Heartthrob, Your Image is Crumbling!

Chapter 477: Sudden Popularity

Su Qing wore a long red slip dress, her flowing long hair cascading down her back.Standing on the stage, she was truly breathtakingly beautiful. She gazed affectionately at Zhou Yuwen, finally asking the question she had been holding in her heart for so long.

In an instant, the eyes of every student in the crowd converged on Zhou Yuwen.

At this moment, Zhou Yuwen looked back at the stage with an expressionless face.

Perhaps not entirely expressionless—he simply did not know what kind of expression to make.

He remained completely silent.

Meanwhile, Jiang Xinyi stood right beside him, tightly gripping his hand.

Whispers had already erupted among the students. Some chuckled, exchanging hushed remarks about how absurd the situation was.

Zhou Yuwen's current girlfriend was standing right there!

For Su Qing to confess so openly—was she begging to get back together?

However, Su Qing's performance today truly made their hearts stir. If anyone else were Zhou Yuwen, they would definitely say yes.

Would the two of them really reconcile?

But if that happened, what about Jiang Xinyi right beside him?

Naturally, Jiang Xinyi was filled with anxiety. She squeezed his hand, staring at him nervously. Finally unable to hold back any longer, she gave his arm a gentle tug and whispered, "Let's go."

"I won't allow you to answer her."

"Leave with me right now."

"Hurry!"

Her voice was choked with sobs, heavy with a profound sense of feeling wronged.

Up on stage, Su Qing continued to wait for his response.

The auditorium had been buzzing with noise, but the moment Zhou Yuwen parted his lips to speak, everyone instantly held their breath. It felt as though the entire crowd was hanging on his every word.

Seeing that he was about to answer, panic overwhelmed Jiang Xinyi.

She could not help but threaten him. "Zhou Yuwen, if you dare answer her, we are going to break up!"

Yet, in the end, Zhou Yuwen still spoke two simple words.

"I did."

"Whoa!"

The entire audience burst into an uproar.

Instantly, tears welled up in Jiang Xinyi's eyes.

She violently flung away the hand holding his.

She stared at him, utterly disappointed.

But from beginning to end, Zhou Yuwen never spared her a single glance.

In truth, he was not even looking at Su Qing. He was simply staring blankly in the general direction of the stage.

To everyone else, however, it seemed as though his eyes were locked entirely on his former lover.

Jiang Xinyi gave him three full seconds to look back at her, but his head remained stubbornly fixed.

Her disappointment was absolute.

Turning on her heel, she walked away without uttering another word.

Liu Jing stood up and approached Zhou Yuwen.

She deliberately stepped right into his line of sight, blocking his view.

She gazed intently at the young man standing before her.

With a heavy heart, Liu Jing sighed. She did not say anything either.

Then, she turned and left.

This entire sequence of events unfolded over just a few short minutes.

Through it all, Zhou Yuwen remained completely mute, his expressionless eyes anchored to that same spot on the stage.

It was only after Jiang Xinyi and her mother, Liu Jing, had completely departed...

...that he finally shifted his focus to Su Qing on the stage.

He saw her smiling.

Her eyes were brimming with unshed tears, yet her smile was as radiant as a blooming flower.

In that fleeting second, the surrounding crowd faded into mere background decorations. In this vast space, it felt as if only Zhou Yuwen and Su Qing existed.

Covering her mouth with a delicate hand, Su Qing continued to smile through her tears.

No one quite remembered how the evening gala concluded. It seemed Shen Yu was the one who eventually stepped in to clean up the mess. In her eyes, the event was a complete disaster. By the time it came to the post-performance cast photos, all the joy had been sucked out of the room.

The audience, on the other hand, absolutely loved to watch the drama unfold.

Even as they filed out of the auditorium, they could not stop gossiping about the explosive spectacle they had just witnessed.

It was too crazy—an ex-girlfriend publicly confessing her love right in front of the current girlfriend!

"I still think Su Qing and Zhou Yuwen make a great couple, though," someone remarked.

"Yeah, they've known each other for five years, and today was even their anniversary."

"Wait, wasn't that Jiang Xinyi girl originally the girlfriend of Zhou Yuwen's teacher?"

"Huh? Then how did she end up with him?"

"She saw how talented Zhou Yuwen was and dumped the teacher for him."

"Good lord, what kind of girl does that?"

The rumors regarding the night's events rapidly spread from the hushed whispers of the attendees to the university's online forums. Even on Fun Campus, the app Zhou Yuwen had recently founded, videos of Su Qing's performance and subsequent confession flooded the feed.

Normally, whenever Zhou Yuwen sang a new song, it would spread through the campus forums like breaking news. This time, however, Su Qing completely stole the spotlight.

Everyone was endlessly dissecting the song she had performed.

The elegant red dress.

The stunning mid-song wardrobe change that let her long hair cascade down.

The seamless transition from a conservative red gown to a sensual slip dress.

And all of it elevated by the powerful backing track.

Su Qing had poured every ounce of her genuine emotion into the melody.

