Chapter 51: Holy crap, System Daddy can even repair things?

There were only a few minutes left in the program.

Dazed and bewildered, Teacher Fang glanced casually at the interface, then suddenly froze, feeling as though his eyes were playing tricks on him.

He blinked and looked again. The Starlight Value had jumped once more, soaring by a sudden 10,000.

Good grief, where on earth did that come from?!

About six days ago, his Starlight Value had reached over 50 million. He had saved it up back then, reluctant to spend it.

By the time "Added Value" was published and the "I Am a Lone Wolf" interview went live, it skyrocketed to 70 million within four days.

From yesterday until today—the 24 hours following the broadcast of the program—it surged to 82 million.

And right now, in the mere 50 minutes since the program's rerun began, the starlight had shot all the way up to 95 million!

Just how many people had been drawn in by the rerun?

The station director of Jilin Television deserved a hefty bonus!

The Starlight Value was finally enough. Fang Xinghe had originally intended to directly max out his coordination, but seeing the number still climbing rapidly, a sudden thought crossed his mind, and he decided to wait a little longer.

Wait to break 100 million and achieve his first small milestone in life.

Although it had no practical use, it felt like unlocking an iconic node—it was immensely satisfying.

The television interview had already reached the stage where the final outcome was uncertain, and a highlight was coming up next, but he couldn't spare the attention to watch. His heart was entirely consumed by the starlight about to break the nine-figure mark.

Achieving a nine-figure dream in this sort of way was simply too miraculously surreal...

Amidst the handsome genius's slightly jittery, excited waiting, the Starlight Value charged toward the small milestone like a runaway husky.

Until that exact moment—

On the screen, he raised an eyebrow slightly and said with utter nonchalance, "I am definitely the dark horse. As for the rest... whether they are or not, who cares."

The Starlight Value *biu*ed through the final bit of progress and officially stepped onto the 100-million mark!

At that very instant, something wondrous happened—

For the first time, the system proactively popped up a notification box.

【Congratulations to the host for accumulating 100-million-level starlight for the first time. Consuming 100 million starlight allows for the primary repair of the Star God Auxiliary System (Damaged Version). Execute?】

Eh?

This gadget wasn't completely broken after all?

So... attribute points or system repair?

"Repair, repair!"

Hesitating for even a second would be a sign of disrespect toward his supreme benefactor. Whatever coordination, whatever stamina—they could go wait in line for another couple of days.

With a flick of his thought, dark golden threads traced across the system's concise interface. Then the interface vanished and popped right back up, the repair completed in a flash.

Fang Xinghe looked on with eager anticipation, only for his forehead to instantly sprout a line of dark black stamps.

【Star God Auxiliary System (Impaired Version)】

Good grief, it went from severely damaged to moderately damaged. In any case, it couldn't shake off that word "damaged" for the time being, could it?

Apart from that added character denoting impairment, other aspects didn't seem to have changed much.

Until he looked over the starlight panel carefully again and finally found something different.

【Starlight Panel】

【Fan Count: 8.05M (Expandable)】

【Starlight Value: 250k】

【Stardust Value: 3】

Right, there was an "Expand" option added next to the fan count.

With a guess in mind, Fang Xinghe concentrated his mind on it and opened up the previously fixed data, instantly bringing forth a five-tier fan breakdown table:

Level 1 Floating Fans: 7,546,300

Level 2 Core Fans: 482,500

Level 3 Die-hard Fans: 27,520

Level 4 Fanatic Fans: 857

Level 5 Faith Fans: 0

"Eh?"

So the upgrade's changes were right here...

A quick scan across the rest of the attribute panels revealed that there were indeed other newly expandable items.

Resisting his excitement, Fang Xinghe turned his attention back to the starlight panel and suddenly discovered another special feature—

When keeping the 【Starlight Panel】 open, as long as his line of sight passed through the floating transparent window and focused on a specific person, the panel would glow with a corresponding colorful light!

When Fang Xinghe looked at Yu Xiaoduo, the panel outlined a purplish red, and the 【Level 4 Fanatic】 tag flashed simultaneously.

Looking at Fang Yuting next—a deep, azure blue, Level 3 Die-hard.

Lu Tingting—a clear red, a rational fanatic fan?

