Chapter 2: The 2nd Day of Livestream Selling
“Beep~ beep~ beep~
Good morning, dear host.
Congratulations on successfully clearing yesterday’s survival stage!
Current accumulated survival time: 10,142 days!
Today’s instance has been unlocked for you:
Current map: Jiangzuo, Longxing District. Weather conditions remain cloudy. Highest temperature: 20°C. Lowest temperature: 13°C. Feels-like temperature: 18°C, slightly lower than the actual temperature. Maximum gust speed: 4 m/s. Chance of precipitation: 0.
Current communication device body reserve energy: 100%.
Earth Online reminds you that today’s stamina has been refreshed. Please allocate it reasonably and pay attention to maintaining your item durability. Completing the business blueprint expansion mission may trigger random reward drops. Wishing you a pleasant gaming experience~”*
Before the chuunibyou alarm rang on time, Lin Zhao was actually already awake.
It was the kind of early awakening where his brain was completely blank and his soul seemed to have left his body a while ago. His whole person carried a beauty that looked like he was about to spiritually disintegrate.
He sat stiffly on the smart bed, eyes staring straight ahead, watching the bedroom’s automatic curtains slowly draw open, bringing in a grayish-white light that was not exactly dazzling.
Amazing.
The sun was not even up yet, and he was already up.
The full wall of floor-to-ceiling windows reflected Lin Zhao’s resentment, which was even heavier than when he used to go to work, as well as an outstanding face.
An overly outstanding face.
His eyes were clear and bright, his nose bridge high, and his skin so fair it looked as though it could reflect light. He was completely the type whom heaven had personally handed a bowl of rice. Even though he looked lazy all over and not particularly motivated, he still gave people a unique aura that was impossible to forget after just one glance.
Why do I “love” waking up early so much? Lin Zhao thought.
It was really hard for him not to remember why he had resigned from his previous company. Whether other people had seen the capital’s sky at four or five in the morning, he did not know. In any case, he had seen more than enough of it. It was not because he had to wake up early for his commute, but because, as an overworked corporate slave at a big company, he often had not even gotten off work at that hour.
Lin Zhao’s first awakening of wisdom came when he passed the campus recruitment interview for the headquarters of a certain major corporation. Filled with ambition and vigor, he had sworn that through hard work and diligent rat-racing, he would buy a car and a house in the capital, Yongji, get promoted, get a raise, and reach the peak of life.
Lin Zhao’s second awakening of wisdom came when he looked at the terminal illness diagnosis issued by the hospital and understood: to hell with performance evaluations and delayed gratification. Nothing was more important than his happiness in the present moment!
He sold the small house in the suburbs of the capital that he had barely scraped enough money together to buy, then went to all the tourist cities he had wanted to visit while he was still working. He ate his way through local delicacies that had been sitting in his favorites folder for who knew how long, practically gathering dust.
And after traveling around without looking at prices, the money he had earned over all those years of working day and night was not only enough for him to buy a house again in his hometown, but there was even a lot left over.
A lot. A whole lot.
After saying goodbye to that city where one hundred yuan was only enough to buy three cups of coffee, and a single hotpot meal started at three to five hundred yuan at minimum, Lin Zhao realized for the first time that the money in his hands could actually go this far.
Of course, it was also because back when Lin Zhao left his hometown of Jiangzuo, he had sold the school-district apartment his parents left him after they passed away for a full 1.1 million yuan, and the underground parking space for 78,000 yuan.
Now, however, Jiangzuo’s housing market had collapsed, and the concept of “school-district housing” no longer meant much. A new apartment in roughly the same location and with roughly the same area only cost 430,000 yuan. The price had been chopped in half, and it even included the parking space, agency fee, and transfer fee.
This was no longer a fire sale from jumping off a building. This was a fire sale from jumping off the Milky Way.
Everything about the new residential compound was good. Its only flaw was that there were always newly moved-in residents doing renovations.
