novelraw Chapter 950 Live Broadcast
Chapter 950 Live Broadcast
The door of a Mercedes parked on the roadside was opened and then closed.
Zhao Lingshan looked through the car window at the person still lying on the ground in the distance and said, "What did you say to him? Why are you crying like this... Are you thinking of committing suicide?"
"No, you know Yang Dan's temper. If it weren't for his sister, I wouldn't have bothered saying so much. I hope he won't let Yang Qing down..." Chen Xi shook her head.
"How come you're acting like someone else's father now? I remember when we were in school, you and Yang Dan used to fight all the time. But then again, Yang Dan was spoiled rotten from a young age, always thinking he had too much money to burn. There's still a long road ahead of him, will what his family left him be enough for him to live on..." Zhao Lingshan recalled.
"Who knows? They should be able to make a living, right? After all, the Yang family made so much money before, and not all of it was illegal, like that food factory. I've heard that the factory now belongs to Three Pine Trees, and Yang Dan is a shareholder... Knowing Yang Dingtian's personality, he definitely won't just leave his son a share; he'll probably transfer the land to Yang Dan to keep her shareholder position. But Three Pine Trees is just so-so. Live-streaming e-commerce will become more and more popular, and the factory's profits will decrease. If Yang Dan can't hold on, she can sell the land..." Chen Xi stroked his chin.
He remembered that in his previous life, the profits of Three Pine Trees plummeted, and with the competition from Chen Shubao's ChaCha sunflower seeds, things probably weren't going to be much better.
"Alright, let's drive." Chen Xi snapped his fingers.
It takes less than two hours to drive from Qilin City to Xinlu.
"Sigh, I was planning to stay at a hotel tonight, but unfortunately I brought two little tagalongs with me." Zhao Lingshan held the reel and glanced at the rearview mirror.
Saori and Kim Nana were squinting at the two people in front of them.
"Heh, I knew all along your little schemes." Saori sneered.
"Two against one is no fun. I'll find a helper another day." Zhao Lingshan turned around and made a face at the two women behind her.
She's been feeling really frustrated these past few days; she can't win an argument with two people.
"Hehe, find another one? Chen Xi wouldn't agree, right, darling?" Saori sat up and secretly pinched the waist of the man in the passenger seat.
"Uh...uh...drive quickly, my eyes suddenly hurt a little, I need to go back and rest." Chen Xi immediately pointed ahead.
As the Mercedes-Benz merged into the main road, the night scene of this small county town of Qilin City appeared particularly desolate.
The young and middle-aged labor force in third- and fourth-tier cities has long been siphoned off by big cities, leaving behind a bunch of empty reinforced concrete buildings and noisy contract factories. It's hard to find even a ghost on the wide streets.
As the car entered an underpass, the strange scenery along the roadside immediately caught the attention of the four people inside.
Under the dim streetlights, a dozen or so young girls with heavy makeup sat in rows on both sides of the tunnel.
Each person had a tripod in front of them, their phone screen emitting a faint blue light, and a ring of bright lights shining behind them.
"What's going on here? A night market specializing in Qilin City?" Zhao Lingshan stepped on the brakes, slowed down, and curiously peered out the car window.
"Setting up a street stall in this godforsaken place, what are you trying to sell to ghosts?" Saori and Kim Nana wondered.
"This is a live broadcast outdoors. Look over there, there's another girl dancing wildly in front of the camera." Chen Xi lowered the car window a little and pointed to a girl in a short skirt dancing energetically in the cold wind not far away.
"How much money can you make by squatting on the curb and doing a live stream?" Zhao Lingshan asked, looking completely bewildered.
She wasn't unfamiliar with the live streaming industry; she knew that MCN agencies would partition off individual pigeonholes in office buildings, hang pink curtains, and pretend to be the boudoirs of rich young ladies.
She had never seen anything like this before, where they would move their live stream directly into an underground passage to inhale car exhaust fumes.
"Because the shady contracts and deceptive tactics of these organizations have long been exposed, these people are afraid of being fleeced, so they simply went solo. These days, it's all about the attention economy. Even you rich young ladies driving by in your Mercedes would be attracted by this spectacle, not to mention the bored netizens online. As long as there's novelty, there will be traffic. These people dream of getting rich overnight, but they're just free labor in the platform's code. Occasionally, a few lucky internet celebrities will emerge, but they'll eventually be ensnared and reduced to mere tools for monetization... In the end, to become a god, you have to boost your data first. Without boosting data, how can you become a god? Boosting data also requires investment. How many of these street streamers have that kind of money?" Chen Xi rolled up the car window again, shutting out the noise outside.
