was limited to Sheng Shi’s fandom.
However, Sheng Wang Fu’s Weibo, which used to be a collection of beautiful pictures of Sheng Shi from the frontlines, suddenly turned into a gathering place for dark secrets about Sheng Shi. After Biscuit finished revealing her own evidence, she began exposing others’ secrets.
Various marketing accounts also joined in, clearly paid to attack Sheng Shi.
Sheng Shi’s fans had witnessed scenes like this before. Early on, when Sheng Shi became popular, they had already experienced a large-scale wave of mockery. They faced constant conflicts and disputes whenever there was news about new works or updates. The fans had experienced countless battles, and this was the thorny path that every top-tier celebrity had to travel on their way to the throne. They were determined to win this time as well because this wave of torment was like injecting chicken blood into them.
Zhang Yang had slept for less than four hours in the past two days, and she secretly checked her phone during work to keep up with the situation. She felt heartbroken for Sheng Shi, unable to understand why someone so perfect had to go through all of this.
However, no one expected that the situation would ultimately spiral out of control, triggered by a low-profile fan with only a few followers on Weibo.
The fan posted a distress signal on Weibo, tagging many influential accounts. She claimed to be a freshman in college and had been a fan of Sheng Shi since high school. Due to borrowing 2,000 yuan from loan sharks in school, the debt had now snowballed to 360,000 yuan. Information about her debt had spread among her campus and friends, causing her parents, who lived in a rural area, to be so angry that they were hospitalized. Feeling trapped and with no way out, she contemplated suicide. The reason she had incurred such a high-interest loan was to buy magazines featuring Sheng Shi.
She explained that the fan community surrounding Sheng Shi had a strict hierarchical system based on contributions, and her only wish was to meet him in person. However, lacking money and talent, she could only be a bottom-tier unpaid water army, posting over 500,000 Weibo posts in less than three years, all focused on data promotion for Sheng Shi. Whenever there was a need to boost Sheng Shi’s rankings or sales, the prominent fans would call for everyone to contribute money. Many students without financial resources would either ask their parents or resort to deception, just like Biscuit did by exceeding her credit card limit. With an annual family income of only 40,000 yuan, she had no money to spare, and her spending was low. She had no credit limit, so she could only save from her living expenses. But when she couldn’t save enough, she felt ashamed seeing others contribute money and, in a moment of impulse, resorted to borrowing from high-interest online lenders, which led her into the abyss.
Now she had awakened to reality and deeply regretted her choices. She wanted to save herself and also warn younger fans not to push themselves into a dead end for the sake of idol chasing.
This incident was like a deepwater bomb, setting off a towering wave on an already stormy sea. It directly targeted the most sensitive forbidden zone—illegal fundraising—just after Sheng Shi had celebrated a grand and extravagant birthday.
In fact, fundraising was not a new phenomenon in various fan communities. However, other fan communities didn’t possess the terrifying money-gathering abilities of Sheng Shi’s fan base, nor did they have the same level of attention and hatred directed at them.
Biscuit quickly received explosive revelations and released linked evidence, proving that the female college student’s claims were not false. Many screenshots showed prominent fans instigating and enticing other fans to spend money, even resorting to loans. And these prominent fans were undoubtedly closely connected to the studio.
When Zhang Yang saw this news, her heart nearly stopped.
In the past couple of days, she had felt anger, but now she was scared.
After all, she had worked in a state-owned enterprise for many years, attending meetings and political classes. Her political awareness was much higher than those naive kids who had never seen the world, and she knew what was permissible and what wasn’t. She was well aware that illegal fundraising was illegal, but it was not easy to define. Fan fundraising activities belonged to a gray area where the authorities turned a blind eye. There were simply too many cases to handle. However, once it was exposed and involved a huge amount of money and had a significant social impact, it would become a typical case, and Sheng Shi’s career would undoubtedly be affected.
As expected, the situation quickly spun out of control, with netizens directly targeting Sheng Shi’s studio and himself. Prominent fans who called for fundraising also faced public condemnation, and numerous reports and complaints were made.
The next day, mainstream media outlets began publishing critical reports and editorials, reflecting on the negative behaviors of both popular idols and their fan communities.
Sheng Shi’s fans, who had always been invincible within the fan community, suddenly found themselves facing a massive storm. They had always relied on their overwhelming numbers to crush others and believed they could cover the sky with their hand. Gradually, they forgot that there were always greater forces at play, and in the face of a real and vast public opinion storm, they became isolated boats in the water, on the verge of capsizing, let alone mounting a counterattack.
When the first official media outlet spoke up, the tightly wound thread in Zhang Yang’s heart snapped.
