[Bonus chapter at 2k comments]

The forums were mostly just there for the drama. But the outside world — especially the industry — was starting to sweat.

The Diary dropped, and Hongming TV's president Yi Feng had originally asked Da Yu to 'start a fight' online and hype up The Diary's premiere.

Looks like stirring drama, really it's just funneling traffic. But Da Yu had gone dark. Completely unreachable.

Yi Feng half-suspected it was deliberate, but there was nothing he could do. Had they offended Da Yu? Offended people don't just shut up.

Fine — buy some Marketing Account slots, rehash old drama, that works too.

Still, one less layer of security.

Da Yu's account had way too many real followers. If they could just commandeer it — well, if it could cooperate with the promo push, the results would've been insane.

In that creeping unease, two days passed — short and endless at the same time — and on April 5th, The Diary finally premiered.

Opening numbers? Great!

Huang Yunwen pumped his fist.

Then, less than an hour later — once all the bulk-bought cloud tickets were claimed — the mask slipped.

Shockingly, The Diary didn't just fail to leech off The Favored One. It got the cold shoulder from viewers entirely.

Episode one did okay. Episode two fell off a cliff.

Not terrible, not good. Audience feedback was just... flat.

The platform could still console itself that The Favored One was too dominant, and that the first week of airing was peak promo season, peak audience engagement.

Holding above 8,000 heat points was still a win for The Diary, technically.

But the audience stayed flat.

And kept flattening.

Huang Yunwen's fanbase was already imploding — 'internal conflict' had them too distracted to even care about The Diary —

The airing drama's tier got downgraded from S+ to S: fans lost it. The rival camp was dunking on them: fans lost it harder. Then the fan station published the financial breakdown — and everyone completely lost it.

The first two things? You could cope. 'One setback is fine,' 'the platform is suppressing the numbers,' 'Weibo is throttling the heat.' Classic self-soothing.

But the station publishing that breakdown? That was a fist straight to the skull of every fan group. Brutal. The kind that rips off the fig leaf.

Because the number of cloud tickets purchased was lower than what had been implied — and casual fans were flooding the Supporter Association, demanding to know where the money went.

Someone in a private group threatened to dox the admins if they didn't come clean.

The Supporter Association admins had been holding it together, because official fan accounts are connected to the star's studio or company.

Major announcements have to be cleared with that side first — easier to manage the fan groups that way.

When they need fans to push something, they tip off the Supporter Association, let them set the tone, so it looks like everyone's on the same page.

What most people don't know: a big fan station's admin team usually has more than one person behind the scenes.

And those behind-the-scenes fans are people too. Not emotionless bots.

So one of Huang Yunwen's Supporter Association admins did something huge —

They vented on a side account about the 'Supporter Association pocketing funds for a beachfront apartment.'

Because they'd crowdfunded nearly ten million, but the cloud ticket spend was only two or three million...

Because the refund rate was insane, okay?!

Sold out, yes — but the post-sale refund rate hit forty percent.

The Supporter Association actually had a conscience this time. They basically didn't pocket anything. Poured it all in and still barely broke even. They were aggrieved.

All they did was talk themselves up and keep up appearances.

Huang Yunwen had no idea how many fans he'd actually gained — everyone just let their vanity get stroked, then requested refunds.

The original post was on a side account. Somehow it got decoded, leaked, and the rival camp had a field day mocking it.

Because everyone else's fan drama was 'station admins ran off with the money' or 'crowdfund got swallowed' — the usual jokes. This one was different.

The station actually had a conscience!

The fans being roasted weren't having it. Convinced the Supporter Association had still skimmed something, they started a two-front war.

Once the fighting started, forget outsiders — even the fans stopped caring about The Diary.

Hongming TV's platform head couldn't sit still anymore. Stress sores forming at the corners of his mouth...

Da Yu, where did you go?!

Can you please give The Diary a boost?!

·

Not his problem.

Sang Yu hadn't disappeared. He was just busy.

Busy gaming.

A brand-new domestic 3A title.

He'd thrown money at a bunch of random investments before — only one AI animated drama had broken even, figured everything else was a loss. Turned out, not quite.

One game called The Martial World. Four years in development. The only wuxia-style 3A title in the country.

When he'd invested, he just thought: it'd be nice if domestic studios could make a game that actually showed off the culture.

Hopefully something decent.

What counted as 'decent'?

Sang Yu wasn't totally sure, but at minimum — the combat had to be good, right?

Different secret manuals and move sets for different sects, weapons that were all distinct, interactions that couldn't just be copy-pasted from one template.

