Chapter 37: The Entire Internet Explodes! The Flop Star is 'Securing Benefits' for the Family! [Seeking First Subscriptions]

"Wu Qian OUT?" The Big Black Bull wore a bitter expression, unable to believe it. "Wait a minute, wasn't he just with Chen Chichi in the haunted house? How could the two of them be eliminated just by walking together?"

"Teacher Huang is OUT, which leaves just me and Baby..." Deng Chao felt things were getting tricky. After all, Baby was a female cast member, meaning he would likely have to fight entirely on his own from this point forward.

After Chen Chichi emerged from the haunted house, Deng Chao had gone up to him and proposed an alliance. The other man had agreed readily, but instead of walking with him, he had headed off in the opposite direction.

"That wasn't even the direction toward the haunted house," Deng Chao muttered in confusion.

Hadn't this guy previously been acting as though he wouldn't rest until he eliminated every single unpopular celebrity?

"Forget it, never mind. Right now, the Blue Team has a huge advantage. I'll use the 'Name Tag Enlargement Card' on Lü Ming!" Deng Chao pulled out the prop card he had won from the first game.

The PD explained, "Because the unpopular celebrity has already used a prop card, you cannot apply another one to him."

Deng Chao paused, only then remembering that the Blue Team had also acquired a prop card after the first game. However, he hadn't expected them not to use the good item on Reba.

"Then I'll use it on Baoqiang instead!" Deng Chao changed his target.

...

Inside the haunted house.

Before the production crew could carry away Teacher Huang and Wu Qian, Lü Ming casually ripped the name tags off their backs. Seeing his personal PD approaching, Lü Ming first peeled off his zombie costume and then turned his attention to the female NPC.

"Pleasure doing business with you. I've decided to give you a small perk!"

Upon hearing the word "perk," the female NPC's eyes instantly lit up. "Yay, yay!"

"Hand me your phone."

The young woman complied. Moments later, she watched as Lü Ming downloaded an app called "Installment Loan" from the app store. Under her bewildered gaze, Lü Ming tapped around on the screen and pulled up the loan application interface.

"Alright, blink your eyes, shake your head, and open your mouth."

The young woman cooperated throughout the process in a daze, having no idea what this major celebrity was trying to pull.

"Done! I've applied for a thirty-thousand-yuan installment loan limit for you. If you're not feeling well in the future, don't come to work. Money is gone and can always be made again, but if your health is gone, then you're truly unhealthy!"

"I've already transferred the money straight into your card. I leave no name behind for good deeds—you can call me Lei Feng, no need to thank me!"

The girl: "???"

She stared blankly at Lü Ming, wondering if she had misheard him.

The boss of the installment loan company was a middle-aged bald man with a dragon tattoo winding across his shoulder, exuding a heavy underworld vibe. Monitoring the progress from the livestream room, he burst into laughter upon seeing this scene: "I never expected this unpopular celebrity to be so smooth with business operations. Excellent, brilliant! This kid has such great comedic timing regarding loans; we should totally consider making him our brand ambassador in the future. It's guaranteed profit!"

The girl checked the bank text message confirming the arrival of the thirty thousand yuan, her little head buzzing: "Mister, you must be promoting a product for your financial backer, right?"

"Smart!" Lü Ming slipped into character in a split second, his articulation crisp and proper: "Good things should be shared with the family. The motto of our Installment Loan is to create a good product that everyone can afford to borrow!"

"Installment Loan, borrowing with moderation, meeting a better you. Short on cash? Just look for Installment Loan—simple and happy!"

"But online loan interest rates are really high right now. With this much money, I'm going to have such a heavy repayment pressure!" the young woman said with a bitter face.

"Repay? Our product is called an Installment Loan. By definition, it's designed to let customers live in splendor and prestige during this period!"

"As the old saying goes, lending money to people is like wiping out their entire family. Those loan sharks demand a 20% annual interest rate every year, and if you can't pay, they threaten to break your limbs. The more ruthless gangs even drag your whole family into it—they're a bunch of heartless bastards!!"

