He fiercely criticized the Manchu scholar clique and the twelve emperors of the Qing Dynasty.

As soon as Gu Nanxi finished speaking, Zhao Shuyao, who had just taken a sip of mineral water, had his swallowing motion abruptly stopped before he could even swallow.

He turned his head abruptly, covered his lips with the back of his hand, and coughed uncontrollably several times, splashing a few drops of water onto his sweatpants.

He took the tissue Gu Nanxi had handed him earlier, wiped the water from the corner of his mouth, and after his chest heaved and his breathing calmed down, Zhao Shuyao turned his face, raised his eyebrows, and stared at Gu Nanxi.

"Using her money to take the postgraduate entrance exam?" Zhao Shuyao asked in a completely innocent question, his tone full of confusion. "How do you know her name? And besides, my living expenses for the postgraduate entrance exam were all given to me by my family during college. How can this be related to her?"

Looking at Zhao Shuyao's somewhat bewildered and slightly absurd expression, Gu Nanxi could tell from this most direct physiological reaction that the other party was definitely not lying.

Gu Nanxi handed her phone to Zhao Shuyao, pointing to the lit screen and saying, "Take a look for yourself. I've saved all these articles and comments. You can get a general idea from here."

Zhao Shuyao glanced at Gu Nanxi suspiciously, then reached out and took the phone.

The page on the screen was a 3,000-word article titled "The Stolen Youth of Xiaoyu." Zhao Shuyao's thumb slid upwards on the screen at a steady pace, his eyes quickly capturing the paragraphs and words in the article.

"Phoenix Man", "Small Town Test-Taker", "Vampire".

Upon seeing this highly stigmatizing and emotionally charged combination of words, Zhao Shuyao's mind raced. This vocabulary was not part of the everyday language of ordinary college students in 2016; it would become the core rhetoric of online feminist emotional marketing a few years later.

The public relations team hired by the Yan family is very professional and knows the secrets to generating traffic by creating gender antagonism and class anxiety.

As the page continued to scroll down, several blurry group photos of backs and WeChat transfer records came into view.

Zhao Shuyao's gaze lingered on the photo for two seconds. He recognized the person who posted it. During their senior year of college, the two did have a brief interaction, but the real reason for their breakup wasn't that he abandoned her after climbing the social ladder.

The truth is that during his exam preparation period, the other party not only did not make any contribution, but also asked him to use the living expenses sent by his parents to buy luxury bags that were beyond his means. He then took the initiative to get into the passenger seat of a local rich second-generation on the grounds that "you can't give me the life I want".

Zhao Shuyao withdrew his gaze, feeling no anger. Instead, the corners of his mouth involuntarily turned up, and he chuckled briefly. To be able to package an old grievance so beautifully and movingly, the Yan family must have spent a fortune behind the scenes this time.

Then, he clicked on another post by "Old Zhou, the Academic Fraud Buster," and after glancing at the so-called "letter of self-criticism" and the academic paper that catered to the mainstream, Zhao Shuyao's smile deepened.

The formulaic essay he wrote back then to get credits and pass the graduation exam is now being used as evidence of his "two-faced" nature.

Zhao Shuyao pressed the back button, locked the screen, and handed the phone back to Gu Nanxi.

She picked up the mineral water bottle next to her, unscrewed the cap, calmly took another sip of water, and then turned to look at Gu Nanxi.

"It's all nonsense." Zhao Shuyao shrugged, his tone revealing a detached composure. "But I'm not surprised at all. This kind of tactic of resorting to moral slander when they can't win a fight is just a common method used by their group."

Gu Nanxi took the phone, her brows furrowing slightly, her tone tinged with urgency: "You mean, everything she said is a lie? And all those influential figures online who's been criticizing you, and all the other comments, were orchestrated by them?"

Zhao Shuyao nodded, tapping his fingers lightly on his knee as he began to dissect the logic within.

"Of course, Gu, you can think back carefully to how these trending topics appeared." Zhao Shuyao spoke calmly, "How could an ordinary person posting a complaint about their ex-boyfriend, unless it involves extremely serious illegal or disorderly conduct, suddenly get tens of thousands of reposts in the early hours of the morning without any endorsements from influential figures?"

He held up one finger: "Take a look at those accounts that are stirring up trouble and insulting her the most in the comment section. If you open their profile pages, you'll find that the vast majority of these accounts have no profile picture, no daily posts, and their content lists are completely blank. These aren't real people; this is called a 'water army' matrix."

