“This book recommended by Gou Lan Ting Qu Da Da has just finished and made me so depressed. The protagonist is too miserable!”
“Wuwuwu, I secretly read it during class and cried. Then my Chinese teacher caught me, and now the whole class is crying with me.”
“I just want to say, Chinese teacher, this book is written so well. I've already recommended all my classmates to buy this book.”
“Today I found this book called 'To Live' in my child's backpack. After reading it, I became depressed. This author must have lived a very hard life, otherwise how could he write such a painful book!”
On the Longmen Forum, the online book discussion forum of Longwen Pavilion, many readers were now exchanging their thoughts.
Because Longwen Pavilion wanted to get closer to its readers, they had left a Longmen Forum URL on the title page of each book, making it convenient for readers to communicate and provide feedback.
In the past, many readers would recommend books to each other and share their reading insights on this forum after finishing a book. The Longmen Forum had once been very popular.
However, since the advent of the mobile internet era, the market share of print books declined, and the number of people online on this forum gradually decreased, with daily traffic usually only in the double digits.
But in the past few days, this long-forgotten forum had revitalized.
Many readers were actively discussing their recent reading experiences on the forum, and ninety percent of them were discussing the book "To Live."
In the online office of Longwen Pavilion, the staff responsible for maintenance were surprised by the continuously soaring traffic.
The Longmen Forum was considered a forgotten project. The higher-ups basically no longer paid attention to it, and the content on the forums had largely stopped updating, with only the website barely operational.
But unexpectedly, in the past few days, this website had shown signs of life again.
The number of new users today alone had reached nearly ten thousand.
And this was only for more than half a day.
It should be noted that customer acquisition costs are very high nowadays. Many major internet companies spend a considerable amount of money to acquire users.
Sometimes, the cost of acquiring a single user can be as high as over ten yuan.
Now, in just over half a day, the Longmen Forum had gained nearly ten thousand new users, which, if calculated, would cost over a hundred thousand yuan.
Therefore, he immediately reported this information to his superiors.
Upon receiving the news, the superior was also shocked and immediately assigned more than a dozen people to exclusively manage and maintain the Longmen Forum.
“Since most of them were drawn in by 'To Live,' why don't we go with the flow and invite the author of 'To Live' for a live interview? This will definitely attract more new users.”
In the conference room, an employee from the content team of the Longmen Forum directly proposed.
“That's a good idea, we can try it!”
The leader of the content team nodded in approval.
“Since the leader thinks it's okay, I'll go contact the author of 'To Live' now!”
Seeing that the leader approved of his idea, he quickly got up to contact Wang Shu.
Wang Shu, who had just left Li Lang's recording studio, received a call from a staff member at Longwen Pavilion.
The staff member told him on the phone that they wanted him to participate in a Longwen Pavilion author interview tomorrow.
They also promised to cover all travel and accommodation expenses.
Seeing that he had no other pressing matters over the weekend, Wang Shu readily agreed.
After all, such author interviews would be beneficial to him. Perhaps the publisher would promote him vigorously, and he could sell more books.
After getting Wang Shu's consent, the employee happily returned to the conference room to report to the leader.
The leader nodded and began to arrange the specific tasks. The Longmen Forum quickly published a preview post announcing that the author of "To Live" would be participating in a live interview.
“Hooray! I want to see how miserable this author must be to write such a depressing novel.”
“I’m curious. I’ve never read such a good novel before. Although it made me feel bad after reading it, it’s undeniably well-written!”
“The author must be an old man, right? A young person wouldn't have such sharp writing skills to portray the characters and historical background so clearly.”
“Why even think about it? They must be at least eighty-eight years old to have such insight and writing ability.”
“I even suspect that the author might have based this book on his autobiography. After all, it's hard to write so realistically without experiencing such things!”
As soon as the post was published, readers were extremely surprised.
Although they had purchased "To Live" for various reasons, after buying it, they realized it told a very excellent story.
However, the protagonist was portrayed too tragically. It was inevitable to feel a bit depressed after finishing it.
But now that the author of this book was going to have a live interview, they were very excited and wanted to see what kind of writer could create such a "healing" novel.
