Shi Bochuan's face twisted slightly. He wanted to tell him to pinch more lightly, but he didn't dare open his mouth.
[Holy crap, this design is literally the limit of human imagination.]
[Shi Jihan! You may not be close to god, but you're already far beyond humanity!]
[This isn't abstract, bro. You're abstracting a freaking spaceship!]
[Shi Corporation no longer cared about profit at all. It was completely immersed in its own art.]
Amid the chorus of holy craps, someone posted: [Wait, why isn't it McDonald's Double Cheeseburger?]
But it wasn't over. Shi Jihan proved with his own abilities that AI could not replace humans.
At least, it couldn't replace him.
Next, everyone saw a crayfish twisting its way onto the stage to disco music, its springy tail bobbing along with the beat;
A model wearing an off-shoulder evening gown pinched into dumpling-wrapper folds, holding dual guns in a frozen pose as she sprayed out a string of crystal vinegar bottles;
The Sichuan hotpot qipao had been transformed into a cyber Chinese-chic style. An exoskeleton evolved from a nine-grid pattern wrapped around fabric woven from optical fibers, with red, orange, and blue neon effects flowing across it. The mooncake bag in the model's hand had been given a glitch-art treatment, and beneath the warped waveforms, faint mooncake patterns resembling ghostly scribbles could be seen.
A full Manchu-Han imperial feast!
The audience was utterly blasted into cerebellar atrophy. Once they came to their senses, they frantically took photos and screenshots.
Ordinary abstractness was just abstractness.
But abstractness like this was art!
Zhou Jingcheng's PR team barely even needed to lift a finger. Millions of netizens worked together to send the fashion show straight onto the trending searches.
#TheClothesDidntGoCrazyIBecameCrazy
#ShiCorporationxElemeCollabRunwayShow
#AtePinHaoFanAtAFashionShow
#YouOnlyCareWhetherImWearingClothesButShiJihanCaresWhetherIHaveAnAppetite
The related tags shot upward like rockets, instantly reaching TOP1, while the view counts behind them doubled and doubled again.
[Ding! "Help Shi Corporation secure a trending topic through unconventional means" completed. Mission reward: Malice Points +80.]
Zero-Zero-Zero shouted excitedly, [Host, we paid off our debt!]
Shi Jihan's heart raced, his hands trembled. [Just wait, we've still got another wave of earnings coming!]
As the final model left the stage, a holographic projection slowly displayed the acknowledgments: "Special thanks to Shi Bochuan for financial support; Shen Qinghuai, Yan Bo, and X Outsourcing for technical support."
Shen Qinghuai: !!!
It wasn't him! He hadn't done anything!
Shi Jihan, you're not human!!
[Ding! Malice Points +9!]
Everyone in the venue looked over. Shen Qinghuai's thin skin burned bright red. Ignoring all the eyes on him, he dove headfirst into Shi Bochuan's arms on his right and refused to lift his head even if it killed him.
Shi Bochuan wanted to bury himself in someone else's arms and play ostrich too, but when he looked right, he found himself staring directly into the black void of a phone camera.
The hands holding it shifted slightly, revealing Zhou Jingcheng's smiling crescent eyes. Holding up his phone, he encouraged him, "Financial-support consultant, say something. I'm recording."
Shi Bochuan cracked. "..."
Damn you, Zhou Jingcheng, you bastard%￥@ idiot%&(%#!!!
[Ding! Malice Points +11!]
The smile at Zhou Jingcheng's lips deepened. His brows relaxed, and he was in an exceptionally good mood.
Why have the secretary record it when filming the humiliation up close himself was so much more satisfying? He could even switch to a close-up.
The words on the holographic projection only flashed for a dozen seconds, but for the couple below the stage, Yan Bo, and the outsourcing team watching the livestream, it was a lifetime of scorching-hot seats.
When the words disappeared, even Shi Bochuan, who usually showed little expression, let out a long breath. Having experienced life's wild ups and downs, he looked utterly weathered.
Zhou Jingcheng felt the time had been too short and was somewhat dissatisfied, but it was acceptable. At least his money had not been wasted. Regretfully, he turned the camera toward the fading words to record the final moment.
Then his long, upturned phoenix eyes slowly, slowly widened to their limit.
He watched helplessly as new words appeared on the screen: "Special acknowledgment: Chief Consultant [Mr. Zhou Jingcheng] participated in this clothing design. Everyone, give him flowers and thanks!"
The enlarged, bolded words "Zhou Jingcheng" occupied nearly half the screen. Accompanied by an endless shower of pink flower effects, they froze into the closing curtain of the Carbohydrate Fantasia collection.
Zhou Jingcheng: ???
Was this right?!
Shi Bochuan was no longer depressed, and Shen Qinghuai was no longer playing ostrich. The two of them turned in unison toward Zhou Jingcheng, their gazes burning.
So you were involved too!
Shi Bochuan ordered his secretary, "Record it. Now."
Listening to the teeth-grinding sounds beside him, Secretary Sun silently turned his face away, too afraid to look at his boss. He felt the awkwardness of watching an acquaintance embarrass himself.
Zhou Jingcheng's jaw tightened. Every word was ground out from between his teeth. "Shi. Ji. Han!"
Was this how he treated his paying player?!
[Ding! Malice Points +23!]
The president who had first struck up a conversation with Zhou Jingcheng fell silent for a long time before speaking. "President Zhou's aesthetic sense truly is at the forefront of fashion."
[Huh? President Zhou? Why are you involved too?]
