When Celestial Bane reached 100,000 words, there were already as high as 150,000 bookmarks. At the same time, it ranked tenth in recommendation votes and was already competing with many other great authors on the list. The battle was a fierce one.

Things did not stop there when Celestial Bane reached 150,000 words and there was not the slightest hint of decline in support. On the contrary, it continued making headway. Bookmarks reached 250,000 in one fell swoop, climbing up the recommendation votes list and achieving third place!

To reach the third place on the recommendation votes list was a truly formidable result. Recommendation votes represented a work's popularity before the work was published!

Those votes could be regarded as directly correlated to the final score of one's book. At that moment, Celestial Bane has already caught the attention of Genesis Chinese Literature's big shot authors. It was a masterpiece that was expected to reach the same levels.

At 200,000 words, Celestial Bane's bookmarks had exceeded the 400,000 mark. It overwhelmed the recommendation votes and made it to the first in the recommendation list!

During the past few days, Celestial Bane received an influential banner recommendation from Genesis Chinese Literature. It was then that everyone realized how explosive it was!

The bookmarks skyrocketed to 800,000!

Even those renowned authors on the net could only watch and dream of such a result.

Ye Lingchen's editor Yogurt was stunned too. Although he knew that Celestial Bane would blow up, he never expected it to be so hot. It went against all odds, and if the result were to continue, it would surely suppress Genesis and set a new precedent of its own!

Celestial Bane's arrival kicked up a bloody storm within the web literature community.

Readers engaged in heated debates!

Every other web novel site besides Genesis engaged in heated debates!

Major editors within the web literature community engaged in heated debates!

Various renowned writers engaged in heated debates!

In short, Celestial Bane seemed to have ushered in a new era within the current web literature community!

It reached a point where many external editors tried their best to contact Ye Lingchen in an attempt to dig him out. Many more people were searching for Ye Lingchen's true identity as they hardly believed that such a work was written by a new author!

This situation developed into a horrifying state of affairs.

In the book review area of ​​Celestial Bane, comments numbering in the hundreds of thousands appeared every day. They were all compliments, leaving behind links in the hopes that Ye Lingchen could go to their respective websites. The attitude shown by those comments was that of absolute humility and respect!

Some were simple and direct—they offered him their highest offer and the best treatment on their website.

The sheer scope of comments made it impossible for Yogurt to do anything. It was a herculean task for one person to delete everything alone.

As a last resort, the situation could only be relayed to the higher-ups.

That short period of time was enough to shake up Genesis' top brass!

Goodness!

Celestial Bane was a masterpiece, a flagship of their website in the future. Did anyone think that they could dig out the author's identity?!

The website added an editor to the xianxia genre almost immediately, without much ado. The first task was to help clean up that portion of the comments from Celestial Bane.

In addition to discussing the title of the book, Ye Lingchen's pen name was also the subject of discussion.

Beep, beep, beep!

Yogurt the editor sent a congratulatory message to Ye Lingchen. "I am Y, congratulations, your results will make you a famous author. Within a month, your popularity can already surpass the highest record for new books on our website."

"Thank you," Ye Lingchen replied.

"It will be National Day in a few days and we recommend Celestial Bane to be published then since it's a holiday and that's when the traffic is the highest. With your results, it will be a hit when it's published!"

"Mm. Let's publish it on National Day then." Ye Lingchen suddenly realized that he had quite a lot of things going on during National Day. Huo Yuanjia was about to be released, Celestial Bane was about to be published, and the trip to Las Vegas with Lu Hao all coincided with National Day.

"Alright! It's set." The Yogurt replied. "There must be an explosive chapter when we are published, usually. Save up a few drafts, so when the time comes, you'll get famous in one fell swoop!"

Regardless of the outcomes or popularity for any novel, the simplest and most effective basis for measuring all of that was the subscription after publication!

Subscription did not simply enable authors to make money and feed their families. More importantly, subscription represented the number of people willing to spend money for one's work, because readers would only spend money if the creation attracted them!

In general, the standard by which an author is measured on a website was also based on subscriptions. When the subscription met certain conditions, the authors could then be inducted as big shots.

...

Dragon's Sky!

It was a dedicated online forum for the web literature community.

Throughout the month, the topic revolved around Celestial Bane and had yet to stop. A search of the phrase 'Celestial Bane' would reveal a shocking discovery—there were hundreds and hundreds of topics about Celestial Bane!

At that point in time, the post "Guess whether Celestial Bane can kill off big shot authors?" became the hottest topic of discussion.

[Replying OP, it's certain that Celestial Bane can kill off big shot authors! It just depends on how it wants to do it!]

[Let's all witness it when the big shot authors are killed off. Definitely going to be a beautiful sight.]

[Swear on my heart, Celestial Bane is an amazing read. I can't stop.]

[Every month there will always be one or two big-shot authors, but Celestial Bane should get first-place!]

[Have any of you seen Celestial Bane's data, it's just scary! The bookmarks have reached 800,000!]

...

Amidst those words of praise however, it was inevitable that there were some mixed reactions.

[Hehe, after reading so many comments, the only thing I want to say is, there are too many stupid c*nts!]

[Celestial Bane's data is obviously brushed1! How can a newcomer get such results? He's a brusher, shameless. Don't show your stupid face, get lost!]

[I can't even continue reading the first chapter of Celestial Bane anymore. What the hell are you writing? I can write better, you garbage!]

[What use does it do if it has plenty of bookmarks? We still have to look at it when it's published! News about Y has been really hot recently, and the author of Celestial Bane is 'I am Y'. It's obvious that he's trying to take advantage of the hype!]

[Agree with the commenter above. Many people are probably bookmarking it thinking that its Y, but few only genuinely bookmarked it.]

[Y'all upstairs are just jealous dogs. People are earning a living with their abilities, so you have what it takes to write your own, do it then, you stupid c*nt!]

Soon, two sides of the divide quarreled with each other and fast became the hottest topic in Dragon's Sky.

Everyone initially thought that the topic would end there, and the subsequent arguments were predicted to be simple little disagreements. However, a netizen named 3Logs commented below and upped the topic's intensity yet again.

[Before publishing, all the data is on paper, not on the table. I haven't read Celestial Bane, but the author called himself I am Y. Hehe, what does that mean? Now, assuming that Y represents the pinnacle of the industry and your name is Y? On what grounds?! Are you ignorant or arrogant, do you think you are number one on the web?!]

Once that post appeared, the situation exploded in an instant!

[Oh f*ck! Oh f*ck! Oh f*ck! It's 3Logs, the big shot!]

[When a big shot appears, the idlers will make way. All hail the big shot!]

[The big shot is finally unable to take it anymore. HAHAHA. I knew that the name I am Y will sow hatred.]

[Are you going to fight Celestial Bane? Wow, wow, wow! The battle of the big shots is about to start, so exciting! So exciting!]

...

刷 – this is translated as brushing, a deceitful technique used primarily in e-commerce to boost a seller's rating through fake orders. In this context, it is likely referring to Celestial Bane's rating being boosted through the creation of fake accounts that leave fake reviews.