Chapter 25 - Lying flat at the bottom of this pit and waiting for flowers to bloom.
Edited by Divetus and Noks
The three female anchors hadn’t started their own livestream sessions yet since most entertainment anchors streamed in the evening. Their fans had nowhere to go, so they all rushed to Yu Yan’s livestream. His livestream’s viewer count instantly shot up to 70,000, and the amount of incoming private messages was even more astonishing, already numbering in the thousands.
However, despite having numerous private messages, he still found the one about the doujins—the other party didn’t get a reply and thus had sent him more than 20 private messages in a row, which became very noticeable in his message list.
“Are you there? Can I draw a doujin ill.u.s.tration of you and Boss?”
“When you see this, can you give me a reply?”
“If you don’t reply, I’m going to count it as you just tacitly approving ah.”
Because he had opened these private messages on the computer, all of them were seen by the viewers.
[Wtf, even doujin ill.u.s.trations have appeared. What kind of otherworldly genius stream follower is this?]
[Although I’d like to see the doujin ill.u.s.tration, what’s with this way of talking? If you don’t reply, I’m going to count it as you just tacitly approving? Are they a primary school student?]
Yu Yan replied immediately: No way.
“Are you still playing?” Tuantuan asked.
Yu Yan was preparing to refuse when his QQ suddenly dinged.
Your Great Lord Lu: Holy s.h.i.t, bro, you seemed to have defied the laws of nature?
Yu Yan: ?
Your Great Lord Lu: Your livestream’s current popularity level is 210,000, and it’s being directly showcased on the PUBG category’s popular list on the homepage!
Without having a camera on, StarTV’s algorithm wouldn’t allow you to be placed on the front page recommendations, but the platform wouldn’t impose those limitations for someone who just suddenly shot up in popularity.
Yu Yan was stunned. Although he didn’t know how the 210,000 popularity level was calculated… It was already an amazing number.
His mouse cursor, which was hovering over the leave team b.u.t.ton, immediately stopped.
Right now, on one side was popularity, and on the other side was his life.
“Come on, we’ll play Sanhok this match. My Sanhok game is pretty strong, I can just barely get into the top ten in every match!” No. 1 saw his hesitation and urged him.
Sanhok? Just barely top ten?
It was truly a nightmare.
“… Play.”
Life was precious, and his game reputation even more so, but if it was for stream popularity, both could be thrown away.
He clicked the ready b.u.t.ton, and Tuantuan immediately queued for the match.
But for some reason, even after 30 seconds, they still hadn’t gotten into a match.
No. 2 wondered, “What’s wrong with this ah? Isn’t the queue usually just for a few seconds?”
“I’ll try cancelling it and requeuing us.” Tuantuan asked, “By the way, are you going to partic.i.p.ate in the anchor compet.i.tion ah?”
Yu Yan paused, and after confirming that Tuantuan was asking him, he said, “Don’t know yet.”
Tuantuan seemed to be very familiar with how the platform worked and straightforwardly asked, “Have you received the system’s notification?”
“… Yes.”
“Then, what’s there to hesitate about? Just partic.i.p.ating and getting the Myriads of Lights is good too.”
No. 1 added, “That’s right. Do you have any idea how popular this compet.i.tion is? Because viewers also get rewards during the compet.i.tion, the platform traffic explodes during that period of time. I remember the last year’s ‘Best Anchor of the Year’ was… a male LoL anchor ba? In the half a month of the compet.i.tion alone, the value of the gifts he received exceeded the prize money.”
“k2026;”
Yu Yan’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “Was last year’s prize money the same amount as this year’s?”
“Not exactly, but yeah, it’s almost the same. There’s 20% more this year.”
So, last year’s ‘Best Anchor of the Year’ managed to receive gifts totalling over 800,000 yuan?
With respect to getting gifts, male anchors were always at a disadvantage compared to female anchors. Although they were popular, the amount of gifts received were far less than that of the female anchors in entertainment channels. In half a month, over 800,000 yuan from only giftsk2026; It was already terrifying.
Of course, they didn’t only rely on gift money, it was just a bit of extra income.
