Chapter 133: The First Internet Fan War

"Zhou Yi: My Scandal Count Isn't High Enough Yet"

"A Free-Spirited New Song, an Unfettered Attitude — The Inner World of Little Crown Prince Zhou Yi"

"The Bottom Line on Writing Scandals: Those with Boyfriends, Please Do Not Join!"

"The Bassist for Zhou Yi's New Song: Chen Hao"

"..."

After the stunning on-site performance by the cast of "Pink Ladies," Zhou Yi's own responses to the various rumors immediately appeared in the newspapers.

And accompanying Zhou Yi on the front page was his evaluation of Chen Hao — directly letting this currently unknown Wan Ren Mi experience what it meant to have attention for the first time.

She could now be recognized by people even when going out to buy newspapers.

"I finally understand why so many women want to stir up scandals with you; your popularity is terrifying."

Hiding in the hotel room with the curtains drawn, Chen Hao ate breakfast and saw Zhou Yi, who had dropped by as a favor to make a cameo, sitting on the sofa directly opposite her, and couldn't help but complain.

Since the media that interviewed the cast yesterday were all legitimate, she had escaped unscathed and wasn't randomly written up as one of his rumored girlfriends.

"Unless I'm surrounded entirely by men, otherwise, as soon as a beautiful woman appears, I'll be written about randomly; just get used to it."

Zhou Yi, still reading the newspaper, happily admired his own heroism, then suddenly realized: "No, if I were surrounded entirely by men, I'd probably be suspected of having issues with my sexual orientation."

"..."

Chen Hao, who was drinking porridge, bit her spoon and looked up at him in surprise.

Zhou Yi shrugged: "Isn't Lu Yi, the one in your cast who went from a cameo to a unit male lead, already rumored to be with men?"

"Cough—cough—"

Chen Hao, who almost choked to death, instinctively raised her hand to pat her chest, then, after recovering, furrowed her features and warned: "Don't say things without basis; be careful someone might hear."

She didn't need to worry about walls having ears here; if it were any other place, Zhou Yi saying such unproven things would easily get him beaten up.

In this era of the millennium, the dark forces on both sides of the strait and in the three regions had not yet exited the stage.

"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing; isn't this your place?"

Zhou Yi waved his hand indifferently and curiously asked for gossip: "Tell me, is there any concrete news?"

"What the hell, how would I possibly know such things?"

Chen Hao rolled her eyes at the man: "But as far as I know, Lu Yi has a girlfriend, one he had since his university days. More than that, you should worry more about that person named Zhou Jielun."

"Didn't the reporters say yesterday that he's releasing a new song too? I heard he's very popular in the Treasure Island, and the Treasure Island media even wrote headlines like 'Double Zhou' when you won the Golden Melody Award."

"What do I need to worry about? The song 'Roof' doesn't pose much of a threat to me."

Compared to Chen Hao's concern, Zhou Yi obviously didn't care much about this. To be honest, the current Zhou Jielun posed no real threat to him now that he had already risen.

Rather than worrying about Zhou Jielun, he might as well worry about next year's Undercarriage War God, A Do.

This year, "Meteor Garden" was competing with him; by next year, barring any surprises, A Do would bring his classic representative work to slaughter the charts.

He hadn't felt it before, but now the more Zhou Yi thought about it, the more he felt something was off.

Why does Li Nainai have a monster-level opponent every year? It's really hard to stay number one.

If Zhou Chuanxiong's album "Twilight," which was popular on the mainland this year, had been genuine, whether he could occupy the top spot in mainland sales would have been questionable.

Fortunately, although there is a relationship between album sales and single rankings, it is not everything.

Even though the single "Meteor Shower" gradually began to solidify its position at number one on the single charts as the TV drama continued to explode in popularity, the album "Jiangnan" remained the album with the most explosive sales on the mainland up to this point this year, and there was still hope to reclaim the number one single spot.

And just as Zhou Yi took a break to make a cameo in the "Pink Ladies" cast, riding the wind of frequent newspaper reports on his new song "Li Bai," on July 6, Warner officially finally calculated exactly what the sum of Zhou Yi's monthly album sales across all channels was —

A number that shocked the entire Warner internal staff beyond measure.

From June 1 to July 1, in just one month, with the physical record market already clearly on the decline, "Jiangnan," released for one month, achieved sales that an ordinary singer could never reach in a lifetime.

Even Harlem Yu and Dai Peini, who had the "Meteor Garden" bonus, couldn't beat Zhou Yi in album sales.

"After a month of noise, Zhou Yi's second brand-new creative album, 'Jiangnan,' once again occupied the domestic music market, becoming the market leader with 1.056 million genuine album sales."

