Huan Zixu noticed Yu Hua’s expression and was faintly curious. He felt like there was some profound meaning in it. 

Yu Hua collected the signed-in-triplicate “indenture” and instructed Zhen Li and Lian Yufan: “I’m to go put this on record at the Bureau of Personnel. In a while the show group will come and have you filmed according to my script. Lian Yufan is responsible for receiving them. After all, you are the public relations director. If you aren’t up to it, then let Director Ha take your place.” 

He walked to the door and saw out of the corner of his eye that Yuan Luori was about to take his glasses off again. He had been scared by his vision going black before and hadn’t wiped his glasses. Now he thought that his eyes were fine, so he wanted to try wiping them again. 

Yu Hua was in the studio, and so was Lian Yufan. Yuan Luori couldn’t be allowed to take his glasses of right now. So Yu Hua stopped in his tracks and said, feigning carelessness, “Oh, right, you posted a funeral announcement on the official account yesterday, then deleted it. I just saw someone’s screenshot and thought it was very strange. How did you speak rudely to me? What merits stopping the livestreams for three days? I didn’t have any contact with you two yesterday.” 

Yuan Luori stopped in the process of taking off his glasses. Lian Yufan, who was going to help him out with optometry, didn’t move a muscle. Zhen Li’s face went rigid; he didn’t even dare to move his eyeballs. 

If Huan Zixu hadn’t been able to see the seconds changing on the electric clock on the wall, he practically would have thought that time had stopped! 

Right, Yu Hua wouldn’t remember that. Huan Zixu had changed his “impression,” the handsome uncle Protector had taken him home and deleted the messages on his phone, and Zhen Li had complied with the order to delete the studio’s public announcement. 

But netizens took screenshots. 

Yu Hua had a public account. Some well-meaning netizens had messaged him in private or sent an @, telling him that Zhen Li and Yuan Luori had posted a status and then quickly deleted it. 

It was normal for Yu Hua to ask about this, but the atmosphere of the airflow in the studio stopping was entirely abnormal! 

Couldn’t Zhen Li think up a joking excuse to brush it off? Four or five ways to respond instantly flashed through Huan Zixu’s mind, but he had just come to the studio and shouldn’t know about this. He couldn’t put in a word. 

“The public announcement… Shouldn’t that be Director Lian’s responsibility? Apart from the livestreams, all the work updates and public statements to do with the studio are your area.” Yu Hua looked coolly at Lian Yufan. “Even if you didn’t know about it at the time, you still should have asked after the fact. Don’t fob me off with ‘I didn’t,’ ‘it wasn’t me,’ ‘I didn’t know.’ The fans have come all the way to asking me. How are you planning to explain this?” 

The three of them didn’t speak. Even Director Ha stopped shaking off water and stood unmoving at Yuan Luori’s feet, pretending to be a toy dog. 

“Who wrote out ‘public announcement’ to make it look like ‘funeral announcement?’” Yu Hua asked in a level voice. 

“Me,” Yuan Luori said, raising his hand. “My eyesight is bad, and my academic background isn’t good. I wrote the wrong thing. And it was Zhen Li who made me write it. He’s the boss. I do whatever he says!” 

Yuan Luori kicked the ball to Zhen Li, and Zhen Li sucked in a breath. His emotions were so roused that he nearly hyperventilated himself into a faint. He pointed to Lian Yufan and said, “I was going to leave it. It was Director Lian who made me delete it!” 

The ball was kicked once again to the director of public relations. Lian Yufan was not to be outdone. He said at once, “I only took care of the public relations issue in a timely manner when I discovered this. The two of them messed up in the first place! I was still thinking of a plan for how to explain it.” 

“Ordinarily, you’re supposed to explain at the same time as you delete. It’s been nearly twenty four hours and you still haven’t given an explanation. What a speedy reaction,” Yu Hua said. “Think of a reason ASAP, or else I’ll fire you and make a cute video of Director Ha to act as an apology!” 