Although the chance of winning the prize was very small, getting the recommended position on the front page would help to attract new viewers. It would be very beneficial for him if he got the recommended position after the end of his probation.
Yu Yan was moved.
“Strange, why haven’t we found a match yet?” Tuantuan muttered to herself. “I’ll requeue again.”
As a result, just after Tuantuan cancelled the queue, Yu Yan’s screen froze and only his game character was left in the interface.
Tuantuan asked, “Eh? What happened? I don’t see you guys.”
No. 1 hurriedly said, “Same with me.”
Yu Yan directly relaunched the game. Sure enough, the game showed a “Servers are too busy at the moment” message.
“The server exploded.”
[f.u.c.k! Exploded again?!]
[I really have to hand it to Bluehole. PUBG is so popular right now, but they still haven’t taken advantage of this to properly fix their s.h.i.tty server. It explodes every day. Every single day. How are we supposed to f.u.c.king play?!]
[The gaming experience is so poor. I originally wanted to watch the livestream, but when I came in, I remembered that the server had exploded. Now I can’t even watch the livestream.]
[Waiting for a server to apologize.]
The barrage was full of people either cursing or joking about the servers. It had to be said though, that Bluehole’s servers were actually terrible. This month, it had been slightly better, but last month, the official PUBG Weibo had to apologize every day and every such post was riddled with dislikes.
Since this was the case, Yu Yan also didn’t have to worry about whether to play or not anymore. He was relieved. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it. I’ll close the game…”
No. 1 said, “Wait a minute ah, shall we play something else?”
“Huh? What would we play?”
No. 1 replied, “LoL? I’m a really good support, a big-b.o.o.bed adorable Mei.”
Yu Yan: “…”
He almost choked. “Jie, I’ll call you Jie only once. Don’t be like this, if you keep talking like that, my stream is going to be suspended.”
Recently, the platform’s management had been very particularly strict. Almost all of the livestreams that liked to teeter on the edge of the bannable offenses had been suspended within half a month. Previously, Yu Yan had drawn a stream follower who liked to use dirty language, and before the match was even over, he had received a system warning.
Only upon finally managing to get the three Buddhas to leave did he let out a long sigh of relief.
His cellphone vibrated gently.
1: Anchor compet.i.tion?
Yu Yan: Yes, it’s a compet.i.tion being held by the platform.
1: Oh, are you partic.i.p.ating?
Yu Yan: I… should be partic.i.p.ating ba.
He waited for a long time without receiving a reply, and was about to put down his cellphone when a message popped up.
1: I’ve read through the rules. Most of them are reasonable, you can partic.i.p.ate.
Yu Yan was stunned. He didn’t expect that the other party would go to read the rules for him.
Even he himself was too lazy to read the dozens of rules ah.
Yu Yan: En… the prize is also very rich.
1: Alright.
[What’s the anchor doing? Afking?]
[Probably went to the bathroom, ba.]
“Sorry, something came up.” He snapped out of it and said, “Right, I’ll change servers and see if I can play.”
After switching between several servers successively, Yu Yan found that only the Southeast Asian server was still alive.
[They secretly switched the Southeast Asian server with everyone else’s servers!]
Yu Yan laughed, “Probably.”
The Southeast Asian server was like the other servers’ little brother, and it was also the worst quality server. It had very annoying problems like the constant crashing of the game lobby and frequent in-game lag. The player levels in this server were also the lowest by default. Usually, Yu Yan never played on this server very much.
He took advantage of the wait required to connect to the server and sent a message to 1.
Yu Yan: Are you coming? Southeast Asian server, very suitable for noobs.
1: It’s not convenient. You can play ba, I’ll just watch.
Yu Yan: Okay.
—
Yu Yan acted as a daddy on the Southeast Asian server for the entire day.
Because the Asian servers were fried, the teammates he got matched with were pretty much all Chinese, and there were no problems with communication. He got to eat chicken four times in one afternoon; he was in a very good condition.
At the end of a match, a yellow vest suddenly appeared in the barrage.
[2: Xiao Yan, I’m here. Can I get on your bus?]
“Yes, get on the Southeast Asian server ba.” Yu Yan explained, “The other servers are down and are currently still under maintenance.”
