225: "Living Up to Humanity"

"A thousand years later, chanting of Chang'an city before the Buddha"

"Overlapping peaks and ridges, fine rain washing away the dust of the world"

"Meeting once in the cycle of life and death, heaven and earth return to spring"

"Not letting the world down, willing to pass the lamp for all living beings"

Fans and listeners were already so immersed in the song that they couldn't pull themselves out.

Half an hour later, this song was already in third place on the music charts.

"I gaze upon the vast red dust, an ordinary person"

"Holding a solitary lamp to illuminate the six pure roots"

"Don't approach, don't recognize, don't misremember again that I am untainted by floating dust"

When the first play finished, everyone immediately started a single-track loop.

The secretary told Xu Jian that the online response to this song was very good. Xu Jian nodded; he was happy, but his emotions didn't fluctuate particularly much.

His past experiences told him that good promotion was one thing, but actual foot traffic was another.

However, the first step of their cultural tourism promotion was considered relatively successful.

Now it remained to be seen what the Golden Week in two days would look like.

At this moment, he had not yet realized that this song would increase N City's tourism growth a thousandfold and bring in 4.5 billion in revenue over 5 days.

On the first day of Golden Week, cultural tourism departments everywhere were prepared.

N City's tourism numbers in the past two years had been around 4 million; N City's pubs, restaurants, snack stalls, and so on had prepared three to four times more supplies than usual based on experience.

On the first day, at 9:00 AM, ticket sales began at the foot of Qiyun Mountain.

The original price of 35 yuan per ticket was even discounted to 28 yuan, and children under 1.2 meters were not charged.

According to past experience, everyone would be busy for about two hours and then be able to relax.

When the Qiyun Mountain Staff Member arrived at the toll station to prepare for work in the morning, they were stunned; there were too many people, swarming like ants.

The toll station Staff Member had never seen so many people. Was this still their quiet Qiyun Mountain, where usually not even anyone came to burn incense?

The ticket office urgently deployed Staff Members to start selling tickets, and the machines printing the tickets were practically smoking.

It wasn't just Qiyun Mountain; the hotels, guesthouses, and homestays near the mountain in N City were all fully occupied.

Xu Jian received news that the visitor flow at Qiyun Mountain had exploded, and the flow of people at the station was also incredibly high; many departments began to urgently reassign personnel.

Xu Jian was overjoyed; at least this year was better than before.

"Tell me the statistics for noon as soon as they come out."

Xu Jian gave the order, and his secretary paid very close attention to the matter.

The statistical data was updated every three hours. At twelve noon, everyone went to check the data. Xu first looked at the visitor flow to N City, followed by the visitor flow statistics for the attractions; by looking at these two main data points, one could know how N City's cultural tourism was really doing.

In previous years, the visitor flow for N City on the morning of the first day was roughly around 160,000 people, while the visitor flow for attractions was around 120,000.

Around ten in the morning, Xu Jian had heard the secretary and others report that this year's visitor flow had increased greatly, but without data, it was impossible to judge exactly how much better it was than before.

But when the data came out, he was stunned; he immediately experienced the feeling the neighboring K City's cultural tourism bureau had when it suddenly exploded in popularity.

The visitor flow for the morning was 620,000, and the visitor flow for the Qiyun Mountain attraction for the morning was 340,000.

If these figures were from last year, they would almost catch up to the visitor flow for the entire Golden Week.

Xu Jian was so pleasantly surprised he stuttered, "How... how did this happen?"

Secretary: "Didn't we ask Lu Qingyu to write a song to promote us?"

Xu Jian still found it hard to believe: "Just one song? It can bring so many people?"

Secretary: "Director, he is extremely popular."

Xu Jian's eyes widened. He specifically asked the secretary to find Lu Qingyu's song and listen to it again. After listening, he looked at Lu Qingyu's photo and still hadn't recovered.

Aside from looking handsome, this kid didn't look like anything else, so how could he be so powerful!

Xu Jian: "We must properly thank Lu Qingyu."

The visitor flow continued to grow. While it grew, Xu Jian began to worry; their N City wasn't large, and aside from Qiyun Mountain, they didn't have much else to offer. What if everyone got bored?

An emergency meeting was held in the afternoon on how to catch the traffic while also retaining it.

A younger employee's mind was active: "Director, young people nowadays love to visit morning markets, night markets, and food festivals when they go out to play, as well as taking photos for social media. We had morning and night markets at the foot of the mountain a few years ago. If we reopen them, it could also stimulate economic development."

"Yes, Director, I see people on the official website saying they hope to eat food with local characteristics."

Xu Jian: "Someone left a message on the official website?"

The secretary showed the official website to the Director, and the Director took a look.

[Qiyun Mountain is quite pretty, but the third section of steps is a bit slippery. I saw many people fall there, everyone be careful.]

Xu Jian: "Find someone to lay down a carpet on the third section of the Qiyun Mountain steps for me."

[It would be great if Qiyun Mountain had a night market, so we could have a meal after coming down the mountain.]

Xu Jian: [Get the morning and night markets opened for me immediately.]

[After getting off the train, there's a lot of luggage, and there's no direct bus to Qiyun Mountain, which is a bit inconvenient.]

Xu Jian: "Go and deploy buses immediately. Open a line from the station to Qiyun Mountain, and ensure there's one every 5 minutes."

"Also, open a convenient luggage storage service for me at the foot of the mountain."

Throughout the entire meeting, Xu Jian spent most of his time scrolling through netizens' comments; anything that could be done, he absolutely did not delay.

On the second day, while Xu Jian anxiously waited for the data, he also looked at everyone's comments. He was afraid that too many bad reviews would lead to people not wanting to come to N City.

To his surprise, the comment section was actually quite good. Instead of disliking the single attraction of Qiyun Mountain, everyone praised the good service here.

The data for the second day at noon came out. As of noon, the visitor flow exceeded 920,000, and Qiyun Mountain was almost overflowing with people.

Certain popular attractions have a visitor capacity limit. Qiyun Mountain had one in the past too, but even Qiyun Mountain's own employees didn't know what it was because it had never been reached—until the ticket-printing employees found the machine prompting that the visitor flow was about to exceed the limit. Only then did they realize that their attraction actually had a visitor capacity limit.

Xu Jian couldn't stop grinning as he looked at the data. Lu Qingyu even received a thank-you video sent by Xu Jian personally.

Lu Qingyu replied politely. This huge windfall made other cities green with envy.

Even the locals couldn't help but joke:

[I go to Qiyun Mountain once a week and have fallen on the third section of steps no less than ten times. This is the first time I've known that carpets could be laid down.]

[As a local, Qiyun Mountain's morning market was gone, and I was depressed for over half a year. I didn't expect it to actually reappear this morning.]

[No way, I came home for the holidays and actually saw a bus going straight to our house, and it's fucking free.]