When Lian Yufan had done nothing wrong, Yu Hua had still been able to pile a heap of wrong on top of him. Now that something had actually happened, he suspected that Yu Hua was going to peel off a layer of his skin. 

“Then there’s you.” Yu Hua pointed to Yuan Luori. “You managed to write ‘public announcement’ to look like ‘funeral announcement.’ If your vision is so bad, please protect your glasses. Is it so hard to weld the legs of your glasses to your ears?” 

“No, no.” Yuan Luori shook his head and covered his ears, afraid of shaking off his glasses. 

“So why did you post the public announcement?” Yu Hua looked at Zhen Li and faintly, very faintly, sent him a meaningful glance. 

“Well…” Zhen Li grasped Yu Hua’s meaning and pointed to Huan Zixu. “It was him! I-I-I interviewed him yesterday, and he said he had a brand new marketing technique that was sure to raise the studio’s popularity. He didn’t tell me why, just made a deliberate mystery of it and had me post the announcement.” 

“Oh, that’s right!” Yuan Luori also saw the light. This had all been caused by Huan Zixu using “false exchange” in the first place. If he wasn’t going to take the blame for it, then who was? “I was there, too. He was the one who made us do it.” 

Lian Yufan also looked at Huan Zixu and nodded. “Yes, Director Huan, why don’t you explain?” 

Lian Yufan’s expression said, “At any rate, you’re a first rate liar, you must be able to think of something.” 

The three of them had offered up Huan Zixu as the chief culprit. Yu Hua looked at Huan Zixu in satisfaction. “Director Huan truly is young and promising. I’ve been working for many years, and your line of thought is different from mine. Why did you do this?” 

Huan Zixu hadn’t expected that while he was watching a fire from the other side of the river, the flames would in the end find their way to him. His brain moved quickly, and he reacted almost at once. “Personas. It’s to establish your personas.” 

This was a term he had just picked up from the contract. 

“What personas? Hm?” Yu Hua asked. 

Huan Zixu licked his dry lips and recalled his marketing skills from when he had been an ordinary person hundreds of years ago, as well as what he had understood of this world since arriving in it. A plan rapidly formed in his brain. He arranged his wording and said, “I observed the company’s situation and discovered that our fans seem to enjoy watching the president and the directors being in difficult predicaments.” 

This was something Huan Zixu had noticed this morning before coming to the studio, when he had been searching for popular videos online in order to understand Zhen Li and the others’ popularity. He had seen some humorous videos of internet celebrities. The celebrities being in dire straits in itself attracted quite a lot of commentary and attention. 

Huan Zixu thought, It’s unfeeling of you all to leave the explaining to me when I don’t understand the situation, so don’t blame me for being immoral. He said, “The fans especially like watching stories where you play the tyrant and oppress the president and the other directors, Director Yu. That public announcement was very well received. Everyone was very enthusiastic. So I thought that we would establish your persona as a despotic ruler and Zhen Li as the stupid and beautiful boss who’s easily tricked and made a figurehead of by Director Yu. Yuan Luori’s persona is…a forthright, proud, stubborn person with a poor education who is nonetheless energetically striving to study, dreaming of studying the law and testing into university so he can use the law as a weapon to protect himself from having his freedom and rights snatched away by Director Yu. Then there’s the public relations director, the only person in the studio who dares to take a stand against the vicious power, but only suffers greater oppression because of it, full of inexpressible bitterness.

“I believe that internet celebrities require humble tactics. They can’t be lofty and superior. It’s best for them to give the fans a feeling that they’re modest and unassuming and also suffer oppression, so that the fans can feel a closer relationship. We want people to like us, so we have to be rooted in the masses, arise from the masses, speak to the masses. Only if we understand what they like can we more effectively promote products.

