Chapter 506 - Xiaoqiang Productions
Curses filled the air. Quite a few audience members stood up and kicked away their chairs, just like the ending of a movie in the cinemas. In their agitated state, there was no order when the audience left the place. Individuals at the front of the crowd were cursed at whenever they slowed down. The chaos didn’t subside even after a long time. Most of them went across the street, throwing bricks, vandalizing the walls, but how could Excellent Era’s guards have the courage to stop them?
They watched or at least saw the results of the match. The moment the saw that Excellent Era had lost again, they knew it would be a disaster. At that moment, the only thing they could do was shut the main entrance. The best they could do was to stop the crowd from entering their headquarters and wrecking it from within.
Chen Guo was stunned by the result of the stampede. A lot of her customers didn’t intend to destroy her Internet Cafe intentionally, but in their moment of rage, much destruction was wrought upon the facilities. Chen Guo realized that her previous decision had been a blessing in disguise. The popularity and income of the Internet Cafe suffered drastically from her action of cancelling the broadcast of Excellent Era’s match, but with the team’s current performance, she was lucky that she stopped the broadcast. With their disgusting performance, her Internet Cafe would be the audience’s first place to release their rage. If the situation continued, her Internet Cafe would’ve been dismantled.
While directing her staff to clean up the place, Chen Guo glanced at the doorway, Ye Xiu was already gone. She shifted her view and saw that a huge crowd had formed outside Excellent Era’s entrance. It wasn’t as bad as last time though. They knew that it was an away match and that not many of the staffs members were around.
Excellent Era had lost to Samsara, who were at the peak of their performance, so the media gave them a bit of leeway and didn’t show too much disappointment towards Excellent Era’s performance.
However, having scored only a meager three points total from their last two matches, Excellent Era’s ranking plunged. Their score this season wasn’t high to begin with and they had only barely increased their ranking with their previously stable performances the last few games. The blunder that they’d made caused their ranking to drop, and they were headed straight towards disqualification.
“If this continues, will Excellent Era be eliminated?” Chen Guo went upstairs and was surprised that Ye Xiu had not logged into the game yet and was in the living room instead.
“I don’t know…….” Ye Xiu replied as he looked out through the window.
That night, Ye Xiu didn’t spend any time on the game, but the next morning, he headed straight to the computer.
He continued levelling his character, but not long after logging into the game, he received a message from Mo Qiang on QQ.
“God d*mn, after working on this for a week, I’ve finally finished it!” said Mo Qiang.
“It’s done?” After Ye Xiu’s discussion with Mo Qiang last time, he gave Mo Qiang’s address to Loulan Slash and the five accounts were sent straight to him, giving him full access to the accounts.
“It’s done. Let me send a short clip to you!” Mo Qiang sent Ye Xiu a video file.
After receiving the file, Ye Xiu clicked into it and the words “Xiaoqiang Productions” appeared on screen in a comical fashion.
“Your introduction…” Ye Xiu hesitated.
“Brand consciousness is a must!” replied Mo Qiang.
“You’re overdoing it... your deal with the Clubs is like ripping hair out of their heads. They’re going to hate you for doing this and you actually made an intro to deepen their impression of you?” Ye Xiu didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Ayy! You’re right about that. It’s not like I’m going to have any more business relationships with these Clubs, so I’m going to gross them out.” said Mo Qiang.
“If you push them too far, they might not pay you for this!” said Ye Xiu.
“Oh they can’t.” Mo Qiang sent a sly smile emoticon, “I’ve already made preparations, they will pay me no matter what, unless they don’t care about their reputation anymore.”
Ye Xiu kept quiet. He guessed that Mo Qiang would be doing this deal in the open, where it could be seen by all the players. Under these circumstances, the clubs wouldn’t be able to go back on their words. Even if they knew that Mo Qiang was tricking them, they could only suffer in silence.
But with so many guilds offering the bounty, the expense would be shared between them. With the sum divided amongst themselves, it wouldn’t be considered much. Just as Mo Qiang said, even if it did not affect them financially, it was more important that they gross them out.
Ye Xiu didn’t comment on Mo Qiang’s mischievous joke because he knew that Mo Qiang didn’t have a good view of these Clubs.
“Do what you want! I only care for the money.” Ye Xiu replied with an “Emotionless” emoticon.
“Keep watching my video, I’ve been working on it for a week and the only thing you’ve watched is the introduction? How could you!” Mo Qiang grumbled.
“I’m watching, I’m watching…” Ye Xiu continued watching the video helplessly.
The main theme of the video appeared right after the introduction, starting with a chaotic battle. Mo Qiang grouped the 5 accounts together, creating a scenario where the party was annihilated in battle. The footage was shaky, hinting that the person recording the video was also a part of the battle. The video ended with 5 corpses on the ground, with the shot stopping at each ID.
