Chapter 69: CH 69

The moment this was dropped, it gave all the arguing antis just now a loud and clear slap to their faces. The few that had been the worst and most aggressive were quickly disappearing; no matter how many mentions, they did not pop up again. It was also at this time that Fu Xiu Nian received a video from the stadium. Taking a quick moment to edit it very simply to the specific relevant time, he then used his throwaway account to upload this version to all major video platforms.

This rendered version was of even higher quality, to the point of clarity in the smallest of details. Easily capturing the faces of those C listers standing by Tong Yue, of their discrete actions in blocking her escape and of their mocking smiles as they did so. 

But the video not only captured them in high crystal clarity, Tong Yue’s manager down under the stage could also be seen clearly, acting completely dismissive to Tong Yue’s cries for help with her eyes. It was a very jarring and piercing image to see, especially when contrasted with the nonstop blinding lights of the paparazzi taking photos.

Not one of them stood up for her, not one of them took a step to lend a helping hand. They were all leaving Tong Yue in a panic and desperately holding in her tears.

Anyone with a brain would know, if that dress fell down, what kind of conclusion would be waiting for her.

A very short video with only a couple of minutes, it was like the mirror on the wall. Within seconds, it was being shared by numerous people, with netizens getting mad out of disgust and from the righteousness in their hearts. But even more were shocked. Not one of them could have thought that the only person to stand up and help was Chen Yi.

That notorious and infamous Chen Yi.

From the dead of night until now, he had not shown his face at all, and he didn’t even come out to explain anything. The internet was spiralling out of control with words full of hate, going wild without any indication of stopping; each character, each word forming into the worst of the worst, as the most poisonous vitriol that could ever be formed on this earth. And this seemed to be normal, as if everyone was used to spitting out hate at him, and he had also gotten used to everyone’s attitude.

In his previous life, Chen Yi had cultivated to a degree of mastery, killing people without notice with just flower petals or leaves. But he had no ability to kill the evil, the malice in the hearts of humans. No one could ever, from looking at a distance, know what kind of person that was sitting right there was really like.

Those who are keyboard warriors, those who take up quests of vengeance with their words and attitude online, lashing out at whoever they could, could be any one of those working men or women in a random corner of a city, could be any of those students sitting in a classroom, and even more possibly, could be a weak, suffering, bullied individual.

The internet was like a covering, hiding away all their details, from information on their sex to their faces. Anyone in the daylight who was normally an upstanding person could take off their masks and go online, typing away words and words that were harder to hear in real life. As if they were knives that did not touch blood, killing soundlessly from millions and millions of miles away.

From the onset of the first video, the fans of Tong Yue had been blowing up in anger, and now they had their targets to switch their ire to. Although they were not high in numbers, tearing apart the other C listers that were there that evening was no problem. It was also easy to grow in numbers, as the group was joined by quite a few passing netizens that were in it for the drama. In just one afternoon, they suppressed all the hashtags that were trending back down.

# Chen Yi did not steal the spotlight, he stole our hearts #

# Big reveal on Tong Yue, a fight from jealousy between female celebrities #

People will always be used to a good person doing good things. But a bad person? A bad person who does a good thing will have their actions magnified. Before the clarifying video came out, Tong Yue’s fans were the ones fanning the fires, pushing and piling on the hate, but before long, one of the biggest fans immediately mentioned Chen Yi in her post, sending out a long apology letter.

[@Moonlight of a Fairytale1: I’m very sorry. I will first say to you I’m sorry, and then a very belated thank you.

>> Fine, don’t help, but wow, what a real nice personality, to throw rocks down when someone’s fallen into a well? Kicking them when they are already down? This is really giving me lessons on having good virtue, making me relearn what it means to be human2. From now on, I am a passerby who has turned into a fan of Chen Yi. Ever since I religiously watched << I Came From Far Away >>, I have fallen in love with his terrible personality. If you can’t accept this, then come at me. The complete version of << I Came From Far Away >> drops on Saturday. Sisters, please go support it.

The situation was snowballing into something bigger and bigger, and so not too long after, Ah Ya and Tong Yue would most definitely be explaining through a status post on weibo themselves, to try and calm the situation down.

Fu Xiu Nian scrolled from top to bottom on the group page, checking the discussions and found that the situation had already turned around for Chen Yi. Only a few antis were still going strong, but sometimes these kinds of things can only count on the power of fans. Fu Xiu Nian went out of his way to take a look at Chen Yi’s page, and he found that Chen Yi’s weibo had about more than five hundred thousand fans. Although this number seemed high, most of them were “zombie” fans, having been bought by his managing company. Even the hashtag feed was dead silent, with only a few loyal fans that were still occasionally posting as a role call. 