"The unattainable is always a lingering temptation,"

"While the favored ones remain forever fearless."

"Zhou Yuwen, do you still love me?"

"I loved you."

That charged moment of eye contact between them was clipped and shared endlessly across various websites.

Their romantic history morphed into countless different versions, circulating wildly through every available forum.

Perhaps because Su Qing's stunning performance had been so genuinely moving, the online community reached a surprising consensus: Zhou Yuwen and Su Qing absolutely needed to get back together.

Many even concluded that he and Jiang Xinyi were a terrible match.

"If a woman was willing to do all that for me, I would rather die than let go of Su Qing's hand!"

"But Zhou Yuwen clearly said 'I loved you.' Doesn't that mean he doesn't love her anymore?"

"Impossible! The crowd was too loud. I swear he just said 'I love you'!"

"Zhou Yuwen! Come out and explain yourself! I literally downloaded the Fun Campus app just for this drama!"

"Yeah! Isn't this your app? Hurry up and give us an answer!"

In just one night, the engagement surrounding the pair on Fun Campus exploded by over a hundred thousand interactions. The traffic grew even faster than it had during the highly-promoted Goddess Competition that Zhou Yuwen had painstakingly organized.

That night, Zhou Yuwen's mind was an absolute mess.

He did not reconcile with Su Qing. They had not even left the auditorium together.

After delivering his fateful words...

...Su Qing had broken down on stage, weeping until she looked like a fragile doll made of tears.

Zhou Yuwen had merely offered a faint smile before turning away.

Tonight was destined to be a sleepless one.

He had wanted to find a quiet place to be completely alone for a while. After pondering his options, he ended up driving to his office by himself.

Despite his phone ringing non-stop, he refused to answer a single call.

Jiang Xinyi dialed his number twice, but he ignored both attempts.

Finally, she sent him a text message: "What did you say back there? Was it 'I love you,' or 'I loved you'?"

"Think carefully before you answer me."

It was her way of offering him a chance to salvage the situation.

Unfortunately, he never replied. The others—Zheng Yanyan, Shen Yu, and Tao Tian—had all tried to call him as well.

Su Qing's impact that night had simply been too massive. The gala had already drawn considerable attention because of his involvement, but her breathtaking performance thrust her violently into the public eye.

So she was his first love.

And they had been together since their first year of high school?

Heavens, this girl was insanely beautiful.

To promote the Fun Campus app, he had hosted an internal Goddess Competition where users could upload photos and videos to earn likes and compete for prize money.

Just about every moderately attractive girl at the university was participating.

Tonight, however, search queries for Su Qing dominated the platform entirely. Anyone casually browsing the app only needed to refresh their feed once to be bombarded with clips of her singing and transforming on stage.

His phone continued its relentless buzzing.

He neither turned it off nor picked it up.

He just sat quietly in his office.

He had not even bothered to turn on the lights.

Located on the seventeenth floor of the Baidu Building, the office spanned nearly a hundred square meters and featured an entire wall of French windows. Outside, the newly developed commercial district remained aglow with vibrant city lights, even at eleven o'clock at night.

Inside, however, the room was pitch black.

He sat in the dark, occasionally rocking his chair back and forth.

It was not until half-past eleven that the sharp clack-clack-clack of high heels echoed from the corridor outside.

The overhead lights suddenly flicked on.

Tao Tian, who had just walked in, saw him sitting there and could not help but smile. "You really are here?"

Zhou Yuwen looked over at Tao Tian. She was dressed in a crisp white shirt paired with a tight skirt and high heels, giving off a distinct professional office lady vibe.

He raised an eyebrow, asking how she knew he would be there.

She admitted she had no idea.

"I just decided to swing by the office. Do you have any idea? The traffic data for the Fun Campus app completely exploded today!" Joy radiated from her face as she spoke.

Zhou Yuwen shot her a puzzled look, not entirely grasping her meaning.

She quickly explained that she had just received a call from several of their Baidu programmers. In the span of a mere two hours, the app had gained over fifty thousand new registered users!

"And the number is still climbing!"

This was something he genuinely had not anticipated.

He immediately booted up his computer and pulled up the app's backend analytics.

Sure enough, she was right.

The number of new registrations had already eclipsed seventy thousand.

Furthermore, the top trending hashtags were #ZhouYuwen, #SuQing, and #RedRose.

Opening the app, he found that a simple refresh instantly yielded dozens of videos of her performance. The song 'Red Rose' had actually been released a long time ago. However, since the original was sung by Eason Chan, the style was fundamentally different from a female cover. While the original was certainly popular, most people merely listened to it once without feeling compelled to actively search for it.

But Su Qing's feminine rendition was a whole different beast. Not only did she incorporate a dramatic costume change and a seductive tango routine, but she had also dropped the absolute bombshell of a public confession right at the end.

It had to be noted that Zhou Yuwen was already a walking magnet for public attention.

A nineteen-year-old literary genius.

A once-in-a-century business prodigy.