Looking at them one by one, there were 8 fanatics and 4 die-hards. Whether someone was a fanatic or not didn't entirely align with emotional closeness; it mainly depended on each person's disposition.

The more resolute a person's willpower, the harder it was to elevate their fan tier.

Take President Fang himself, for instance. Back when he worked as a paid internet commenter, he greatly admired Shawn Dou and Yang Chaoyue, but he was merely a fence-sitting floating fan. On the other hand, he considered Xiaotian and Gulnaza to be at the core level of... ahem, physical fans.

Generally speaking, passerby goodwill meant knowing who you were with a predominantly positive impression.

Level 1 floating fans were those who could accurately recognize your face, knew your representative works, held substantial goodwill, and were willing to offer moderate support when new works came out.

Celebrities with massive floating fan bases included Jackie Lee, Jet Li, Stephen Chow, Jay Chou, Fat Man Yao, and now, Little Swallow, who enjoyed near-universal goodwill.

Level 2 core fans began to show a willingness to offer steadfast support, but they wouldn't like *only* you, and their level of support remained within limits that didn't disrupt their normal lives.

Level 3 die-hards were unreasonable. If Jay Chou wanted to crossover and direct a movie, they would back him blindly even if the previous one was absolute trash; they'd still go watch *Kung Fu Dunk*.

Die-hard fans could still have divided attention—for example, being die-hards for H.O.T. while also liking Lu Yi and Fang Xinghe. After all, their domains didn't conflict, and some fans weren't all that sensitive about it.

However, once you reached the Level 4 fanatic toxic solo fans, there could inevitably be only one idol.

The TF Boys probably had the most toxic solo fans of any artists; years of internal turf wars had basically purified their fandoms to the core.

Bojun Yixiao wasn't much different either. When splitting up the CP, they hammered away at purification, growing trigger-like and defensive the moment the other party was mentioned.

On the other hand, figures like Jackie Lee and Jet Li didn't have fanatic fans—in fact, they didn't even have many die-hards. The moment they transitioned to drama films and stopped doing action scenes, public support vanished instantly.

This was a classic phenomenon of having many floating fans and few die-hards.

From this, it was evident that raising fan tiers wasn't easy. It truly wasn't something that would happen naturally just because you were handsome, beautiful, or had good works.

The Thirteen Eagles, plus the unregistered "Audacious Fang," only produced 8 fanatic fans.

And within this group, there was another detail—excluding Fang Xinghe himself, out of the 13 people, only 12 were above the die-hard tier.

The one left behind...

Left Fang Xinghe with very complex feelings.

Li Gang'ao, the jinx, ranked number eight. He fought fiercely, didn't talk much, and usually carried a gloomy aura all over, looking at people with a dark expression.

His fan tier was only Level 1, emitting a feeble white glow.

Broadly speaking, it was a case of being forced to admire, yet not truly admiring from the heart.

Jealousy? Resentment? Anger? A desire to replace him?

Probably a bit of all of those. When people were young, it was indeed easy to lose sight of themselves, easily swept away by negative emotions, focusing their attention outward rather than inward.

Forget it, the reason didn't matter. In Fang Xinghe's heart, he was already reduced to a mere passerby.

If out of 13 people, 7 were floating fans, it would certainly mean the Big Brother hadn't done enough or lacked in some way. But when 13 people had only a single outlier, there was no need to look for flaws within oneself.

It didn't reach the level of hatred; it was simply that there was no longer any need to continue associating with each other.

The Thirteen Eagles were still the Thirteen Eagles. Audacious Fang had been going crazy trying to squeeze in, and there were even more people waiting in line outside. Apart from Fang Xinghe, who was indispensable, whoever dropped out wasn't worth a passing thought.

So be it...

Fang Xinghe didn't wallow in sentimentality. On the contrary, he was quite happy.

The new function was of immense significance; not only could it identify fan tiers in person, but it also provided precise data.

The internet commenter boss couldn't help shouting internally: This bro can finally unleash his professional competence!

Living in the year 1999, the thing President Fang found most difficult to adapt to was precisely the scarcity of data.

Lacking advanced data collection tools and comprehensive data collection channels, President Fang felt like more than half of his prowess had been crippled. Everything had to rely on guesswork rather than targeted, precise decision-making.