“That’s true, you know a lot about these things. Right now, the hottest live streaming platform is yours, oh my god!” Zhao Lingshan nodded after listening.
After saying that, she added, "But Douyin is also very popular now."
"I also invested in that..."
Chen Xi touched his nose.
Having been reborn, Chen Xi naturally wouldn't let go of the Douyin platform. Not only him, but even Feng Jialun was one of the shareholders.
However, because the Tianya Forum didn't shut down in this life, and even started a live streaming project, Douyin's traffic wasn't as high as in the previous life.
To be honest, Chen Xi doesn't really like short videos or live streams. These fast-paced, fragmented pieces of content make people restless and increasingly impatient.
The dopamine mechanism, which delivers a stimulus every few seconds, is grinding a person's patience to shreds like a meat grinder.
But capital never considers personal preferences; it only looks at financial statements and data.
The market feedback is incredibly honest; this high-frequency, fragmented pleasure is precisely the best-selling painkiller in today's society.
Because people seem very busy these days, Chen Xi doesn't understand what they're busy with.
He still remembers when he was in school, everyone could get together and play games for an entire afternoon, or stay up all night to finish reading those long online novels, or even sit in front of the TV on time to watch a TV series.
The young people on the street now look hurried and exhausted.
They seem to be spinning like tops every day, but no one knows what they're actually busy with.
After getting off work and returning to their rented rooms, their only action is to slump heavily into the cheap sofa, letting the blue light from their phone screens illuminate their numb faces.
The finger slides mechanically across the ground, and if it can't catch the eyeball in three seconds, it simply scrolls away.
Let alone watching a two-hour movie, even playing a twenty-minute game can drain their last bit of energy.
All aspirations, ambitions, and desires for the future seem to have been squeezed dry by the juicer of life, leaving only the slight muscle memory of mechanically swiping the screen with your thumb.
“I find this quite interesting. Look, this road is full of women doing live streams, but over there are two men. Hmm, these two look quite alike, are they twins?” Zhao Lingshan slowed down and stopped the car after passing a certain point.
"What's so interesting? Do you want to find Chen Xi a few more women? Look at those women outside, their skirts are practically up to the sky." Saori crossed her arms and pouted. "Yeah, didn't I just say I wanted to find a helper?" Zhao Lingshan retorted, nudging Chen Xi with her finger, indicating whether he wanted to go down and take a look.
Chen Xi didn't want to get out of the car, but the two people Zhao Lingshan had just pointed to caught his attention.
"Let's go down and take a look. It'll be nice to enjoy the night breeze." Chen Xi opened the car door.
"I bet you just want to enjoy the breeze and maybe pick a wildflower," Jin Nana said sarcastically, but she still followed them down. Actually, she was also curious to see what these people were livestreaming.
The four strolled along the edge of the underpass. Most of the female anchors along the way were dressed scantily and were wildly swaying their hips in front of the camera.
Most female live streamers either sing or dance; you could say they have any other talents, but they almost never do. However, their singing is still listenable because they have built-in sound cards.
Having a sound card is like having backup singers in a karaoke bar; as long as it's not too outrageous, it can fool many laymen.
“We used to make funny videos, we haven’t done much live streaming. I just took a look around, and those women’s live streams have more fans than ours,” Zhang Feng said, squatting on the ground with a sigh.
“Then we should definitely do it. We just talked about doing live streaming in the karaoke bar, and nobody believed us. My cousin didn’t explicitly say he would invest in us either. I thought about it, and it’s because we haven’t achieved anything yet. Now we need to convert those fans who watch our videos into viewers in our live streams.” Zhang Yun sounded very confident.
"The problem is that most people nowadays like to watch things that are borderline," Zhang Feng said, pointing to the girls twisting and turning in the distance.
“Then we’ll wipe it too!” Zhang Yun said with a smirk.
"Huh?" Zhang Feng's jaw almost dropped to his feet.
Two minutes later, the simple live broadcast room officially started broadcasting.
Zhang Feng stood in a horse stance, gripping a rough carrying pole tightly with both hands, keeping it upright on the cement ground.
Zhang Yun took a deep breath, climbed onto the carrying pole with both hands, and began to vigorously twist around the agricultural "steel pipe" with all his might.
As he twisted his body, he would occasionally glance at the scantily clad female anchors next to him, mimicking their movements and throwing out rough, seductive winks at the camera.