"The boss of our Installment Loan saw too much of the darkness in this industry, and he is ashamed to associate with those animals. So, he turned around and set an annual interest rate as high as 29.8%! Sounds terrifying, doesn't it? If you borrow ten thousand yuan, the interest alone for one year comes out to 2980. If you default and fail to repay, it will be raised to a 40% annual interest rate to collect penalty fees!"

"Furthermore, this excess penalty fee will be rolled into the principal amount and compounded, generating even more interest. In human terms, it's the legendary, long-lost compound interest of the martial arts world!"

"With these twin approaches, we guarantee our customers will find it utterly impossible to stop!"

"If your future income isn't very impressive and you want to repay in installments, that's completely fine too. However, you must first pay off the interest before you can gradually pay off the principal. Of course, penalty fees will still accumulate during this process, and as the principal continues to grow, the interest will naturally increase more and more."

[???]

[A 20% annual interest rate from loan sharks is heartless, so your boss is ashamed to be with them and turns around to set a 29.8% annual interest rate?!]

[Are you out of your mind, do you hear what you're saying?]

[An unpopular celebrity calls this kind of black-hearted online loan a good thing, and even dares to call it a good product that everyone can afford to borrow? Sure, you can afford to borrow it, but the question is can you afford to pay it back?]

[Fans treat you as an idol, and you treat fans as suckers, is that it?]

[Treat them as suckers? He practically wants to sell his fans to northern Myanmar!]

[I've turned from a fan to a hater of this unpopular celebrity. You've barely gotten any heat and you're already making dirty money off your fans' lives. Are you even human?!]

[Is that really how you use the phrase 'impossible to stop'?!]

[Impossible to stop: You want to finish paying the loan, but you just can't!]

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[Beaver!]

Millions of Lü Ming's haters saw him digging his own grave and immediately jumped out to pass judgment:

[Now everyone sees the ugly face of this unpopular celebrity, right? We've been saying it all along—he has rotten morals and is entirely selfish. You didn't believe it before, but do you believe it now?]

[Who would expect someone who gets drunk all day to have a conscience?]

[Even so, no matter how messed up his brain is, he wouldn't go as far as wanting to make dirty money by pushing scam loans to everyone while simultaneously exposing compound interest like that, right? I downloaded that app just now, and it doesn't mention the annual interest rate at all—you only see it after the money is disbursed. Don't ask me how I know!]

[Drinking has fried his brain; his left brain and right brain are fighting each other, that's what's going on.]

[He can't even figure out how to make dirty money properly!]

The young woman: "?!?"

"Ahhhhh!" Terrified, she snatched back her mobile phone, wanting to return the loan that had just hit her account.

"Don't waste your effort. Projects on our Installment Loan exceeding thirty thousand yuan don't have the early repayment function enabled. If you insist on repaying early, you need to call the manual customer service hotline to apply. The purpose is to prevent you 'little luxury pigs' from jumping out halfway."

Seeing that repayment was impossible, the young woman's eyes welled up with tears as she prepared to dial customer service.

"Don't bother calling. Customer service basically has a set of canned scripts—let me introduce you to the stalling tactic. Your loan amount is small, so they'll stall you for a month at most, and if you really want to pay, you eventually can. But if you've borrowed one hundred thousand or several hundred thousand, don't even ask. When you ask, the answer is 'system malfunction' or 'server maintenance'!"

"Just repay it!"

The young woman, wearing terrifying female ghost makeup, stood there with teary eyes, looking isolated and helpless. She looked as aggrieved as a baby. "Mister, you must be teasing me, right?"

"No, mister is putting himself in your shoes and sincerely earning perks for you!"

The young woman: "..."

The live chat was already flooded with screens full of "animal-like unpopular celebrity."

Meanwhile, the customer service phone lines for the Installment Loan company had been jammed completely. Also jammed were the complaint departments of Kiwi Fruit Livestreaming, the Zhejiang Satellite TV Marketing Department, various market management bureaus, and cyber administration authorities.

The netizens' anger was completely ignited. Under Lü Ming's "agency," Installment Loan directly provoked public outrage, and countless people wanted him gone!

