At three o'clock in the afternoon, in Computer Lab 3 of the School of Computer Science.
“The script is very simple.”
Zhou Jianguo shook the thin two pages of A4 paper in his hand. “You just play a hacker trying to break into someone else's computer, get caught red-handed as we kick down the door, and then say a couple of warning lines to the camera at the end.”
The shooting process was indeed simple.
Jiang Yue put on a pair of borrowed glasses and sat down in front of the computer. His aura shifted seamlessly, and it was as if the villainous master hacker Shen Xu had possessed him on the spot.
“Action!”
Jiang Yue's fingers flew across the keyboard, leaving afterimages on the mechanical keys.
Two actors dressed in police uniforms burst through the door and pinned his shoulders. “Freeze! Police!”
Jiang Yue lifted his hands from the keyboard, slowly turned his head, and raised his chin slightly. The corner of his mouth curled upward as he gave the camera a disdainful side-eye, showing blatant defiance.
Outside the camera's frame, Zhou Jianguo clapped his hands hard. “Cut! Perfect! That's exactly the vibe! Moving on to the next scene!”
In the next scene, Jiang Yue was handcuffed and escorted out the main door by two police officers.
For the final shot, he stood alone in front of a white wall, holding up a sign that read, “The internet is not a lawless place.”
With a deadpan face, Jiang Yue spoke like an emotionless reading machine. “I am Shen Xu. Don't copy me, or you will go to prison.”
“Perfect! Wrap it up!”
Zhou Jianguo waved his hand excitedly. The entire shoot felt like it was on fast-forward, taking less than half an hour.
Before leaving, Zhou Jianguo gave Jiang Yue a mysterious pat on the shoulder. “Don't worry, Student Jiang. The comrades in our municipal bureau's publicity department are all master editors. We'll make sure to edit this into a viral hit!”
Jiang Yue just took it as typical polite banter from a government official and didn't give it another thought.
...
At seven o'clock that evening.
In the boys' dormitory at Donghai University, Lu Ming, who had just showered, was slumped in his chair, mindlessly scrolling through his phone.
“Pfft—”
A mouthful of water he had just sipped sprayed directly onto his screen, followed immediately by a burst of hysterical, manic laughter.
“Holy shit, hahahaha! Brother Yue! Haozi! Stop grinding and look at this! The municipal bureau's official account is leading the memes! This is so freaking hilarious!”
Jiang Yue and Chen Haotian gathered behind him.
Lu Ming tapped the play button.
The video opened with a sudden shift to a dark, suspenseful tone, accompanied by scalp-tingling, tense background music.
On screen, Shen Xu, played by Jiang Yue, sat in front of the computer, his gaze aloof and his fingers flying.
In the center of the screen, cold, bold letters slowly appeared: “The internet god you imagine.”
Immediately after, the screen went black.
Two police officers burst through the door aggressively.
Jiang Yue was pinned down. He turned his head, just as his provocative smile began to form.
The screen suddenly jumped.
The suspenseful music cut off abruptly, replaced by a brainwashing, cheerful nursery rhyme beat.
Then, a line of colorful, incredibly tacky WordArt effects slammed onto the screen:
【Don't get cocky! The cyber police are coming down your Ethernet cable to arrest you!】
The screen cut again.
Jiang Yue was led away in handcuffs, his face still maintaining that aloof, cool expression.
But right next to his head, a pink, heart-shaped speech bubble popped up, accompanied by an exaggeratedly high-pitched, cutesy voiceover: “Oppa isn't being arrested, he's just going to prison in my heart~”
Finally, it showed the shot of Jiang Yue holding up the sign and reciting his line: “Don't copy me, or you will go to prison.”
In the video, the editor had added two circles of pink blush to his cheeks, and there was even a pair of fluffy white cat ears bouncing around on his head with a boing-boing effect.
The entire video was barely over a minute long, but the sheer density of ridiculous memes was absolutely suffocating.
The comment section had already completely collapsed.
“Official memes are the deadliest! I declare that Shen Xu's aloof persona has shattered into dust at this very moment! 😂”
“I'm dying of laughter, the Donghai Municipal Bureau really knows how to crack the traffic code! I fell right off my bed laughing when I saw those cat ears!”
“Comrades of the publicity department, be honest. Did Shen Xu hack your servers before? This is a brutal revenge!”
“One second: Is the enter key faster, or a bullet? The next second: I'm sorry, Officer, I'll never do it again. 🐶”
“I suggest all official police accounts nationwide take notes. Isn't this anti-fraud publicity effect a hundred times better than sending ten thousand text messages?”
Lu Ming leaned back in his gaming chair, clutching his stomach and shaking with laughter.
Even the usually calm Chen Haotian broke character, his shoulders shaking violently as he tried his best to suppress his laughter.
Looking at his deadpan self with pink cat ears on his head on the screen, Jiang Yue chuckled helplessly.
He really hadn't expected that the master editors Zhou Jianguo mentioned belonged to this school of style.
If they wanted to make a viral hit, they certainly did.
But this direction was... slightly different from what he had expected.
As the official anti-fraud video was frantically reposted across major platforms, the system notifications in Jiang Yue's mind began to go off like New Year's firecrackers.
【Large-scale collective emotional fluctuation detected (Joy/Laughter). Prestige points +1,000.】
“...”
Jiang Yue leaned back in his computer chair and fell into silence as he watched his Prestige points break past twenty thousand and continue to soar at a steady speed.
He had worked himself to the bone in the production crew for two consecutive months, playing Chu Yan as a dark and psychotic madman, to the point where he almost became Chu Yan himself, yet the Prestige points he earned were barely enough to pull a few dozen High-Tier draws.
And yet, just by coming back and cooperating with the police officers to shoot a tacky short video of less than a minute, his Prestige points had completely taken off?
As expected, the end of the universe was a government job, and the end of traffic was memeing.
The next morning, the aftershocks of this memeing completely invaded the campus of Donghai University.
When Jiang Yue went to the cafeteria to buy breakfast, the auntie serving the food stared at his face for several seconds. Then, without her hand shaking in the slightest, she scooped two extra large spoonfuls of braised pork onto his plate.
The auntie smiled warmly. “Young man, those cat ears look really nice on you. Eat more.”
Even with his usually thick skin, Jiang Yue couldn't help but quicken his pace to escape the cafeteria.
Over the next few days, walking along the main roads of the campus, he would constantly receive all kinds of curious stares.
This continued until Friday, when the School of Computer Science held its senior graduation thesis defense.
The large lecture hall was packed, with not a single empty seat.
Normally, aside from the miserable students of the same defense group, there wouldn't be a single soul in sight at these events.
But today, the back rows were not only packed with underclassmen from their own department, but even students from the neighboring Media and Economics departments had caught wind of it and snuck in.
A few people in the front row held their phones, staring toward the podium with expressions full of gossip-seeking anticipation.
“Hey, do you think he'll forget his lines when he goes up?”
A girl lowered her voice to gossip with her companion. “Just a couple of days ago, he was wearing cat ears in a video, and today he's here to defend his thesis in front of professors. The contrast is too jarring.”
“Let's wait and see. If there's no entertainment value, this early morning trip would have been for nothing.”
Whispers echoed throughout the lecture hall.
At exactly ten o'clock in the morning, the advising professor opened the roster and tapped on the podium.
Next up, it was Jiang Yue's turn to take the stage.
Rate on N.U.
