Suddenly.

The phone vibrated a few times.

Ethan Brooks picked it up and saw that it was a message in the WeChat work group “All the teachers of The Prequel of the King of Blockers are super popular.” The group owner, Grace Miller, @-ed everyone: “Dear teachers, our film will be released on Y Station Video at 8 o’clock tonight sharp. Please help to repost and promote it, thanks.”

Huh?

The post-production for this film was pretty fast.

Ethan Brooks was just about to reply when he received a private message from the producer, Grace Miller: “Mr. Brooks, please help promote it on Weibo. I’ll treat you to a meal next time.”

Treating to a meal, of course, meant she wasn’t planning to send a red envelope.

But Ethan Brooks didn’t mind at all.

“Okay, Ms. Miller, no problem.” He replied cheerfully, “But I don’t have many real followers on Weibo, so I probably can’t help much.”

“Haha, Mr. Brooks, you’re too modest. Just your willingness to promote is already a huge help. Besides, you’re so handsome and a top student from a prestigious university. You’re bound to become popular in the future.”

“Thank you for your kind words, Ms. Miller. Our film is sure to be a big hit.”

After a few quick compliments back and forth, Grace Miller got busy again.

Ethan Brooks opened Weibo and went to the backend.

He had a little over thirty thousand followers.

But he knew very well that about thirty thousand of those were fake followers bought by the company; if he had two or three thousand real followers, that would be pretty good.

He’d been sidelined by the company for almost two years now. His last Weibo post was about taking a break from acting to focus on his studies.

A year ago, quite a few fans still sent him private messages to check in on him.

But now, he hadn’t logged into Weibo for over half a year, and the number of fans who still followed him and occasionally messaged him was already very few.

Ethan Brooks renewed his Weibo membership, then reposted the official promotional post from the production team of [The Prequel of the King of Blockers], adding a line of his own.

“A well-produced online movie, I play the second male lead, Alex.”

As for whether the film was actually well-produced, Ethan Brooks hadn’t really paid attention.

But he could tell that the production team had put some effort into the project.

It was just that, from what he’d heard, the project’s budget was really limited, so there wasn’t much room for polish, and there probably wasn’t much money left for promotion.

Five minutes after posting, Ethan Brooks refreshed his feed and saw that the repost had 30 views, 1 like, and no comments or shares.

Alright then.

If you don’t post on Weibo, you’ll never know just how irrelevant you are.

……

Chapter 5: It’s Ice Cold! Time for a Rescue

Ethan Brooks exited Weibo and cooked himself a bowl of scallion oil and crab roe noodles.

Both the scallion oil and crab roe were store-bought canned goods, and the noodles were dried, so they could be stored for a long time. Not exactly a feast, but still better than instant noodles or random takeout.

Checking the time, it was almost eight o’clock. Ethan Brooks turned on Y Station TV Video and started refreshing frequently, waiting for the movie to go live.

At exactly eight, The Prequel of the King of Blockers was released on time, but only got a secondary page promotion.

No front page promotion—looked like Y Station didn’t have much faith in this film.

This gave Ethan Brooks a bad feeling. Was this film about to flop?

Oh well, might as well watch it first.

He watched while eating his noodles. The film tried its best to build suspense in the first six minutes, and Ethan Brooks thought it was somewhat interesting—at least watchable.

Before he knew it, he’d finished the entire seventy-minute film and was left wanting a bit more.

You couldn’t really call the film brilliant.

It was just a standard, by-the-book movie with both dull and bright spots. In his opinion, it deserved a six or seven out of ten.

What made Ethan Brooks most uncomfortable, though, was his own acting.

It was really awkward.

Not only was his face expressionless the whole time, but his line delivery was as bland as plain water, with no tension at all.

It gave him the feeling of being publicly executed.

Just a month ago, was I really this awkward?

He almost lost his appetite.

Truly, there’s no pain without comparison. He felt that his performance as Yin Wujiao in [The Legend of Sword and Demon] was clearly much better than Alex—maybe he’d improved, or maybe it was because he was playing a villain, which gave the character more tension.

No wonder after filming [The Prequel of the King of Blockers], the skill card he drew didn’t even have one star of proficiency.

The system didn’t lie to him.

Still, he did have some strengths.

First, he was handsome—this advantage was obvious throughout the film, completely “outshining” the male lead, Howard.

Second, his card control skills, with the help of props and post-production effects, looked really cool—not much worse than when he showed them in real life after gaining the skill. Plus, with his good looks, it was quite eye-catching.

Other than that, there really wasn’t much else.

After summarizing his own performance in The Prequel of the King of Blockers, Ethan Brooks opened WeChat again.

He clicked into the “All the teachers of The Prequel of the King of Blockers are super popular” group and took a look. Sure enough, there were already quite a few messages.

He scrolled through them and summed it up in one word.

Flop!

Over half an hour ago, Grace Miller had already posted the backend viewing data for [The Prequel of the King of Blockers]: six-minute audience retention rate—forty percent.

For a low-budget online film, that seemed like an acceptable number.