Shu Yu briefly looked through the news reports from back then. The incident had been considered a major event locally, so the newspaper had devoted an entire page to covering it. The article explained what had happened in considerable detail, and there was basically no discrepancy between the report and what Team Leader Liang had told them.
However, the case hadn’t generated any significant online discussion at the time. So although it had practically become a household piece of local gossip, Shu Yu had never heard of it before.
“Are you sure this matter has something to do with them?” Shu Yu asked.
If the direction of the case changed to the vice president having been murdered by the male student he had expelled because of HIV, then shifting the direction of public opinion shouldn’t be too difficult.
But only if there was evidence proving that the male student really had done it.
“He has no criminal record, so we don’t have his DNA sample in our database. We’re currently trying to find out where exactly he went.” Team Leader Liang clearly had quite a headache over the matter. “We’re also comparing the remaining DNA samples, but there haven’t been any results yet. Right now, we suspect that everyone involved in this crime has no prior criminal record, so until we find the suspects, we have no way to determine whether they were actually responsible.”
“So this happened somewhere without surveillance cameras again?” Xiao Que wasn’t surprised. “They probably knew beforehand that there weren’t any cameras there, right?”
“That’s right. The crime scene was an alley behind the vocational and technical college. The area is currently undergoing demolition and redevelopment. There used to be several shops there with surveillance cameras installed outside, but after they moved out, the cameras disappeared too.” Team Leader Liang sighed. “So this case might not be solved in a day or two. You should prepare yourselves for that.”
“We understand the situation now, so we won’t disturb you any longer. If there are any new developments, we can communicate at any time.” Shu Yu knew there was nothing more they could learn by staying here, so she decided to head back and hold a brief meeting to discuss what they should do about the case.
Everyone was busy, so no one wasted time on unnecessary pleasantries.
By the time they returned to the small meeting room from earlier, Shu Yu had more or less sorted out her thoughts.
“What do you all think about the current situation?” she asked while making herself a cup of coffee.
“Forget everything else. First, we need to drag the direction of public opinion back from wherever the hell it’s gone.” Xiao Que took a sip of the strong tea he had brought with him, then habitually touched his hairline, which had practically reached the top of his head. “My suggestion is to directly release his cause of death.”
“That might not be strong enough.” Lu Anran opened a can of energy drink and worriedly touched her chin, where it seemed like a beard was about to start growing. “If we only release the cause of death, the other side can still steer the narrative toward ‘female sexual-assault victims taking revenge.’”
After all, they had gotten involved rather late this time. If they wanted to pull public opinion back on track after it had already been led around by the nose for so long, they wouldn’t be able to do it without enough force.
“If you ask me, this time we should at least release that full-page newspaper report along with it,” Feng Tang said. “But the official account can only issue a statement. We need to find some other platform to expose the newspaper report.”
“Then we’ll leak it through a Douban group,” Shu Yu said without hesitation. “Find a few entertainment groups that have already turned into general lifestyle groups. Our IP addresses happen to be local right now, so we can coordinate it with the cause of death released through the official account and pretend to be locals leaking the information.”
Lu Anran had accounts in all the more active Douban groups. In some groups, she even had several accounts that could coordinate with one another.
Considering that the story would most likely climb high on the trending searches, she contacted an MCN and prepared to immediately coordinate with Weibo marketing accounts after the Douban post went live, allowing the story to rapidly gain traction.
The milk tea Feng Tang had ordered finally arrived. As she drank it, she laughed and said, “We learned this whole trick from fandom circles—use professional fan accounts to leak information on Douban, then immediately coordinate with marketing accounts to buy a trending spot on Weibo.”
“Sometimes, when a platform has already become heavily fandom-oriented, you have to use their methods against them.” Shu Yu watched Xiao Que frantically typing away as he drafted the statement and said somewhat helplessly, “Although the fact that the platforms became like this in the first place was their own choice.”
Lu Anran had already used several accounts to prepare posts complete with text and images. She was only waiting for Xiao Que to release the official response.
The mention of fandom circles suddenly reminded Shu Yu of the marketing company Shu Ling had mentioned last time.
“Shu Ling told me about a pretty interesting company last time,” she said casually while taking small sips of coffee. “You can tell they’re extremely professional when it comes to marketing, and they’re very familiar with all these different tactics. Looks like the entertainment industry really does have a lot of talent when it comes to this sort of thing.”
“Who told the entertainment industry to have such huge demand?” Feng Tang said while scrolling through her phone. “High demand means intense competition. If they don’t compete like crazy, they’ll get eliminated.”
Shu Yu deeply agreed, which only made her feel even more depressed about her own job.
“When will our leaders start competing this hard too?” she said as she finished the remaining half cup of coffee. “Then we wouldn’t have to work overtime here in the middle of the night.”
After saying that, Shu Yu felt somewhat melancholy.
The longest hours of overtime she had ever worked in her life had all happened after transmigrating into this novel.
Who could have imagined that?
By then, Xiao Que had already finished writing the statement and quickly applied the standard template, turning it into white text on a blue background.
