Shi Pengpeng looked at the life-sized wooden figure, her heart filled with mixed emotions.
This wooden figure wasn’t a naturally formed spirit.
Since gaining consciousness, it had been placed in the imperial mausoleum, referred to as the “Guardian Divine Wood.”
In reality, it was simple-minded, understanding nothing, and only followed the instructions of the court sorcerer in a daze.
Though it had committed sins, it certainly didn’t deserve to bear such a heavy burden of bloodshed.
Looking at the ink stains on the wooden figure’s face and the paint on its body, Shi Pengpeng suddenly remembered its cries when it was forced back to its original form in the southern forest.
Her heart stirred, and she asked, “Junior Brother, do you have a plane and some paint here?”
“Yes, yes,” Xiao Lingshu nodded.
His small Taoist temple often had visitors, so repairs were inevitable, and he kept some common tools on hand.
He asked, “What do you need them for?”
Shi Pengpeng grabbed the wooden figure’s rope braid and said with disdain, “This wooden figure is too ugly. I’m going to give it a makeover.”
Shi Pengpeng planed off the ink stains on the wooden figure’s face and repainted it.
Her craftsmanship was average, but after long practice in drawing talismans, her hands were steady, and the paint was applied evenly and smoothly.
After the makeover, the wooden figure didn’t look brand new, but it was no longer as eerie as before.
“Not bad, not bad. Senior Sister, you do have an eye for aesthetics. It looks much more presentable now. Before, I really didn’t know where to put it.”
“Leaving it outside didn’t match the temple’s vibe, and having it in my room felt a bit creepy when I slept. Now it’s not so scary. I’ll find a place to hang it…”
As Xiao Lingshu spoke, he went to lift the wooden figure but accidentally knocked off the talisman on its forehead.
The wooden figure’s black-painted eyes blinked instantly.
“Eek!”
“Whoa! You scared me!” Xiao Lingshu jumped, quickly grabbing the talisman to stick it back on.
“Wait, wait,” the wooden figure flailed its limbs and hurriedly said, “I’m not running away. Let me look in the mirror!”
Xiao Lingshu was baffled.
“What the…?”
“Wait, let it look in the mirror,” Shi Pengpeng, who had some understanding of the wooden figure, stopped Xiao Lingshu and had him bring a mirror.
The wooden figure looked at itself in the mirror, growing more and more pleased.
“Eek, no more beard. I’m so beautiful!”
After a while, it reluctantly put down the mirror, turned to Shi Pengpeng, and tilted its head.
Its black-painted eyes seemed to shimmer with light.
“Master, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Shi Pengpeng smiled.
“From now on, stay in this temple and don’t wander off.”
“Okay, okay,” the wooden figure nodded obediently.
“I’ll listen to whatever you say.”
Then it went back to admiring itself in the mirror.
Seeing this, Xiao Lingshu relaxed.
“If A-Mu is willing to cooperate, that’s great. You can stay in my room during the day. At night, I’ll remove the talisman, and you can play with Xiao Nian and Xiao Tu.”
“By the way, A-Mu, do you need to sleep? Should I buy you a bed? Though you’re quite big, so it’d have to be a large one, which is a bit expensive.”
“Maybe I’ll just get you a mat. After all, you’re a wooden figure and probably don’t need a blanket. Also, there are rules in this temple, so you’d better listen…”
Before he could finish, the wooden figure, which had been preening, couldn’t take it anymore and turned its head.
“Brother, please, just stick the talisman back on me.”
Xiao Lingshu: ?
The wooden figure, despite its expressionless face, inexplicably revealed a hint of bitterness and asked, “You’re not this talkative at night, are you? If you are, don’t bother removing the talisman for me tonight. I don’t need freedom that badly.”
Xiao Lingshu: “…………..”
Wow, even a wooden figure could look down on him!
Xiao Lingshu placed the sealed wooden figure on a chair in the room and set up a mirror in front of it, adjusting its posture to face the mirror as if it were working.
Seeing that there was nothing else to do, Shi Pengpeng and Yan Jing prepared to leave.
Noticing that Shi Pengpeng still seemed preoccupied, Yan Jing comforted her, “You don’t need to worry too much. Trust that justice will prevail, even if it takes time…”
“I’m not worried about that,” Shi Pengpeng shook her head.
Since the higher-ups were already aware of the situation in Xiluo, they would naturally handle it.
