Chapter 506: The year's greatest scolding war!
......
"Hello, Master Xu, are you online?"
"I'm about to sleep. It's already this late at night, what's the matter?"
"Go and take a look quickly. Zhang Ye's gone mad. He's looking for trouble everywhere!"
"What matter of his would concern me?"
"He...he scolded you as well!"
"What!?"
......
"Hello, Teacher Chen!"
"Who is this?"
"I am Little Wang from the publishing firm."
"Oh, oh, I know who you are."
"Your new book has been scolded by Zhang Ye on Weibo!"
"Ah? You son-of-a-gun Zhang! How dare you try to bully me!"
......
The disturbance was large!
He had caused too much ire!
In the late hours of the night, countless celebrities who were turning in or had already gone to sleep were awoken by Zhang Ye's attacks. Many netizens also did not bother with sleeping anymore as the fans of those celebrities were making a fuss, as though they were on steroids! They rushed forward to curse at Zhang Ye, while those who were unaffected joined the war as bystanders, as it wasn't too much trouble since all they wanted was to observe what would ensue! Some of them even tried to muddy the waters and gave Zhang Ye's posts Likes!
"Zhang Ye! Come out!"
"Where is he? Is he running away after scolding others?"
"This idiot is such a coward! How maddening! I've never been angered so much by a celebrity! Just how many Teachers have you scolded in such a short span of time? Let's see how you are going to end up today!"
"Haha, Teacher Zhang is being so cute today!"
"Supporting Teacher Zhang Ye! I wonder what you all will do!"
"Right! Supporting Zhang Ye! In the past, it was always Teacher Zhang who released a work before getting harassed by those bunch of people who seemed to have something against him. They would scold and doubt him before denouncing him. Not once, not twice, not even thrice, but now the tables seemed to have turned. Damn, based on what reason does it always have to be Teacher Zhang getting scolded by you guys? This time, it's our turn to challenge you all! It would be impolite to not reciprocate! Is there a rule saying that only you people can scold Teacher Zhang and he isn't allowed to do the same to you all!?"
"Right, well said! Like that Meng Dongguo, Deputy Station Head Jia, Tang Dazhang, Lee Anson, and those other literary and crosstalk world people who jumped at everything Teacher Zhang did and endlessly repeated it! Now it's our turn!"
"Everyone, let's do this! Support Zhang Ye!"
"Brothers, let's attack! Let's scold that wretched Zhang Ye!"
The netizens sparred and fought with their words and the mess that followed was better left unsaid!
Actually, Zhang Ye's cellphone would have been exploding with calls if it were not for the fact that he had been expecting it to happen and turned it off before he started scolding people on Weibo. He was enjoying the peace and quiet right now as he watched these people, whom he was scolding, react to him. Zhang Ye suddenly felt very satisfied. Just like how his fan had described, he had always been reactive in the past and fought back with his face-smacking after being scolded, it has always been this way, but now that he had been banned and had gained almost no attention for his new novel's release, Zhang Ye even felt a little bit lonely. So this time, he decided that he would actively seek the wrath of his 'old friends'!
Many of the celebrities who were scolded, issued statements to accost Zhang Ye!
A lot of critics and other people published their thoughts through various channels to strongly denounce Zhang Ye's act of aggression in scolding so many people through Weibo!
The battle was increasingly getting out of hand and more and more people were gathered to witness this unprecedented Weibo war! The number of times Zhang Ye's Weibo post and comments were forwarded was exploding and headed straight for the top on Weibo's ranking page. Other forums and Tiebas were also full of criticism for Zhang Ye!
Zhang Ye's blog was naturally one of the battlegrounds in this war! It was at this time that the click rate for "Legend of Wukong" began rising at an unbelievable speed. It rose so quickly that it would shock you just to see it! Every time the page was refreshed, the click rate for those six chapters would rise by a large number again!
1 million!
1.5 million!
2.3 million!
That rate of increase blinded the eyes of many observers!
"Ah, this novel's really good!"
"I accidentally clicked on it and read it but it's quite good!"
"I came to watch the scolding war wondering what was going on, but ended up seeing 'Legend of Wukong' and reading it. I couldn't even stop once I started! What a great 'I want for the sky to not cover my eyes'! Aside from Zhang Ye's character, which I do not want to comment on, his literary level really leaves people speechless! It can only be described as amazing!"
"Good read!"
"Stop scolding people and quickly update the novel instead!"
"Zhang Ye, stop scolding people. Come back and publish your next chapter! I want to read on to find out!"
Most of these people did not know about Zhang Ye's new novel until the scolding incident happened and caught their attention. The popularity of the novel suddenly surged!
3 million!
3.5 million!
It was still rising!
This scene had left many people dumbfounded. The novel had only just been published earlier that night and wasn't even completed. There were only six chapters and only how many hours had passed since then? The number of times it was read shocked many of them. Then some of them analyzed the numbers and felt that if Zhang Ye had not been banned previously, he would still have been unable to get so many views in such a short period of time, but now that he was banned, how the heck did he get this many views!? There were no reports of it on the news, no media promotions, and no direct promotions and it still managed to reach such heaven defying readership??
Quite a number of people from the other side of the war finally understood.
"Everyone, stop scolding already!"
"Don't go on to Zhang Ye's Weibo or blog!"
"Damn! Zhang Ye's making use of us to hype up his new novel! We've been tricked!"
"We must all ignore Zhang Ye! We are helping to raise his popularity right now!"
