A Frenzy Across the Internet

The staff member was sweating too. "I don't know what happened. In the last hour, Xiao Ran's votes suddenly skyrocketed."

Only the final result mattered in a vote like this, so the production team did not keep watching it every second. Especially since voting usually surged rapidly at the beginning before losing momentum toward the end. This time, Fang Huiwang had led all the way, making the outcome nearly certain, so the production team paid even less attention to the final stretch.

Having just finished negotiating with Xie Ran, the director went straight into this segment. Without even checking the final vote count, he announced Fang Huiwang's victory first.

There should not have been any problem with that.

But no one expected that, in that final hour, the internet would suddenly undergo a complete upheaval.

The production team hurriedly pulled out their phones to check what was happening. After a while, someone finally found a brand-new top comment beneath the voting post. It linked to a well-known art blogger's Weibo post from over an hour ago:

Shen Ya V:

"My mind is blown! The third photo in the set posted by Somewhere Else with You today looks like the real-life location of New and Old Xi, a painting created two years ago by Shahi, an up-and-coming painter from Old West City!

You may not know what this means. New and Old Xi was Shahi's vision of Old West City's future. She added plenty of her own fantasies, and with her consistently exaggerated, romantic style, the image was incredibly fragmented and chaotic. Ever since the work was unveiled, people in the industry had been guessing its real-life location, but no one had ever gotten it right.

I had often followed Shahi's work over the past two years, so those guesses had left a deep impression on me. That was why I was truly shocked when I saw this photo today.

I specifically overlaid the images just now. Although Shahi's original work was exaggerated and fragmented, aside from the parts born from her personal imagination, all the other color blocks matched up!

And here is the key point—this photo was not merely taken at the same location. Even its composition and angle were very likely exactly the same as New and Old Xi! At least, when I overlaid them, there was not the slightest difference.

Who on earth took this photo? How did they manage it?"

The post included two images: one was Xie Ran's photograph, and the other was an image of New and Old Xi.

Looking at them separately, nothing seemed unusual. But once the two pictures were placed together and carefully compared, people could see that many elements in the photograph really did seem to correspond to the painting.

The post had already been reposted 460,000 times, received 230,000 comments, and garnered nearly 600,000 likes.

Xie Ran was somewhat surprised. "It spread that quickly?"

Meng Feixuan sounded smug. "That blogger had a good eye, so I gave her a little boost."

Xie Ran: "..."

Meng Feixuan's boost was probably viral promotion—the kind Weibo's technology could not detect.

Author's Note:

Did I torment the scumbag ex today?

I did.

President Xie said disdainfully, "I didn't lay a hand on him."

Mark said, "Neither did I."

A Frenzy Across the Internet

Beneath Shen Ya's Weibo post, netizens were in an uproar.

[Holy shit, holy shit! Is this real?!]

[666, whoever took this photo is seriously something else!]

[I didn't really get it at first, but I specifically went to read up on the story of people trying to guess New and Old Xi's location. I came back to leave a like. Whoever took this photo is genuinely amazing!]

[Serious question: is guessing the location really that impressive?]

[To answer the person above, Shahi's paintings belong to a completely new style of realistic abstraction. They draw from reality, yet look almost nothing like reality, and are filled with intensely subjective, fantastical elements. Guessing the sources of her work has always been one of the important parts of appreciating Shahi's paintings within the industry.

To use an example that might be overreaching, guessing Shahi's sources was a bit like guessing why the Mona Lisa smiled, or why

Dream of the Red Chamber

ended the way it did.]

Furthermore, guessing Shahi's sources required not only an extremely high level of artistic appreciation, but also broad and keen knowledge. Take New and Old Xi, which was unveiled two years ago. Everyone knew it drew from Old West City, but no one had ever found the actual location, because people who both thoroughly understood the city's landscape and could sharply connect reality with abstraction were simply too rare.]

[Stunned Dog.jpg]

Of course, while some netizens were impressed, plenty of others were skeptical.

[What the hell? How come I can't see anything in common between this photo and New and Old Xi?]

[Wow, people actually believed that blogger? Please. Even industry professionals never guessed the location, yet some celebrity managed to find it? And even if someone really did find it, would they hide it for so long and wait until filming a show to take pictures there? Don't you find that

ridiculous

?]

[Isn't this just baseless speculation? Wasn't this photo taken by one of the guests on this show? None of these celebrities had ever posted anything related to Xia Xi before, so how did they suddenly transform into artsy types and even find Xia Xi's location?]

[It is reasonable to suspect the production team is using Xia Xi for publicity. Everyone knows Snowball TV's usual tricks.]

The two sides refused to give ground, and the internet was soon filled with heated arguments.

While the production team was scrolling through the comments, more replies continued flooding in beneath Shen Ya's post. With the discussion volume so enormous, searches for New and Old Xi, Shahi, and even Somewhere Else with You and its guests rapidly climbed and appeared on the trending list.

The production team was collectively dumbfounded. Their station really did love hype and knew how to create it, but this time, they truly had nothing to do with it!

The other guests had also learned from the staff about the ins

and

outs of the matter. All of them were stunned. Zhu Chuanjia stared at Xie Ran wide-eyed. "President Xie, you are incredible. I never knew you had this kind of talent!"

Fang Huiwang was equally astonished. However, unlike those netizens who simply echoed whatever they heard, he knew Xie Ran well. He knew Xie Ran did not understand the art world and did not even know Xia Xi, much less study her work.

Seeing all the cameras focused on Xie Ran, Fang Huiwang laughed and drew everyone's attention back to himself. Only then did he look at Xie Ran in surprise. "Xiao Ran, when did you start paying attention to paintings? You even studied Xia Xi? Why have I never heard you mention it?"