[I woke up too suddenly. Wasn't our President Zhou supposed to be refined and elegant, someone who loved drinking red wine?]
[I thought the younger brother was already the peak, but it turns out President Zhou is the one who's truly deep blue.]
[President Zhou, your designs, um, uh... have a kind of chaotic beauty from a five-dimensional space.]
#ShiJihanDestroyedEveryone became the final trending tag of the night.
While Zhou Jingcheng's company PR department worked overtime, they also got to feast on gossip about their own boss.
An employee asked, "Director, this involves our boss. Should we remove it?"
The director glanced at it. "Why remove it... I think our boss is enjoying it too. He designed so many clothes for him."
When the fashion show ended and everyone moved into the inner venue, the livestream had only just shut off when Shi Jihan sprang to his feet and ran.
He had just reached the corner and was about to rush out of the venue when someone grabbed the back of his neck, the nape of destiny.
"Where are you running to? Hmm?"
That last chilly syllable condensed into a thin thread, as though it wanted to hang Shi Jihan on the spot.
He squeezed his eyes shut in fright, then secretly opened them a sliver and looked back, meeting Zhou Jingcheng's utterly cold gaze.
Shi Jihan: !
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
Shi Jihan immediately shut his eyes and turned back around. "What? How strange. Who's talking? I can't hear or see anything... Where's my Electronic Wooden Fish? I'm going home to tap it for a while."
He struggled a few times but could not break free.
Zhou Jingcheng laughed in anger, his words venomous. "Tap an Electronic Wooden Fish? Young Master Shi wants to go to cybernetic paradise, does he? Such a small wish—I can fulfill it for you very soon."
"That won't be necessary!" Shi Jihan's mouth fell open like a trash can that had been stepped on. He quickly closed it again in embarrassment, slowly turned around to face Zhou Jingcheng, and secretly pinched the hem of the man's suit jacket between two fingers, tugging it lightly. "Well... there was a reason for this. Listen to my sophis—explanation!"
Feeling the tug on his jacket hem, Zhou Jingcheng paused slightly. Yet he was still not appeased. Narrowing his phoenix eyes, he raked them inch by inch over Shi Jihan's face. "Go on."
If you don't explain this properly, I'll send you to Australia to fight kangaroos and make you roommates with a handsome dark-skinned eight-legged guy.
That was the subtext Shi Jihan read from his expression.
His brain raced as he desperately searched his stomach for a script. "Bro, what was this show supposed to achieve? Disruptive innovation, empowering a new ecosystem, identifying business pain points, building two key levers from the underlying logic, benchmarking competing products, forming differentiated solutions, successfully breaking out of our circle with a combined strategy, expanding the market, and forging ahead boldly."
Zhou Jingcheng said, "Transfer to a human agent."
Shi Jihan: .
This was exhausting. He was so hard to fool.
He said, "Open your phone and take a look at the trending searches. This massive flood of traffic has poured straight into both our companies. Think how much money we'll make monetizing it."
Zhou Jingcheng tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Can you stop talking about traffic like you're dumping out foot-washing water?"
Shi Jihan was done for. Reasoning nicely or begging bitterly did not work. This time, he used a little more force to tug on Zhou Jingcheng's jacket hem and pleaded miserably, "Bro, I was wrong. I really was... I misunderstood what you meant. I thought when you said you didn't want it, you actually wanted it."
Zhou Jingcheng: ? So he had this kind of tsundere hobby?
He pulled that hand away, lowering his dark eyes to look at Shi Jihan. His tone carried an indescribable meaning. "Shi Jihan, stop acting cute with me."
"? Don't falsely accuse me. I wasn't acting cute!" Shi Jihan defended himself.
"Who knows? When you say no, it means yes... Who's there?" Zhou Jingcheng immediately put what he had learned into practice, turning toward the corner halfway through his sentence.
Shi Jihan looked over as well, then secretly backed away while Zhou Jingcheng was distracted.
Secretary Sun emerged from the corner and stammered, "Sorry for disturbing you... Boss, your phone. Madam is calling."
"My mom? Why's she looking for me?" Zhou Jingcheng released Shi Jihan and went to take his phone.
Unable to reach her son by phone, Madam Zhou had simply sent him a message.
[Son, I watched the livestream. Are you free this weekend?]
[Mom will take you to the hospital. Your mental state scares me.]
Zhou Jingcheng: "..."
He instinctively wanted to find the culprit and settle the score, only to discover that the other man had already slipped several meters away and was sprinting for the exit.
"Why are you running?!"
Shi Jihan's voice drifted back through the air from afar. "If I don't run, am I supposed to wait for you to solve this business pain point of mine?"
Haha, Dianjia Bro, see you later!
-
Shi Jihan sprinted all the way back to the car and urged the driver, "Sir, hurry, hurry, hurry! Don't wait for those two!"
Watching the scenery race backward outside the window, he grabbed the collar of his custom-made formalwear and fanned himself.
Whew, that was close.
Zero-Zero-Zero was still buzzing with excitement. [Host, have you calculated how many Malice Points we have now?]
Shi Jihan really had not. [How many?]
[A whole 92.34!!] Zero-Zero-Zero set off cybernetic fireworks for its host with repeated bangs.
Shi Jihan sat bolt upright. [That many?!]
[Yes, yes. Because you destroyed both the audience at the venue and the netizens at the same time. They may all be random passersby, but there were a lot of them, so they contributed quite a bit.]
...That didn't sound like a compliment.
Before you continue