Chapter 97: The Bandit Catcher Goes Viral in Promotion

That evening, Xiao He's short video went viral explosively, reaching over ten million views and a million likes within just a few hours, becoming the top trending topic on Douyin that day.A massive wave of fans flooded into the comments section.

The funniest part was Pu Rong, who left a string of question marks in the comments section after Xiao He posted his video.

Soon after, Pu Rong also filmed a video.

In the video, Pu Rong dressed even more casually—just an old man's undershirt and shorts—gripping the long sword he used while filming as Jiang Rushu. He used the same background music as Xiao He, but instead of cutting meat, Pu Rong drew his sword and performed various elegant sword flourishes.

When the music reached its climax, a shower of petals poured into the frame from off-camera. Pu Rong's sword swept horizontally in a swift motion, and the video frame once again split apart following the sharp blade's path. Two perfectly sliced petals slowly descended onto the sword blade in slow motion, while reflected in the silver-glinting sword behind them were Jiang Rushu's eyes, filled with unrestrained laughter, exactly like his character's first appearance in the film.

As expected, Pu Rong's video also went viral.

Even though neither of them did any costume changes, just that one close-up shot of the eyes was enough to make people instantly recognize their characters. This direct demonstration of acting skill left an especially deep impression.

What's more, both videos contained genuine substance—Xiao He's Bone-Cleaving Knife Technique and Pu Rong's sword skills were both their characters' signature abilities in "Thief Catcher," and simultaneously represented their actual real-life skills, which made people admire them even more.

After Pu Rong, other cast members of "Thief Catcher" successively uploaded videos. While their video quality wasn't as eye-catching as Xiao He and Pu Rong's, they still attracted many casual viewers. Particularly notable was an actor who played a thief catcher wielding a meteor hammer—this actor was also found by Pu Rong and was originally a weightlifter. His video showed him first lifting what appeared to be an extremely heavy barbell, then putting it down and single-handedly swinging a large iron ball toward the camera.

However, because he didn't control his strength properly, the camera lens actually got smashed in the end.

The actor even @mentioned Director Lin Yipeng in the comments, sincerely asking if his phone counted as promotional work injury.

While netizens were laughing hysterically, they only cared about one question—

Following these viral videos, Douyin sparked a wave of imitation trends.

Some imitated this editing style. For example, a pet blogger filmed themselves being bullied, then raised their hand to signal, where a fierce and handsome giant dog leaped across the screen in slow motion, using the dog's body to "slice through" the frame. Behind the dog, the blogger showed a proud and pleasantly surprised expression.

There were many similar videos like this, even spreading to areas like anime cosplay. Beyond this, people gradually began studying Xiao He's Bone-Cleaving Knife Technique frame by frame, attempting to make it into a challenge, but almost all ended in failure. One blogger refused to believe it was impossible and persistently tried to learn and imitate, only to twist their wrist while swinging the knife, resulting in a hairline fracture—both hilarious and pitiful.

All these videos carried tags like #ThiefCatcherChallenge and #BoneCleavingKnifeChallenge, invisibly bringing tremendous heat to "Thief Catcher," spreading from Douyin to other social media platforms. The scale of this promotion even far exceeded that of other theatrically released films.

As this popularity grew, more and more people went to Penguin Video to see what kind of charm "Thief Catcher" possessed.

Once they stepped in, they couldn't get out.