The next afternoon, Wang Shu arrived at the headquarters building of Longwen Pavilion.
With the experience from the first visit, Wang Shu was now very familiar with the process.
Upon arrival, he contacted the employee who had called him yesterday. The employee quickly came to the lobby to personally greet Wang Shu.
When the employee saw Wang Shu, he couldn't help but be stunned.
He had originally thought that a writer who could write a book like "To Live" would be at least fifty or sixty years old.
But now, it seemed that the young man in front of him was even younger than himself.
“Teacher Wang Shu, I didn’t expect you to be so young. The live broadcast later might surprise those readers.”
The employee said to Wang Shu with a smile.
“Haha, I’m used to it!”
Wang Shu also smiled and nodded in response, then was led by the employee to the interview room.
The live broadcast equipment in the interview room had already been installed, and the broadcast could begin at any time.
At 7:35 PM.
The live broadcast officially began.
Many readers who couldn't wait had already flooded into the live broadcast room.
“It’s finally started! We get to see the great author!”
“Yes, I can’t wait to ask the author why he wrote such a healing novel.”
“This is the best novel I’ve read this year, and also the one that made me cry the most!”
As soon as the live broadcast room opened, many readers began to discuss intensely.
The viewership of the live broadcast room rapidly soared, from dozens of people initially to fifty thousand.
Before Wang Shu's image even appeared in the live broadcast room, it had already frozen completely.
“Technical Department! What’s going on?”
Seeing the live broadcast room frozen, the leader angrily yelled at the technical department.
“Leader, the number of viewers is too high. Our current equipment cannot handle so many users!”
The programmer in the technical department said with a distressed expression.
“What were you doing earlier? Why are you messing up at this time?”
The leader continued to question.
“We didn’t expect such a large amount of traffic. After all, the Longmen Forum has been neglected for years. We thought this live broadcast would have at most a few hundred people, but we didn't expect tens of thousands to flood in. The server can't handle it!”
The technical department staff member said with some guilt.
This was indeed his oversight, but mainly because he hadn't anticipated so many people watching the live broadcast.
“Is there any other solution?”
The leader asked, sweating profusely. After all, this live broadcast was very important, and the upper management was paying close attention.
If there was a problem with the equipment at this time, he didn't know how he would explain it.
“We can only rent servers temporarily now. I'll try to restore it to normal as soon as possible!”
The technical department employee thought for a moment and replied.
The leader could only nod helplessly and waved for the employee to hurry.
The live broadcast room finally resumed after ten minutes.
“Damn, what kind of trash is this? It froze for so long, how can we watch the broadcast!”
“Exactly. If it weren't for wanting to watch the broadcast, I wouldn't come to this crappy website. It’s so useless!”
“Quickly turn on the camera! I want to see what the great author looks like!”
“……”
When the live broadcast room returned to normal, many readers immediately posted their comments.
Because of the previous freezing, the camera on the streamer's side had not been turned on, so the readers couldn't see anything yet.
“I’m so sorry, Teacher Wang. We were too negligent with this live broadcast!”
The employee said to Wang Shu with a slight embarrassment.
“It’s alright, let’s start broadcasting now!”
Wang Shu was unconcerned. He was in a good mood, and he could understand these kinds of technical issues.
“Okay, then we'll turn on the camera now!”
As per Wang Shu's request, the camera was officially turned on.
Wang Shu and the live broadcast host appeared in the live broadcast room.
“Hello everyone, dear readers. Today we are very honored to invite Teacher Wang Shu, the author of the recently popular book 'To Live'!”
The host introduced directly.
And in the live broadcast room, when the readers saw Wang Shu in the live broadcast, they were all stunned.
“Whoa, he’s so damn young!”
“So young, did he really write 'To Live'?”
“My god, isn’t this Wang Shu? How can he write novels too?”
“I’m impressed, I’m really impressed. Wang Shu, how many identities have you been hiding?”
“Oh my, I’m kneeling. My favorite singer is also my favorite writer!”
“Let me calm down for a moment. Did I enter the wrong live broadcast room?”
At this moment, the shock in the hearts of many readers was beyond description.