Chapter 263 217: Howard: Overseas Internet Army? Who Allowed You to Slander Chu Bamboo?

"Oh, right," Chu Bamboo added. "I should be heading to the White-headed Eagle country in the next day or two..."

Just a moment ago, he had spoken with Coach Yuan and agreed to go to the White-headed Eagle country for the Grand Slam.

"God." Howard sucked in a sharp breath, his face breaking into a delirious grin. "Then, I understand what you mean! Don't worry, we at Stone Roll Music will put together a promotional campaign... This is perfect... If this is the case, we'll get twice the results with half the effort!"

Chu Bamboo's eyebrow twitched. 'Did I say I'd cooperate with their promotion? And didn't I just say I wanted to maintain as much freedom as possible in the future contract? What's he so excited about?'

However, Howard had clearly entered a state where he couldn't hear a word anyone else was saying. Even when Chu Bamboo tried to emphasize his point, Howard just nodded as if he completely understood, though it was impossible to tell what he'd actually understood as he rambled incoherently.

"Don't you worry, I'll get your visa sorted out right now! By the way, are you interested in becoming one of the White-headed Eagle People? As for your nationality... we can pull some strings..."

"Not interested!" Chu Bamboo's reply was short and to the point.

"Alright then." Howard wasn't disappointed. He pulled out his phone and quickly walked out. "Please rest assured, I swear, I'll have the visa approved today."

Howard vowed, "You'll be able to go anytime! And about the citizenship thing... if you change your mind in the future, my offer will always be open!"

He even thoughtfully closed the door on his way out.

...

A brief silence fell over the room.

"...Ah Zhu! This..." Lin Xia's face was scrunched up in a knot. He looked at Chu Bamboo, opening his mouth several times. He had so many questions but was worried that asking them would touch on a taboo subject.

"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing!" Chu Bamboo patted Lin Xia's shoulder, then turned to Zhao Shao and said earnestly, "You should also prepare for international expansion!"

"Next, if all goes according to plan, even with just a tiny bit of exposure... Z should quickly be able to achieve DS-level popularity worldwide!"

"...?" Zhao Shao was stunned. "Although I feel like your confidence is a little ridiculous... Huh? Is this related to your chat with that guy earlier? Are you really that confident you'll become a global superstar... And even if you do, that doesn't necessarily mean you can make Z popular, right?"

"Besides, even putting that aside... just on its own, your singing is seriously incredible! And that foreigner really did look like a fan of yours, but I still lean toward him being more likely to screw you over." Zhao Shao rambled on. He couldn't help it; he'd seen too many cases like this.

He glanced at the impassive Chu Bamboo, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. "But, since you've already made up your mind! Let's just go along with it! It doesn't matter anyway. To put it bluntly, as long as there are no problems with the shares, if we really get screwed on the music side of things, we can just stop singing in the future... Z!"

Zhao Shao paused. Because of the warning Chu Bamboo had given them when he woke them up, they hadn't mentioned Z in front of Howard at all. This was the key reason Lin Xia was so dead set on viewing him as an enemy.

He continued, "Did you hear your dad? Make a plan!"

"Yes, Mother!" Z's voice was as placid as ever.

...

「On the way back to the university.」

After a moment of thought, Li Quanyuan took a photo of the signed album cover and sent it to a good friend of his.

Seconds later, a WeChat call came through.

"Lao Li! This... this! Who wrote this?"

"...A student of mine," Li Quanyuan said humbly.

But the next sentence from the other end made him lose his composure. "Who do you think you're fooling? Are you kidding me... with that shoddy scrawl of yours! You could teach a student like this? Could he be a disciple of Southern Tang and Northern Kong? No... I'd believe it if you said it was one of them who wrote it themselves! In fact, at this level... have they improved again? But why would you know... I should have heard about it before you!"

The more he muttered, the more confused the man on the other end became.

"I'm not kidding," Li Quanyuan said, taking a slow, deep breath. It took him a good while to calm down before he continued, his expression flat, "He is indeed a student of mine... However, I never taught him calligraphy!"

"I knew it," the other person said, as if it all made sense now.