“The party was annihilated, but they don’t revive themselves and they just lay there so you can get a clean shot on them? Isn’t this too take? You really intend to disgust them to death!” said Ye Xiu.
“Hahaha, keep watching!” Mo Qiang continued.
Ye Xiu continued to watch the video. The footage zoomed out as if the character were backing off and looking around, while paying close attention to the corpses lying on the ground. Not long afterwards, a Cleric appeared on camera. Ye Xiu immediately understood his intention.
It was scripted. Everything was scripted to giving the chance for his opponents to be rescued by their Cleric and then ambushing them.
“......” Even Ye Xiu was speechless.
“Haha, if the characters respawn, we still need to control them. I was a little lazy. By doing this, even if they counted these two occasions as one, it’s still quite convenient!” said Mo Qiang.
“You often use this method. It’s too disgusting.” said Ye Xiu.
“Yeah yeah, that was why I made it look like they saw through it after a few times and then stopped doing it. We want to decrease our workload, but we can make it look realistic at the same time! For the viewing pleasure of the higher ups of the clubs, it can’t be done too crudely, right?”
“With these five accounts moving around so frequently, won’t people notice them?” said Ye Xiu.
“Who would notice them faster than our own guys? I notified the big guilds every time, saying how I found these five player’s whereabouts. But these guilds are really sly. These five characters had a bounty placed on them to fool the public. They don’t even care about them. I’ve never seen any one of their men come over. I’m guessing the others that gave them intelligence on these five were also ignored. I was lucky that I had a trick up my sleeve. Xiaoqiang’s product, home made. I feel good earning this money.” Mo Qiang prattled on.
“In the end they’re all bald?” asked Ye Xiu. Being “bald” meant that all the experience points on the characters were gone. Even though their levels were still at 70, if you opened up their character info pages and looked at their stats, you would break into tears.
“Sigh, speaking of which, we made a mistake in our calculations. The minimum level a character can have in Glory is level 1, there is no level 0, so to make these Level 70 characters go bald, there are only 69 levels. With 500 yuan per level and 5 times 69 levels, we’ll only get a grand total of 172,500. The sum that we came up with, 175,000, was incorrect!” Mo Qiang continued!
“So how much are you going to get in the end..…” said Ye Xiu.
“I didn’t finish off all of their levels. It would be too unrealistic, so I got a total of 150,000.” said Mo Qiang.
“This isn’t realistic either.” said Ye Xiu.
“Isn’t 150,000 easier to divide? We’re aiming to decrease our workload.” said Mo Qiang.
“Sure, sure. I’ve finished watching the video, do what you have to do!” said Ye Xiu.
“I intend to leave it there for a few more days, but I’m afraid that they’d suddenly cancel the bounty. I heard that even after so many days, they still couldn’t get ahold of you right? Why don’t you give them some hope? Dying once or twice. Isn’t there’s a huge pile of money waiting for you after that? Make some sacrifices. Huh? Come on!” Mo Qiang continued earnestly.
“Stop spewing nonsense, if you’re afraid that the bounty will be canceled, do it faster.” said Ye Xiu.
“But there is also a possibility that they will increase the bounty. Raising yours to a thousand, and if these accounts’ got increased by about 200 yuan, it would still be a very big profit!” said Mo Qiang.
“Don’t be too greedy. If the amount is too big, aren’t you afraid that they’d rather lose face than to pay the bounty? Everything has a limit!” said Ye Xiu.
“Yes yes yes, you are right. Fine! I’ll cash in on the bounty, give me your account number, I’ll send the money later.” said Mo Qiang.
“Slow down, I have a list of things here that I need, so help me acquire those.” said Ye Xiu.
“What do you need?” asked Mo Qiang.
When the shoplist was received by Mo Qiang, he immediately understood Ye Xiu’s attention after a glance, “You’re going to upgrade that Silver Equipment of yours!”
“Yes!”
“You’re upgrading it to level 50, am I right?” Mo Qiang continued. Each equipment and materials had their own levels. The level of the materials used to forge a piece of silver equipment wasn’t limited, but it was still based on the level of the end product. Guessing the level of the equipment was simple just by looking at the list of materials.
“Yes.”
“I don’t have all the things you need. How could this be a single weapon? This is enough for an entire set!” Mo Qiang was amazed.
“I know you have your ways of getting it done. The money is with you, just help me out here. Is it enough?” said Ye Xiu.
“It’s hard to say, Orange Equipment is easy to get, but you need three materials that are only dropped by wild bosses, which are mostly owned by the big guilds. It’s tough luck for the studios. Even if others have them, if we try getting it, they will certainly raise the price unreasonably, you know that.” said Mo Qiang.
“Yes, I know.” Ye Xiu nodded. There was no market price for such rare materials. They were so rare that they couldn’t even form a market out of it. Such items could accurately be described by “rare commodity”. If any workshops got their hands on them, they would only sell them when the time is right.
“Then, leave it to me!” said Mo Qiang.