“I’m worried about you…”
“Ahem “Yan Jing quickly covered his mouth with his fist to stifle a laugh.
After managing to suppress his amusement, he casually said, “Then just spend more time with me…”
Shi Pengpeng clenched her right fist and smacked it into her left palm.
“I need to find a way to meet with the people from Yutian.”
She had a feeling that Yutian Culture’s exposure of Yan Jing’s “Unwithering bones” wasn’t just about causing trouble for him.
What were they really after?
Yan Jing: “……”
Fine, as long as she cared about him, that was enough!
However, he suddenly remembered something and said, “In a few days, Cat Paw is hosting its Internet Celebrity Gala, and people from Yutian will be there. I’ll have Wei Chi send you an invitation. You should come too.”
The Cat Paw Internet Celebrity Gala, also known as “Cat Paw Night,” was both the annual company meeting and a grand ceremony for Cat Paw Technology.
In addition to Cat Paw employees, major partners were also invited.
Shi Pengpeng’s e-commerce company primarily operated as a channel for Cat Paw Mall, so naturally, they were considered a partner.
Shi Pengpeng: “Great, great.”
“What? Cat Paw Night?”
Xiao Lingshu popped his head out from behind, excitedly asking, “Is that the one with a lot of internet celebrities?”
Cat Paw’s gala naturally attracted many platform influencers, and they also invited celebrity guests to join.
Yan Jing: “……”
“Daddy!” Xiao Lingshu’s eyes sparkled with anticipation.
“Can I go too? I heard internet celebrities and the entertainment industry are super superstitious. I want to infiltrate their circles. Support your precious son’s career, won’t you?”
Yan Jing closed his eyes, expressionless.
“…Fine, but don’t ever say ‘precious’ in front of me again.”
“Deal, deal,” Xiao Lingshu shamelessly agreed.
“As long as you give me the invitation, you can be my precious anything.”
***
As soon as Shi Pengpeng arrived at the company, a colleague from the operations department rushed over with a phone in hand, looking frantic.
“Pengpeng, it’s bad. Several of our popular videos have been reported and taken down.”
“What?” Shi Pengpeng took the phone and opened the company’s Cat Paw account backend to check.
After Fuxi E-commerce separated from Fuxi Food, they had focused entirely on online channels.
Now, in addition to their online store, they had also launched an official account on Cat Paw for live streaming and regularly posted edited videos to attract traffic.
Several colleagues in the operations department had a keen sense for trending topics and were adept at capturing hot spots.
In a short time, a few videos from the official account had made it to the trending recommendations, significantly boosting the online store’s sales.
Shi Pengpeng awarded the operations department a substantial bonus, which greatly motivated them.
Just as they were gearing up to achieve more, they arrived at the office today only to receive devastating news from the Cat Paw platform backend: all those trending videos had been reported for plagiarism.
Due to the overwhelming number of reports, Cat Paw had directly taken them down.
Shi Pengpeng checked the backend notification and asked in confusion, “Why were there so many reports?”
“They were all reported by Hui Xi’s fans…” an operations colleague explained while opening the account of a blogger named Hui Xi.
Shi Pengpeng glanced at it and saw that Hui Xi was a borderline female influencer with over five million followers.
The video covers on her homepage featured some very provocative photos, showcasing her extremely hot figure and strikingly beautiful appearance, though it was obvious she had undergone cosmetic surgery, giving her a heavily “enhanced” look.
Hui Xi’s data was quite impressive, with almost every video garnering over 100,000 likes, which was rare among borderline influencers.
The operations colleague explained that Hui Xi was notoriously domineering.
Whenever she saw someone else’s video that had even the slightest resemblance to hers or used similar elements, she would sarcastically accuse them of copying her and rally her fans to report the content.
Once, a small blogger had simply performed a dance that Hui Xi had done during a live stream, and Hui Xi had mocked her, leading to her fans furiously reporting the video.
That time, the video wasn’t successfully taken down, but Hui Xi’s fans became even more enraged, flooding the small blogger’s comment section with insults and even sending private messages threatening to dox her.
The small blogger eventually couldn’t handle the pressure and deleted the video, deactivating her account.
The most outrageous part was that sometimes, even when other bloggers had posted their videos first, Hui Xi would twist the narrative, claiming that she had come up with the idea first, and her fans would blindly charge into battle for her without questioning.
