Monster Cub Live Stream – CH12

Chapter 12

By the time she got home, it was already noon.

Shi Xiaoxing hurriedly stuffed half a bag of leftover dry rations from the morning into her mouth and counted that as lunch.

She lived in a tiny single-room apartment in an apartment building—one bedroom, one living room, no private bathroom, no kitchen, no balcony. The only good thing was that the living room window was large enough, and the lighting was quite good.

Shi Xiaoxing both ate and slept in the cramped bedroom, while the living room had been simply converted into a small indoor garden for growing fruits, vegetables, and greenery.

Actually, when she had first arrived on Sin Star, her savings had been enough for her to rent a detached house with a small outdoor yard in the inner city.

At the time, she really had rented such a little villa, turning the downstairs yard into a vegetable patch and the upstairs balcony into a sky garden.

But over the years, her career had been going steadily downhill. Not only had she failed to make money, even the savings in her hand had quickly run dry.

At first, Shi Xiaoxing could still afford to buy high-quality seeds soaked in nutrient solution from the inner city. But now, even for the lowest-grade seeds, she had to haggle with shop owners, and sometimes even join group purchases with others just to get the extra freebies.

As for the reason, it was very simple—she had developed Alpha Syndrome. Her symptoms were very unusual, a condition called ability imbalance.

Simply put, her ability would weaken bit by bit until, in the end, she would become an ordinary person with no ability at all.

Shi Xiaoxing had not given up. So what if she no longer had a plant-type ability? It only meant she no longer had an ability—it was not as though every plant in the world had gone extinct. Her love for farming would not disappear just because her ability did.

But the reality was that Sin Star’s soil was simply too poor. Without a plant-type ability, growing anything on Sin Star was more or less impossible.

At the beginning, her ability had not yet fully faded. Relying on that little remaining power, she could still grow some things, and she managed to carve out a path for herself in Sin Star livestreaming, becoming a somewhat well-known streamer.

But half a year ago, she completely lost all sensation of her ability’s fluctuations.

From then on, her livestream was filled with ridicule and abuse, and her popularity dropped rapidly. Of the people who still stayed in her stream every day, more than half were there just to watch her make a fool of herself.

Shi Xiaoxing knew very well that among those people, there were definitely some members of the Shi family deliberately steering the atmosphere. But now, she no longer had the power to slap them in the face with her own strength.

The Shi family was one of the Empire’s ancient noble houses, specializing in botany and cultivation, and many plant-type ability users and botanical experts had come from the family.

Shi Xiaoxing was the eldest daughter of her generation, and from childhood her parents had placed great hopes on her. Yet during the usual awakening age of three to eight, she showed no signs of awakening at all.

Because of that, the expectations and affection her parents had once placed on her shifted to her younger brother instead. He was only two years younger than her and awakened a plant-type ability right at the age limit of eight.

Shi Xiaoxing became the one who was ignored. Her parents overlooked her, and the older relatives in the family were full of disappointment whenever they spoke of her.

Even those of the same generation grew accustomed to putting her down and bullying her in order to curry favor with her younger brother, simply because Shi Youchen disliked her, and Shi Youchen had already been tacitly acknowledged as the Shi family’s next leader.

Shi Xiaoxing had long since grown used to all of this.

Until the year she turned sixteen, when she suddenly experienced a delayed awakening and gained a plant-type ability.

This world was just like that: it would give you a glimmer of hopeful light once you had grown used to the darkness, only to snatch it away again before you could truly grasp it.

Less than half a month after awakening her ability, Shi Xiaoxing was diagnosed with Alpha. Her newly awakened power began to weaken and leak away little by little—and at the time, she had not even had the chance to register it with the Empire’s Ability Bureau.

From hope to despair took no more than a dozen short days.

Shi Xiaoxing drank a cup of water. The dry rations she had just swallowed swelled in her stomach, quickly satisfying the gnawing hunger.

Her task for the afternoon was to sow the newly bought seeds.

The not-too-large living room was filled with flowerpots of all sizes. Nearly all of them sat empty. Only in the small pot near the bedroom door was there still one tomato vine growing—or rather, barely clinging to life—withered yellow, blackened, and almost impossible to call alive.

It was the last remaining plant from a batch of tomatoes she had grown half a year ago. Everything else had died, leaving only this single vine hanging on to its final breath.

Shi Xiaoxing watered the tomato vine a little, then began planting the seeds bit by bit with serious care.

The virtual camera floated at her side. On the livestream, her delicate profile was reflected clearly. The girl’s movements were practiced and gentle, and even when a streak of dirt accidentally smudged her cheek, it did not make her look messy or dirty at all. Instead, she carried a kind of quiet peace, as though time itself had slowed.