"Among this, in the Treasure Island, Zhou Yi was far ahead of his opponents Harlem Yu and Dai Peini with an absolute sales advantage of 430,000 copies."

"In this album, Zhou Yi still handled all the lyrics and composition, and he personally directed everything from studio recording to post-production mixing."

"As a creator, Zhou Yi's ability to so clearly control the album's flow at such a young age is truly rare."

"The album's title track, 'Jiangnan,' even more so sang out the grace of Jiangnan, living up to the name of the Jiangnan Talent. 'Dongfeng Po,' full of Chinese classical charm, even more so demonstrated Zhou Yi's understanding of Chinese traditional culture..."

July 6, 2001, 10:08 AM.

Two hours after Warner officially announced Zhou Yi's new album monthly sales, Sina News's Audio-Video Entertainment section — the "POP Explosive" sub-section — immediately published this explosive achievement, letting the netizens of the turn of the century witness Zhou Yi's sky-high record sales results.

All Zhou Yi fans who were qualified to go online and chose to use the internet, this new product, to follow their idol's movements were overjoyed after seeing this news.

In major forums, chat rooms, and even in Tencent QQ, the chat software with rapidly rising domestic user numbers, Zhou Yi's fans fell into a frenzy!

And within the Tianya Forum, a post titled "Has Zhou Yi Already Become King" attracted a massive brawl from fans of many singers —

The first to join the battlefield was Xie Tingfeng, who was on par with Zhou Yi.

Xie Tingfeng, who also released the album "Jade Butterfly" this year, had equally gratifying results; although he hadn't yet broken the million mark, Xie Tingfeng's fans reasonably cited the limitations of Cantonese albums and stated that it wasn't too late to decide the winner once Tingfeng's Mandarin album came out; don't be too happy too soon.

And after Zhou Yi's fans kept repeating the same sales arguments, even escalating to personal attacks in the end, Xie Tingfeng's fans, knowing they were no match, directly expanded the battlefield, dragging in fans of older-generation singers like Jacky Cheung —

This thoroughly muddied the waters.

Not only did the Four Heavenly Kings' fans turn on each other while bickering, but Xie Tingfeng's fans even fought with the self-important fans of Wang Fei.

Zhou Yi's fans, finding themselves unable to fight four hands with two, had no choice but to bring in the fans of Sun Yanzi, Elva Hsiao, and Zhang Shaohan to assist.

Unexpectedly, the fans of these three started fighting amongst themselves while arguing; especially Sun Yanzi and Elva Hsiao, one holding "Love's Main Song" and the other holding "Green Light," neither would yield to the other.

On July 9, Wen Lan of Alpha Music Company released a new album, which included an old song she had previously sung as a duet with Wu Zongxian, "Roof," this time sung as a duet with the original author, Zhou Jielun.

And after this album was released, the fans of these two also joined the battlefield.

However, because Zhou Yi had defeated Zhou Jielun 4:0 at the Golden Melody Awards, some of Zhou Jielun's fans took a fence-sitting attitude, which directly caused friction between the "Double Zhou" fans after a brief honeymoon period.

In the domestic emerging internet, the internet war started by Zhou Yi's fans turned into a complete mess in less than two days, with fans of powerful singers from every camp refusing to yield to anyone.

Crown Prince Zhou Yi, who was vaguely trending to replace Guo Fucheng as Warner's number one, was even attacked by Guo Fucheng's fans. After all, when Zhou Yi's first album was sold overseas, he was still wearing the title of "Little Guo Fucheng."

"Guo Fucheng isn't even old yet, and you're already trying to take his spot?!"

"Ungrateful!"

In response, Zhou Yi's fans didn't hold back, launching straight into an attack: "Old things should retire when they're old! The music industry competition is that cruel."

On the other side, because Xie Tingfeng's fans were also being attacked by Wang Jie and the Four Heavenly Kings' fans, Zhou Yi's fans and Xie Tingfeng's fans, who should have been enemies, ended up uniting. As the Twin Prides of the Music Industry, they formed a powerful alliance and began attacking other fanbases...

Zhou Yi, who had started a small anonymous account to join this "war" just to watch the fun, ended up being scolded and kicked out by his own fans for not being "radical" enough, labeled as a fence-sitter...

"What the f***, my fans are scolding me?!"

In the hotel room, Zhou Yi's eyes widened. Beside him, Chen Hao was already laughing so hard she was bent over: "I can't take it, I'm dying of laughter hahaha."

PS: I saw people talking about creating a group. Let me figure out how to link that to the profile. I don't see this function in the backend; how do others do it...

I'll ask the editor tomorrow.

(End of this chapter)