January 14, Monday morning.

Pei Qian slept until after 10 o’clock before getting up.

Mainly because he had stayed up late yesterday feeling anxious, and today the weather was nice, and he slept comfortably, so he got up a little later than usual.

After getting up and washing, Pei Qian figured it was almost noon, so he might as well order some Slackin’ takeout and visit the company after eating.

While waiting for the food, Pei Qian habitually took out his phone, opened the AiLiDao website, and checked the rating of “The Inheritor.”

“Huh?”

“That doesn’t seem right?”

Seeing the rating, Pei Qian was stunned.

He thought he might not be fully awake yet, or maybe he had opened the website incorrectly.

He closed the app process and clicked in again to check once more.

He wasn’t mistaken—”The Inheritor’s” rating had surged from around 6 points last night to 6.7 points!

Although a 6.7 rating still seemed rather poor, this rate of growth was clearly very abnormal!

It increased by 0.7 points after just one night’s sleep?

At this rate, wouldn’t the rating shoot through the roof in a few days?

“Where exactly did things go wrong?!”

Pei Qian panicked, his intuition telling him that he had celebrated too early last night!

This rating was obviously related to Tian Gongzi.

Pei Qian quickly clicked into “The Inheritor’s” comment section to check the latest reviews.

“Masterpiece, no explanation needed!!!”

“I’m sorry, Teacher Cui. I even mocked you before, but now it seems I was the immature one. I’m going to change my rating right away!”

“You laugh at the characters in ‘The Inheritor’ for having lowered intelligence, but Teacher Cui is telling you no, not only have they not had their intelligence lowered, it’s actually been raised…”

“Fiction needs logic, but reality doesn’t.”

“I originally thought ‘The Inheritor’ was meant to be a joke from novel to web series, but now I realize I was wrong. This is an absolute masterpiece! Sorry, Teacher Cui, I’m the real clown!”

“Changed my rating. Such a masterpiece deserves a perfect score, or I wouldn’t be able to face my own conscience!”

Besides these, there were many simple comments like “masterpiece,” “divine prophecy,” “prostrating in admiration,” and so on.

Scrolling through this page of latest reviews, they were all full of perfect scores!

No wonder the rating had been pulled up so much in a short time—many viewers who had previously given low scores had come back to change them to perfect scores, and many who hadn’t watched it at all had also come to give perfect scores.

How could the rating not rise quickly?

But Pei Qian was still confused. What was going on?

How did the reputation completely reverse overnight?

He quickly found Tian Gongzi’s post and saw that the first few sarcastic comments were still there, as they had high likes and weight, and hadn’t been pushed down in such a short time.

Including the one saying “If ‘The Inheritor’ gets popular next month, I’ll do a handstand and have diarrhea,” which was still among the top comments, although the newest replies had uniformly changed to “Brother, give us your livestream room number” and “Brother, take some digestive medicine before streaming.”

And looking at the latest replies sorted by time, the tone here matched that of “The Inheritor’s” review section. The previous skepticism had completely disappeared, replaced by one-sided praise!

“Tian Gongzi, forever a god!”

“Even this could be predicted? Simply too amazing! You understand ‘The Inheritor’ even better than Teacher Cui!”

“Where are those people who said Tian Gongzi was riding the hype at the beginning? Come out and apologize!”

“This is truly Tian Gongzi’s deification work. His previous videos, although rich in content, now seem a bit superficial in retrospect and didn’t exceed the scope of an excellent content creator. But now it’s different. Tian Gongzi has leaped to become a prophet, his identity as a content creator has undergone a qualitative change!”

“I’m wondering, what kind of person is Tian Gongzi really? How did he manage to connect two seemingly unrelated things? How did he notice the deep connection between this event and ‘The Inheritor’ when very few people in China were paying attention to it?”

“Nothing more to say, only worship. Perhaps this is what a true master is!”

“Going to give ‘The Inheritor’ a perfect score and watch the whole series again. Such a masterpiece shouldn’t be buried!”

“If I had to say something, Tian Gongzi had a small issue with timing, saying it would be the 13th, but actually the hype rose on the 14th.”

“You just don’t understand, do you? Tian Gongzi said it was the 13th, but he didn’t specify which place’s 13th! The 13th in Ukraya’s local time is still the 13th!”

“Anyway, I only have admiration left for the master. I’m going to like, comment, and share all of the master’s previous videos to show respect…”

Seeing this flood of praise in the comments section, Pei Qian was even more speechless.

This was heading for the stratosphere!

Originally, he had hoped for “The Inheritor” to fail and Tian Gongzi’s image to collapse, a double blessing.

But now it had turned into “The Inheritor” suddenly exploding in popularity, and Tian Gongzi being deified with just one post. For Pei Qian, the double blessing had turned into a double nightmare!

However, from these netizens’ replies, Pei Qian finally found some clues.

Why were people mentioning Ukraya?

Is that… a country?

Pei Qian immediately searched for the keyword “Ukraya,” and with this search, he was blown away.

