The End of the Universe Is Live-Streaming E-commerce – CH16

Chapter 16: The 16th Day of Livestream Selling

Yes, His Highness Reinhardt’s long-awaited streamer, Lin Salted Fish, had finally gone live.

How did Adjutant Carlos know?

Because he was the one who reminded him.

Originally, he had only been slacking off with his optical computer when he was not busy, as usual, wanting to see what new gossip the family members on StarNet had shared today. In the end, with one upward swipe, he saw a familiar black-haired young man leap into view before his eyes.

Beautiful. Quiet.

Like the grain on lacquerware, hiding its beautiful luster within the layered transition from black to blue-green.

Of course, the Yasa star system was vast, and its territory was still constantly expanding. It would never lack good-looking beauties. The reason Adjutant Carlos had continued paying attention to this person was only because his superior and friend, Reinhardt, had been far too obviously abnormal.

He had originally intended to treat Lin Zhao as part of his work.

But then…

Somehow, he ended up watching seriously.

To be honest, Lin Zhao’s livestream this time, which had been started on a whim, did not contain anything particularly special. It was just the process of him and Qin Xiaoman packing goods.

This idea had actually been casually mentioned by Qin Xiaoman’s older sister, Qin Lixia.

“Why don’t you just livestream your work?”

Just like some people livestreamed their renovation process, some livestreamed their whole family making a large amount of a single type of food together, and others filmed their daily stall business revenue, every kind of livestream would have its audience. It only depended on whether you could match someone’s brainwaves.

Qin Lixia felt that the process of sorting goods had a similar effect to those immersive organization videos. She found it very hard to explain why watching a scene of chaos become orderly through step-by-step sorting gave her such a strong sense of comfort. She could only say that organization and stockpiling videos were like entertainment speed bumps for her. Every time she swiped to one, she would definitely stop smoothly and watch the video from beginning to end.

And she believed this could not possibly be just her own unique little hobby.

As a P-type person, Qin Xiaoman completely could not understand this. But he still actively suggested it to his friend based on the principle of: whether they livestreamed or not, they had to work anyway, so why not turn something that could earn one sum of money into two?

And Lin Zhao readily accepted.

Because…

It was just adding a camera. Who would not like padding out some streaming hours?

1114 had specifically reminded Lin Zhao before that as long as his monthly livestream hours reached thirty hours, the transaction service fee on the mainframe’s side could be partially waived. The longer the livestream time, the higher the waiver ratio. Lin Zhao would not deliberately work hard for this, but since there was an opportunity to pad the hours, naturally he would not push away benefits that had landed in his hands.

Besides, Lin Zhao had indeed not gone live for a very long time. So long that ever since learning he had “annexed” the little supermarket next door, his aunt, who had always worried he would lose money doing business, had already tried three times to find various excuses to stuff money into his hands.

To reassure his aunt, Ms. Lin Mingzhu, and also conveniently let the Kaman customers supervise their assembly line, Lin Zhao took the opportunity to start streaming.

He did not think this kind of livestream content could attract many viewers. At least as the person doing the packing, he felt this work was rather dull. Probably only his own aunt could watch it. Oh, no, Qin Xiaoman’s parents probably could too. Old Mr. Qin had already been discharged from the hospital with stable blood pressure. Supposedly, after becoming more relaxed recently, he had even eaten more and gained a little weight. He had been trying to arrange for Lin Zhao to come to his house for a meal, just like when the two children were little.

When the stream first started, things were indeed more or less as Lin Zhao had expected. 1114 split out a small screen to show him the backend data of the various livestreaming platforms. Some platforms still had slightly falsely prosperous data, but on those livestreaming platforms, there were truly only three or five viewers. Sometimes there could even be two or zero. Terrifyingly real.

1114 typed and asked Lin Zhao whether he needed to activate the lottery traffic given by the mainframe. They still had quite a bit of unused time.

But Lin Zhao shook his head and refused. He was not trying to sell goods right now. He was purely padding his hours. Was he supposed to push traffic to a bunch of people and make them watch him pad a livestream? There was no need.

After adjusting the angle of 1114’s camera, which was flying at the side, he no longer paid attention to the stream. At first, he deliberately pretended the camera did not exist. Later, he truly had no time to care about it. Although he did not do as much work as Qin Xiaoman, and was not as neat and efficient as Qin Xiaoman, the movements of his hands truly never stopped.

