40: Chapter 4 Plagiarism Scandal!

Tao Min raised his hand and pointed at Shen Yan.

"Little Shen, I've been waiting a long time for you to say that!"

"Come on, let's add each other!"

After adding contact information, Tao Min went to find the organizers.

Not long after, the organizers called a few people over to take photos with him.

"Young man, you have a boundless future!"

As soon as the organizer arrived, he praised Shen Yan.

Shen Yan shook his head modestly and said, "There are still many areas where I need to learn from my seniors."

The organizer nodded with a chuckle, then threw his arm around Shen Yan's shoulder and took a few pictures.

After the photos, they were called up to receive their awards.

By the time they finished all the formalities, it was already evening.

Chen Guangke and Wu Ya were both exhausted to the point of collapse.

Neither of them had expected that merely accepting an award would be so troublesome.

Just when they thought everything was over, the organizers came looking for them again.

"We're planning to have a meal together in a bit, are you coming?"

Hearing the organizer's question, Shen Yan shook his head.

Although eating with these people could help build connections, he, Old Chen, and Wu Ya were too tired.

He didn't want to drag the other two along to a banquet.

"I'm sorry, we have something else to do later, so we won't be able to join..."

The organizer didn't say much about being rejected, just nodded and told him they would meet another time.

Walking out of the venue, the three of them felt a sense of relief.

"I'm never participating in this kind of competition again; this is more torturous than designing software!"

Shen Yan raised an eyebrow and asked, "You don't want the prize money anymore?"

As soon as these words came out, Chen Guangke immediately adopted a serious expression: "I still want the prize money. If the prize money for the next competition is more generous than this one, then I will participate."

Wu Ya rolled her eyes when she heard this and scoffed.

"You truly lack ambition!"

Chen Guangke was unconvinced. "Not caring about money means lacking ambition? How narrow-minded are you!"

Seeing that the two were about to start bickering again, Shen Yan quickly intervened: "Alright, alright, let's stop talking about this. I already have arrangements for the prize money."

"The champion prize money is a total of two hundred thousand. I plan to divide fifty thousand for each of you, and the remaining fifty thousand will go into the company's team-building fund. Do you have any objections?"

Chen Guangke and Wu Ya looked at each other.

"Is it really okay to just give us the prize money directly? Actually, we don't need that much."

Shen Yan found it both funny and frustrating. He couldn't understand the way these two thought.

Isn't more money always better?

Why were these two trying to persuade him to give out less prize money?

"This is prize money won jointly by the three of us, so of course, it should be divided directly among you. Don't worry, the studio isn't so poor that we need to deduct your prize money to keep it running."

Since Shen Yan had put it that way, Chen Guangke and Wu Ya naturally wouldn't refuse.

"Fine, so what are we eating next?"

"How about we go eat stone pot fish?"

"But I want hotpot..."

...

After much deliberation, they finally chose a nearby restaurant to eat.

There was no special reason; it was purely because they were too lazy to go anywhere else.

By the time they were full and satisfied, it was nearly midnight.

"That's about it, let's head back. I've already booked our train tickets for tomorrow."

Wu Ya finished speaking and handed them the information displayed on her phone screen.

"I bought two high-speed rail tickets for one o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Do you see any issues?"

Chen Guangke didn't even glance at it.

"It's just buying a high-speed rail ticket, what could possibly be wrong?"

Just then, Wu Ya's phone suddenly made a "ding" sound.

Shen Yan looked down and saw an automatically pushed entry from a software notification.

It read: "New Internet Competition Champion Accused of Plagiarism."

He frowned slightly and clicked on the entry.

As soon as he clicked, he saw his photo with the organizer displayed prominently on the public feed.

The accompanying text read: "The champion of the recent major New Internet Competition is actually a plagiarism monster!"

Wu Ya noticed Shen Yan's expression change and picked up her phone to look for herself.

"What's going on? Why are we being accused of plagiarism?"

Chen Guangke looked completely bewildered.

"Plagiarism? Who did we plagiarize?"

Wu Ya handed the phone to Chen Guangke.

After reading it, Chen Guangke's face showed undisguised anger.

"Slander! This is blatant fabrication!"

"They don't have a shred of evidence, so what right do they have to say we plagiarized?!"

Wu Ya turned and looked at Shen Yan with a face full of worry: "CEO Shen, what should we do now?"

Before Shen Yan could speak, Chen Guangke interjected: "We should call the police, of course! They are spreading such rumors, we must report them and have them arrested!"

Shen Yan nodded in agreement.

"Let's call the police first. This matter is 100% deliberately orchestrated by someone."

Chen Guangke's eyes darted around, and he almost instantly understood Shen Yan's meaning.

"You mean... this is very likely Chen Ling's doing?"

Shen Yan hummed in affirmation.

The popularity of this competition wasn't very high.

The people paying attention were basically all within the same circle.

He had just glanced at the time the marketing account posted the news.

Only half an hour had passed since the marketing account posted the news.

In just half an hour, this trending topic had been pushed to the number one spot on the local hot searches.

He definitely wouldn't believe there wasn't something fishy going on.

"Then I'll go to the police station right now and report them, have them arrest Chen Ling!"

After saying that, Chen Guangke and Wu Ya ran off to report the incident.

Shen Yan was about to go with them, but he received a call from the competition organizers at that moment.

"Little Shen, what is going on with this trending topic online? Did you really plagiarize?"

Shen Yan frowned and replied, "Plagiarism is absolutely not true. The software project we submitted is one hundred percent original."

The organizer didn't seem to believe him.

"But I saw that the person who accused you of plagiarism online has a lot of evidence..."

Shen Yan stated firmly, "All of his evidence is fake. You can check the document timestamps; the creation time for his document was a week ago."

"Whereas my team had already submitted the project to you long before the competition even started."

"Our team researched and developed this software even earlier; if anyone copied, it was him copying us."

Even though he had made his point very clearly, the organizer was still unwilling to trust him.

"I'm sorry, your explanation is not enough to convince me, nor is it enough to convince others."

"This incident has too big of an impact. To minimize the fallout, I and the others have already decided to revoke your first-place ranking."

"I hope you can understand our position."

After saying those two sentences, the organizer directly hung up the phone.

Shen Yan hadn't expected the organizers to act so ruthlessly.

They hadn't even conducted an investigation before directly affixing the label of plagiarism onto them!