Li Quanyuan forced himself to ignore the man's comment and continued, "Besides that, this kid... he's recently gotten in touch with the military! He started a company... producing things that might be useful to them..."

"?" The person on the other end fell silent. A moment later, he finally spoke. "Found it... Interesting! So, Old Li, you sly fox... you're trying to pave the way for your student, aren't you?"

"No." Li Quanyuan shook his head, a hint of worry in his eyes. "It's just that I can see the boy is exceptionally talented... I'm not sure how many more surprises he'll have in store for me! But I'm a bit concerned he might run into some trouble in the future... Right now, a foreigner has already made contact with him! It's an assistant to the ambassador from the White Eagle Embassy."

He paused briefly before adding, "What if..."

The person on the other end was silent for a very long time before finally saying, "I understand! I'll pay close attention to this."

"Don't worry! Our country won't let truly talented people be buried."

...

「Afternoon.」

「Xinjie Street.」

After having already eaten eight huge bowls of hot dry noodles, Howard rubbed his stomach, let out a small burp, and scrolled through his phone. He looked at the latest intelligence report compiled by the Celestial Net that had just appeared on his screen. "AI... videos?"

After a moment of contemplation, Howard tapped on the link. And with just one look, by the time he snapped out of it, he realized... the sky was already getting dark!

"...My God!"

Howard was pondering a very serious question: were these videos really made by an AI?

The physics models, the character movements... their similarity to a real person was ridiculously high! It didn't even trigger the uncanny valley effect in him.

Most importantly, they were actually quite interesting to watch.

He scrolled a couple more times, looking at the skyrocketing popularity and the speed at which new videos were being produced... faster than he could watch them. He was taken aback.

Alright... with that kind of efficiency, it had to be AI. No doubt about it!

After all, based on what he had seen of Chu Bamboo's love for freedom and his laziness when it came to any kind of promotion... he found it very hard to imagine the man would be willing to spend so much time shooting videos!

At the same time, Howard discovered that on every site he checked, from Weibo to Douyin, Kuaishou, and so on, the popularity of Chu Bamboo's AI videos was exploding.

But as he kept watching, Howard's expression suddenly stiffened. He saw a group of utterly absurd people joining the discussion, saying things like Chu Bamboo was obviously fake, maybe he was transgender, or maybe he was...

All he could say was, their style of speaking was just too obvious. Howard recognized it at a glance and instantly figured out what was going on with this group.

After holding it in for a while, Howard finally couldn't take it anymore and furiously made a phone call.

"F**k you, who gave you permission to smear Chu Bamboo online?"

"...Huh?" The head of the online army on the other end was stunned. It took him a good while to figure out what the man was talking about. He said cautiously, "But, according to our analysis, this young man has the potential to become the next cultural phenomenon in the Divine Continent... As per our usual practice, we're supposed to suppress him, and then, see if we can recruit him for our own use..."

"Right now, immediately, this instant, take down all those smear pieces against him!" Howard cut him off, his brow furrowing tighter and tighter. He spoke word by word, "Stick to the facts, be reasonable—he's genuinely amazing! Just hype him up. Don't intentionally smear him! If I see any more of this nasty stuff online... Hmph!"

Howard hung up the phone directly.

'Suppress anyone with the potential to become a cultural phenomenon and try to control them?'

'A nice thought, but the problem is, the other party seems to have a super high-performance AI under their control. If it digs into my side... the contract we planned out earlier will probably be completely scrapped!'

'And they expect to recruit him like some dog? But from what I've seen, he doesn't care about any of this! If they piss him off, it's more likely he'll just drop the whole thing and refuse to pursue it any further...'

Regarding this, the head of the troll army was speechless: "..."

He stared at his phone in disbelief, repeatedly checking to make sure the call had really been disconnected. Damn it! Why does every big shot have a different opinion?

The man in charge felt like crying but had no tears. The only reason he was running a smear campaign was because someone had ordered him to.

The problem was, even though this was his first time speaking with Howard, he had a record of this phone number on his end.

According to the information he'd received, if the owner of this number called him, he was to obey any and all of their commands unconditionally!

But... why would he be getting such contradictory commands?!