The incandescent light in the little supermarket’s back warehouse buzzed as it cast down a somewhat dazzling glow. The air seemed to float with fine dust from cardboard boxes and the particular chemical smell of tape.

Today, Lin Zhao was once again wearing overalls convenient for work, only this time they were made of washed blue denim. He and Qin Xiaoman pulled over a red metal flatbed cart, letting its wheels roll across the cement floor with a sound neither too loud nor too soft.

Qin Xiaoman skillfully shook open several special boxes provided by 1114, propped them upright, snapped the tape dispenser onto his wrist with a click, and pulled over a roll of bubble wrap from the side.

Just like that, the simplest two-person assembly line was formed.

The two of them sat properly on their little stools. Lin Zhao was responsible for opening the original outer packaging of the goods, confirming that the items inside were intact, then deciding which goods should be placed in which spacetime box and sticking on the information-blueprint labels 1114 had prepared in advance. After that, Qin Xiaoman, at the next step in the process, was responsible for repacking and moving them.

Lin Zhao aimed the scanner gun at the barcode. After a beep, the corresponding item information automatically popped up on the screen. It was a portion of the hardcover books to be sent to Mechanic.

After Mechanic confirmed the book list, Lin Zhao had placed an order online and had the bookseller deliver them by same-city express.

This purchase channel was also provided to Lin Zhao by 1114. As a transaction system, 1114 not only helped Lin Zhao precisely push goods to people who needed them, it also helped him find suppliers urgently needing to get rid of stock. Even if there had not been Qin Xiaoman and his sister, whose cannery could no longer pay wages, 1114 would still have provided Lin Zhao with other good-quality, inexpensive channels that were urgently trying to sell goods.

The bookseller it provided now was exactly this kind.

In today’s world, where the publishing industry was already declining and had become a typical red ocean, there were still some people stubbornly alive and insisting on doing book business. In Jiangzuo City, where Lin Zhao lived, there was an offline warehouse belonging to an online book website.

To be precise, there was first this offline warehouse-style book storage center, and only later did the online website appear.

Jiangzuo was not large, but it had an educational supplementary materials brand that ranked in the national top five—Jiangzuo Study Newspaper. Mentioning this name naturally made people think of things like Huanggang test papers and the Five-Three practice books.

Back then, Study Newspaper had also been ambitious. It had wanted to expand its business scope around its educational supplementary brand and create something like a full-category book warehouse. But no one expected that with the rapid arrival of the electronic age, forget becoming one of the leading companies in the book industry—now, the entire industry was almost gone. Just like Jiangzuo’s cannery, they had all become tears of the era.

Fortunately, educational supplementary materials still relied on the massive student population that renewed year after year, and there was still some market left. That was how it had struggled on until today without going bankrupt.

Although the company’s main business now had mostly become selling newspapers to schools all over the country, the offline book warehouse was still preserved, with a large number of books in a very rich range of categories.

Most of the books Lin Zhao wanted to provide to Mechanic could be bought directly from this book warehouse. For those he could not buy there, he had also already placed online orders, and they would be delivered to his door in three to five days.

Because Lin Zhao had bought one or two hundred books in one go and counted as a “big customer,” the book warehouse even gave him a very nice wholesale price, even though he only bought one copy of each kind of book and could not really be considered wholesale at all. When he contacted them online, the teacher on the other side was incredibly enthusiastic. After hearing that Lin Zhao was a livestream seller, they even sent him quite a few samples of new books, asking nothing of him except hoping that when it was convenient, he could casually mention their new books, any one of them would do.

Perhaps during the non-school-start season, the book warehouse truly had little sales and little work. Lin Zhao had only just placed the order when the other side actively drove over to deliver the goods.

Now, these books were neatly arranged in boxes before Lin Zhao’s eyes.

He skillfully pulled out a piece of hard cardboard of suitable size and padded the bottom of the box first. Then he picked up the beautifully packaged hardcovers one by one and placed them inside. These were all popular science books that one could tell had been made with care at a glance, from binding to cover design, to paper craftsmanship…

Unfortunately, no matter how good they were, these books exuding the scent of ink were already rarely asked about.