Yi Ran joined the game lobby with a yawn. He had just woken up. “These broken servers are actually so trash. Your friend isn’t coming?”
“He has cla.s.s all day today.”
“Oh, are you guys still students ah?”
Yu Yan laughed, “He is, I’m not.”
“Graduated?” Yi Ran said, “Listening to you, it doesn’t sound like it ah. You sound like a little kid.”
“En.” Yu Yan paused, “Graduated from junior high school.”
“…”
The second young master of the Yi family had basically grown up in a greenhouse, and every person he came into contact with was smarter than the previous one. He didn’t have any qualms when he asked the question, but he didn’t expect to accidentally expose the other person’s shortcomings.
He was about to say something when his cellphone suddenly dinged. He looked down and was astonished——
His Ge actually sent him a WeChat message?!
They had been WeChat friends for three years and it had always been only him sending his Ge messages, while his Ge had never returned the favor.
Not a single message!!
Yi Chen: Just play the game, why do you have to talk so much nonsense?
“…”
Yi Ran looked up and saw Yi Chen’s ID in the viewer list.
Yi Ran: Wait, Ge, aren’t you at the company right now?
Yi Chen didn’t reply again. He tossed his cellphone to the side and stared at the barrage in front of him. His eyes slightly narrowed.
[Just graduated from junior high school? That’s a bit of an exaggeration ba.]
[What’s so strange about that? Many anchors have low educational backgrounds. Otherwise, who else would open up a livestream to get cursed at?]
[But it’s too low. The few that I’ve seen, at least they have a high school education. I thought that only my parents’ generation would have just a junior high school education…]
[Did a junior high school education provoke you? Did it eat all of your family’s rice? Idiot.]
[It’s really true that anyone can be an anchor now.]
Yi Ran’s simple question had triggered an educational background war in the barrage.
Yu Yan glanced at the barrage and softly said, “It’s due to family reasons that I didn’t continue my studies. I also don’t think there are any problems with just having a junior high school education. You guys can laugh at me, but you can’t involve others, or I’ll be suspended. Not everyone’s life is smooth sailing, so learn to be more understanding of each other ba.”
“That’s right!” Yi Ran quickly added, “Don’t quarrel ah, this topic is already over.”
The stream moderator promptly appeared, directly banned all on-screen chat, and kicked out the viewers who had started this war. Soon, the cursing storm was stopped.
Seeing that he had inadvertently caused so much trouble for Yu Yan, Yi Ran felt a little guilty. After all on-screen chat was banned, he tossed out a meteor in compensation.
Because there was only one gift message, those abusive words were still displayed in the chat box. The stream moderator was ready to clear the chat box when the webpage suddenly froze——
[1 has sent a meteor shower to yanxyan’s livestream]
[1 has sent a meteor shower to yanxyan’s livestream]
…
The stream was spammed with meteor showers more than a dozen times, and it didn’t stop until the hurtful words were all pushed out of sight from the chat box.
Yu Yan was stunned. After a while, the on-screen chat ban was automatically lifted, and thousands of lines appeared in the barrage——
[I’m a fan of this CP now. Lying flat at the bottom of this pit and waiting for flowers to bloom.]
[This small gift isn’t much of a tribute, but just count it as my wedding gift for you two.]
[If you like a person, even if you cover your mouth and eyes, love will still pour out of your wallet.]
—
Juurensha: Guys, don’t pick on Yanyan for his education! He has reasons, and he works so hard!
Divi: Educational background doesn’t dictate how well you do in society. Please don’t pick on Yanyan when he has reasons and it’s not because he’s lazy or academically struggling! Boss Yi, you keep doing you!!!
Noks: +1. Yanyan is a very young man who is earning to provide for himself, and he is doing that well, I must say. Education is important, but sometimes life throws you a curveball, and you have to learn to live with it. I can just imagine the struggles that Yanyan must have gone through to reach a stable period in his life right now, and it breaks my heart to think about someone so young (16-18) having to face all that. Worse yet, it’s reflective of reality, where many young people don’t have access to education or simply can’t afford it, because they have to think about fulfilling their and their families’ basic needs first.
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