Chapter 63 Murder Mystery Game

Liang Feng finally couldn't help interrupting, "We are not competitors of Cocooon; what is the point of comparing traffic with them? What we want is to unearth the truth! If we are going to compete on having no bottom line and no shame, we might as well just close down."

Xiao Zhang didn't retort, but his expression still looked a hundred percent unconvinced.

Mayflies trying to shake a giant tree—desperate measures were justified. If they could really bring down a behemoth like Cocoon, that would be true skill.

Liang Feng knew that his subordinates were of uneven quality, and chasing fame and fortune was human nature; he didn't want to be overly critical either.

Take Xiao Zhang, for example. He seemed to have no bottom line, but in reality, he had the sharpest web sense in the entire "Unmasking the Truth." He had deduced Cocoon's stance through the changes in Cocoon's trending topics, realizing that it had quickly undergone two shifts, yet he knew nothing of what went on behind the scenes.

Liang Feng had his own channels.

He knew the origin of the matter was that a certain director had taken a fancy to a minor live-streamer under Zhou Yifan, wanting her to be the female lead of his web drama, only to be refused to his face by Zhou Yifan, which left him flying into a rage from embarrassment.

Therefore, the core of the matter was not really the popular actress Ellen, but Zhou Yifan and that unknown live-streamer.

However, after the matter blew up, Zhou Yifan very decisively pushed his subordinate live-streamer out and even pushed the entire Yellow Lantern Company to be listed for sale to Cocoon, making Cocoon's shift in stance quite easy to understand.

This was hardly good news for their "Unmasking the Truth." Cocoon, that towering tree, was only growing more and more lush.

"That's why we need to dig even deeper into the root cause of this matter."

Liang Feng's fountain pen wrote and rewrote on the paper, his train of thought shifting again and again.

"Our spearhead cannot be aimed at Cocoon, because all platforms are currently fermenting this matter, and Cocoon is just one of them with no distinct features at all. If we want to restore the truth of the matter, one person is crucial."

Writing the word "assistant" on the paper, Liang Feng drew a circle around it.

"This assistant produced the complete surveillance video, so we assume her words have the highest credibility. Then, before the surveillance video she released, where might the person involved, Maggie, have just left from nearby? Drawing a circle based on a maximum walking distance of five kilometers, let's check and analyze them one by one. Among these hotels, which ones are of higher class, have better private room confidentiality, are places frequented by people in the entertainment industry, or places frequented by people from Yellow Lantern? Mark them with high priority. In the same time frame, which heavyweights from the entertainment industry have visited these hotels? Who has a new drama currently casting a female lead in their hands?"

We can do a detailed analysis. If there is such a person, then his suspicion is the greatest. If there is no such person, it is very likely that Maggie's assistant is lying."

"Why go to all that trouble? Let's just call a friend at Yellow Lantern and ask which company has been approaching them lately, and that's it!"

Liang Feng sighed, "We're not solving a crime; what we want is the process—the excavation process that all fans can understand and believe. We don't even need to find out ourselves which people from the entertainment industry entered the hotels during the same time frame; busybodies on the internet will naturally find them out for us. This is a game of Murder Mystery. We are only responsible for pulling the strings, and let the netizens dig out the rest. They will enjoy the process of excavation, find the truth they believe in, and then speak the answer on our behalf."

In the early days, Liang Feng had suffered a lot of losses.

He would clearly write everyone's speculations into his articles, and in a flash, a lawyer's letter would arrive over his head. Not only did he have to delete the articles, but he also had to issue a lot of public apologies on the platform.

Later, he slowly learned to give answers in an obscure, hazy, indirect, and abstract way, letting the readers untangle the clues themselves and use the fans' mouths to speak that unspeakable name, thus truly evading risks.

"The stance of our 'Unmasking the Truth' lies in uncovering the truth, so there is no need to get involved in the topic of actress Ellen's secret marriage. Verifying what the assistant said is one direction, and digging into Cocoon's shift in stance is another. But the latter must be handled with caution; we must never take our speculations as conclusions. All our articles must adhere to a bottom line: we only state facts and do not make value judgments."

Reputation is hard to build.

"Unmasking the Truth" had spent such a long time, with millions of words in articles, to finally establish the label of speaking bluntly and unearthing the truth; they must cherish their own feathers.

After all, building a pagoda requires stacking hundreds of millions of bricks, but destroying it might only require pulling out a single brick.

"Boss," another senior employee, Ah Jie, finally couldn't help saying, "Would you like to contact that live-streamer again? I saw that her later live streams also changed their tune and she started standing up for the person involved. Maybe there is some inside story to dig up."

Liang Feng did not hesitate: "I said we cannot steal other people's trade secrets through our own personal friendships. That's the end of this matter, and there is no need to bring it up again."

That being said, Liang Feng actually wanted to see Lin Ke.

Lin Ke in the live-stream footage was still green, far from as relaxed and at ease as when she shot short videos. Even less so than the cheerful self she showed when filming videos for herself.

Her gaze seemed to constantly look forward, and Liang Feng felt that there was a company teleprompter there.

The problem lay right there.

Without a doubt, every single live-streaming and video-shooting action of Lin Ke's was directly arranged by the company. But given Cocoon's usual style and Liang Feng's understanding of Cocoon, stopping at the surface was definitely not their way.

Lin Ke's live-stream content actually didn't offend anyone, which was vastly different from her previous uncompromising short videos. It was not sharp enough, nor savage enough, and such live streams could hardly attract the audience's attention.

He didn't know if it was the influence of Lin Ke just starting to live-stream and not being used to it yet, or if she had fought with the company over something.

Deep down, Liang Feng hoped it was the latter.

After their last meeting, the two had added each other on WeChat. Liang Feng hesitated for a long time, and finally typed out a line of characters:

"Free this weekend? It's the last temple fair after the Lantern Festival. Would you like to go together?"

Some things could only be asked inadvertently while meeting and chatting casually.

At Xu Meiqi's home, the drunk girl had already fallen soundly asleep. Having vomited several times, she had been carefully wiped clean by Lin Ke, and finally looked a bit more settled.

Late at night, Lin Ke was holding her own phone in a daze.

She was suddenly startled by the "clang" sound of a notification.

Because of Xu Meiqi's matter, she was feeling conflicted. She wanted to help her clear her name, but she really didn't have much of a standing.

After all, the company had already told her that jumping out now to speak as a friend of the person involved would only make a mess of things. Who would believe the one-sided word of a good friend?

However, if she didn't step forward, she could only place her hopes on the technical department pushing fewer things about Xu Meiqi into the feeds. If they wanted to hype up a popular actress, fine, hype her up, but why drag an innocent person out to be a scapegoat?

And that Zhou Yifan was too imprudent!

Lin Ke had already heard from Xu Meiqi about him sticking up for her, but she had never expected that Xu Meiqi would actually hug Zhou Yifan on the street that night, and it had even been captured by surveillance cameras.