He even held the title of one of the Jinling Top Ten Outstanding Young People.

Recently, the media had been pushing out an absolute frenzy of promotional coverage surrounding his achievements.

And right in the middle of all this hype, news of his first love had suddenly detonated across the internet.

A pure, unforgettable white moonlight from his youth.

It was just like the lyrics of 'Red Rose'—once obtained, it was no longer cherished.

What made this viral explosion different from past incidents was the medium. Before Fun Campus existed, any gossip about him would have been confined to the local university town.

But Fun Campus was designed as a nationwide community for university students.

His personal fame had already drawn a massive fan base to the platform. Despite its short time online, it boasted hundreds of thousands of registered users.

Today, those hundreds of thousands of users had collectively stumbled upon the breathtakingly beautiful Su Qing. They watched her sing her heart out, moving with flawless elegance to the stirring rhythm of a passionate tango.

And the ultimate kicker was Zhou Yuwen showing his face at the end, offering that heavy, unapologetic confession: "I loved you."

"Oh my god! Zhou Yuwen actually has a girlfriend!"

This sudden shriek echoed from a girls' dormitory in a university somewhere down south.

"Zhou Yuwen? Who is Zhou Yuwen?"

Her roommates were uniformly puzzled.

"He's the guy who wrote 'I Don't Want to Rebirth'! He's my absolute idol, I've told you guys about him a million times!"

"Oh! That college student who made a fortune. Isn't it totally normal for him to have a girlfriend?"

Her roommates still failed to see the big deal.

In places like this, Zhou Yuwen's name had carried very little weight. But after tonight, his anonymity would become a thing of the past.

If there was one thing university students loved above all else, it was watching drama unfold—especially when it involved minor celebrities.

Their schools constantly preached about him: Zhou Yuwen from Jinling, making tens of millions at such a young age.

Most students usually tuned out that kind of boring inspirational lecture.

But now, everyone was glued to the viral video of Su Qing singing.

It was a visual masterpiece, further elevated by "insiders" dropping juicy details in the comment sections.

They claimed the two had been dating since high school.

And that after entering university, she had spent all her time desperately chasing him.

Someone even swore she had literally gotten down on her knees in a lecture hall to beg him!

"I even still have the photos to prove it!"

"I feel like she wasn't singing about him abandoning her for someone new. She was singing about her own regrets," someone theorized.

"Exactly! Everyone at our school knows the story. Back in high school, his grades were terrible, and she dumped him because she thought he lacked ambition. She had no idea he was actually a genius who would go on to sell phone cards, write hit novels, and become a millionaire during his freshman year."

"Yeah, at the time, his girlfriend was Zheng Yanyan. I clearly remember Su Qing constantly stalking him."

Armed with this rich, melodramatic backstory...

...listening to her sing the song suddenly took on an entirely different, deeply poignant flavor.

The audience finally understood the true weight of the lyric: 'The unattainable is always a lingering temptation.'

"Hey, where are you watching this?"

"On Fun Campus. It's an online university student community developed by Zhou Yuwen himself."

"I just realized this app is actually super interesting. You can even post videos on it!"

"Yeah, and why do the videos load so smoothly without lagging?"

"I have no idea, but there's a ton of content. A lot of students are sharing videos on here. Did you know you can even earn prize money?"

"Wait, real money? I'm downloading it right now!"

The mere mention of cash rewards made the students' eyes light up. Droves of them immediately flocked to the app store to download Fun Campus.

Once installed, the very first thing they searched for was Zhou Yuwen.

Actually, they did not even need to search. The moment they tapped the search bar, the algorithm aggressively recommended content relating to the former couple.

Sitting at his desk, Zhou Yuwen watched the backend metrics tick upward at a pace visible to the naked eye.

Beside him, Tao Tian's phone was ringing off the hook.

The entire infrastructure of the Fun Campus app had been hastily cobbled together by a handful of senior programmers he had poached from Baidu. Initially, those veterans had severely doubted the project's viability. The online community sector was already horribly oversaturated, and they could not fathom how a college student planned to carve out a profitable niche in such a cutthroat market.

But witnessing today's explosive surge in traffic, the programming team could only bow their heads and admit the kid was an absolute badass.

He had personally entered the market, using his own reputation as the ultimate catalyst.

That was a brilliant move they had never seen coming.

Because the sudden influx of users over such a short period was completely unprecedented, the servers were buckling under the strain. Unsure of how to handle the sudden crisis, the frantic tech team redirected all their emergency calls to Tao Tian.

Tao Tian, in turn, looked to him for guidance.

Zhou Yuwen stared at his computer screen for a long moment before finally speaking. "Tell them to wake up and pull an all-nighter for some overtime. We will aggressively hire more staff tomorrow."

"Got it!"

She immediately nodded in agreement.

After a moment of careful thought, he added, "Also, get in touch with Su Qing. Tell her to register her own official account on the app."

"?"

Taken aback, Tao Tian stared at him in sheer bewilderment.