“For example, yesterday we posted a public announcement. So the next day, we post a video of President Zhen and Director Yuan being oppressed by Director Yu, and suddenly he gets out a thirst-quenching beverage and has President Zhen personally unscrew the lid and present it to him. Director Yu drinks it, and his mood instantly improves. He pats President Zhen’s head and lets him go. Won’t that lead to a good result in promoting the beverage?” 

“Not bad.” Yu Hua nodded. “So what about your persona? Have you thought about it?” 

“I…” Huan Zixu had been hoist by his own petard. Under the circumstances, no matter what persona he described, he would be dropping a rock on his own foot. 

“You used to be a marketing champion… How about this? When you were down and out in your early years, I helped you get your first purchase order and let you reach the peak of life. You heard that I had resigned my position in order to start a business. In order to repay me, you voluntarily came to my company and from now on will follow me blindly, doing anything I say. If I make you work twenty four hours a day without rest to make money, you won’t have any complaints, even feel that working for me is a kind of joy. How does that sound?” Yu Hua said. 

“This…bootlicking persona won’t attract fans,” Huan Zixu resisted. 

“That’s true. After all, I’m a married man. Having a bootlicker around is no good, and I don’t want my husband to misunderstand.” Yu Hua’s smile instantly turned cold. “Let’s change the object of your loyalty, say…Director Lian. Change the person you owe a debt of gratitude to from me to Director Lian. Because of your gratitude to Director Lian, you’re willing to suffer my oppression. Every time I bully Director Lian, you bravely step forward on his behalf. At any rate, a ship can also attract fans. There are quite a lot of fans who ship Yuan Luori and Zhen Li.” 

Huan Zixu felt bitter. “That’s also not very…” 

“You’ve already refused me once,” Yu Hua said. “Is my request very difficult? You’ve read for yourself what the contract says. You’ll do whatever I tell you to do!” 

Then, wrapped up in cold, he left the studio, leaving four people and one dog staring at each other, not daring to breathe too loudly. 

After a very long time, Zhen Li said, “Let’s do what he says. It’s already very indulgent of him not to make us kneel during the livestream like we said in the public announcement.” 

Of course Lian Yufan was in agreement now that there was someone to shoulder the blame for him. He nodded. “It will also benefit the studio’s development and lure in more Destroyers. It works.”  

Yuan Luori thought about it. “My persona is pretty good. Maybe I really will be able to test into university. I agree.”  

Huan Zixu: “…” 

What about him? Was he supposed to be shipped with someone else just like that?  It wasn’t enough that they were keeping Feng Kui at the base as a hostage, they also had to force him into a ship with Lian Yufan? 

Before he had left the base, Feng Kui had said goodbye to him, smiling foolishly, and said that in a few days the base would take him to a place where he could access the internet. Then he would be able to see Huan Zixu on the livestream. Was he supposed to let Feng Kui see this? 

Since entering the studio, Huan Zixu had been led around by Yu Hua. Whenever he had wanted to speak, Yu Hua prevented him from speaking by interrupting him or questioning the others, and he had cleverly used the public announcement to make the other three push everything onto him. While there was some coincidence in this, Yu Hua’s methods were in fact savage and powerful. 

He finally understood what means Yu Hua had used to seize power. Huan Zixu laughed bitterly and said, “The market is a like a battlefield. In every circle, the weak are prey to the strong. I underestimated Yu Hua.” 

“At any rate, you’ve managed to join the company smoothly.  The show group will come to do the filming soon. Zhen Li, hurry up and help Yuan Luori with his makeup,”  Lian Yufan said, clapping his hands. 

In fact, Lian Yufan had his own selfish motives. Huan Zixu was an unfathomable person. He had been worried that Huan Zixu would beguile Yu Hua and trip him up at the studio. With Yu Hua asserting his power, the work of keeping Huan Zixu under control would be comparatively easy in the future.  

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Author's Note

Yu Hua: You may not have realized it, but I did all that just to keep Yuan Luori from taking his glasses off in front of Lian Yufan. That kid’s ability is a little frightening. I have to think of how to deal with it.