In the later stages of his career as an internet commenter, AI tools and big data analysis tools could narrow down a target's genuine fan count to the exact hundreds, precisely separate paid astroturfing from organic engagement, and harvest the specific purchasing power and user personas of individual fans from social platforms...

Having grown accustomed to that level of intuitive clarity, operating now felt like being completely blindfolded.

It didn't affect his daily life, but it felt awkward.

Kids in the 2020s played with all sorts of AI tools, while the dignified President Fang had to rifle through stacks of heavy newspapers to extract text information... It was exasperating.

Now, having finally acquired a portion of precise data, he could at last perform further analysis and planning regarding his own situation—a joyous and congratulatory occasion.

Judging from the disproportionate fan structure, his initial judgment had been quite correct.

Writing was a profession that very easily attracted fans, but struggled immensely to retain them.

Text had great reach; when it struck the right person, it could pierce straight into the depths of the soul.

However, the connection between literary works and the author themselves was exceptionally poor.

The most obvious example was J.K. Rowling. With global legitimate sales of *Harry Potter* exceeding 700 million copies, countless pirated editions, and extremely successful film adaptations, surely she must have had a massive number of fans?

Yet her social platform account only had 14 million followers, and her die-hards numbered fewer than 10,000.

When she publicly expressed opposition to transgenderism, all related parties severed ties with her, fan websites even expelled her from the fellowship of authors—an extremely magical realist scenario.

And how many fans dared to withstand public pressure to support her?

Very few.

The supporters who spoke out mostly did so out of ideological stances, using the opportunity to vent their dissatisfaction and engage in polarized verbal battles.

Who actually cared whether she herself was doing well? Not a single person gave a damn.

Liu Cixin, Dangnian Mingyue—they were all the same.

Therefore, an author and an idol author were truly not the same thing.

Han Er and Guo Si: one pioneered the path of the idol author in China, while the other carried it forward and popularized it. Both were formidable, but their playbooks were entirely different.

Han Er embarked on the path of an opinion leader, drawing fans from among angry youth.

Guo Si took a side path, brutally tormenting young girls with youth-pain literature while reaping the benefits of the fujoshi demographic. Thinking about it, that was no easy feat either.

In terms of pan-name recognition and the number of floating fans, Big Brother >>> Guo Si, whereas the number of die-hard fans was completely reversed.

So despite their debut films performing similarly at the box office, their essences were fundamentally different: one was an artistic angry youth's call to kindred spirits, while the other was the cinematic teenage dream tailored purely for young female fans.

Could the advantages of both paths be combined, addressing needs accordingly to play the game with greater precision?

Fang Xinghe felt it was worth a try.

In the early stages, he started out walking the same path as Big Brother—

Establishing an image through sharp prose, focusing on the pain points of teenagers, expanding his brand recognition while sparking resonance among minority groups.

Yet because his appearance was far too attractive, it presented an illusion of universal appeal.

Now, the truth was finally clear: 80% of his female fans were looks fans, persona fans, and mother-fans, rather than textual or literary fans.

Most of his male fans were personality fans and text fans, yet they were inherently difficult to convert into die-hards.

Thus, the overall result presented an explosion of floating fans, a relatively low number of core fans, too few die-hards, and a massive scarcity of fanatics...

If he hadn't been constantly getting scolded and fiercely putting them through the wringer, his core fan count might well have dropped by 70%, and die-hards would have been even harder to come by.

Ah, this was very scientific.

What was even more exasperating was another matter: if text had poor emotional projection, then miscellaneous essays were the worst kind among all literary works.

Big Brother wrote so many stirring, magnificent essays, accumulating a decade of fans while battling the world every day. Yet when "The Three Han Essays" finally came out, the vast majority of his floating fans defected, and his tens-of-millions scale instantly collapsed.

It wasn't until three years later, when his first feature film premiered, that he somewhat recovered, but that was primarily driven by the long-term quality of the movie.

It was an epic scale of misery, yet it was also inevitable.

Once that wave of adolescent angst passed among angry youths, how much lingering affection could they truly hold for the author himself?

In comparison, Fang Xinghe had only been famous for a few days, yet he was already far more popular than Han Han during the *Triple Door* era.

Well, thanks to the hard-to-guard old iron for delivering the heat, and thanks to the wise decision to max out his looks.

However, the moment he caught sight of Little Swallow's news, little Fang would instantly calm down, completely devoid of any further inflation.

