Heartthrob, Your Image is Crumbling!

Chapter 583: Creating an Internet Celebrity

Yin Songyue casually uploaded a few videos online, and inexplicably gained a wave of popularity. She was dubbed the Pure Desire Ceiling, and her popularity only continued to rise. Many media companies had already begun trying to poach her, and even Kuaishou and several other short video apps started inviting Yin Songyue to join them.However, Yin Songyue was currently waiting for the highest bidder. She publicly declared on her social media homepage that her secret crush was Zhou Yuwen and that she hoped to date Senior Zhou Yuwen for a day.

"If I could date Senior Zhou Yuwen, I would even be willing to give up being an internet celebrity!"

This homepage declaration made many fans feel that Yin Songyue was someone who dared to dream and act. At the same time, they were incredibly envious of this so-called Zhou Yuwen. Of course, Zhou Yuwen had always been the center of everyone's envy. Setting aside how many school beauties he had dated since his freshman year, a pure and alluring first-year girl had finally appeared, yet she was also relentlessly chasing after him.

Of course, envy was just envy, but when it came down to it, his appeal was unobjectionable. After all, considering Zhou Yuwen's current capabilities, there were very few people in the entire country who could compare. It wasn't just that he was wealthy; he was not only rich but also young and handsome.

The topic of the freshman school beauty and the most popular campus internet celebrity actively pursuing Zhou Yuwen became a hot discussion on the school forum.

And the one with the ugliest expression was undoubtedly Zheng Yanyan.

Zheng Yanyan had complained to Lu Lin more than once, saying that Yin Songyue was a little slut who just wanted to embarrass her!

In truth, most of the girls in the Arts Department knew some of the inside story—Yin Songyue and Zheng Yanyan had a long-standing conflict. The thing Zheng Yanyan loved to show off the most was that her boyfriend was Zhou Yuwen.

She had become the Minister of the Arts Department right at the start of her sophomore year, and ultimately, it was due to Zhou Yuwen's power behind the scenes.

Therefore, Yin Songyue was blatantly declaring war on Zheng Yanyan.

The meaning was clear: I am going to steal your man!

This made Zheng Yanyan furious. The two of them had bumped into each other a few times at school, and if Lu Lin hadn't been there to hold her back, they probably would have actually gotten into a physical fight.

Zheng Yanyan felt very wronged. She was pulled into the office by Zhou Yuwen for a meeting.

Also present in the office were Tao Tian, Lu Lin, and a few managers from the cultural media company, such as Han Qian, who had been following Qu Jing since the very beginning.

The scene Zheng Yanyan and Yin Songyue had made at school was known by practically everyone, and quite a few people were secretly laughing at the spectacle.

Zhou Yuwen also felt helpless. Looking at Zheng Yanyan's huffing and puffing demeanor, he said, "Look how old you are, yet you're still bickering with a child."

"Haven't I told you before? You should get less involved in school matters," he added.

Zheng Yanyan snorted and replied, "I just can't stand her arrogant attitude."

"Doesn't she just know how to strike a few poses? Pure Desire Ceiling, my foot!"

Tao Tian found this somewhat amusing. She commented, "The problem is that on the internet, everyone really does acknowledge her as the Pure Desire Ceiling. In just a few days, her follower count has grown to three million."

"That many?"

Zheng Yanyan was taken aback. Seeing Tao Tian holding a tablet, she grabbed it to take a look and found that the followers had indeed soared to three million.

Tao Tian went on to say that many media companies now wanted to sign Yin Songyue.

"But Yin Songyue has put the word out that as long as Yuwen is willing, she can sign a contract with us at any time."

As she said this, Tao Tian looked up at Zhou Yuwen. At the same time, Zheng Yanyan also cast a guilty glance at him. She was genuinely afraid that Zhou Yuwen would abandon her for the sake of profit and actually sign Yin Songyue.

However, Zhou Yuwen's expression remained calm. He declared, "My company has grown this large, and it certainly wasn't built by relying on a honey trap."

"Isn't it just about traffic? Han Qian, come over here for a second."

Zhou Yuwen spoke to Han Qian, the most inconspicuous person standing outside the office.

"?" Han Qian looked confused.

Han Qian was one of the first girls in the Arts Department to do part-time work with Tao Tian. The fact that she could enter the Arts Department meant her foundational looks were not bad. During Tao Tian's incident, she had chosen to follow Qu Jing. Although she had been doing clerical work at the company all this time, she actually had an artist contract.

Han Qian walked up to Zhou Yuwen's desk, looking at him somewhat cautiously.

The fact that Han Qian was in the Arts Department proved that her natural appearance was quite good.

Her height might be slightly shorter compared to Zheng Yanyan and the others, but because her bodily proportions were good, she still looked great. Wearing a pair of round, black-rimmed glasses, she had the appearance of an honest, hardworking clerk.