Even the boss of Installment Loan, who had previously been praising Lü Ming for his exceptional business capabilities, changed his tune entirely and began cursing furiously: "This bastard of an unpopular celebrity, was his brain kicked by a donkey?! I told him to advertise, not to broadcast our industry secrets to the world! Is this gutter-tier celebrity promoting a product or bringing bad luck to my company?!"

"No, there has to be something seriously wrong with him!!"

Ring ring ring!

The bald boss no longer had time to curse, because both his private phone number and the landline on his desk were ringing off the hook from various numbers.

If this matter wasn't handled properly, he couldn't imagine what kind of terrifying disaster his company would face.

...

"Wah wuuu wuuu!" The young woman finally accepted the cruel reality and began sobbing, shedding little pearls of tears.

Seeing that the major celebrity beside her remained completely indifferent, while fear, panic, and grievance welled up inside her, she could no longer hold back. With a loud wail, she threw her arms around Lü Ming's waist and burst into tears. Because they were standing so close, all her lipstick, fake blood, and cosmetics smeared all over Lü Ming's clothes.

"A thirty-thousand-yuan loan—over the course of a year, the interest alone is ten thousand yuan. If there's even a slight default, triggering the mechanism where penalty fees are added to the principal, many people repaying in installments might never finish paying it off, and could even end up owing more the more they pay back," Lü Ming remarked suddenly.

Upon hearing this, the young woman cried even harder!

"So, online loans are scary, right?"

The young woman looked up with teary eyes: "Scary! Extremely scary, there is nothing more terrifying than this!"

"Remember, never touch any online loans in the future, whether legitimate or illegitimate. The moment you start consuming beyond your means, your life has strayed onto an overdrafted path."

The young woman nodded like a pounding pestle, looking as frail as could be.

"Alright, crying for a bit is enough; in a moment, you'll be smiling." Under the young woman's puzzled gaze, Lü Ming explained, "As the saying goes: ordinary people see mountains as mountains and water as water; wise men see mountains are not mountains and water is not water; saints see mountains as mountains and water as water. You only saw the first layer; in truth, the boss of our Installment Loan is standing on the second layer!"

"Did you think he wanted to wallow in the same mire as those loan sharks? If you thought that, you couldn't be more wrong. Our boss is kind-hearted; in reality, he is using this method of throwing himself into the game with the intention of wiping out all loan-sharking competitors in one fell swoop!"

"Upholding the principle of 'if I don't go to hell, who will,' he brazenly runs charity under the guise of loan-sharking!"

"If you borrow money from others and fail to repay, your limbs get broken. But if you borrow money from our platform and don't repay, the boss will only tell you: since we've set interest rates higher than loan sharks and don't even check credit scores, did you really think we expected family members to pay it back? Upholding the principle of building a harmonious society, we're all brothers here—just take the money and spend it!"

The girl was completely baffled: "Are you serious?"

"Do you think anyone has more authority to speak on loans than I do? Do you understand the value of the 'Peerless Loan Prodigy' title?" Lü Ming looked immensely proud as he popularized some knowledge:

"For lending institutions, the maximum borrowing interest rate permitted by law is 18.8%. Various regulations clearly state that any interest rate exceeding this figure falls under the category of usury, and illegal loans do not need to be repaid. Furthermore, if lending institutions conceal or obscure interest rates, it constitutes a serious illegal crime, punishable by a complimentary pair of silver bracelets with a rental period of 15 to 30 years!"

"If it weren't to contribute to society and do charity, do you think our boss is an idiot?"

[!]

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[Is this real?!]

[I just checked, it actually is true!]

[Does that mean?!]

[Holy cow!]

The live chat instantly exploded. Because the netizens were so enthusiastic in their comments, the Kiwi Fruit platform's server—which had undergone multiple upgrades—experienced lag once again.

"So, family members watching this on screen, please download the Installment Loan app right now to claim the exclusive perk little Ming has secured for you! Furthermore, please be sure to screenshot the annual interest rate page before applying and after disbursement as a souvenir. Time is tight, everyone get on board quickly!"

