Li Yanping asked excitedly, "You watched Young Bao Qingtian too?"
Chen Bing smiled. "Of course. Not only did I watch it, I stayed up late watching it."
"Me too. I nearly got to work late this morning!" Li Yanping laughed.
Chen Bing chuckled. "My eyelids are still fighting each other."
A coworker called out, "Hey, don't just focus on flirting with each other. Hurry up and tell us what Young Bao Qingtian is about!"
Chen Bing replied, "It's about a brilliant judge solving cases, of course! It's a costume suspense drama!"
"Costume suspense? What's there to watch?" The coworker shook their head.
"Anyway, you'll understand once you've watched it!"
On January 26, episodes 3 and 4 of The Legend of Consort Chen went online.
IQIYI Video headquarters.
The atmosphere there had been unusually excited and cheerful all day.
The Legend of Consort Chen's ratings had exploded.
On its premiere day, it reached an astonishing 2.7% viewership during Shenlan TV's prime-time slot. In this day and age, a rating above 1% meant a show had become popular; above 2% meant it was a major hit; and above 3% meant it was a phenomenon-level work, of which only a handful came out every few years.
The Legend of Consort Chen had reached an astonishing 2.7% on its premiere day. That practically meant that as long as the later plot didn't fall apart too badly, breaking 3% was all but guaranteed.
What surprised everyone even more was that The Legend of Consort Chen's Dou Miao Score had also broken 9. A palace scheme drama had scored above 9? Everyone knew what that meant.
The Legend of Consort Chen hadn't just been a ratings hit; it had also received rave reviews!
The only drawback was that Penguin Video's Young Bao Qingtian had already broken 9, with an even higher score of 9.2.
IQIYI Video had made the right call in spending a fortune to secure the online streaming rights to The Legend of Consort Chen. And its efforts to stop Penguin Video from getting those rights had been a stroke of genius.
With the show's ratings exploding on television, it was easy to predict that its online views would soon surge as well.
IQIYI Video seized the opportunity to make the latest two episodes of The Legend of Consort Chen VIP Episodes.
The reason video platforms were willing to spend a fortune competing for rights was, at heart, to attract paying users. With The Legend of Consort Chen so popular, making it a VIP Episode was sure to bring iQIYI Video a large number of new subscribers.
IQIYI Video's VIP membership count was now approaching 50 million. It currently stood at 49.1 million, and once it broke the 50-million mark, the battle for dominance among video platforms would begin to take shape.
The first-day figures came out soon after.
The Legend of Consort Chen's 24-hour figures: 55 million views on iQIYI Video, 35 million on Gua Video, and over 90 million across all platforms.
Phenomenon-level. This was absolutely phenomenon-level!
At a senior management meeting, iQIYI Video CEO Zhao Qi declared triumphantly, "The Legend of Consort Chen might set a record that nobody will be able to break for years!"
Then the figures for two new dramas from rival Penguin Video landed on Zhao Qi's desk.
Young Bao Qingtian had 61 million views on a single platform in 24 hours, while Palace Scheme had 56 million.
On January 25, the all-time single-platform viewership ranking was: Young Bao Qingtian in first place, Palace Scheme in second, and The Legend of Consort Chen in third!
It was also worth noting that Palace Scheme had a Dou Miao Score of 9.0.
The Legend of Consort Chen could only rank third in single-platform views? Most of Zhao Qi's good mood vanished in an instant.
Although The Legend of Consort Chen still led by a wide margin in total views across all platforms and was undoubtedly the most popular show at the moment, the absolute domination he had imagined hadn't materialized.
On January 26, the newly released episodes 9 and 10 of Young Bao Qingtian were also made VIP Episodes.
That evening, when Chen Bing saw that the latest two episodes required payment, he opened a Penguin Video VIP membership without hesitation.
He and Li Yanping had had a great conversation the day before, and their relationship had grown noticeably closer without either of them realizing it. He had Young Bao Qingtian to thank for that—all because he had happened upon it the previous night.
He had watched eight episodes in all. The first six formed a complete story, while episode 7 began a new one.
The first two episodes of the new story mainly established the setting and introduced the characters, so the plot didn't advance very much. The reason its views had surpassed the previous record set by the finale of the first six episodes as soon as it went online last night was the strong reputation the first story had built.
In the first two episodes, the academy's Academician Ying Ming and Teacher Meng Fang appeared, along with the court's Grand Scholar Yang Qishan from the Longtu Pavilion, Chang Yu, who sold spices, and Zhan Zhao, whose introduction followed Zhan Jun's death. One by one, the characters were introduced in an orderly fashion. Starting with episode 9, the plot gradually unfolded, and the murders became increasingly mysterious.
After Bao Zheng solved the case involving the Goryeo Envoy, women all over the city began flocking to him. Whenever he went out, crowds of women chased after him. Then, one day, everyone on the street suddenly began avoiding him as if he smelled terrible.
Bao Zheng was secretly wondering what was going on when he saw Ling Chuchu spreading rumors about him in the street.
Ling Chuchu: "Do you all know why Bao Zheng is so black from head to toe?"
Crowd: "Wasn't he born that way?"
Ling Chuchu: "Of course not! It's because he hasn't bathed in years. All the dirt and grime has built up in his pores, layer upon layer, until it covers his whole body. That's why he's so black!"
Crowd: "That's right! He goes to the spice shop every day to buy spices. So he's trying to cover up the smell! No wonder he runs away whenever he sees us—he's afraid we'll smell how foul he is!"
Ling Chuchu hadn't noticed Bao Zheng standing right behind her. She kept making things up. "And there's more! You have no idea—his mother helps the authorities examine corpses. They keep the bodies at home for days, and the whole place reeks! It's disgusting! Worst of all, to stop the bodies from rotting, they have to put them somewhere well-ventilated. You know where that is? Right in their living room! The two of them eat their meals facing those corpses. It's revolting! I can barely go on! And the most disgusting thing is that his mother scrapes the grime off his body, rolls it into pills, and gives them to people to eat! It's just too disgusting!"
Standing right behind Ling Chuchu, Bao Zheng asked, "Miss, how do you know so much?"
Ling Chuchu put her hands on her hips. "If I don't know, who does?"
She turned around and saw Bao Zheng standing behind her.
At this point, Chen Bing burst out laughing.
"Ling Chuchu really is a little rascal. But she's only doing this because she likes Bao Zheng. She sees all those women hanging around him every day, so she's jealous!"
Next, Bao Zheng went to see Grand Scholar Yang, only to discover that he had suddenly died. His death pose was exactly like that of the stone statue at the ancient Kuayi Tribe altar in the back hills.
The students at the academy began to panic.
Everyone thought that Lord Yang had died under the Kuayi Tribe's curse. First Zhan Jun, then Grand Scholar Yang—did that mean everyone who had seen the ancient altar would die?
The academy's students were terrified, unable to find peace.
And in the middle of all that tension, Gongsun Ce's father, Gongsun Zhen, suddenly made Chen Bing laugh.
While everyone was worried about the Kuayi Tribe's curse, Gongsun Zhen, who had also entered the ancient altar, reacted like this:
"A curse? A third-rank court official died in my jurisdiction! How am I supposed to explain that to the court?"
With just one line and an expressive look, Gongsun Zhen's cowardice and fear of trouble came across perfectly. But could you really call him a coward? Everyone else was worrying that they might be the next to die, but he didn't take it seriously at all. The contrast made for great comedy.
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