That was also the reason Lin Zhao had no choice but to wake up early. If he did not get up, someone would always call him up.
Every morning at seven, the sounds of renovation would rise from every direction in his residential compound. No one knew exactly which household, or how many households, they came from. Over here, a sledgehammer went bang, bang, bang. Over there, an electric drill went zzz, zzz, zzz. The sounds rose and fell, crisscrossing one another, jointly composing a grand hymn titled, “If I Don’t Wake Up the Entire World, I Lose.”
Apart from accepting these noises, Lin Zhao seemed to have only one path left: destroying the world.
So, could he destroy the world?
The blue-and-white sphere that had just been hovering by the bed acting as his alarm drifted unsteadily before its black-haired, fluffy-headed host and spoke guiltily.
“I am very sorry, host. According to the AI Safety Guidelines, as an artificial intelligence created for the purpose of allowing [???] to develop better and faster, and to integrate into [???] as soon as possible, 1114 is unable to assist or encourage you to participate in any form of violence, destruction, or behavior that endangers intelligent lifeforms.”
Yes. The major events that had recently happened in Lin Zhao’s life, aside from falling ill, quitting his job, and returning to his hometown, included inexplicably obtaining a system.
It was just that unlike the systems in novels that appeared directly inside the host’s mind, this system was external. Its appearance was not especially large, but it was not small either. It looked like some flying Tmall Genie.
Strictly speaking, Lin Zhao had not even obtained a system.
More accurately, he had picked up—or saved?—a system.
It had been an ordinary, unremarkable night. Lin Zhao had only recently returned to his hometown and had not yet figured out what to do now that he had finished traveling and still had not died. For the time being, he was staying at his aunt Lin Mingzhu’s house.
As usual, he went out to walk the dog for his aunt, who was dancing in the square at the park. He actually quite liked this job, because it was truly hard for him to reject a fluffy creature that wanted to cuddle with him every day.
His aunt’s dog was called Doudou. It was the very common type of evil fleece creature that grandmas and aunties always loved to raise.
Only, their family’s evil fleece creature did not bark randomly and would not pounce on or scare passersby for no reason. Its only stubborn trait was that it liked to walk a different route every day to expand its “territory.”
That day, they discovered yet another small road they had never taken before. At least, Lin Zhao, who had just come back, had never walked it.
The new road grew narrower and more desolate the farther they went, but Doudou continued charging forward happily and bravely until they reached the end, where only one person could pass through sideways.
The rough cement walls between two buildings scraped against his rustling jacket. After squeezing through, the space before him suddenly opened wide.
What lay before his eyes was an open area, deserted and overgrown with weeds. A smell mixed with dust from old bricks and dampness accumulated over long years rushed toward him.
But Lin Zhao had no time to take a closer look, because the first thing he noticed was the sky full of stars that night.
A large expanse of bright meteors slipped down from the black-velvet-like sky, moving from north to south, slowly and calmly leaving behind strands of golden trailing lines.
They were interstellar dust from the periodic comet 21P. Among all meteor showers, they were the slowest, so slow it seemed as though they existed specifically so everyone could clearly see each burst of brilliance, like breathing flames.
The next day, Lin Zhao heard their scientific name on the news: the Draconids, also known as the Giacobinid meteor shower.
The experts said that this meteor shower, which had been as bright as daylight and had almost illuminated the entire night, was perfectly scientific. If Lin Zhao had not picked up the dying system 1114 at the place where the meteors fell, he probably would have believed them too.
Amid intermittent sounds mixed with electric currents and meaningless syllables, Lin Zhao only barely understood 1114 saying that an unknown code corruption had occurred inside it. Part of its information database had been lost, and most of its function icons had gone gray.
It was like a half-broken, eventually cut-off radio, so much so that Lin Zhao once thought it was some toy made especially for chuunibyou patients.
Lin Zhao performed a daily good deed by wiping the blue-and-white ball with the wet wipes he carried with him, then placed it beside a shrine in the open area.