Zhou Yuwen asked Han Qian, "You've been at the company for almost two years now, right?"

"No, not quite yet." Han Qian was one year senior to Zhou Yuwen in school, but she didn't dare act superior at all. After all, Zhou Yuwen was like a god in the company.

"Don't be nervous," Zhou Yuwen reassured her.

"Speaking of which, I should still call you Senior Sister. If I recall correctly, you were among the first batch of girls to sign an artist contract?"

"That's right, but because I've always been following Sister Jing, I never went out to work as a model."

Zhou Yuwen nodded, indicating that he remembered this.

He said, "A while ago, our contracts were caught in a controversy. People called it an unfair clause, claiming we knew short video apps were going to take off and deliberately set up a high breach of contract penalty."

"Sweetie, it's fine that you thought about signing Yin Songyue to resolve this issue."

"But Yin Songyue wasn't cultivated by us. Even if we really piled traffic onto her, it would only capture temporary hype. I feel that doing so would instead chill the hearts of artists like Han Qian, who have signed contracts and remained loyally with the company."

Zhou Yuwen was speaking polite formalities, making Han Qian feel a bit embarrassed. She wanted to say that she was perfectly fine with how things were now.

But Zhou Yuwen suddenly asked her, "Do you want to be an internet celebrity? A massive internet celebrity like Yin Songyue?"

Han Qian lowered her head and whispered, "Actually, I think the way things are now is quite good..."

Tao Tian chimed in at this moment, "Actually, I have considered cultivating our company's own internet celebrities, but the progress for that is too slow. Besides, we don't really have any proper channels right now."

"Channels have to be figured out on our own. I personally believe Han Qian has what it takes to become a massive internet celebrity."

As Zhou Yuwen spoke, he stood up and walked over to Han Qian. He took off her black-rimmed glasses, revealing her blank, bewildered expression as she looked at him.

Zhou Yuwen told her to smile.

She gave a forced smile.

Zhou Yuwen told her to smile more naturally.

So, Han Qian tried again.

She even had a little canine tooth showing; she really was quite beautiful.

Zhou Yuwen said, "See, how pretty you are when you smile. So gentle and serene."

Han Qian grew bashful at his words.

Zhou Yuwen declared that they would focus on cultivating Han Qian.

Tao Tian said, "But we don't have much time left, do we?"

"How long does it take to cultivate an internet celebrity? A single night is more than enough," Zhou Yuwen replied.

Tao Tian didn't understand his words, and Zhou Yuwen didn't waste breath explaining. He simply stated that he would handle this matter personally.

"All of you can leave now."

And just like that, everyone headed out. Right at the end, Zhou Yuwen called out, "Linlin, you stay."

"?" Lu Lin felt confused.

It wasn't just Lu Lin; even Tao Tian, seeing Lu Lin being held back, couldn't help but feel a twinge of disappointment. It seemed that because of the incident with Minmin, Zhou Yuwen still harbored some reservations about her.

Next, Zhou Yuwen took Lu Lin and Han Qian away mysteriously to do who knows what. As it approached time to get off work, Tao Tian saw Zhou Yuwen leaving the company with them and a cameraman, heading to an unknown destination. Later, she heard from employees that they had been seen filming a video in a corner of the underground parking garage.

An underground parking garage? What kind of thing were they filming?

Zhou Yuwen said she would become an overnight viral sensation. What kind of video could achieve that?

In reality, what Zhou Yuwen was replicating right now was the viral video of the "Garage Goddess" Wen Wan from his memories of his previous life.

In his previous life, this minor internet celebrity named Wen Wan blew up in 2018. Before Wen Wan became famous, no one realized that short videos could be hyped up in such a way.

Countless phones were set up, furiously spamming likes. After investing a few million, the result was a harvest of twenty million likes overnight, and Wen Wan gained twelve million followers.

This was a loophole in the mechanics of the short video software. Such massive traffic instantly pushed Wen Wan to the top of Douyin's most popular videos. At that time, as long as you opened Douyin, you would scroll past this video.

Coupled with people driving the narrative in the comments, saying, "Wow, this girl is so pretty!"

"This girl is so simple and innocent!"

To be honest, if it weren't for the fact that Wen Wan had a delinquent background, causing things to spiral out of control later, combined with the leak of her private videos, Wen Wan could have truly lived off that colossal wealth for the rest of her life.

It was a pity. In this era where traffic was king, Wen Wan's bare face was just not resilient enough. Combined with her own lack of substance, she eventually sank without a trace into the vast sea of the internet.

She herself couldn't be copied, but her successful case study certainly could be replicated.

Thus, Zhou Yuwen brought in a makeup artist to apply makeup for Han Qian and arranged a full outfit for her. Even her hairstyle was styled exactly like Wen Wan's. Needless to say, she actually looked quite a bit like her.