Don't get cocky; you're just a stinky writer, miles away from the lead of a blockbuster hit.

Even without comparing himself to such a monster, just looking at his rival, Lu Yi, the truth was actually quite cruel.

*Never Close Your Eyes* premiered on Beijing Television this year, and due to plot issues, its second-round rerun was required to undergo revisions and re-evaluation, pushing multi-channel syndication to next year. Yet, just through this single-channel premiere, the tragic and devastatingly handsome Xiao Tong became the lifelong "white moonlight" for female viewers.

In terms of hype, Lu Yi—who didn't engage in marketing—was far inferior to Fang Xinghe; but in terms of die-hards, he utterly crushed him.

Xiao Tong crushed the genius writer.

This was the blessing that a classic role in film and television bestowed upon an actor: strong emotional projection, long-term reviewable imagery, massive space for fantasy, and a flesh-and-blood object of fantasy...

There was simply no comparison.

A miserable keyboard-hammerer was entirely unworthy of picking a fight with that.

Although Fang Xinghe was an orphan and equally matched the definition of "tragic yet devastatingly handsome," the tragedy of real life lacked the intuitive impact of film and television. It couldn't project imagery deep into the soul, lacking real substance, which made the effect vastly inferior.

Mao Xiaotong was even more tragic—who even stanned her?

Fake tragedy, once filmed and presented, was simply more capable of eliciting empathy than "real but invisible" suffering.

In this regard, the whole world was the same: Leonardo DiCaprio, who sacrificed himself to bravely save his girlfriend in *The Titanic*, exploded into a mega-top-tier star; the perfect persona in *Twilight* rocketed Kristen to female top-tier status; Wei Wuxian from *The Untamed*, Xiangliu from *Lost You Forever*, Li Lianhua from *Mysterious Lotus Casebook*... all soared instantly.

Having even a single classic role was super awesome, sufficient to lay down a lifelong foundation.

And once you had three...

So what if you gained weight in middle age~~~

Later on, many young people who didn't watch TV shows couldn't understand why the "Fat Fairy" deserved to remain the queen of commercial value after starring in movies for over a decade without a single good one, yet frequently hanging on trending searches. They assumed it was purely reliance on marketing—this was a failure to understand the emotional projection mechanism of classic roles.

Luxury mega-brands that deeply understood this logic didn't give a damn about all that; they poured perks upon her wildly, completely unbothered by the chaos in fandom circles.

In the big data models and commercial value evaluation systems of consumer-facing mega-corporations, one of the core indicators for a spokesperson was precisely whether they possessed classic roles that could be passed down endlessly and continuously generate positive influence.

Without them, you didn't deserve high compensation.

Another great example was Jiao Enjun. Uncle Jiao truly wasn't top-tier in terms of face value in reality; viewed bare-faced, his facial features had quite a few flaws, and among the hundreds of dramas he starred in, only a handful managed to prop up ratings. Yet in the public eye, he was the undisputed costume heartthrob. The filters of Li Xunhuan, Yang Jian, and Zhan Zhao had long since detached from reality, reaching a point that defied all basic laws.

That was why Fang Xinghe was dead-set on becoming an actor.

Whether one had classic roles directly determined the upper limit of die-hard fans and starlight value.

This wasn't an issue that could be solved by the quality of writing alone; rather, it was a comprehensive engineering project that integrated artistic image, personal persona, marketing capability, audience reach, and the depth of projection.

Before today, Fang Xinghe had merely been making inferences based on experience.

Now, with the fan tiers expanded, his line of thinking was finally corroborated, making his future direction all the more definite.

Preparation, accumulation, starring in classic roles, performing to a standard where one stood alone under heaven. If there were truly no good roles, he would create them himself—integrating writing, directing, and acting, and even taking a firm grip on investments...

Not striving for wealth, but swearing to produce classics.

Everything—absolutely everything—served Starlight Value and Stardust Value.

Precisely for this reason, he wasn't in a rush to add points to his writing. An output capability of 79 points was more than enough for now. For the time being, he mainly relied on depth of thought and cross-era material to write miscellaneous essays, and his current writing skill was more than adequate; adding more would just overflow.

When the time came in another couple of months to do the final revision of his very first full-length novel, he could supplement his writing attribute then—there was plenty of time.