If it could actually capture that flavor, wuxia fans would play it, xianxia fans would too — so he threw some money in.

Along the way the studio would send updates to his assistant — art direction, system builds, soundtrack, the 'skeleton' of the game.

Sang Yu found it interesting for a bit, then forgot about it and handed it off to his assistant to monitor.

Now the game was in its final stretch. Last round of testing, bug fixes, then launch and operations.

The project lead worked up the nerve to contact the assistant. One: the results were in, time to give investors a satisfying answer. Two: they were out of money.

Sang Yu: '?'

Do I look like a piggy bank?

But he was curious — what did four years of work on The Martial World actually look like? Abstract or concrete?

So he started a trial run.

And...

Actually really good!

There were classes to pick from — swordsman, monk, assassin, escort guard, that kind of thing.

Every character had different motion capture. Boss fights played out differently too.

Not one to follow instructions, Sang Yu picked the assassin.

Every dungeon's environment modeling had that authentic Chinese feel.

From the misty blue-green waterways of Jiangnan, to the yellow dust of the northern frontier, from the resonant bells of Shaolin, to the blood-red banners of the demon cult snapping in the wind.

Immersive.

So Sang Yu accidentally got hooked.

— Absolutely not because he'd picked hard mode at the start and the bosses were destroying him.

The boss's dagger was coated in venom bought from a Western Regions merchant.

He kept dying!

His eyes dodged in time. His hands didn't.

Hadn't played a 3A title in ages. Once he got sucked in, he refused to quit until he cleared a stage. Too stubborn to sleep.

So he pulled all-nighters.

Kept going through the day.

As for The Diary's premiere — completely slipped his mind.

Honestly, whatever.

Sang Yu cared about it less than the other projects he'd originally invested in — he was already having his assistant do a full re-audit of those. After all, The Martial World had been a surprise. Worth digging through the 'old basket' — maybe there were more.

So by the time he'd gamed himself into a stupor and finally cleared stages three and four, the outside world had moved on by several days.

When Sang Yu finally dragged himself back into the sunlight, he felt like he'd returned from another dimension.

Everyone was excitedly flooding the comments to report Aurora Entertainment's victory and the 'enemy's' crushing defeat.

Aurora Entertainment had made a name for itself in one shot.

Yuanshang TV had struck gold.

Hongming TV, reading the room, quickly recalibrated — downgraded The Diary from S+ to S.

Honestly, looking at the heat trajectory, A+ was basically within reach (and not in a good way).

The downstream promo budget and treatment got adjusted to match.

The Favored One had relatively few couple-focused promos — especially off-screen fan-service moments — compared to mid-to-late airing, when there'd be more.

Which actually extended The Favored One's staying power.

Viewers were refreshing for new episodes while savoring what they had. Nothing hit harder than spending a weekend at home watching four episodes of The Favored One. That was peak happiness for the working class.

Weekly drop schedule, not daily — so four episodes a week.

Three hours total.

Every update, people lost their minds.

Not just because the couple was so shippable — but because after all the earlier buildup, everyone trusted there were no landmines ahead.

Watch all four episodes with a smile, then go search Douyin for the couple's latest interactions.

Like finishing fried chicken and cracking open a Coke. Joy multiplied.

The following week, fans survived on rewatching old episodes and the couple's new interactions and activities.

The Diary was going in a completely different direction.

First week done. If you charted the numbers on a line graph —

It'd look like a checkmark going the wrong way.

Peak at premiere.

Over 8,000 heat points out of the gate — solid by any standard in recent years.

But the heat dropped like a tide going out. Never came back. Limp as wet clay, no matter how hard the platform tried to prop it up.

A well-known blogger put it plainly: look closely at The Diary, and it's a kind of cruelty to the audience.

Why?

Because The Diary was a carbon copy of Domestic Entertainment's idol drama template. Not a single thing changed.

If this had aired a few years back, viewers might've watched anyway — 'everything's equally bad, we're used to it.' Now? Not a chance.

Once you've had good food, who wants to go back to stale grass.

Especially when that grass scratches your throat.

Huang Yunwen's performance was especially stiff — for some reason his posture in the drama was noticeably off, always craning his neck.

Instant meme material in the roast section.

Go up against The Favored One?

Don't quietly boost your own profile off it — that'd be an insult to The Favored One.

Not even worthy as a rival. Try the tier below.

Long story short, this April, The Favored One had dominated from day one — to the point where it had overestimated its competition going into the Arena.