The previously unresponsive Baidu suddenly produced a screen full of news about Ukraya’s election!

In yesterday’s election, Big Vasily crushed Ukraya’s incumbent president with 60% of the votes, achieving great success!

Pei Qian was still a bit confused. Isn’t this just a normal election? These happen every few years, what’s worth paying attention to?

But after checking a few more search results and reading about Big Vasily’s life story written by several marketing accounts, Pei Qian fell silent.

Handsome appearance, born into a wealthy merchant family, law major, worked in the media field, famous actor and host, successfully gained the public’s affection through a movie, and then won the election…

This was basically Phil himself!

Their backgrounds were practically cast from the same mold!

Except that Phil did it through a variety show, while this guy did it through a movie.

And this guy’s rise to power was even smoother and more outrageous than Phil’s.

“Damn, it’s like the world is targeting me specifically!”

“Who could have anticipated something like this happening, and so coincidentally!”

Pei Qian was speechless. For the first time, he clearly realized that those remnant memories in his mind often not only failed to help him but had become a burden, holding him back!

Because many things in this world had undergone tremendous changes, and in many cases, it was like being off by a hair but missing by a thousand miles.

Take this incident, for example. Actually, something similar had happened in Pei Qian’s memory, but he was absolutely certain that it couldn’t have been in 2013.

So this way of thinking prevented Pei Qian from considering this direction.

When the news broke, Pei Qian was dumbfounded.

Similar tragedies had happened before, such as when Pei Qian thought that the current technology level couldn’t possibly do justice to “Mission and Choice,” but unexpectedly, a technological breakthrough had occurred just in time!

This naturally gave Pei Qian an illusion that “the world is targeting me”…

Clearly, the heat of this event would continue to ferment.

Because it was simply too dramatic!

Various marketing accounts and content creators would certainly see this opportunity and explain this event in detail to domestic netizens. And in this process, whether content creators actively mentioned it or netizens spontaneously discussed it, “The Inheritor” would inevitably gain a lot of attention!

Considering the current surge in ratings, a complete reversal of its reputation was just a matter of time.

It might even break 9 or 9.5 points, which wasn’t impossible.

Pei Qian’s face was filled with melancholy.

This was screwed up.

“The Inheritor” had signed a revenue-sharing agreement with AiLiDao, where both viewership and reputation would affect the revenue share. As things stood now, losing money was impossible—it would be a blessing from heaven if they could just make a little less profit…

As Pei Qian was feeling dejected, someone suddenly sent him a message.

Looking at it, it was from Qian Mou.

“Boss, I can’t take it anymore!”

“Can I delete the post and run?”

“I’m being scolded too harshly. The post can stay, but you’ll need to pay more!”

Without thinking, it was easy to guess that the higher Tian Gongzi was praised, the harder Qian Mou was trampled.

Once the Ukraya incident broke, Qian Mou’s previous viewpoints were completely overturned.

Didn’t you say the plot in “The Inheritor” involved intelligence drops? Didn’t you say the major corporations, superheroes, and ordinary people in it were all stupid?

But you were looking at it from a god’s-eye view, which is why you thought they were stupid. But in reality, without a god’s-eye view, how can people truly judge whether someone is sincere or fake?

Many people in reality can’t even see through the lies of some sponsored influencers, let alone see through the lies of someone like Phil, who has the power of a superhero and can manipulate public opinion at will.

Once Qian Mou’s theory attacking “The Inheritor” was fundamentally dismantled, his review was basically done for.

Looking at it, Pei Qian had to admit that this Qian Mou had quite a professional ethic.

Unable to withstand the pressure and wanting to delete the post and run, he still specifically came to inform Pei Qian.

In fact, the final payment had already been sent, so what if Qian Mou deleted the post and ran without saying a word?

Making someone endure such a barrage of insults for just a few thousand yuan, to the point where his entire account was nearly ruined, was indeed somewhat inconsiderate.

Pei Qian thought about it. Even if Qian Mou kept this review up, it would only be nailed to the pillar of shame and wouldn’t lower “The Inheritor’s” popularity or rating at all. Instead, it would have the opposite effect.

Since that was the case, let him delete the post and run. Leave a way out, for future encounters.

There might be opportunities to collaborate with this Qian Mou again in the future.

So Pei Qian replied: “Go ahead and delete it. I know you’ve done your best with this.”

Qian Mou quickly replied: “Boss is generous, thank you for understanding! Boss, please accept my condolences; it’s really unfortunate to encounter such a low-probability event.”

These few words of comfort touched Pei Qian deeply.

Look, just look! My employees don’t even have the awareness of a paid writer of negative reviews!

In this situation, the comfort from a stranger on the internet seemed so precious.

However, the next second, Pei Qian refreshed Qian Mou’s review and was dumbfounded.

Qian Mou’s so-called “delete the post and run” didn’t actually involve deleting the review, but rather changing the rating and replacing it with a new review!