Chapter 41: Bonus Chapter (300 Thunderbolts)

The number of weirdos you run into while gaming rivals the number you meet working in the service industry. It's a full showcase of the diversity of the species.

There are the ones who blame their teammates when they lose and take all the credit when they win; the lone wolves who don't have the skills to back it up and end up dropping grenades on their own teammates' heads.

Once CTX gets annoyed by who-knows-what, he starts venting at his teammates. Teammate calling for help? Ignored. Needs backup? Ignored.

One sliver of HP left in a scope duel, one more shot would finish the enemy, but no—he has a compulsion to reload for style points, gets headshot instead, and then starts yelling to be revived.

As for the couples who turn a four-player squad game into a hotel double bed room, their flirting and bickering making the teammates feel like they'd accidentally crawled into someone else's quilt...

Well, that's actually one of the better cases.

All of it was bought with blood and tears.

And the more Sangyu thought about it, the more sincere he felt about it.

As for why it was called the "Golden Rice Spoon Cup"—in the esports circle there's a term, "rice-pairing plays," meaning a player's plays are so bad, so terribly bad, that they pair perfectly with a big bowl of rice.

So the name "Golden Rice Spoon" corresponded exactly to those rice-pairing plays.

Sort these weirdos into categories and make a random lottery box out of them.

Then have one pro player from each team cosplay a randomly drawn weirdo category, playing in reverse, dragging their own teammates down.

The other teams would do the same.

As the first round of matches ended, a second cosplayer would be added in the second round.

Sangyu felt... this had real potential!

Major international competitive games basically only hold one tournament a year, lasting a little over a month.

Clubs specializing in a single game wouldn't sit idle the rest of the time either—they'd participate in various comprehensive competitions.

So the "Golden Rice Spoon" might actually be feasible.

But wait—Sangyu had invested in DOH, and if DOH also served as the organizer, wouldn't that be a bit like a melon field and plum tree situation? Suspicious by association?

"Player doubling as referee"? Not a good look.

But actually, the problem wasn't that big.

Sponsoring one is sponsoring; sponsoring all of them is also sponsoring. Just have someone use that reasoning to contact the other clubs.

Play it all through once, like the earlier "inspection" content, make it a research survey.

That way it wouldn't seem abrupt.

Genius.

Simply genius.

In such a short time, he'd actually spun out such a reasonable-sounding scheme.

Sangyu felt he had a real talent for making up stories—it was honestly a great pity that the novels he'd written before had no readers.

Let's do it, then.

Sangyu felt light as a feather.

When Xi Xingfa heard about it, he started mulling it over.

There really was something there!

The gimmick looked pretty solid—had anyone ever deliberately run a fun competition themed around rice-pairing plays before?!

It would definitely attract the entertainment-seeking crowd. And with President Sang's pull, there were countless gamers who'd suffered deeply at the hands of such teammates, with nowhere to voice their grievances.

"President Sang, count me in..."

·

Meanwhile.

In the Lingjiang authors' group chat, someone was also wailing: "President Sang, count me in..."

The joke that was Rebirth: I'm a Big Spender in the Entertainment Industry—everyone in the circle was eating that melon in real time.

Laughing at the joke was one thing, but those were copyrights—the very copyrights every author dreamed of selling.

Selling them all on merit was the dream, sure, but this time it was "one man falls, and even the chickens and dogs ascend to heaven"—why couldn't it be me?

The author ranked twenty-first on the monthly donation leaderboard nearly ground their teeth to dust and posted a dozen emo Weibo posts in the middle of the night.

The top twenty authors, whose mood could not have been more different, were practically gongs-and-drums loud, bursting with joy, dancing in ecstasy.

Some of the top twenty's readers didn't follow the circles, but through the "author's notes" their authors wrote, they also came to know of this President Sang.

Some authors were extremely quick on the uptake.

The rest quickly followed suit.

[Brothers, remember to support President Sang's new drama. My book only achieved these results thanks to President Sang, haha!]

[This Demolition Office Is Something Else was a novel I read before I even entered the industry. The setting is so fresh—it's definitely going to be a hit as a drama.]

[Senior Chen of Crimson Rainbow's new book [link] is really well written, but the platform keeps refusing to give it traffic. Everyone, go take a look.]

...

There was even a small-time male-lead-focused author—[KM Always Sleepy], the scriptwriter of The Demolition Office's romance line—who wrote fanfics.

He also came out to joke about it, about narrowly missing his shot.

Though their motives differed, the result was that they all spontaneously funneled traffic toward The Demolition Office.

Even authors who hadn't been picked would half-jokingly mention President Sang—

If someone started another Rebirth: I'm a Big Spender in the Entertainment Industry, could the chickens and dogs ascend to heaven one more time?

