Chapter 58: Reversal of Fortunes

“This… actually works?”

Lei Ai, a seasoned director in the industry, was stunned. In all his years, he’d rarely seen a production as dramatic as The Empress both on and off-screen.

“So many people!” Kong Le exclaimed, struggling to keep track of the endless names trending on social media. He couldn’t even differentiate who was who.

“The key point is that fans no longer care about the show’s popularity,” Lei Ai commented. “Winning for their idol is all that matters to them now.”

This kind of dynamic was beyond the realm of Lei Ai’s understanding.

Lu Xu, by contrast, was no stranger to spats, but his targets were always people or matters outside of The Path of Bones. During the show’s promotional period, he had never missed a single publicity event and was exceptionally active on Weibo.

According to Grape Film, Lu Xu alone had saved the platform a considerable amount in promotional expenses.

Since The Empress was the direct competitor for this time slot, Lei Ai had been paying extra attention to it. He even came to a conclusion: the actors in The Empress were entirely focused on promoting themselves, unwilling to share even a shred of attention with others.

When appearing on variety shows, they made every effort to “dispel rumors of discord,” but Lei Ai felt that the atmosphere in Empress’s large production team was far worse than that of their smaller team.

It was as if they only bothered to keep up appearances when the cameras were rolling.

With a sigh, the director remarked, “Lu Xu is still the better one.”

Although Lu Xu’s account suspension had initially given Lei Ai quite a shock, as a rising actor with moderate fame, Lu Xu’s exuberance was almost over the top. But compared to those whose ambitions were blatantly visible, Lu Xu felt more… human to Lei Ai.

To be honest, the moment Lei Ai saw the trending chart data, he was quite surprised.

The frequency of The Empress appearing on the trending list was much higher than when it first aired. Back when both dramas had just premiered, The Empress had stronger data across the board compared to The Path of Bones—naturally, its popularity was also higher.

Logically, since the show had been online for some time, with rising stars like Zhai Yiyun, Xu Qingtian, and Rong Sheng gaining significant presence across platforms, the popularity of The Empress should have surged, heading toward an explosive success.

But the result—

In the latest episode, The Empress had a popularity score of 12,774.

Meanwhile, The Path of Bones had a popularity score of 12,330.

[Did I see that right?]

[Uh, what…?]

[Did The Empress’s plot collapse? Or is there too little screen time for Qiao Mengyao? It shouldn’t be heading in this direction.]

The netizens were also stunned by the numbers.

They remembered clearly that when The Path of Bones first aired, it indeed had a decent presence—it was, after all, Lu Xu’s first lead role since being nominated for the Stellar Awards.

However, as the plot of The Empress developed, The Path of Bones seemed almost forgotten. It garnered some attention due to Mu Qian’s clashes with Lu Ding, but the trending lists and major forums were practically dominated by The Empress.

The fans of characters like Xi Ling, Li Chengfeng, and Hu Feiyin were embroiled in endless battles. Even when they used initials to refer to rival characters, fans from opposing camps would swoop in to hurl insults.

From this perspective, the attention and presence of The Empress were truly unrivaled.

Naturally, the clueless onlookers thought, since The Empress was so popular, its popularity score should be sky-high, right?

On the trending chart, The Empress was indeed in first place. The problem was—at this point, The Empress was only 400+ points ahead of The Path of Bones.

[…Why is the search volume across all platforms increasing, but the popularity score is dropping?]

[How is The Path of Bones almost surpassing it?]

[…This feels like a repeat of the The Watchers and Nine Revolutions situation.]

[How could it be the same? Everyone knows Qiao Mengyao’s dominance in the lead actress category.]

[Is it because Yu Yi in The Path of Bones has been ruthlessly dealing blows lately? Relax, once this arc of The Path of Bones ends, The Empress will still come out on top.]

Both fans of The Empress and the Deyi streaming platform remained highly confident in the drama’s trajectory.

From the platform’s perspective, the popularity score wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, The Empress alone had fulfilled Deyi’s six-month advertising KPI. Its ad slots were far more marketable than those of other historical romance dramas.

Even if the popularity score of The Empress was being closely challenged by The Path of Bones, in the public’s perception, The Empress was still the hotter show.

However, the performance of the two dramas in their subsequent episodes was—

The Empress, popularity score: 11,939.

The Path of Bones, popularity score: 13,266.

The tide had shifted. The Path of Bones climbed to the top of the trending chart.

[???]

[What the heck!]

[What just happened?]

The seemingly unstoppable The Empress was effortlessly overtaken by The Path of Bones!

Not only that, but the popularity score gap between the two dramas had exceeded 1,000!

The netizens were stunned, and so was Deyi’s management!

Fans of The Empress’s cast, however, didn’t feel a sense of shame from being surpassed by The Path of Bones. Instead, they seized the opportunity to mock their rivals mercilessly—

[Tsk tsk, I knew it. BYY is a jinx. He had the most screen time in these two episodes, and now the popularity score has dropped.]

[That’s just the blessing of forcing a flop male lead. Trying to punch above their weight and pick a fight? Do they really think Ling fans are pushovers?]

Lei Ai was genuinely moved by this kind of meticulous time-keeping spirit. He had studied accounting in college and only ended up as a director by a twist of fate after losing his job.

But Lei Ai could confidently say that, aside from his university days, he had never calculated numbers so precisely—not even when he once rounded attendance numbers to three decimal places.

Yet these fans had managed to calculate screen time down to the thousandth of a second.