Searching through the posts, Fu Xiu Nian finally found the official fan group for Chen Yi. He used a more well used throwaway account to join in, but he was immediately denied.

Silence descended upon him for a second, and then he continued with perseverance to apply, clicking that button without planning on stopping. And in the end, the group leader messaged him to present evidence that he was not an anti-fan.

Fu Xiu Nian could understand, as there were quite a few antis that had the patience to do a long con mission. Thankfully with all the things that happened in the past few days, he had used his throwaway account to help Chen Yi, refuting back at the anti-fans, and the complete HQ video was uploaded by him, so he just took a few screenshots and sent it to the group leader and let the other investigate the truth in his records.

Half an hour later, Fu Xiu Nian was finally let into the group.

Chen Yi’s “fame” was still fairly high, but there were not even a hundred fans here. Most of them were also lurkers, and the group did not really have any moderators either. Seeing this, Fu Xiu Nian could only privately message the group creator.

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The creator’s QQ name was called Ruo Meng3 and she seemed to always be online as she had quickly replied when she saw the message.

[ There were too many antis pretending otherwise, so this is the group after being selective to make sure none of those make it through. It’s not a lot and they are pretty much casual fans, not popping up usually. ]

Fu Xiu Nian didn’t even get to reply before he received another DM.

[ Thank you for your upload yesterday. Can I ask when you became a fan of Yi Ge? How did you get the video? ]

Fu Xiu Nian thought about it and then sent a very condensed and simplified version of the events: Three days ago. Not long. Got it from someone I know.

Ruo Meng took a few minutes before replying back.

[ You’re quite honest. Yi Ge’s actually really nice. He has a vicious mouth, but he’s quite soft on the inside. Don’t believe all the negative news out there ]

Seeing this, Fu Xiu Nian’s long fingers unconsciously knocked on the table, deep in thought.

When he entered this industry, it was at first based on an interest, but the more he delved into it, the deeper he went, the more he discovered the darkness and murkiness within. There were quite a few things that were not as clean as it looked on the surface. Good people may not be good, bad people may not be bad.

He knew, Chen Yi was always good.

Fu Xiu Nian smiled and sent another message.

[ I believe that there will be a day where he will stand at the top, and there will be many more people who will like him. This down period is only temporary. ]

This second attempt at sleep made Chen Yi sleep all the way into the late afternoon, and he did not even know he had been somehow cleaned off of all the negativity; an exemplary example of lying down without doing anything and winning. When he woke up, he sluggishly went to clean himself up. The moment he stepped out of the bathroom, he saw Chen Xiao Meng come out of her room.

“Brother, you’re awake. I didn’t wake you up at noon as you have been working so hard these past few days. I’ve saved you some food which you can heat it up in the microwave.”

Chen Yi paused in surprise and then said, 

Chen Yi replied with two english letters:

[ sb ]4

And then following Zhou Ming’s orders, liked and reshared Ah Ya’s post.

Notes:

*1 Moonlight of a fairytale: The fan’s account name is a play on words with Tong Yue’s name (which is fairly common if you’re a fan of someone), with the fairytale as 童話, where the first part “童” is the first character of her name Tong Yue, 童月, and the moonlight with moon from the second character (Tong Yue is literally as “child moon”).

*2 to be human: Please refer to chp 64 for a bit more of an in-depth meaning (altho technically glossing over a lot there too haha) as I changed the footnotes there if you haven’t seen it yet. But a quick summary: they mean here the three values of what makes a human human (the three ways a human thinks and the overall arching values and understanding of the world and themselves and that becomes the basis of what things mean and how one would interpret a situation). Also a quick note on that idiom of throwing rocks down the well when someone fell in. It sounds exactly like what it means/implicates, kind of like taking joy in being mean when someone’s already suffering (kicking someone when they are down).

*3 Ruo Meng means “if dream”/”dreaming” and QQ, you can think of this as an account for something that’s like twitter if you will.

*4 sb: I think the more commonly known meaning is stupid bitch which takes from the sound of “stupid” and “force”, “cunt”, “compare” – I’ve seen a few sources on debating which one it is based on, but I’m pretty sure there’s one that stands out lol, but you can think of sb as like a curse word/insult at someone, along the likes of dumbass.

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