The platform had genuinely made money. They were already thinking about throwing a wrap party once the drama finished airing.

Happy occasion like that — of course they had to reach out to Sang Yu and invite him.

And by the way — what's your next project?

That question wasn't just coming from Yuanshang TV. Hongming TV, Love to Watch TV, even Xi Xingfa had asked.

Sang Yu hadn't answered any of them.

They kept hinting around it.

It was starting to get on his nerves.

Didn't he make it clear from the start? He only made things he wanted to watch. Of course he did it for himself.

It wasn't like he was actually trying to 'save' Domestic Entertainment. Where would a next-step plan even come from? Did everyone think he was running a serious production company?

The Favored One was an accident to begin with — picked randomly from comments, hadn't even thought about getting it on a major network when filming wrapped.

Sang Yu's expression went flat.

Ask again and he'd push back out of spite.

His mood soured, and so did his appetite — until he found a seafood buffet and ate his way back to health.

Or maybe he ate so much his brain lost blood flow and just stopped processing.

Yeah. Satisfied.

Sang Yu usually ate pretty normally, but once or twice a month he'd get this overwhelming urge to binge — just to let the beast out.

Maybe there was something primal and magnetic about sitting in a buffet restaurant and tearing into food. Sang Yu couldn't explain it.

Also just a way to decompress.

Unorthodox, sure.

Too full to move. Let it settle — felt like he hadn't been on Weibo in ages.

Sang Yu idly tapped into the trending feed.

First post: a long analysis from an entertainment blogger, praising The Favored One and its creator. A lone warrior carrying Domestic Entertainment on their back.

Sang Yu: a plant account?

Definitely.

He tapped in, ready to deploy his go-to move — screenshot, send to lawyer — then paused at the top comments from a few days ago.

Wait, they're not performing?

Sang Yu was confused.

Nope, couldn't do it. Two lines in, all those genuinely heartfelt compliments about 'Domestic Entertainment's conscience' and 'resetting the rules' made his skin crawl.

Too cringe. Bailing.

Scrolled down — The Favored One's reviews, five stars, and a big chunk of the write-up was praising Sang Yu directly.

Sang Yu: '...'

Something clicked.

Oh right — that Douyin meme, 'every time Sang Yu comes up, I think of my parents.' People were making their kids write film reviews for The Favored One.

No wonder the praise was so intense.

Made sense now.

Sang Yu kept scrolling. Another long review.

Kept going. Another one — this time half-written by someone he vaguely recognized: Shu Mucheng, the original novel's author.

Writers write with real sincerity.

The comments underneath were all praise too — posted in the comments section, so it probably wasn't a formal review. No one needed to perform here.

Sang Yu had been assuming bad faith this whole time, but after resisting for a moment, he caught on.

Something felt off to him.

Looking at the comment section — clearly hand-typed, one after another, genuine thank-yous from real viewers.

Sang Yu's hand hovered over the screen.

Didn't scroll away.

Something stirred, though he couldn't name it.

He hadn't been invested in The Favored One — found the original novel, assembled a team, put in the money, barely visited the set.

And yet all these people were this happy. Couldn't hide it.

Maybe...

He'd actually done something good?

Couldn't help it. Kept scrolling.

The restaurant lights were warm amber. He picked up his glass, took a sip — 'hss —' the bubbles from the sparkling water popped on his tongue.

A faint, quiet sense of accomplishment.

That feeling made Sang Yu a little smug. Fine, he'd admit it — people are vain creatures who need encouragement and praise.

Just not those 'resetter of Domestic Entertainment's rules' titles. A bit too try-hard.

What was that word for it? Right — trying too hard to flatter.

That The Favored One would get this many fans — Sang Yu wasn't surprised. The original novel had already passed the public taste test before it could be published, before it could be adapted.

Adapt it faithfully, and of course people would like it.

His production team wasn't anything extraordinary either. Stay true to the source, and the audience was already this satisfied.

Looks like Domestic Entertainment's floor was lower than he'd thought.

Aurora Entertainment hitting that standard was enough to blow up like this.

If he kept investing, maybe his track record could go from two wins (The Martial World made it two) to a few more.

Sang Yu took another sip of sparkling water.

The corner of his mouth hadn't dropped —

Okay, okay. Enough.

From now on: make one he actually wanted to watch, throw in a 'bonus gift' for everyone else. Simple.

Not a big deal. Given how genuinely heartfelt all of this was.

He was just that generous and kind, after all.

Honestly though, he wasn't really feeling TV dramas right now — three in a row was getting stale. Time to find something new.