However, no matter how much effort the fans put in, the industry was still left wondering: how exactly had The Empress been surpassed by The Path of Bones?

Searching for answers on Weibo was futile—all the tags related to The Empress were filled with chaotic battles among the various fan groups.

Even when searching for The Path of Bones, the top results were still The Empress fans invading The Path of Bones’ territory to bicker among themselves.

Some fans even laid out a slew of data to prove that The Empress was superior to The Path of Bones:

Things like cross-platform search volumes, follower growth for the main actors, endorsement deals for the cast, and statistics from smaller websites…

The only thing conspicuously missing was the data from the most authoritative platform, which the fans seemed to have conveniently ignored.

[Lu Xu’s endorsement conversion rate is so much worse than Zhai Yiyun and Xu Qingtian’s. After his Stellar Award nomination, he only signed three contracts. Even though The Path of Bones has been airing for a while, there hasn’t been any news of new deals.]

Only on the drama forums could one catch a glimpse of the underlying reasons.

Drama forums, primarily dedicated to promoting TV series, had a number of influential contributors. Many of today’s prominent reviewers and content creators had left their mark on these forums in the past.

Although February wasn’t typically a hot period for dramas, the simultaneous popularity of The Empress and The Path of Bones, both breaking 10,000 in popularity score, brought in far more discussion than usual.

Upon opening the forum homepage, most of the threads were still centered around Empress.

[…The male lead’s fans have gone crazy. They’re fighting everywhere, and now I can’t even bear to look at the comments.]

[I’m speechless. Some male lead’s scrazy fans are now complaining that Qiao Mengyao is too old, asking why their idol has to work with an ‘old woman.’]

[It’s even worse here! Since The Empress’s popularity score has dropped, the male leads’ fans are saying that as the female lead, Qiao Mengyao should take the blame for it.]

[On one hand, they’re blaming Qiao Mengyao. On the other, they’re spending tons of screen time narrating Hu Feiyin’s tragic childhood. Getting a child actor would have been fine, but why did they have to cast Bai Yuyi and his ‘garlic bulb’ face to play his younger self? Doesn’t the production team know what childhood means? Where did they dig up this resource-dependent actor?]

Posts about The Empress were split roughly into two categories: half were complaints about fan wars and the male actors’ performances, while the other half criticized the drama itself as a so-called “female lead drama” series.

[What even is a female lead drama? Help!]

[The world is a giant Ding! Oh, by the way, when The Empress hired drama critics, they skipped over a bunch of talented ones and chose someone with a ‘Ding’ in their name.]

[Hey, don’t drag us Ding-surnamed folks into this mess!]

[Sorry, sorry, no offense intended. But look, Xi Rongyi’s shining moments haven’t even been portrayed. For example, the study scene—it’s written in the original novel but completely omitted from the series. Instead, they focused on depicting Hu Feiyin’s struggles as a top scholar. If you won’t show the study scene, how will the protagonist’s ability to eloquently debate and express her ambitions come across?]

[I actually really enjoy scenes about studying. Xi Rongyi was such a clever and wise little princess!]

[Let’s not compare—it just makes Xi Rongyi seem even more pitiful. Look at how The Path of Bones handled its adaptation!]

[I clicked into the The Path of Bones thread, and honestly, I’m so envious. No arguments there, just detailed analysis, micro-expression breakdowns, and reflections on the original work.]

[I took a look too. Envy +1.]

At the time, The Path of Bones had just aired the scene where Yu Yi faced a crisis. The previous day, after his act of revenge, Yu Yi was cornered inside a house. He was so tense that cold sweat dripped down his face, and the audience could feel their own hearts pounding with anxiety.

The cliffhanger left viewers in suspense for an entire day, leaving them restless and itching to find out what happened next.

For fans of the original novel, the wait was manageable since they knew how the story unfolded. But for those unfamiliar with the source material, the suspense was unbearable. Some rushed to buy the original book to find out, while others held out until the next episode aired.

This particular storyline was why The Path of Bones saw a popularity score surge of nearly 1,000.

Fortunately, Yu Yi overcame the crisis in the end. He escaped by hiding in an underground tunnel, waiting until dawn before slipping away unnoticed.

What followed was Yu Yi’s continued pursuit of uncovering the mastermind behind it all.

As long as the identity of the person outside the door remained a mystery, viewers couldn’t stop watching The Path of Bones.

The Path of Bones had previously been brought into the limelight by Lu Ding. It was a revenge drama described as “bloody” and “brutal,” leaving audiences with a strong visual impact. Everyone, regardless of their preferences, had to take notice.

On top of that, Lei Ai was particularly skilled at setting up suspense. Except for the slightly slower pace of the first two episodes, the later episodes of The Path of Bones actually progressed faster than The Empress.

After all, revenge could neither drag on nor be slow.

The slow pace of the first two episodes was only meant to highlight the transformation in Yu Yi’s personality.

For fans of the series, it was no surprise at all when the popularity score of The Path of Bones climbed to over 13,000.

Of course, it was equally unsurprising that the popularity score of The Empress dropped below 12,000.

Its plot had already fallen into the framework of a love polygon.

If the production team had been ruthless enough to edit or cut the scenes of several male actors before the show aired, it wouldn’t have been a big problem. But delaying the changes until now was unwise—

By now, the male leads weren’t just “up-and-coming” stars anymore. They had already become widely popular.

So, who would the production team cut?

Whoever got cut would definitely have their fans cursing the director’s ancestors for eighteen generations, making him regret taking on The Empress in the first place.

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