Chapter 57: 56 chapters Bring the people, show the map!

    Cheng Zhu received a message on WeChat from Shen Qingning, which made her pause momentarily.

    Regardless of whether his words were true or false, it proved that the sender had never considered initiating a private chat with her.

    Shen Qingning sent a photo she had taken, along with the message, “Remember to tell Little You tomorrow that I am using this keychain properly.”

    “Alright,” Cheng Zhu replied.

    And with that, the conversation abruptly ended.

    A good online chat shouldn’t just consist of a question followed by an answer, but rather, it should involve passing the conversational baton back and forth.

    ...

    Your reply should not only respond to her message but should also continue the topic or start a new one.

    Cheng Zhu clearly understood this simple principle and knew full well that by replying with a mere “alright,” this private chat was effectively over.

    But he wanted to end it there.

    At that moment, he stopped chatting with Shen Qingning and just glanced briefly at the photo she had sent.

    The photo captured not only her car key and a Pikachu but also a bit of her bedsheet and curtains.

    Judging by the color scheme and style, Cheng Zhu thought to himself, “Could she really be one of those women who feel a strong need for self-restraint?”

    He never believed that women who dress in a restrained fashion and decorate their homes in dark tones were truly consistent inside and out.

    He had been to many women’s bedrooms.

    You never know, they might completely change once the lights go out.

    With that thought, he turned off the image.

    He wasn’t the type to obsess over a photo someone casually sent, analyzing it over and over again.

    He had valuable time at the moment.

    Just as he was about to attend to his store “Persistent Visit,” he received another message on WeChat from Lin Lu.

    She had taken a photo of a pig plush toy and sent it to Cheng Zhu.

    “You two really are like besties, doing nearly identical things,” Cheng Zhu muttered.

    Upon opening the image, he saw the words “Cheng Zhu” on the toy’s clothing, complete with a little pig head drawn after them.

    “Do you intend to dishonor your ancestors?” he typed back irritably.

    “You’re my mentor, and I’m your senior—let’s not get too fussy about it!” Lin Lu responded instantly.

    Cheng Zhu continued, “Originally, our master-disciple combination could have taken one character from each of our names to form ‘Chasing Deer,’ which has quite a powerful ring to it, doesn’t it?”

    “You just had to make it zoo-like, with me as the deer and you as the pig—how is that fun?” Cheng Zhu expressed his dissatisfaction.

    Lin Lu, looking at the WeChat message, muttered, “Pshaw, taking one character from each of our names, are you trying to pair us in a couple’s nickname or what?”

    But she actually found “Chasing Deer” to be quite domineering!

    In this day and age, there are professional “negative reviewers” who make a living by posting negative reviews and then extorting merchants.

    But these few were special; they just wouldn’t respond. You offer money, they don’t want it. Each one behaved like this, simply pissed off, claiming they didn’t care about the money, just wanting to leave the negative review hanging there.

    Or they would not interact at all, completely unreachable, let alone deleting their negative review.

    Interesting—suddenly encountering so many with such poor resistance yet tough attitudes.

    One of the buyers was truly amusing—almost as if they had studied The Art of War by Sun Tzu. After leaving a negative review about developing red spots, the very next day they purchased another item, immediately followed by another negative review—talk about resolution!

    Damn it, did they think another area of their body was missing red spots? Was it OCD acting up?

    This was just explicitly foul play, a ploy to mess with your mind.

    Nice psychological warfare!

    “The flavor is too overwhelming,” Cheng Zhu thought.

    There was a high chance of malicious negative reviews from competitors.

    Some inexperienced merchants might not even know how to deal with it.

    But Cheng Zhu knew what to do; there were many solutions, even able to hire professional teams to handle it.

    “No big issue.”

    To him, all this fuss was rather pointless.

    “Low-end business warfare is like this—neither thrilling nor direct!”

    “If anyone’s to blame, it’s me for not yet earning big bucks, not qualifying to participate in high-end business wars.”

    He had long yearned for high-end business warfare.

    You might think high-end warfare involves capital maneuvers, stock market turbulence, or hacking?

    No, No, No!

    It’s about leading a group straight to an office to forcefully seize the official seal, an official seal that they fucking have to strap onto their belts, holding on tight.

    It’s about pouring boiling water onto your rival’s fortune tree or giving the cleaning lady a couple hundred bucks to secretly cut your company’s power every two hours.

    It’s like the shared bicycle manager personally going out early in the morning to slash the seats of the rival’s bikes, eventually getting caught by the police.”

    And there’s also the classic ice cream incident where one publicly uses their official account to stir up trouble in the competitor’s comment section: “How come only half the people are typing insults? Do the others not have hands?”

    “This is the exhilarating battlefield I long for!” Cheng Zhu lamented.

    The next day, in the afternoon, the artist Hu Yan finally finished the images.

    Holy cow, they were awesome!

    Cheng Zhu increasingly believed this person was a talent that crass old folks needed.

    “Oh, my beloved QQ apparel industry, are you ready for the ‘unified march of people and comics’?”

    Cheng Zhu sat at his computer, raised an eyebrow, and prepared to upload.