Then, Zhou Yuwen taught Han Qian the moves one by one, telling her to just dance exactly like that.

Han Qian had a foundation in dance. After learning how to dance the routine, she couldn't help but laugh, thinking to herself, 'This is way too easy.'

She simply wiggled her fingers while bobbing her head back and forth.

Gucci Gucci, Prada Prada!

'This is just too silly...'

As she danced, Han Qian let out a genuinely happy laugh.

It was exactly the moment her smile was captured on camera that it perfectly coincided with the charm of the original video.

"Perfect, just like that."

The filming was a success. Zhou Yuwen watched it again, and everyone gathered around him to take a look. Even Han Qian couldn't resist huddling close. Watching herself perform just a few simple moves in the video, she couldn't help but ask meekly, "Will this really go viral?"

Zhou Yuwen chuckled softly at Han Qian and said, "Senior Sister, you have to trust me."

This statement left Han Qian unsure of how to respond.

Afterward, Zhou Yuwen started editing and then uploaded it. Lu Lin asked him, "Are we posting it on Fun Campus?"

Zhou Yuwen replied, "Of course not. We are posting it on every single short video app. Then, have our subordinates start furiously botting the traffic. We need to push her onto the trending searches within a single night."

For this task, Zhou Yuwen specifically kept an entire office of people behind to do overtime work. Those working overtime did nothing else but constantly like, refresh, and watch the video on a loop.

It wasn't just his subordinates; even in Zhou Yuwen's office, his several close female friends were chatting about it.

They remained skeptical of Zhou Yuwen's methods. Even Zheng Yanyan couldn't help but ask, "Will this really work?"

Zhou Yuwen simply said, "Just keep boosting it."

In reality, this was just the small part. For the heavy lifting, Zhou Yuwen had already had Lu Lin contact a professional click-farming company. Now, it was just a matter of seeing if Han Qian had the destiny to be an internet celebrity.

That night, Zhou Yuwen and his crew were busy until around two in the morning. Seeing that everyone was exhausted, Zhou Yuwen finally announced, "Alright, we're done for today."

"Let's get off work. We'll see the results tomorrow."

"It's finally over," Zheng Yanyan breathed a sigh of relief.

Li Shiqi, who had been pulled over to help, scrolled through and refreshed the page once more before remarking, "This doesn't look like it's doing much at all."

Zhou Yuwen told them not to rush; they wouldn't know the results until tomorrow.

"Han Qian, head home first. We'll know the outcome tomorrow."

"Mhm, okay."

Han Qian's heart was filled with bewilderment. She was one year junior to Tao Tian and the others, meaning she was only a junior this year, right at the time when she was about to start her internship.

In all likelihood, she would stay at the company and continue helping Tao Tian and the others with the clerical work for the cultural media company, earning three thousand yuan a month.

To be honest, Han Qian was quite satisfied with this job. After all, in this day and age, not every college junior could earn a salary of three thousand yuan a month.

But today, the boss suddenly declared that he was going to make her an internet celebrity, and overnight at that.

Truthfully, Han Qian didn't believe it; she just felt it was entirely unfathomable.

But the person saying this was Zhou Yuwen.

So Han Qian also somewhat believed it, because in her impression, there seemed to be nothing Zhou Yuwen couldn't accomplish.

'Can I really become an internet celebrity with millions of followers?'

Han Qian hardly dared to imagine it. After getting off work, she returned alone to her rented apartment off-campus.

She happened to bump into a female neighbor who lived upstairs in the elevator.

The female neighbor was around twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old. She was exceptionally bright and beautiful, and she knew how to dress well. Despite her young age, she already owned her own apartment in Jinling.

Han Qian actually deeply envied this female neighbor. Her biggest wish was to have a small apartment of her own in Jinling, but for the current Han Qian, that was simply too difficult.

She only made three thousand a month.

A small apartment cost three hundred thousand, which meant she would have to starve and save every penny for ten years just to afford one.

It was too distant a dream.

"Good evening," the female neighbor greeted Han Qian.

"Oh, right, just getting back?"

"Yeah."

The two of them exchanged a few brief words. After returning to her own room, Han Qian felt that if there were some things you didn't have in the first half of your life, you might just never possess them for your entire life.

Right before sleeping, Han Qian checked her short video backend once more. Her followers had already broken past a million, and the likes were at two million, but there were hardly any comments.

Han Qian thought, 'No matter how beautiful these numbers look, they're still just faked in the end.'

Even if it was Zhou Yuwen...

It was probably impossible for him to make an ordinary person go viral overnight.

Thinking this way, Han Qian put down her phone and began to peacefully fall asleep.

The next day, the sun rose as usual.

Around eight o'clock in the morning.

"Ding-dong!"

"Ding-dong!"

"Cough-cough-cough!"

On Han Qian's phone, message after message popped up continuously.