Anyone who read novels now knew the keywords The Demolition Office.

These people were all potential audience members for the adapted male-lead fantasy drama.

The Demolition Office's reservation numbers began to climb.

·

Jiang Yang's manager was so excited he couldn't stop pacing, insisting on proving himself to Jiang Yang: "I was right about President Sang's plan, wasn't I?!"

Jiang Yang: "...I think President Sang might have felt that novel was offensive, which is why he got angry."

Back when they were filming in France, he'd had contact with President Sang. President Sang was a man of genuine temperament—that was real.

It was possible he'd planned the publicity all along, but that novel this time really was too much.

The manager sighed: "Jiang Yang, when have capitalists ever been simple?"

"Look at President Sang this time—he's dead set on holding next year's domestic entertainment scene in the palm of his hand. No, make that the next ten years."

The 3D movie was the most obvious long-term play.

Releasing one every five years—after a few rounds, audiences would develop the reflexive habit of paying to see each installment of the film series.

The animation, TV dramas, and comics were clearly all meant to build a cultural entertainment mega-matrix belonging solely to Aurora Entertainment.

"Jiang Yang, just endure these two-plus years, okay?" The manager patted his shoulder.

The manager added: "Don't overthink it. Xuan Lerong isn't even on the same track as you. Even if he makes it, he can't pull off the domineering-CEO persona anyway."

"At the celebration banquet later, even though President Sang won't be there, there's no telling who might go running to report things. So act cheerful, alright?"

Sangyu didn't attend Favorit's celebration banquet. But though the man was absent, his gift was not.

The reason given was that there were too many people and prying eyes—he didn't want his face photographed and leaked.

Yuanxing TV's president Fu Yuanhua had originally wanted to suggest President Sang just wear a mask, but after deliberating for a long while, he swallowed those words back down.

Persuasion depended on standing—they weren't in the same league. The scale of the three major TV stations, to him, was probably like toys.

No one dared disturb President Sang.

So President Sang didn't attend the celebration banquet.

Jiang Yang: "I'm not worried because of that..."

What he was thinking about was his future.

"Gu Ye" had blown up, and compared to Jiang Yang's rise from bastard son to legitimate heir, the more legitimate path was his transformation from discarded pawn into the former Huang Yunwen's position.

Before, he'd weighed "pledging allegiance" to President Sang, believing this drama would flop anyway.

Otherwise, Hongming wouldn't have let the drama he starred in air on Yuanxing TV's side.

Now what—he had resources, sure, but he was also being handed the garbage-crew in-house productions.

The platform intended to bundle Jiang Yang and Yu Zhitao for a second collaboration, having them star in another costume idol drama the platform was rushing to produce in-house.

Market it as Favorit's past-and-present lives.

He wasn't willing.

Yu Zhitao wasn't willing either.

It wasn't the second collaboration they objected to—it was walking Hongming's assembly line.

Jiang Yang had tasted the sweetness now: whether a work was good or bad couldn't be determined by an S-tier rating. It depended on whether the creative team was reliable.

He and Yu Zhitao could certainly do a second collaboration and make another quick buck, but what if they walked into Huang Yunwen's script instead?

Though Jiang Yang didn't have many feathers yet, cherishing what he had was no bad thing.

Compared to the platform's in-house productions, President Sang's side was clearly far more tempting.

Jiang Yang knew he was being pragmatic, but to truly climb higher... his contract with Hongming TV still had two years to run.

During that time, would President Sang come looking for him for roles? And afterward, would Aurora Entertainment sign artists?

Jiang Yang wasn't sure.

Although Aurora Entertainment was an entertainment company, it currently had no signed artists. Now that he'd blown up, there should be a chance, right?

President Sang's relative also liked his "Gu Ye"—he'd even asked for separate and CP signed photos from him and Yu Zhitao.

That was his advantage.

The manager wasn't thinking that far ahead: "Jiang Yang, we need to fight for the movie's voice acting."

"Voice acting?"

"The protagonist's voice role in I Goof Around in the Infinite-Flow Livestream. You get it. It's another form of exposure."

Jiang Yang: "Oh..."

Actually, he wasn't keen on that either.

How many actors had been flamed before for snatching jobs from professional voice actors?

·

Sangyu: "Here. I pulled strings to get these autographs, so can you stop spamming me with ads for those brain-dead mini-games now?"

He handed the items to Sang Ying.

"Aaaaaah—!"

Sang Ying was screaming.

She couldn't calm down.

She was a mengmeng-ren CP fan of the "JiangYe CP."

Mengmeng-ren referred to that subset of the fandom who were naive, innocent, even childish star-chasers.

So every time Sangyu saw the CP-shipping content his own little sister posted on her Moments, his feelings were truly complicated.