Shi Pengpeng was stunned:
“Is that even allowed? Don’t other bloggers complain about her?”
“They don’t dare. Hui Xi has strong backing…” the operations colleague said ominously.
“?” Shi Pengpeng, upon hearing this, took a closer look at Hui Xi’s profile and noticed that her MCN agency was listed as “Yu Tian Culture.”
Shi Pengpeng:”…..”
I almost forgot, Yu Tian Culture is the company most known for cultivating borderline influencers.
Probably half of Cat Paw’s famous borderline male and female influencers are under Yu Tian’s banner.
Yu Tian Culture’s influence on Cat Paw was self-evident, which explained why the bloggers who had been targeted dared not speak out.
The operations colleague had already looked into it.
Hui Xi was currently Yu Tian Culture’s top beauty influencer.
Although her follower count wasn’t at the top tier, her live streams always attracted massive traffic, and the big spenders on her leaderboard were extremely generous with their tips.
However, being a borderline influencer wasn’t a sustainable path.
Only a few fans were genuinely loyal, and many were just creepy freeloaders.
In truth, Hui Xi’s fans might not actually be that powerful in terms of combativeness.
What was truly strong was Yu Tian’s water army, which could precisely target and attack wherever directed.
Knowing that Hui Xi was a Yu Tian influencer, Shi Pengpeng wasn’t surprised anymore, but she was even more puzzled and asked, “Our videos are all about introducing local specialties and rural charm. How could a borderline influencer like her accuse us of plagiarism?”
“You wouldn’t know the whole story…” the operations colleague said with a complicated expression.
It turned out that Huixi didn’t start out doing suggestive content.
When she first created her account, she was actually an unboxing blogger, specializing in unboxing local specialties from various regions.
However, she was working alone and never really gained much traction.
But she was pretty, and it didn’t take long for Yutian Culture to notice her and sign her.
After that, she transitioned into being a beauty streamer and received strong support from Yutian Culture.
Her live stream viewership rarely dropped below 100,000.
The reason Hui Xi reported Fuxi E-commerce this time was that she claimed they had copied her old unboxing video ideas for local specialties.
Shipengpeng was speechless.
She scrolled through Hui Xi’s videos, taking a while to reach the bottom, where she found her older videos.
What she saw surprised her.
Hui Xi’s old video covers were actually quite fresh and minimalist.
When she opened them, she found that Hui Xi’s appearance back then was vastly different from now.
“Is this her?” Shipengpeng was shocked.
“How is she so different?”
She could tell Hui Xi had undergone plastic surgery, but she didn’t expect it to be this drastic.
“That’s her,” the operations colleague confirmed with a nod, also somewhat emotional.
“I came across her videos before she transitioned. She wasn’t popular, but the impression she gave was much better than now…”
Shipengpeng couldn’t help but recall that Yu Tian Culture had also wanted to sign Xu Qiannian and have her transition into a beauty blogger.
Xu Qiannian later told her that after signing with Yutian, the company would require bloggers to make minor adjustments according to their planned route-in other words, undergo plastic surgery.
It seemed Hui Xi was a case of this.
Looking at her old appearance, it wasn’t just her face that had been altered; her body had likely undergone significant changes as well.
Shipengpeng grew even more puzzled:
“She’s already doing suggestive content and has had such drastic surgery. Why hasn’t she deleted her old videos? Doesn’t she see them as a black mark on her history?”
“That’s unclear,” the operations colleague also didn’t understand, saying with frustration, “I’ve heard that she wasn’t so possessive of others’ things before. It was only after her surgery and transition into suggestive content that she became like this…”
“Is that so?”
Shipengpeng clicked her tongue.
“Then it seems like it’s Yu Tian Culture’s problem.”
“So what do we do now?” the operations colleague looked troubled.
“I’ve looked carefully, and our video only shares a few elements with Hui Xi’s, which doesn’t constitute plagiarism. I’ve already appealed to Maozhao, but their operations team seems to favor Hui Xi and keeps delaying the processing…”
“Don’t worry,” Shipengpeng waved her hand.
“I’ll talk to someone at Maozhao.”
With that, she took out her phone and sent a message to Yan Jing.
AAA Local Specialty Retail & Wholesale: [Bro, the weather’s getting cold. When is Maozhao going bankrupt?]
Yan Jing: [?]
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