“Take a look. Does this response work?” Xiao Que sent the completed statement to Shu Yu.
It was an extremely official and formal statement, mainly explaining the progress of the homicide investigation and the cause of death while responding one by one to the questions currently being raised by netizens.
Of course, only thinking about responding now was already somewhat too late. It would be difficult for the explanations in this statement to gain widespread acceptance.
Shu Yu wasn’t particularly anxious about that.
They had dragged things out for so many days before finally issuing a proper response. If others had exploited the opening and created so many rumors, they had only themselves to blame.
“Post it first. Anran, wait half an hour, then start posting on Douban,” Shu Yu said.
Lu Anran yawned, pushed her laptop forward, and collapsed onto the table.
“I’m going to sleep for a while. Remember to wake me up later.”
She was already struggling to stay awake.
Shu Yu leaned back in her chair and allowed her mind to go blank for a while.
She had just drunk extra-strong coffee, so there was absolutely no way she could fall asleep. But working overtime in the office this late at night was starting to take a toll on her neck.
She needed to rest properly.
Otherwise, she might end up with a herniated disc before she even turned thirty.
At nearly midnight, Lu Anran opened her eyes and published the post she had prepared.
“Girls, that XX who’s been in the news lately is from our area. Haven’t any of you heard that he once expelled a male student who was spreading HIV around the school?”
That was the title of Lu Anran’s post.
She attached a photograph of a somewhat old newspaper.
“My family’s elders subscribe to newspapers. After remembering this incident, I went looking for it, and I actually found it!”
After posting the photograph of the newspaper, she continued explaining.
The leak quickly attracted attention within the group. After all, no one had ever mentioned this piece of news before.
Once Lu Anran confirmed that the leak had attracted enough attention, she began operating the marketing accounts on Weibo, reposting the Douban post there. She also casually arranged for a trending topic, and only then did the story truly begin to gain traction.
“Done.”
Lu Anran tapped away at the keyboard for a while, repeatedly switching between accounts across several platforms. At last, she had successfully set everything in motion.
“We can go rest now. Both the official response and the leak need some time to spread.”
Everyone was already exhausted, so no one objected. Under Chen Heng’s arrangements, they checked into a hotel.
Lying on the bed, Shu Yu thought through the entire situation.
So far, everything was still following the usual development pattern of the public-opinion cases they had encountered in the past. But after today’s response was released, the people on the other side who were steering public opinion would definitely be able to tell that their opponents had changed.
As for how they would respond to that—
That was tomorrow’s problem.
After a peaceful night’s sleep, Shu Yu was awakened by her alarm in the morning. She glanced at the WeChat group and saw that there were no new messages for the time being.
Everyone was probably still asleep.
She opened Weibo and took a look.
Public opinion was currently fermenting, and the situation was in complete chaos.
Some people speculated that the deceased Hong Guodong had been killed in retaliation. Others insisted with absolute certainty that the local government had deliberately released this information to divert attention. Still others had already skillfully begun provoking conflict between men and women to harvest traffic.
In short, the internet was already a foul mess first thing in the morning.
Still, this was much better than the one-sided condemnation of the previous few days.
The reason Shu Yu and the others had chosen to expose the Hong Guodong incident through a leak yesterday was precisely to make the matter seem almost completely confirmed.
After all, it hadn’t been posted by an official platform. It had appeared in a place like Douban, a “gathering place for gossip leakers.” On top of that, the newspaper in the photograph was clearly an old issue from long ago, and it even had some signs of everyday use that Lu Anran had temporarily created with a drink.
There was photographic evidence to back up the claim, and newspapers weren’t particularly difficult to find in the first place.
Soon, actual residents of C City began speaking up, confirming that the incident really had happened and that almost everyone locally knew about it. It was only because they had wanted to protect the male student’s privacy that the case had never gained traction on online platforms.
Of course, the main reason was that there had been nothing wrong with Hong Guodong’s handling of that male student.
Even buying several trending topics for the incident would have made it difficult to steer public opinion on a large scale. At most, it would have turned into attacks against a small group of people living with HIV. As a result, the various forces that frequently manipulated online public opinion had shown absolutely no interest in the story.
After confirming that things were currently developing in the direction they wanted, Shu Yu briefly washed up, then looked at her somewhat pale face in the mirror and the dark circles beneath her eyes, which had faded slightly.
“Actually, the foundation of this face is pretty good. Unfortunately, no matter how good the foundation is, there’s probably no saving it if I keep working overtime and staying up all night like this.”
After evaluating her current appearance, Shu Yu casually slapped a sheet mask onto her face and sat down on the sofa, thinking about how the case might develop from here.
The narrative the other side had originally pushed was that Hong Guodong had sexually assaulted female students and had been protected from consequences.
That in itself was extremely difficult to refute.
After all, the victims didn’t exist in the first place, which meant there were no actual parties involved who could come forward and clarify the situation.
Now that Shu Yu and the others had shifted the narrative toward retaliation by the expelled male student, there was no way the other side would simply let the matter go.