After that, he could leave it alone. An output capability of 89 points would be enough to last him until he died; unless he suddenly wanted to make a run at the Nobel Prize, there was no need to add any more.

On the contrary, coordination was directly related to numerous martial arts skills, various actor training methods, voice, body, expression, and all other foundational skills. With so many skills, it was impossible to brute-force them using Starlight Value—the gap was simply too huge. He could only rely on practicing slowly by himself.

Therefore, the earlier he maxed out coordination, the greater the benefits.

In Fang Xinghe's ultimate life goals, health came first, immunity second, recovery third, stamina fourth, while strength and speed weren't worth mentioning.

Yet in his mid-to-short-term planning, coordination came first, and everything else shifted according to circumstances.

This was President Fang's working mindset and methodology that he relied on to break into the top three of the entertainment industry: keeping a tight grip on the core thread, taking what was necessary and discarding the rest, pressing forward all the way without ever deviating.

......

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!"

Suddenly leaping up and throwing punches, little Yanbian pulled Fang Xinghe back from his reverie into reality.

The program froze on his faint smile, and the little eagles exploded.

"Damn! That was explosive, right?!"

"Totally! I'm drooling buckets over that white button-down right now!"

"Big Brother sitting right there had insane swagger!"

"The Godfather of Third High! The supreme head honcho of all national teenagers, Xinghe Fernando!"

"Right, Big Brother, raise your arm and shout! First unify Nong'an, then unify the country—staking your claim to the throne starts today!"

"Pfft!"

The bite of watermelon Fang Xinghe had just taken sprayed everywhere. His toes curled hard against the floor, and his mind was filled with *Geneva, what a bunch of blockheads*.

Were they all super extroverts whose dictionaries simply lacked the word "embarrassment"?

As it turned out, Zhang Qi, who shouted "Godfather Fang," wasn't even the craziest one; the ones who followed were even more mentally handicapped.

"The one mentioned in the interview was me!" Storm of Wealth was immensely proud, showing off with an arrogant swagger, "The very first person to hand money over to the boss was none other than yours truly!"

"Fatty, what on earth are you feeling smug about? I was the first girl to throw herself at Big Brother, am I bragging about it?"

Fang Xinghe couldn't listen to any more of this.

These kids in their mid-teens were a tangle of innocence and stupidity, a mixture of childishness and restlessness. If he didn't keep a tight rein on them, they really could pull off a major catastrophe in a matter of minutes.

"Done watching? If you're done watching, hurry up and get back to study."

Fang Xinghe cast a side-long glance at them and announced with a sneer, "I've discussed it with all the teachers in the class. This summer vacation, you're all going to obediently go to remedial classes. If any of you fails again next semester, you're getting expelled from Eaglehood."

"Ah, ah, ah... No way!"

"Bro, you might as well just kill me!"

A chorus of wailing erupted instantly. Seventh Sister, the little stutterer, even tried to hug his leg and throw a tantrum.

"No negotiation."

Fang Xinghe kicked a groin-guard right in front of the little stutterer, his face dark as he cursed, "I'm spending what little human decency I have left on you lot. Who gives a damn about outsiders? Pulling strings with the teachers took a huge chunk of my face. I'm only advising you this once—study if you want, or don't!"

"Uh... O-Okay, fine..."

The teenage boys and girls had no other choice. They trudged home dispiritedly, still muttering that they shouldn't have come in the first place. That left the lurking tabloid reporter brimming with curiosity, sidling up to grill them with questions.

Spending 10 yuan to treat them to soda finally yielded the whole story, and the paparazzo rushed back to write his article in a state of wild excitement.

Small as the matter was, an article showcasing Fang Xinghe's character traits—which starkly contrasted with his arrogant "I Am a Lone Wolf" persona—would sell for big bucks once written. Wasn't that why he was lurking in this godforsaken little county town in the first place?

Such was the heat surrounding Fang Xinghe right now. Though he didn't pull in fans quite like Xiao Tong, his topicality utterly slaughtered him several times over.

In reality, however, President Fang was already trying very hard to cool down that heat. In a little over a month, his new concept essay collection would hit the shelves; a month after that, his full-length novel would be published. It was time to let his fans rest up and protect their vocal cords.

Calm down, save your energy, and save up that passion properly.

Rest assured, when the day came for you to scream, not a single one of you would be left standing.