WS - Chapter 14
Chapter 14
An entire basin of peeled potatoes, soaking in water, looked fresh and innocent, with nothing trap-like about them.
In a livestream variety show like this, it would be lucky if the production staff didn't set obstacles; they absolutely wouldn't do such an anonymous good deed.
It was either Song Shiyue or Yu Nianbing.
This was what Zhuang Jiachuan could figure out the moment he saw the basin of potatoes.
In a livestream show, doing more work could earn more favorable impressions from the audience. Zhuang Jiachuan was well-versed in this and wasn't surprised. In fact, what made him momentarily unable to hide—and even forget—his surprise while on camera was not the sudden appearance of peeled potatoes, but their quantity.
Zhuang Jiachuan stepped forward and fished one out of the water. It was a freshly peeled potato, cleaned so thoroughly that even the tiny dents were spotless. It was clear that the peeler wanted to show the livestream audience her diligence and attention to detail.
But the question was: by peeling a dozen, nearly twenty potatoes all at once, what was she trying to demonstrate?
Her wastefulness?
Zhuang Jiachuan found it hard to understand.
Then, who could it be?
Was it Yu Nianbing, who had other plans for dinner tonight?
Or was it Song Shiyue, trying to create a topic by taking an unconventional route?
But no matter who it was, there was always work she couldn't steal...
Zhuang Jiachuan's peripheral vision swept over the fridge, one thought after another flashing through his mind, but his face kept its smile. Even when looking at the potato, his eyes held a hint of approval, and a trace—visible only with extreme attention—of something like resigned fondness.
Who said that what audiences see in a reality show are the real artists?
Maybe it's just real, living people performing a show.
No matter how advanced livestream technology is now, it still can't broadcast a person's inner thoughts.
On StarNet, the viewers staking out "The Wilderness Journey" livestream page had no idea that Zhuang Jiachuan, with his genial smile, was actually not happy at all.
Just as Zhuang Jiachuan didn't know that his confidence was actually fragile, nor that the person he was silently sizing up had already attracted far more viewers than he expected during that short nap of his.
The show "The Wilderness Journey" was to be livestreamed for over ten full days, so naturally not every viewer had time to stay glued to the page that long. So besides the livestream, the production team also released a daily highlight cut, though it wouldn't go up until midnight each day, limited to under an hour. Of course, if viewers paid, they could access all camera angles' footage from the full 24 hours. But both of those could only be accessed after the day ended.
However, there was another viewing method worth mentioning.
You see, with this kind of full-day, multi-day livestream, the biggest worry was that viewers might get busy in the middle, and when they came back hours later, they couldn't follow what was happening. The screen would be flooded with danmaku asking what happened, and not all questions got clear answers, which naturally lowered the viewing experience.
When viewing experience dropped, churn rate rose. If no one did anything, maybe most viewers would end up only watching the edited version, and the only ones left on the livestream page would be a small portion—fans of the participants.
For a show, the participants' fans are of course the target audience. But a show that relies solely on fans cannot achieve great success.
To address this inevitable problem of missing parts in such a livestream, the production team of "The Wilderness Journey" made some adjustments.
Once the participants' livestream began, as the show progressed, each participant's more important or interesting actions would be recorded and added to a small column beside their livestream window interface. Depending on what they did, the outcome, or the nature of it, different colors were used for the text, and some were even turned into clickable links—this is the third way to catch up on previous events, which we'll talk about later.
Take Zhuang Jiachuan, who was holding a potato and smiling right now: in the small column beside his livestream page, there were two lines of text.
One was black, reading [Made Italian pasta, tuna chicken breast salad, vegetable juice]
And the other, somewhat interesting, read [Peel potatoes (Failure)]
Next to the black characters "Peel potatoes" were red parentheses and the word "Failure".
Both lines were clickable links. This was the third way to catch up, as mentioned earlier, for viewers who hadn't watched continuously but didn't want to miss important plot points, so they could continue watching seamlessly.
Clicking on one naturally led to the video of Zhuang Jiachuan making lunch at noon, selected from his best camera angle, with Yu Nianbing and Song Shiyue occasionally appearing in frame.
Clicking the other, however, brought up a video spliced from three segments. The first segment, from Yu Nianbing's camera, caught her saying they'd make dapanji for dinner, and Zhuang Jiachuan volunteering to peel the potatoes. The third segment was Zhuang Jiachuan entering the kitchen after his nap, seeing the big basin of peeled potatoes, and his unguarded look of surprise.
The first and last segments were very short. The second segment, taken from Song Shiyue's camera angle in the middle, was a bit long.
In the second segment, viewers could see that after a short nap, Song Shiyue got up and went into the kitchen alone. She first weighed the two potatoes Zhuang Jiachuan had left on the counter, then opened the fridge and took out the remaining two. Then, Song Shiyue seemed somewhat troubled, staring at the four potatoes for a while, but finally, after glancing at the trash can, her expression shifted from troubled to resolute.
At this point, watching, it just looked like Song Shiyue wanted to make a good impression by going to the kitchen early to work.
But unexpectedly, that resolute expression became a long-distance iron fist, and soon, it flew right up to their eyes, smashing their drowsiness to pieces.
They watched with wide-open eyes as Song Shiyue made her way, winding around, to find the staff member who had led her onto the spaceship, and then, in the face of that person's shock, proposed... increasing the fridge's ingredients.
