Benefit

  "But where's the benefit?" I couldn't think of how to gain from posting on a city forum and becoming famous. All I heard was Gao Cheng saying in a sarcastic tone, "So another empty post appears."

  "You mean... the first post is seeking fame, and the second post is based on seeking fame, but the real purpose is gain? If so, this swallow's mind is really hidden deep. I don't know what benefits it wants to get through posting, it seems we have to wait for its next move to see."

  This time Gao Cheng didn't speak again, his mouth corners curved slightly, but not retracted.

  Suddenly a flash of inspiration struck me, and I suddenly thought of the two words he had just said: "empty post". Astonished and asked: "Could it be that 'Yan Gui Lai' will not have any follow-up posts for the second post?"

  "The goal has been achieved, why is it still appearing? Waiting to expose too many clues and get caught by the internet police?"

  "What? Internet police?" I couldn't keep up with his train of thought again.

  Gao Cheng raised an eyebrow, "You don't think the forum is going to turn upside down and the net police still haven't noticed?" I hesitated for a moment, I didn't think about it that way. If we say the net police have been paying attention all along, then the fact that the forum is still in chaos means... are they fishing? The net police might also be staring intently at the screen, waiting for this Yan Gui Lai to appear, and then catch this online spreader off guard. But Gao Cheng's meaning was that Yan Gui Lai's purpose had already been achieved, it's impossible for him to show up again. But is it just fame without gain?

  Just as I was in doubt, Gao Cheng murmured to himself, "The water army is approaching, both fame and fortune are within reach, and then disappear without a trace." As I wanted to ask him more, he had already stood up and casually threw out a sentence: "Don't want to miss the excitement, don't sleep tonight."

  It was deep in the night, and I was still awake in bed holding my laptop refreshing the forum. There wasn't much going on, just a post titled "The Case Takes a Turn, Who is the Real Murderer?" that kept getting more and more clicks and replies. Some netizens were complaining about being fooled, while others insisted that "Yan Daxia" would never go back on his word. I felt a bit numb, glanced at the time in the bottom right corner of my computer screen, and saw that it was already 3 am. I let out a yawn, feeling very sleepy.

  My fingers mechanically clicked the refresh button again, and suddenly I felt something was off. The post that originally had just over 3,000 replies suddenly jumped to 4,000, and in just a few short minutes, refreshing again added several hundred more. I immediately scrolled to the last page and found countless netizens' replies were all roughly the same: "Really?" "Is it true or false?" "No way?", followed by: "When is it?" "Can you still buy tickets?" "I want to see."

  Something must have happened, I flipped through the pages forward, but every time I flipped, the data was constantly refreshing, and netizens seemed to have gone crazy, completely unable to stop. In over ten minutes, the number of replies had reached nearly 10,000, how is it possible for so many people to be waiting online? I kept flipping through the pages searching for the source of this dramatic change, and thought of Gao Cheng's words "water army pressing the border", apparently that was what he meant. Obviously, the "benefit" that everyone was waiting for had appeared, but I still hadn't found it. More importantly, the website seemed to have exceeded its capacity, becoming more and more laggy, every click taking several seconds to load a page. I felt like closing the website at any moment, my anxiety growing.

  When I saw those words in front of me, I was stunned, and actually...