976 Digging Your Own Grave
Gu Nianzhi looked at this empty IP address with her eyes narrowed. The situation was way more complicated than she had imagined it to be. However, it was not complicated to the extent that she could not get it settled on her own.
After pondering over it for a while, Gu Nianzhi decided on a plan.
Her intention had initially been to report Cai Songyin’s entertainment company for having online marketing companies to create false fan bases for accounts, and for intentionally tarnis.h.i.+ng the reputation of a high ranking official of the country’s army. Based on Cai Songyin’s position as the wife of the prime minister, this was something that would be deemed an extremely serious matter.
However, after reading the novel and finding this empty IP address, Gu Nianzhi’s intention and mindset quickly changed.
Firstly, this novel was going way too overboard. She could not take the risk of allowing any other people to see this. The author’s computer had also been hacked along the way by Gu Nianzhi, and the hard disk that he’d used to save the novel had been thoroughly reformatted by her.
As for cloud storage, Gu Nianzhi was using her software to search through it to scan for keywords indicating that the author had saved the novel in his cloud storage.
As of now, that process was already eighty percent complete. There were still no signs of him having saved the novel on the cloud. Therefore, Gu Nianzhi had most likely already destroyed the novel entirely.
As for the content of the novel that the author could remember, that didn’t matter. The things that Gu Nianzhi would be doing next would allow that author to know the dire consequences of what he had done. Even if he had remembered every single word by heart, this online author would have to keep them in his mind and keep mum about them until he died.
Gu Nianzhi would not be reporting Cai Songyin’s entertainment company. She wanted to use a method that was way harsher than that so Cai Songyin would be able to have a good taste of her own medicine. Cai Songyin would understand what it meant to dig her own grave!
Therefore, the very first thing that Gu Nianzhi would do would be to let Huo Shaoheng’s popularity decrease online first, preventing people from linking to any outside sources about him.
How could she do that?
Gu Nianzhi’s eyes fell onto that empty IP again. She remembered that this empty IP had appeared back when she was investigating the leak of Gu Yanran and Tan Dongbang’s indecent video.
Didn’t Cai Songyin and Tan Dongbang both like to use dirty tricks like this to tarnish the reputations of others? Therefore, the best way to attack them would be to use their own methods on them. However, Gu Nianzhi could not deny that, although they were dirty and low, tricks like these were the most efficient. They worked the same way no matter what you used it on – especially on gossip.
The majority of people loved news like this. Therefore, the efficiency with which it would spread would be extremely high. Those in the media industry would know about it. Therefore, since Cai Songyin wanted to start this game, she could not blame Gu Nianzhi for playing along.
The high definition videos of Tan Dongbang and Cai Songyin that Gu Nianzhi had been saving for so long could finally be put to good use now.
She took the videos from her computer and looked through them quickly. This time around, she was not satisfied that only Tan Dongbang and Gu Yanran had appeared in the video.
Gu Nianzhi’s lips curled upwards, forming a sly smile.
She opened the editing software on her computer and searched online for a few things. She found clips online of people talking to Cai Songyin. She cut them up and put them into the video of Tan Dongbang and Gu Yanran. Then, she used the song “Lost Rivers” as background music.
The two-person video was immediately transformed into one featuring three-people. While Prime Minister Tan was having a “war in bed” with Gu Yanran, Cai Songyin was soon filming it with a video camera off to the side and a smile on her face…
To let everyone know who the people were in this affair, Gu Nianzhi intentionally added name tags in the video. She used the Hollywood method to achieve this. After completing everything, she realized that it had only taken her thirty minutes.
When she logged in to Weibo again, she realized that the online author had already gone offline. What a perfect coincidence! She would be able to use this person’s Weibo account to her heart’s content.
After this five-minute edited video finished rendering, Gu Nianzhi logged in to the author’s account again and helped him create a brand new post.
The post went read: “Shocking secret news. I did not expect this of you, Prime Minister!”
After that, Gu Nianzhi used a program that runs in the background to change the post about the novel to this video, then made it a non-editable post.
Gu Nianzhi had dealt them a huge blow this time around. She had even edited some of the background programmings of Weibo. Thankfully she had realized it in time. The novel had not been backed up by Weibo. Therefore, Gu Nianzhi did not have to look through the backup data of all the deleted data on Weibo again.
The novel had been thoroughly destroyed. The link in the post would now direct users to that five-minute video. Unless Weibo turned off their entire website, that video would be at the top of their page for everyone to see!
The novel had been swapped with a video, but the link that was supposed to promote it had already been sent. This change was undetected, and no other parties noticed the change at all.
At eight o’clock in the evening, the program to promote the link started working. According to the original plan, three hours after the novel was sent out, the big validated account called “Sometimes” that had been bribed by Cai Songyin’s entertainment company was tagged in the post.