Zhao Shuyao continued to push forward the deduction: "Also, concentrate all my old papers, my ex-girlfriend's emotional disputes, and the rebuttal videos from those big V's in the history section with millions of followers into the time period of 3 to 6 a.m.

"The scale of this multi-service joint operation requires extremely tight organization and financial support. The reason they chose this time to release it is to take advantage of people's habitual thinking when they wake up early and check their phones for information, and to forcibly define my public opinion."

Gu Nanxi sat on the steps, following Zhao Shuyao's analysis to recall the posting time and comments of those posts, and the clues in her mind instantly became clear.

She took a deep breath and nodded: "You're right. When I was looking at the posts just now, the replies from those accounts and the logic behind their manipulative tactics were completely consistent, but..."

Gu Nanxi changed the subject, looking at Zhao Shuyao's still-smiling face with a puzzled expression: "Why aren't you nervous or worried at all after seeing all this? They've used such enormous resources to frame you across the entire internet, are you just going to let it go like this? Aren't you going to explain yourself?"

"Explain?" Zhao Shuyao placed the mineral water bottle at his feet, shook his head, and smiled with a hint of understanding of human nature. "Do you think it would be useful for me to go out and explain at this time? Or, do you think they would believe me if I went out with a few bank statements? I certainly don't."

Gu Nanxi opened her mouth, but was speechless for a moment.

Zhao Shuyao crossed his hands on his knees, looked directly into Gu Nanxi's eyes, and said in a deep voice, "Under the magnifying glass of the internet, once you fall into a moral judgment field set by others, proving yourself is the most foolish thing to do. This is called the 'self-proving trap'."

"When someone accuses you of eating two bowls of noodles but only paying for one, you don't need to cut open your stomach to show them," Zhao Shuyao said, his tone hardening.

"Because they don't care how many bowls of noodles you ate, they just want to see the process of you cutting open your stomach, once I issue a statement today explaining the source of my living expenses."

"Tomorrow they'll be questioning me about why I didn't bring my ex-girlfriend along when I bought the duck. This endless hype will only provide them with a constant stream of material to attack me."

Gu Nanxi was shocked when she heard these words. She originally thought it was just a dispute in the academic circle, but she did not expect that the public opinion game behind it would be so dark and complicated.

"So you're just going to watch them throw dirty water on you?" Gu Nanxi's tone was filled with deep helplessness and sympathy for him. "If that's the case, you'll be the one who suffers real harm in the end."

Even if some rational people don't believe these rumors, once this dirty water is thrown at you, your reputation will be completely ruined in school and in society. Aren't you going to fight back?

Zhao Shuyao stood up, patted the dust off his sweatpants, and the March sunlight shone directly on his shoulders over the roof of the teaching building.

"It's not the right time yet." Zhao Shuyao raised his chin slightly, a confident smile curving his lips.

"Let the bullets fly for a while."

Gu Nanxi stood there, completely bewildered by the meaning of this extremely carefree yet illogical statement.

Zhao Shuyao looked down at Gu Nanxi's bewildered expression, and his smile deepened.

"Since you don't understand, then don't think about it." Zhao Shuyao's voice returned to its original gentleness, exuding an undeniable sense of power. "Just remember one thing: I have my own plans, and I will absolutely not let these people achieve their goals."

Zhao Shuyao turned to look at the wide main road of the campus outside the stadium.

"It takes real money to buy trending topics and hire online trolls," Zhao Shuyao began to explain his final decision-making logic. "They've just set up the stage, and the actors have only just taken the stage. The fire isn't hot enough yet."

"What I need to do is give them enough room to maneuver, and then I'll make my move when the attention across the internet reaches an uncontrollable peak."

Zhao Shuyao turned around and nodded to Gu Nanxi.

"Thank you for your concern, and thank you for the bottle of water. Please let me know if there are any new developments."

After speaking, Zhao Shuyao took a step and steadily walked down the steps of the stands.

Gu Nanxi sat in her seat, watching the figure in the gray tracksuit walk further and further away. For some reason, this boy, who was at the center of the online controversy, did not show any panic. Instead, he gave her a powerful sense of pressure, as if he was about to overturn the entire gambling table.

As Zhao Shuyao walked out of the playground gate, he casually threw the empty mineral water bottle into a trash can by the roadside.