"Family members! Welcome to the live stream of the three sheep! Today, Big Sheep and Little Sheep are here to bring you the top specialty of our hometown, Qilin Melon Seeds!" Zhang Yun shouted into the camera, biting his lip as he did so.
As the eye-searing scene unfolded, the number of viewers in the live stream began to jump upwards in an illogical manner.
The number of viewers quickly climbed from dozens to hundreds, and the screen was instantly flooded with question marks.
"I'm offering a hefty sum for a pair of eyes I've never seen before."
"What kind of supernatural talent is this? Watching two energetic young men from the village entrance perform pole dancing in the middle of the night?"
"Hey streamer, aren't there just two of you? Why are you calling it three?"
Seeing the interaction in the live chat, Zhang Yun slid his hands up and down on the carrying pole, twisting it even more energetically: "Family, there's another sheep on its way! If you all manage to snag these seven Lin Melon Seeds today, next time we'll have three sheep and give you something even more exciting!"
The number of viewers in the live stream immediately exceeded one thousand.
The fluctuating numbers allowed the two brothers to completely let loose.
Zhang Yun threw off his coat and twisted around like a mudfish just pulled from the water.
Zhang Feng's face turned red, and the veins on his arms bulged as he desperately pressed the swaying carrying pole firmly to the ground.
A female anchor in a tight short skirt stopped and quietly approached in her high heels.
She peeked at the number of online users on Zhang Yun's phone screen, her eyes widened instantly, and her previously sweet voice broke down on the spot.
"Good heavens, when men get cocky, we women are no match for them. I was wiggling my hips for ages, and there were fewer viewers than these two idiots with their carrying poles!" The female anchor rolled her eyes and walked back to her stand, grumbling.
Not far away, the four people who had watched the whole thing from the cold wind fell into a long silence.
"Is this what you called... the secret to traffic in lower-tier markets?" Zhao Lingshan rubbed her temples, her lips twitching.
Chen Xi looked at the two skinny, dark-skinned boys writhing wildly through his sunglasses, a slight smile playing on his lips.
"Regardless of whether the approach is unconventional or not, anything that grabs attention is the future cash cow," Chen Xi said with a smile as he smoked.
"Family members, all of today's Qilin Melon Seed tea has been sold out in seconds! We need to hurry back to the village to see if the villagers still have any left. Thank you all for your support, that's all for today!" Zhang Yun bowed repeatedly to the screen, then pressed the close button.
He let out a long sigh, wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, and was just about to help his brother clean up the tripod on the ground when he heard a man's voice from above.
"That's quite an unconventional approach. How was that performance just now?"
Zhang Yun looked up and immediately saw Chen Xi wearing sunglasses, as well as three outstanding beauties who were half a step behind.
He glanced again at the black Mercedes with its hazard lights flashing in the distance, and immediately labeled Chen Xi in his mind as a "talent scout boss of a major guild".
"Boss, our numbers are absolutely amazing! We just started broadcasting less than ten minutes ago, and the number of viewers online has already exceeded one thousand. Hundreds of tea orders sold out instantly!" Zhang Yun puffed out his thin chest and rubbed his hands together enthusiastically.
"The results are not bad. So where did you get this melon seed soup from? Since the traffic is so good, why did you end the broadcast so quickly?" Chen Xi exhaled a puff of white smoke, his gaze falling on the carrying pole that had been thrown aside.
"The tea leaves were all processed by the villagers themselves. We stopped broadcasting because we really ran out of stock and had to hurry back to check our inventory. If we couldn't fulfill orders, we would lose face completely," Zhang Feng, an honest man, answered truthfully, scratching the back of his head.
"What if the village's tea leaves are completely sold out, or if the weather is bad and production is reduced? What will you use for live streaming in the future?" Chen Xi flicked his cigarette ash.
“That’s easy! We can partner with farmers in other villages to sell other fruits and vegetables. Once we’ve built up a reputation, we can even directly source from large food factories!” Zhang Yun interjected, his dark, thin face full of anticipation for the future.
"Connecting with food factories? Who will control the product quality then? What if you're selling braised pork belly with preserved mustard greens, boasting that it's top-quality pork belly, only to find the buyer receives inferior pork offal? Or what if you're selling mooncakes, claiming they're high-end imported goods, only to discover the customer eats a low-quality product from a small domestic workshop? What are you going to do then?" Chen Xi asked again. (End of Chapter)