And yet the bullet comments in the livestream remained chaotic and harsh.

Shi Xiaoxing had already learned not to look at them. She quietly did what she needed to do, and only when the sky outside had turned dark and her stomach began protesting fiercely did she finally finish today’s planting.

There was still one tiny flowerpot left empty in the corner of the living room. Shi Xiaoxing took out the daisy seeds from her pocket and buried them in the little pot.

Her movements were so gentle they seemed like the caress of a beloved face.

After watering the daisy seeds, Shi Xiaoxing’s terminal suddenly gave a chime.

She turned slightly to block the virtual camera, opened the terminal, and glanced at it—then her expression abruptly froze.

There was an internal message waiting in her Sin Star backend, sent by Chang Feng, the manager who had represented her over these three years as a streamer. The title of the message was four bolded words in large capital letters:

[TERMINATION NOTICE]

Shi Xiaoxing opened the message and stood there stunned for a long while.

Of course. She had already been on Sin Star for three years. Back then, the contract she signed with Chang Feng had been for three years. Now that the contract had expired, termination seemed like the natural outcome.

Three years ago, Chang Feng had still been a rookie manager. It was only after Shi Xiaoxing gained some popularity through her farming streams that Chang Feng’s own career rose with hers, until he became the veteran manager he was today.

Shi Xiaoxing still remembered that back then, Chang Feng had said she was his lucky star, and that even when the contract ended, he would never terminate with her.

Now, times had changed, and that old promise had turned into a joke.

Shi Xiaoxing lowered her eyes and, without hesitation, signed the digital termination form and sent it back to Chang Feng.

Let it end like this, she thought.

Reality and dreams were, in the end, never the same. Her stubbornness over these years had to come to a close sooner or later. It was time for her to wake from the dream and return to reality.

Shi Xiaoxing closed the bedroom door, buried her face deeply into the pillow, and under the blanket her body trembled in fine, silent shivers.

The virtual camera, forgotten outside the bedroom, still hovered dutifully in the living room, continuing to film the flowerpots of all sizes.

Night fell.

The virtual camera seemed to notice something and turned toward the smallest flowerpot.

[Why did the camera stop moving?]

[Huh? Is there something in the soil of the little pot? [rubbing eyes gif]]

[It looks kind of green…]

[Probably some trash blew in there. Don’t make a fuss.]

[First option ruled out: definitely not sprouting. [doge jpg]]

…

[Wait! Holy shit!! It really seems to have sprouted!!!]

Lin An’an dragged Feng Wu and Xiong Yingjun into working overtime. One wolf, one bear, and one cub bustled around the courtyard for the entire afternoon, and only just before dark did they manage to bury all the newly purchased seeds in the soil.

A full day of painstaking, gradual stimulation had once again used up almost all of the ability Lin An’an had only just managed to recover.

The little cub sprawled limply across the wolf’s back, holding a bunny-shaped cookie in his tiny tentacles and slowly replenishing his energy.

Bullet comments flew rapidly across the livestream. At a glance, the whole screen was filled with people fawning over the cub, peaceful and harmonious as though all was well in the world.

After finishing the cookie, Lin An’an waved a tentacle at the virtual camera in farewell and ended the all-day livestream.

Once the livestream was closed, Lin An’an suddenly noticed that a little red light was blinking in his Sin Star backend—someone had sent him an internal message.

During the livestream, Lin An’an had kept his terminal on silent mode the whole time, so he had not noticed it right away.

The moment he saw the title, the little cub instinctively rubbed his eyes—

[Invitation to Sign]

Back in human form, Xiong Yingjun leaned over curiously and let out a puzzled eh. “Didn’t they reject your application before? Why are they suddenly taking the initiative to invite you to sign today?”

Lin An’an opened the message and read it. [It’s not the same manager. The one who rejected me yesterday was ‘Chang Feng.’ Today it’s a manager called ‘Ying Youyou.’]

Xiong Yingjun did not really understand. “What difference does that make?”

After searching the discussion boards, Feng Wu said, “Chang Feng is a veteran manager. Ying Youyou is a newly arrived manager. Their seniority is different, and so are the ranking slots and promotional resources they have in hand. A veteran manager’s resources are definitely better.”

Xiong Yingjun gave an oh. “Then don’t sign with that… whatever Youyou person. If the resources are bad, there’s no future in signing anyway.”

Before he had even finished speaking, Lin An’an swiftly signed his name on the contract.

The little cub blinked innocently. “Yingji!”

Who cares about all that? Sign first, worry later!

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