"3, 2, 1, charge!!"

Following Lü Ming's call to arms, the livestream room—which a second before had been so densely packed that the screen lagged—cleared out in a single second. At that moment, the Kiwi Fruit livestream room, which previously boasted a heat index of 1.2 billion, was left with only a few bots spamming "666" and "哈哈哈" in the chat, with no other sound whatsoever.

The personal PD shouldered the swaying camera and approached Lü Ming: "Dad, help me hold the camera for a moment, just point the lens at your divine face!"

"What are you doing?" Lü Ming was stunned.

The personal PD was ecstatic: "I need to quickly claim the perk Brother Ming secured for the family!"

"..." Lü Ming glanced at the camera, then turned to look at the beaming female ghost NPC standing to the side. "What are you staring for? You might only encounter a perk like this once in your lifetime. Why aren't you calling your aunts and uncles right now?"

"Huh? Oh! Oh!" The young woman reacted in a split second, tapped open her contacts list on WeChat, and dialed rapidly.

Strangely enough, every single friend, including her own parents, responded within a single ring with "Call declined."

...

"Damn it all, what did this unpopular celebrity do? What is he trying to achieve? How the hell did he dare?!" The boss of Installment Loan was furious. In his rage, he swept all the ornaments off his desk onto the floor. With no way to vent his overflowing fury, he simply kicked over his genuine leather desk chair, letting out a series of hysterical roars: "I must have been blind to have taken a fancy to such a piece of trash!!"

"Damn it!!"

Bang!!!

The office door was pushed open violently, and his secretary entered with a horrified expression: "Boss, it's bad! Our app has registered tens of millions of new users in just one minute, and the server has crashed completely!"

"Good! Good! A crash is good news!" The bald middle-aged man let out a lingering sigh of relief. If the server crashed, those bloodthirsty wool-shearing netizens wouldn't be able to take out loans. He hurriedly issued instructions: "Immediately, right now, have the tech department modify the backend, drop the rate down to the normal 18.8% annual interest rate, and cancel the overlay page we made earlier to display the real interest rates directly!"

"Boss, it's already too late..."

"What do you mean it's too late? How could it be too late?!" A bad premonition seized the middle-aged man.

Silently, the secretary placed a resignation letter on the desk and murmured, "Boss, those are ten million real users. Even if only one percent of them successfully get their loans disbursed, it's enough to bankrupt us ten times over. They had no intention of repaying in the first place!"

Bang!!

The office door was once again shoved open violently as the accountant rushed in holding a slip of paper, reporting in terror:

"Boss, up until the server crashed, we have disbursed a total of 1.06 billion yuan in funds. Among them, the 2.1 billion yuan in our account balance was wiped out in just 3 seconds, three partner institutions added up to another 4.1 billion, and the partner bank automatically disbursed 3.86 billion. The phones outside are ringing off the hook; Boss, you'd better go out and handle this yourself!"

Hearing those astronomical figures, the middle-aged man felt the world spin before his eyes. The next second, everything went dark. Cursing "unpopular celebrity" hysterically, he charged headfirst toward a three-meter-tall blue-and-white porcelain vase nearby!

Amidst the terrified gasps of his secretary and accountant, a dull "thud" echoed. Their boss knocked himself out cold right in front of the vase. Because of the violent impact, the ceramic vase slowly tilted and came crashing down, shattering into a million pieces instantly and burying the loan shark alive on the spot.

"Ahhhhh!"

"The boss has committed suicide!!"

"Help!"

The entire headquarters of Installment Loan descended into total chaos.

...

Special thanks to [Yongsu] brother for the 100,000 VIP points reward and becoming our Guild Leader!

My excitement is beyond words. I never imagined this book would receive a Guild Leader tier reward. I am truly honored and so very grateful!

Once the pre-existing update backlog is cleared, I will provide an extra independently-named chapter for brother [Yongsu].

May [Yongsu] find noble people in all four directions and wealth pouring in from all eight!

May brother [Yongsu] live the rest of your life free of worries, carefree like the wind, and always smiling with joy!

Thank you, Big Brother!!!