The books had sharp edges and were not light. Lin Zhao supported the spine and cover with both hands, his fingertips brushing across the gilt titles. He slightly adjusted the neatness of the pages before placing them side by side into one side of the spacetime box, spines facing down and pressed close against the box wall. His movements were not fast, but they were extremely steady, ensuring that no corner of any book would get bumped or curled.

Honestly, Mechanic did not know what others thought, but as the future owner of this batch of books, he watched with quite a bit of happiness. At first, when Lin Zhao had said he could come supervise if he was worried, he had even sneered. But now…

He had to admit, this Lin Zhao did have something. J-types would rejoice.

Lin Zhao’s entire packing process was quiet and focused, carrying a unique rhythm formed after repeating something hundreds and thousands of times. Before Qin Xiaoman sealed a box, Lin Zhao would habitually run his palm over the edge of the box flap, confirming that there were no lifted cardboard edges or missed gaps. Only then would he pull the tape over for his childhood friend. With a clean, crisp shrrk—, the tape drew a straight horizontal line across the mouth of the box, followed by two vertical seals. At the connecting points, Lin Zhao lightly pressed and smoothed them down with his fingertips.

It was like brushing across Reinhardt’s chest.

He knew it was strange to think this way, like some kind of pervert. But ever since clicking in, he had been staring at Lin Zhao on the screen for a very long time, his eyes not shifting even once. He was like some large, top-tier predator hiding in the dim underbrush, waiting to strike true in one blow.

Even Reinhardt himself did not know why he could watch so intently. He only knew that time quietly flowed past within the repeated motions of the black-haired young man before his eyes.

The empty boxes on the flatbed cart decreased one by one, while the neatly sealed packages stacked beside them grew higher and higher. The sound of tape tearing, the friction of bubble wrap, and the sound of spacetime boxes being moved alternated rhythmically. Every tiny displacement revealed an indescribable sense of stability.

This just-right, neither-too-much-nor-too-little harmony made the prince, who had been unusually irritable under the influence of a mental power tidal riot, completely quiet down.

That posture of fitting irregular objects into fixed positions and creating a stable structure miraculously caused one tiny crack at the edge of Reinhardt’s long-worn mental core—a fissure where a small, chaotic shard of mental energy had always kept restlessly stirring and giving off sharp pain—to show signs of healing again.

It was like, on a boiling sea surface, a small patch of absolutely calm ice suddenly appeared.

In the past, for a disturbance that directly affected his mental power like this, Reinhardt would need at least several periods of absolute meditation before he could suppress it. But today, just watching that picturesque young man gave him a full-body comfort like drinking a cup of iced orange beverage in the middle of summer.

His agitation, his unease, the disasters he had anticipated a thousand or ten thousand times, all vanished into nothing beneath one glance from the other person.

It almost made him forget to go find fault with his adjutant.

Yes, His Highness Reinhardt had been a little angry with Adjutant Carlos at first. He asked him why he had not notified him the very first moment the stream started.

Carlos: “…There is something in this world called livestream notifications.”

You did not set it yourself, and now you blame me?

His Highness Reinhardt’s thin lips moved slightly. Only after quite a while did he tell the truth.

“My account was banned for some unknown reason.”

In fact, he had privately gone to appeal to StarNet’s administrator, but when he said he was Reinhardt, the other side said they were Dawn Queen, then completely refused to communicate with him.

This matter was honestly somewhat embarrassing, making the duke, who was still at an age of caring about face, somewhat unable to say it. This was also why, after Lin Zhao started streaming, he suddenly suffered a tidal riot. Emotions really could easily affect mental power.

In the end, he chose to say it only because he wanted to see whether Carlos had any good solution.

But what solution could Adjutant Carlos possibly have? StarNet was a normal high-tech company. As someone from the royal family, he had no direct connection with that side. If he truly wanted to build a connection, they would have to wait until they returned. The only thing he could do at present was:

“Why don’t I lend you my alt account?”

“That doesn’t seem very appropriate.”

The prince who said this did not take even one step away.

The adjutant, who understood the elegant meaning after hearing the first note of the string song, immediately replied, “No. I’m begging you. I truly and very much hope you can use my alt account to watch the livestream and help me raise the level of my StarNet account.”

“Then I’ll try it. In any case, there hasn’t been much going on recently.”

The “extremely reluctant” prince, after logging into the account, recharged six digits into it without blinking, the same length as his account password.

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