The moment he saw it, “he got a shock” and reposted it immediately with the caption: “A piece with good content and amazing internal stories.” To put it simply, this verified account would be promoting it as well.
Just as Gu Nianzhi had expected, the moment the verified account was added to the story, the online marketing accounts that were tagged to this account began working as well. All of Weibo was “shocked” by this little video in no time.
To be fair, the owner of this verified account did not even know what was in the link. He only knew that it was a video. However, the cover of the video was a row of words that looked extremely plain. He thought that it was a music video that was made to pair up with the novel, and therefore he reposted it without watching.
In his opinion, the number of advertising companies that wanted him to endorse their products was countless. All he had to was make a couple of clicks and hundreds of thousands of dollars would be transferred into his account, so why not?
With the promotion of these validated accounts, their online marketing accounts, and Cai Songyin’s online marketing accounts, the video shot to fame within five minutes. Even media representatives from other cities who had been following them silently had gotten their hands on this video.
No matter what, this was a video that showed their Prime Minister having a “bed war.” It was definitely a treasure!
Therefore, by nine o’clock in the evening on the fourteenth day of the lunar new year, a five-minute video on Weibo had attracted the attention of everyone on the site. Weibo’s entire system was practically paralyzed.
However, Cai Songyin’s entertainment company had its eyes on the support staff of Weibo. They were forcing them to maintain the support system and not allow any issues to arise.
The broadcasting company that was showing a pre-lantern festival program was also shocked at this piece of news. They stopped the program that they were broadcasting and began broadcasting the video that had captured the attention of everyone on Weibo.
Those who’d been busy gus.h.i.+ng over Huo Shaoheng on television disappeared without a trace. Almost everyone’s attention was on the five-minute video that had just surged to popularity on Weibo.
Some had already watched this video before, but the man and their surroundings had been blurred out in that version. Only the woman’s image had been shown.
This time around, not only was the man’s image was clear, but there was also a third party who was holding a video camera! Then, in a blink of an eye, everyone followed the subt.i.tles on the screen and recognized the man in the video as the prime minister that they had voted for – the person who had just gotten away with his impeachment – Prime Minister Tan Dongbang!
The woman who was in the ‘bed war’ with him was the person who had been rumored to be his mistress, Gu Yanran! As for the middle-aged woman who was holding the video recording camera off to the side, she was none other than his wife, Cai Songyin!
Seeing Prime Minister Tan and Mrs. Tan appear in the video at the same time made the meaning behind extremely different!
By the time this video had become popular throughout the Hua Xia Empire, Cai Songyin’s higher management at the entertainment company finally realized that something was amiss. Where was the 3,000-word novel that they had initially agreed upon?!
What was this video that had gotten the attention of everyone on Weibo?!
“Who sent it? I will sue this person to death! Also, delete it! Delete it quickly!” The higher management was almost having a heart attack due to fear. He held onto his phone, sitting in front of his computer and contacting every single person he could think of to delete the video.
“I don’t care how much money we’ll spend! Delete that d.a.m.n video quickly!”
“What did you say?! Unable to delete it?! What in the world do you mean?! It didn’t get posted on Weibo by itself! Can’t you get the owner of the account to delete it?!”
The human resource officer who had already contacted the online author quickly replied, “Director, it’s not possible. The author said that he is unable to delete it. He even said that it was not uploaded by him. His account was hacked!”
The higher management was not convinced. “Bullsh*t! Contact the management of Weibo and say that I am the one who wants the content from that author’s profile deleted! Get them to do it from the back end system!”
This human resource officer was truly responsible. The moment he sensed that something was amiss, he contacted that online author immediately and asked him what was going on.
That online author had wailed and said that his account had been hacked. He did not know anything about the video at all…
The human resource officer had to appease the online author as well. If the author had blurted the truth out, everyone would be in deep trouble. Therefore, the human resource officer spoke up for the online author. “Director, I have contacted the management of Weibo already. However, their management said that they were unable to delete it. It seems like their programming end is faulty! They’ve been hacked as well!”
“There are things that even the back end management cannot delete?! Do you think that I am a fool when it comes to technical things?!”
The higher management of Cai Songyin’s entertainment company glared at the pleading eyes of his staff and felt that he was about to have that same look on his face soon enough…
He had no other choice left anymore. He could only call management personally and try every method possible to delete that video or to shut the website down temporarily.
It was not the time to push the blame right now. The most important issue was getting that video off the website as soon as possible!
“Director, it is not that we do not wish to delete it. The technical team of Weibo has been trying for the past ten minutes. However, the back end just cannot delete it! We have no idea what has gone wrong either. Moreover, you were the ones who used marketing settings. Can’t you stop it on your end?!”
“d.a.m.n it. If I could do it on my end, would I even be asking you?! Seriously! A bunch of good for nothings!”
The higher management of the entertainment company ranted for the next fifteen minutes before realizing that the video was still spreading like wildfire. Finally, he collapsed on the sofa.