They watched as that staff member, under Song Shiyue's persistent coaxing and pestering—with the argument that they should be allowed to eat their fill before entering Wilderness Planet—took her to meet the ship's warehouse manager.
They watched... as Song Shiyue returned to the kitchen, one hand carrying a sack of potatoes, the other carrying two chickens and a pack of seasonings.
Perhaps from keeping their eyes open so long, the viewers who had missed their afternoon nap were no longer sleepy...
And soon, Song Shiyue left the kitchen, with a new line appearing in her small column: [Peeled 21 potatoes].
Of course, the video linked to this black text was the same as the red [Peel potatoes (Failure)] in Zhuang Jiachuan's column.
The small column next to each person's livestream window could be set to show only the current artist's important matters, or to show all participants' important matters. Some of these items, turned into clickable links, became an effective way for viewers to quickly catch up on missed important events in the livestream. It was clearly a two-birds-one-stone approach, increasing viewer stickiness while also steering certain topics for more discussion.
Where there is a first, there is a second.
Where there is success, there is failure.
A matter of just a few potatoes, turned into two lines hung on the page, seemed to magnify its significance far beyond the potatoes themselves.
Zhuang Jiachuan's fans were initially unbothered, but as soon as he entered the kitchen and the production gave him a "Failure" label for peeling potatoes, they immediately sprang to attack.
You have to understand, all these years, Zhuang Jiachuan had his ups and downs—no, wait, it was up, down, down, down, down, down, down... As his fans, they were naturally protective, and they would not allow anyone to climb over their brother.
Even though Zhuang Jiachuan had more failures than successes over the years, he was still a Golden Planet Award-winning actor, with far more fans than Song Shiyue. If they couldn't out-fight Yu Nianbing's fans during the meal, that was one thing, but Song Shiyue's fans were nothing in their eyes.
However, they had lost the initiative.
Earlier, when that dainty, delicate-looking girl who seemed like she'd never done a chore in her life came back from the ship's warehouse carrying a sack of potatoes in one hand and unflinchingly holding two raw chickens and seasonings in the other, walking lightly all the way back—it was both down-to-earth and adorably unexpected, earning a wave of goodwill from passersby. And because many artists' windows were on afternoon break, only Song Shiyue's had something to watch, so many passersby stopped by and stayed.
And because she nimbly peeled half a sack of potatoes, leaving people puzzled about what she was going to do, the discussion there grew heated, and it was still lively when Zhuang Jiachuan's fans charged over.
After a messy fight, Zhuang Jiachuan's fans were somewhat surprised to find that... the opponents were unexpectedly numerous. But that's a story for later.
The chaos caused by twenty-one potatoes outside was unknown to the people on the ship.
At least Zhuang Jiachuan didn't take it seriously.
It's just peeling some potatoes; little girls can only do this kind of thing.
When it came time to handle the chickens, they'd still have to rely on him.
Thinking this, Zhuang Jiachuan just looked at the potato, smiled, put it down, and went back to his room, planning to return after everyone else was up.
That whole chicken in the fridge, looking so plump, would be counting on him.
The viewers watching the livestream had no idea what Zhuang Jiachuan was thinking. If they could know, they would probably loudly tell him that the number of fat chickens waiting for him in the fridge had changed from one to three.
On Beichen Planet, Wang Mancang, who had just finished catching up on the videos in the three participants' small columns from the ship departing Beichen Planet, rubbed his plump belly and sighed, regretting that he should have brought a couple packs of flatbread for Song Shiyue to eat before boarding the ship.
How long had it been? Already three chickens and twenty-one potatoes perfectly arranged?
Did Yu Nianbing and Zhuang Jiachuan look like they could each eat a whole chicken and seven potatoes?
It was all a plot... In the end, one person would polish it all off anyway.
Wang Mancang was a bit worried, but soon, after clicking on a StarNet video request, he went from a bit worried to quite worried.
"Found Li Longsheng," the man in the video, his face half-covered, said bluntly.
"At a casino?" Wang Mancang frowned. He didn't know what had been going on with Song Shiyue in the past, but her mother hadn't even let her take her father's surname—wasn't that enough to show that her mother, while alive, didn't want her to have much to do with this man?
"No, at a Blue House." The man's visible eyes were full of contempt.
"What?" Wang Mancang, who had been sprawled on the sofa, sat up in shock.
"So what do you say? He doesn't seem too deep in yet—should we stop him?" the man asked again.
Wang Mancang was silent for a long time.
What kind of place is a Blue House?
This pleasant-sounding name actually has no fixed address.
It is a general term for illegal drug dens.
So gambling could no longer satisfy Li Longsheng?
"So? This stuff is one hit one addiction. If you want to stop him, you'd better decide quickly. I'll need time to arrange things on my end," the man dutifully reminded his employer.
Wang Mancang thought of Song Shiyue's suicide note. Disappointment in her father, despair toward life...
And he thought of a few days ago, when he had taken Song Shiyue and those borrowed funds to pay off the two private loans, and the sincerity in her eyes when she promised she would never again have anything to do with that father.
"Hmph, why bother with him? Am I his father or are you?" Wang Mancang hardened his heart. "Don't let him gamble; otherwise, do whatever. When he reaches the point where he can enter a rehab facility, let me know."
"Oh?" The man seemed slightly surprised, but quickly smiled. "Got it."
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