Suddenly, a lot of these detractors reacted and responded to the call and Zhang Ye's blog became quiet for a few seconds.
But the next moment, Zhang Ye had appeared again on the literary and crosstalk world members' Weibo and blog and repeated his previous scoldings!
Zhang Ye: "@MengDongguo What lousy book is this! What lousy book is this! What lousy book is this!"
Zhang Ye: "@TangDazhang What lousy crosstalk is this! What lousy crosstalk is this! What lousy crosstalk is this!"
It was still the same words, only repeated several times in each post. It had appeared on Meng Dongguo and the other people's Weibo!
These celebrities, who had been scolded, nearly vomited blood!
Holy sh*t!
Zhang Ye! I will fight it out with you!
Even though they knew that Zhang Ye was doing this on purpose, they still did not take it lying down. This was really too maddening! Ignore him? Don't respond to his provocations and leave him frustrated? But they couldn't! Zhang Ye was jumping around scolding them, if they chose not to respond, they would be overwhelmed by his aggression! They would be scolded to death by him! Then those netizens who did not know of Zhang Ye's intentions would think that they were afraid of Zhang Ye! Fight back! They had to fight back!
Right then, another wave of scolding battle began again!
"Zhang Ye!"
"You bastard!"
"How can you be so wicked!"
"This bastard is really annoying and making me clench my teeth!"
The fans of these celebrities could actually be considered as Zhang Ye's 'old friends' as well. Back when Zhang Ye had clashed with their idols, these fans often came along to join in the ensuing arguments as well. They already got to know each other rather well by now since it wasn't their first time crossing swords. The only difference was that all of the different celebrities fans were now attacking Zhang Ye together at once!
It was a grand scene!
An overwhelming amount of netizens had now gathered at Zhang Ye's Weibo and Tieba and used it as the battlegrounds to begin the great war!
Zhang Ye's fans were also very supportive and they went for the Weibo accounts of Meng Dongguo, Tang Dazhang and the others and posted the same comments as Zhang Ye!
"What lousy book is this!"
"What lousy song is this!"
"What lousy crosstalk is this!"
The battle was fierce as the two forces clashed. Sometimes, it was even hard to tell who was on whose side!
The observers and neutral parties still numbered the most as they watched on during this earth shattering scolding war. With every scolding comment posted, they were overjoyed! If it were other celebrities who attacked others like this without reason, most people would definitely feel uncomfortable about it. But it was Zhang Ye who was doing the scolding now and he even recycled the scolding phrases on all of his victims. Somehow, everyone did not have negative feelings about this but were instead tickled by what they were seeing! Zhang Ye has never been known to be a serious celebrity. He had hosted a talk show before and even performed crosstalk in the past few days. As he was a very funny crosstalk actor, everyone would change their mental image of him whenever they see him talking. They would not take the things he said as too serious!
"How funny!"
"Zhang Ye's really cute!"
"Hahaha, Teacher Zhang is such a tease!"
"Using such a way to gain popularity, I've never even heard that there was such a way to do this! Hahahaha!"
Some of Zhang Ye's friends also posted on Weibo.
Su Na: : “Pfft, Teacher Zhang. Don't make trouble anymore!"
Dong Shanshan: "@ZhangYe Old classmate, it's time for your medication."
Grandma Zhang Xia: "........"
Zhang Yuanqi's agent Fang Weihong: "Just passing by, it wouldn't affect me to just watch."
It was needless to say how busy the Heavenly Queen's manager was. The duties of the manager were probably more packed than the artist that she managed. But now, even the top manager Fang Weihong had appeared on Weibo, so that must say how much of a sensation this big encompassing scolding war had caused. Not only did it interest the netizens, even many of those industry insiders' attentions were captured! But thinking it through, whether it was Lee Anson, Lee Parkwoo, Tang Dazhang, Xu Wenxiang or any of the others, which one of them were not well known? Which one of them did not have a large number of fans defending them? When the old and new hatred combined together from Zhang Ye's scolding, it was as good as poking the hornet's nest!
Suddenly, a small situation happened.
On Central TV's sports channel, a live European football match was currently being broadcasted. When the pre-match was just beginning and the footballers were doing their warm-ups, countless football fans were watching the game. In the broadcast studio, the host was discussing about netizen comments with the in-studio pundits and commentators about which team had more support. But an unexpected situation occurred, possibly due to an operation error backstage. The website that was being shown on the live broadcast had displayed Zhang Ye's blog instead and "Legend of Wukong" was shown on screen. It was showing the comments section where the scolding battle was occurring and the feed lasted for about 6-7 seconds!
"Uh, our apologies to everyone."
"We had some technical difficulties just now."
The host and guests quickly switched topics and moved on.
But with that slight distraction, countless of others had taken note of "Legend of Wukong"!
"Shown the wrong feed?"
"Pfft! Central TV! It's Central TV again!"
"What kind of a relationship does Central TV have with Teacher Zhang! They're taking such good care of Teacher Zhang!"
Zhang Ye only knew about this incident when he saw a screenshot of it posted by a netizen. He knew clearly that this was surely the effect of the 5 times reduced difficulty!
It was all thanks to the Difficulty Adjustment Die!
Whatever help he needed, it would come. It repeatedly committed meritorious deeds for him!
Translator Notes: Thank you for your support so far! Please continue to support IRAS by submitting a vote at Gravity Tales Vote Page. The top 3 novels at the end of the month will get a free sponsored chapter!