—Posting that stuff to Moments? Yeah, pretty childish.

One look and you could tell she'd never been beaten down by society.

But Sangyu only muttered a couple of complaints—if he actually let Sang Ying get beaten down by society, what was the point of buying her a house, a car, a shop?

Sang Ying nearly took off flying on the spot. Coming back to her senses, she gave Sangyu a bear hug, held it for two or three seconds, then dove back to admiring the signed photos.

"Bro, how did you get these?! I'm absolutely the happiest fan alive, aaaaah, the two of them are so perfect together, so gorgeous!"

Sangyu sighed dramatically: "I kowtowed and begged on my knees for them. Now it's your turn to kowtow to me."

Sang Ying: "...Speak human."

Sangyu: "How else? I asked for them."

Sang Ying, thrilled: "You asked in person? You met them? Is Yu Zhitao really, really super pretty in real life?!"

Sangyu decided to seize this opportunity to upgrade his identity according to his earlier setup: "Forgot to tell you—I'm a screenwriter now."

Sang Ying was startled: "No way—you're a screenwriter for that Aurora Entertainment?!"

"Oh? You know about them?"

"How could I not know!"

Sang Ying replied: "But you didn't use your real name, right? I don't have any impression of you?"

Because Favorit was filmed so well, the fandom had dug up the entire creative team.

"The project I'm in charge of isn't something you'd know about."

Sangyu casually dropped a bombshell: "I write custom worldbuilding documents for that big-spender President Sang. How would you know about that?"

Sang Ying: "...?"

What did that mean?

"I'm telling you this, but don't leak it, or I'll have to pay damages. President Sang is going to open a nationwide chain of xianxia-themed scenic parks."

"He doesn't want to use an existing IP to build the parks—he thinks being spoiled would make it boring—so it's an original setting, and that's why he hired me for the worldbuilding."

"I have to design the characteristics of different sects based on the landscapes of different regions across the country, so I'll be going out on field research trips later."

"You know how rich he is. Once I finish this job, I'll be financially free. Don't tell the family yet, or it'll all leak out."

Sang Ying's mouth couldn't close.

A nationwide chain of... scenic parks? She felt a bit... blown away in the wind.

And xianxia-themed, no less. Could rich people really be this rich?! And wait—her brother had latched onto a golden thigh?!

"My long-lost brother from another father and mother..." Sangyu, spouting nonsense at full speed, got another punch from his dear sister.

"Fine, fine—actually, it's because we share a surname that I got noticed. He also appreciates my talent and decided to give me a chance."

Sang Ying gritted her teeth in exasperation.

This man just loved being a little shit.

But also... this felt amazing!

"When one man attains the Dao, even his chickens and dogs ascend to heaven"—an old saying that had always held true.

Sang Ying issued an important directive: "Work hard. The whole family is counting on you."

Sangyu sprawled onto the sofa: "Water. Snacks. Remote."

Sang Ying: "..."

Fine. Endure it for now.

She turned on the TV, and there was The Demolition Office's big banner. Looking at the date...

Early June... wait, so it was airing in just over half a month?

Sang Ying grabbed a bag of caramel-flavored sunflower seeds: "I'm planning to follow this one. I don't usually watch this stuff, but the trailer looked good."

"I'll check the screenwriter credits in a bit—your pen name isn't in there, is it?"

Sangyu: "Go ahead and look. You won't find me."

LOL, he literally wasn't in there.

"Scoot over. Stop crowding me."

"I'm taking half the sofa. Do you have four butt cheeks? How do you take up so much space?"

"Get lost."

"Sigh, I hope it's good. The dramas these past few years have all been so boring. If Aurora Entertainment keeps up this standard, that's one giant granary of content."

"People have pretty high expectations for them."

"If you haven't watched Favorit, don't hold prejudices against female-oriented idol dramas. Watch it and you'll see how well it was made."

Sang Ying clicked open Favorit, promoting it in disguise: "As a screenwriter, shouldn't you study hit dramas?"

Sangyu: "..."

What a bizarre conversation.

Thanks to Favorit, The Demolition Office had actually "inherited" a batch of drama fans—an angle Sangyu hadn't anticipated.

—You could inherit fans like that?

The promotion for the new drama this time had followed the marketing department's plan, and judging by the reservation numbers, the effect seemed pretty good.

Sangyu nodded silently to himself. As long as you paid workers wages matching their workload, was there any job that couldn't be done well?

What he didn't know, or hadn't paid close attention to, was that someone else was also putting in effort.

One week before the broadcast, [KM Always Sleepy] came online on Weibo. His article had also passed Aurora's review and could be published.

With the drama about to air, now was the ideal time to release his little essay.

Too early, and the heat would fade. Too late, and there'd be no time to gather attention.