Yes, the place Doudou had led him to was actually a Daoist temple that had been abandoned for many years. Outside the temple stood many wooden shrines.
No one knew whether it was the power of metaphysics or science fiction. In short, after lying dormant before the shrine for more than half a month, 1114 really did come back to life.
It determined that Lin Zhao had saved it. To repay this kindness, it bound itself to Lin Zhao and had him do missions.
Or rather, work.
Although 1114 had lost much of the code in its information database, at least it still remembered that it had a sacred and glorious mission—livestream selling.
As for just how many things there were to roast about that, Lin Zhao would not elaborate. The only thing he wanted to say was:
“So your way of repaying kindness is making me work for you? What a truly unique kind of gratitude.”
1114 hurriedly explained that he was not working for it, but for the mainframe.
Although, due to the loss of some functions, it was temporarily unable to contact the mainframe, that did not matter. It would definitely be able to contact it sooner or later.
After it was able to connect to the internet, it absorbed a massive amount of knowledge through Earth’s network—more precisely, through China’s network.
It learned that systems and hosts here all worked this way: the system sacrificed energy to save a host who had unexpectedly died for various reasons, and the host then used the system, this golden finger, to launch all kinds of careers and work, eventually reaching the peak of life.
“We just happen to be reversed. The host saved me. The host is good. I work hard together with the host and become rich through diligence. I will also be good!”
“…The first thing you need to do is uninstall the Jinjiang app.”
After that, this system—which loved its job and was dedicated to its post, but had smashed its brain stupid, as Lin Zhao interpreted it—clung to Lin Zhao like a ghost.
It tried to persuade him that labor was the most glorious thing, that work loved him, and that he loved work, because the mainframe had said that only work had value. Only work could earn transaction points, unlock the system mall, and make everything available.
This pie it painted was big and round, but Lin Salted Fish’s heart against rat-racing was extremely firm. Every day, he only wanted to lie flat. No matter how many times he rolled over, he had only one thing to say:
“Not doing it.”
1114 was shocked.
“Why?”
As a workplace newbie that had yet to be beaten down by society, it truly could not understand why there would be someone in this world who did not like work.
Lin Zhao, terminal illness patient: “I’m already about to die, and you still want me to work for you? Why would I love working that much?”
1114 hurriedly comforted him.
“Now that you have bound yourself to me, you won’t die.”
What followed was all kinds of blah-blah-blah scientific explanations. Too long, did not read. Lin Zhao directly treated it as background noise and skipped over it, only caring about the core sentence. He repeated softly:
“As long as I stay bound to you, I won’t die? Even if I don’t eat or drink, I won’t die?”
1114 nodded vigorously, floating in the air and spinning in celebration.
“That’s right, that’s right. Isn’t it amazing? Host, please rest assured. As long as 1114 is alive, your life will not be in danger! Not only that, once you save enough points and unlock the mall, you will even have the chance to exchange for potions and genes that can improve your constitution. Complete recovery is not a dream, and even flying on a sword is not impossible.”
The chuunibyou young man was greatly moved, then firmly refused.
He had heard the phrase “have the chance” far too many times from unscrupulous capitalists. The chance did exist; it was just that it would never be the screw’s turn.
“Since I can survive without eating or drinking, why should I still work?”
1114: “…”
Author’s Note:
This alarm sound can be set on iOS. As for the specific method, you can search for short-video tutorials. I only happened to come across it before and was very tempted, but it felt too complicated, so I gave up with great regret. Sob sob.
In case the timeline is a little confusing, let me explain one extra thing here: the protagonist first learned that he would not die, and only then decided again to buy a house in his hometown~ He is currently living alone in a super awesome way.
P.S. A little early spoiler, though it does not really count as a spoiler: the protagonist really did unconsciously save the system. The story will explain why later. Then the system bound itself to the protagonist. The two of them basically saved each other.
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