Chapter One Hundred: A Tie-Break in Twelve Hours (1/2)

After closing that somewhat humorous advertisement, Xiao Yu immediately saw the post pinned by the admins. The title was “Tie-Break in One Week”. The content showed the latest number of votes, which would be updated every few hours.

Xiao Yu chose the “original poster’s thread only” option and directly scrolled to the voting results updated at eight in the morning.

SI’s total votes were at nine million, whereas YL had a total of twelve million votes.

The numbers on this poll count were indeed shocking. In his previous life, Xiao Yu once thought that his computer was having problems to be showing such numbers. He later realized that voting chances could be easily obtained several ways in the game. In addition to that, the target audience base for this game was very broad, which was way the final numbers would end up extremely shocking.

Just looking at the current results, YL was in the lead for now. However, the odds were not that strong. Three million votes could easily be caught up to in a few hours. Which meant that this might turn into an evenly-matched war.

Was it? Not really.

The voting would be held over the course of an entire week. In his previous life, the final votes were counted in the billions. The current few million votes were just the tip of the iceberg.

Plus, the most crucial point was that these counts were compiled at eight in the morning. At that time, most people were either asleep or heading to school or work. Those few million votes were from the hardcore fans, who were still gaming in the middle of the night, as well as SI and YL’s private interference.

Xiao Yu was not particularly clear about YL’s situation. But if he had given it any thought, as a newly established company in S City, it would be difficult for YL to do anything too drastic.

Whereas for SI, Xiao Yu drew from the memories of his past life and clearly remembered that under their chairman’s instructions, SI had found several studios that specialized in rigging votes. They must have waited for the game to update and started generating votes as soon as they logged in. They did all that just to display their initial show of strength to YL.

Under such circumstances, YL’s total votes were in the lead.

As mentioned, a few million votes were nothing. That was because most of the players were not online yet. The factor that decided the fate of both companies were the actual players of the game who had not unleashed their potential yet. For every digit place the vote count increased, the gap between both companies would level out, to the point where no matter how many vote rigging studios they found, it would no long matter.

The original poster had mentioned that there would be a new vote count at noon. Xiao Yu was not bothered about it. He closed the thread and searched for other content. Very quickly, he saw a post that did product analysis.

From the ID of the post, Xiao Yu knew that the author was from the magazine Spreading Fire, which contributed to the monthly recommended jewelry accessories column. This person was a supporter of SI, which was why under most circumstances, he thought highly of SI’s products. But unfortunately for this time, as a professional designer, he could no longer support SI unconditionally.

“… It’s a pity that such unfeasible designs could not bring out all of SI’s strength. But I cannot deny that, just by comparing design aspects, SI is in a disadvantageous position. And the person who made this impossible mission into a reality was without a doubt, Mr. Mystery, who remains a mystery to this date.”

Xiao Yu gave that person’s post a ‘thumbs up’.

The term ‘unfeasible design’ had the same meaning as the other posts when they said that both companies’ designs were similar.

Before the drawings were finalized, Yan Jin once promised Xiao Yu that he would let him be in-charge of all the designs. Whereas for SI, they separated all five sets of designs and distributed them to different designers. On the method of strategy, SI had won over YL for sure.

To let a single designer be in-charge of all the designs would make the entire set of products look more unified. But it was not a smart choice because all the designs were voted on individually in the game. This meant that the options that the players were voting for were not SI and YL but forty different character rings.

With such a voting method, it was highly possible that a single piece or a pair would win by a landslide over all the other designs. Hence, there was no need to unify an entire set of designs on a similar design style. So long as a pair or two were outstanding, they had high chances of winning the battle. However, letting different designers get involved could prevent the possibility of different parties having similar designs because they were based on the same character traits.

Yet SI could not avoid that in the end. Xiao Yu clearly remembered all of the designs made by the mystery designer in his previous life, and these designs were all improved versions of SI’s designs.

What made it hateful was that among the five pairs of rings from the mystery designer, there were three pairs which had “extremely” obviously copied SI’s design. Moreover, the other two pairs did not look similar and successfully fooled everyone and escaped the whirlpool of plagiarism.

Yes, those three pairs belonged to Xiao Yu’s work.

From how Xiao Yu saw it, his work had been plagiarised. It was obviously plagiarised. Yet for some reason, no one in the department supported of him.

In his previous life time, on the second day after this war began, it was the last straw for Xiao Yu. He had planned to speak to his chairman about being plagiarised, but he was stopped by Lin Zhou.

The reason he gave was because those rings were originally assigned to him. It was against the rules to let Xiao Yu help him. They must keep their silence, otherwise both of them would get into trouble.

Furthermore, Lin Zhou even declared that he did not agree that the mystery designer had plagiarised Xiao Yu’s work. Xiao Yu was just overthinking.

To this moment, Xiao Yu could still remember how unwilling and wronged he felt back then.

It was rare to encounter people who provided help in someone’s hour of need. It was more common to face people who hit a person who was down. The continuous losses in that past six months had made those people who were watching his defeat become even more savage in their actions. Soon, Xiao Yu sunk into a passive situation where he had no one to complain to.

What saddened him the most was no doubt when the senior he trusted was unwilling to believe him.

That winter in his memories was a cold and harsh one.

However, at this moment, the Xiao Yu who was holding his warm tea cup, wrapped in his little pink blanket while browsing the forum, was feeling a little too hot.

It was noon when both companies’ voting results had reached thirty million to seventy million. SI could no longer catch up to even half of YL’s vote count.

To Xiao Yu, this supposed tie-break in one week could already come to an end.

Coincidentally, Xiao Yu was not the only person (hamster) who thought so.

At five minutes past twelve, Yan Jin arrived home.

“Squeakk?” Why did you come back? Have you forgotten anything?

The moment Yan Jin entered the house, he noticed Xiao Yu, who had wrapped himself like a glutinous ball.

“Why didn’t you switch on the air-conditioning system?”

“Squeakkk.” It shouldn’t be switched on all the time. It needs to be switched off once in awhile for the air to adjust.