Chapter 520: Chapter 520

Some things require someone bold enough to undertake them. Even if they may end up shattered to pieces afterward, who knows what the future holds?

She wasn’t looking to break the industry’s unwritten rules, nor was she demanding that the voting process be absolutely clean, but she did want to ensure that the true result wouldn’t be buried, regardless of whatever manipulation happened afterward.

If from the beginning, or even during the middle phase, Li Yaotiao had resorted to vote-rigging to suppress her, she wouldn’t have been so angry, but to pull such a stunt less than half an hour before the official voting channel closed, that infuriated her.

This wasn’t just her award, she wouldn’t just let her fans fight on their own while she hid behind the scenes!

He Jinxia took a deep breath and gripped her phone tightly.

During the wait, the voting channels for the Golden Custard Award officially closed. The rıghtful source is novel✦fire.net

Cheng Xiaohua refreshed the vote count, and Li Yaotiao was holding the first place firmly, surpassing Jinxia by three hundred and fifty thousand votes.

Afterward, the team took action, and under Zhang Dayou’s operations, a mass of "bot" news took over W’s marketing accounts.

Luo You even posted on W, openly stating that the judging of the Golden Custard Award was utterly unfair, with bots openly vote-rigging and suddenly overtaking by hundreds of thousands of votes in less than the last half-hour, an obvious case of chart manipulation!

Initially, Miss He Jinxia had planned to post it from her own account, but Luo You persuaded her otherwise. Since they had decided to tear into this issue, they should do it in a way that would cause her the least harm.

He was her agent; his taking the initiative to post already said a lot.

Should things go terribly wrong, Miss He Jinxia still had an exit strategy, shifting all the blame onto him as acting on his own accord. This was the contingency plan the team had left her.

Once Luo You’s W post went live, there was no need to spend money on marketing accounts to share it; many such accounts swarmed over like cats smelling fish, dutifully and willingly spreading the word.

Coupled with the team’s deliberate planning, the hashtag #GoldenCustardAwardRigging become a trending topic, shooting up to the third spot on the trending list in an instant!

The angry Timekeepers found an outlet for their feelings, leaving comment after comment under Luo You’s W post.

[Unfair! I’ve been dragging all my friends to vote every day, I’ve even downloaded over a dozen apps just so that Fat Emperor could get a few more votes. Less than half an hour before the channels closed, they rigged three hundred thousand votes in just a few minutes, blatant cheating!]

[They call the Golden Custard Award one of the largest awards in the country, but with this kind of behavior, how can it ever be the best? It’s already doing well not to be the absolute worst!]

[Vote rigging! Cheating! Is this what our country worships as the Golden Custard Award? Is this the purpose behind the event? Once the Golden Custard Award entered the capital market, all fairness was disrupted, and those who win awards aren’t the ones I admire, but rather the actors who pave their way with money!]

For a time, the Golden Custard Award found itself in the eye of the storm, criticized by an increasing number of internet users.

Even if one wasn’t a fan of He Jinxia, just as a mere spectator of the events, they would realise what generating three hundred thousand votes in just a few minutes entails.

"Cheating," "condoning botting," "unfairness," "the worst award ceremony of the year," "rigged Custard" ... all kinds of harsh words were directed at the Golden Custard Award, tarnishing an otherwise esteemed accolade.

As the saying goes, it is harder to build than to destroy.

To accumulate a good reputation, it takes decades of perseverance.

But to ruin a good reputation, it only takes a few minutes.

When the organizing committee of the Golden Custard Award saw the vote-rigging controversy hit the trending list, they had a bad premonition.

As the waves of criticism and pessimism grew stronger, they hurriedly convened a meeting to discuss a solution to the issue.

Before the organizing committee could come up with a solution, Luo You’s side released a second bombshell.

V Luo You: "Miss He Jinxia will not attend an award that is unfair and unjust, and we hope for everyone’s understanding.

Miss Jinxia has seen all of your efforts these past few days in her eyes, and thanks you for making her achievements possible today. She stands with you always, fighting shoulder to shoulder with you forever!"

As soon as this Weibo post was released, netizens were in an uproar, shocked!

Timekeepers saw it, and they too were shocked!

But after the surprise, Timekeepers were also very moved.

"I just knew Fat Emperor wouldn’t let me down. Fat Emperor did the right thing this time. The vote manipulation is so blatant, you’d have to be blind not to see it. It’s better not to attend such a shady award ceremony, though I really wanted to see you on the award stage."

"Awesome, awesome, this must be the first star in history to openly confront the Golden Custard Award !"

"The Golden Custard Award stinks so much, it’s good not to attend. I suggest other celebrities also don’t attend, who knows how much money was spent to buy those awards?"

"Fat Emperor, I will always support you, to hell with the Golden Custard Award, we don’t care at all!"

This wave of news came swiftly, completely catching some people off guard and throwing them into disarray.

Even many fans who were not fans of the female lead rushed to their own favorite’s Weibo to call for them not to attend either, saying that attendance would be a disgrace.

And those stars who received such messages were all hopeful contenders for the awards, but they were left in the dust by the manipulators with no chance to stand out.

If the votes from the manipulators were excluded, they would all be ranked at the front, even potentially rewriting the winners’ list.

The oppressed stars weren’t only Jinxia.

Like dominoes, the fall of one led to the collapse of the next in a rapid succession.

After Miss He Jinxia announced through her agent’s Weibo that she would not attend, a third-tier male artist also publicly stated through his agent’s account that he would not attend this year’s Golden Custard Festival.

With one third-tier artist standing up, more and more followed, and many people took a stand. Eventually, even some second-tier artists also stepped forward.

The scope of the issue did not seem large, confined to second-tier and below artists, but there was a serious problem: those who decided to stand up were all very young, and the future belonged to the youth.

Don’t look at them as mere third-tier right now. One day in the future, they might become top-tier, and many more will become the backbone of the second-tier.

The Golden Custard Award Organizing Committee was truly in a headache now, extremely pressing!

But this was just the beginning, not the end.

If only a small portion of second-tier stars and most third-tier stars withdrew, it would impact the Golden Custard Award, but the damage was limited, something they could try to remedy.

However, just as the Golden Custard Award Organizing Committee was holding an emergency meeting for the second time, an assistant rushed into the meeting room, holding up a phone and said in panic, "Bad news, Sheng Yan has spoken out!"

The committee immediately turned pale with fear.

Sheng Yan was a super superstar who did not have any dramas eligible for the Golden Custard Award this year; why would he have a problem with them?!