The End of the Universe Is Live-Streaming E-commerce – CH4

Chapter 4: The 4th Day of Livestream Selling

Once the core driving force changed, the way of working would naturally be different too.

For example, for the first time, Lin Zhao took the initiative to ask 1114 where the group-buying links in his livestreams came from. In truth, he had always been rather curious.

1114 immediately began happily introducing the results of its internet surfing. “Those little yellow cart links—oh, the group buys you mentioned—are all from a third-party platform called ‘E-commerce Livestream Selling.’ It’s basically like a huge online product exhibition or goods warehouse.”

Merchants would list the products they wanted promoted in advance, much like on Taobao, display them, and write out the tiered commission rates for selling the goods. After a streamer took a liking to something, they only needed to click once to add it to their own account’s showcase.

Of course, it could also work the other way around. Streamers had their own introduction pages. After merchants filtered according to their needs, they could send targeted invitations through the backend.

1114 had also made one for Lin Zhao. From main promoted categories and influencer attributes to fan numbers and sales data, it had everything. It could be called a very exquisite résumé. But what 1114 enlarged the most was still Lin Zhao’s personal photo. There was no helping it. This was the only thing its host could currently show off.

According to Lin Zhao’s understanding, his system had put him on the shelves.

“Well then, thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome!” The system did not understand sarcasm and was still trying hard to show how useful it could be as the host’s little assistant. It came at him with a “kiss” of massive data. At one glance, it was clear it had prepared for this for a long time and had a tiny little bit—just a hundred million points—of ideas about Lin Zhao’s livestream career.

“I have conducted a comprehensive analysis of the host’s recent livestreams. The data is very unsatisfactory, I know, but that doesn’t matter. My information database contains a vast number of solutions. Even though more than half was lost, half still remains…”

On this point, 1114 was not lying. Although most of the function diagram displayed on its screen had gone gray, there were still quite a few options available.

For example: free beginner’s lottery draw (3/3).

Lin Zhao had seen this prize pool before and had been curious about it too. It was just that the most expensive things in this world were often the free ones. His high level of caution had made him want to download the National Anti-Fraud Center app right beside the prize pool icon.

It was the same now.

But 1114 had already begun introducing it enthusiastically, even adding special-effect music that matched its blue-and-white ball colors: dang dang dang dang~ dang~ dang~ dang~. It instantly sent people back to the Doraemon “Let me show you a treasure” series.

“A normal system’s beginner lottery draw usually includes special goods, rare items, or improvements to certain system functions. But we’re different,” 1114 said with great pride, puffing out its round belly. “We can help the host expand the traffic of the livestream room! A full one to two [???] worth of traffic!”

Lin Zhao: “……?”

Although it was censored, he still understood. This meant that this beginner lottery draw only drew things that helped the host with work content?

Then he did not have to worry about being scammed, because he had never seen such a stingy scam!

Even the lectures at the park entrance trying to trick old men and old ladies into buying health products knew to hand out two eggs first. And you people were only giving this?

“It’s targeted traffic distribution across [???]. It’s very difficult. Only our mainframe can do it. It can accurately push the goods you intend to sell to people who need them, or to people who have so much money they don’t mind buying some delicate little useless things they don’t need. Of course, they may also not be [???].”

To sum it up in one sentence: distribution according to need.

“Will the other party definitely buy my things?”

“Of course not.” 1114 had no choice but to emphasize again that old-school systems like them did not do forced transactions. “It only uses more scientific and reasonable big-data calculations to build a bridge of communication between buyers and sellers who have mutual needs. You have extra things to sell and sell them to people who happen to need them. Your livestream room no longer has to worry about popularity, and the other party also buys what they need. It is the ideal win-win.”

Lin Zhao understood. It was still spending money to buy followers, only in a more scientific way.

And he had only one thing to say about this…

Why had his fried chicken still not arrived? If it was not delivered soon, it would pass its best-tasting period.

Lin Zhao lowered his head and refreshed the delivery app’s backend again and again. He could only watch as the rider was eight hundred meters away from him one moment, then became a despair-inducing two kilometers away the next.

Jiangzuo was not big, and the average delivery time for takeout could generally be kept within thirty minutes.

At the twenty-ninth minute after placing the order, the video intercom on the wall by Lin Zhao’s entrance finally rang after much anticipation. Holding the beautiful expectation of “If you say you’ll come at four, I’ll start feeling happy from three,” Lin Zhao rushed toward his takeout in two steps for every three.

One portion for Auntie, one portion for me. One portion for Doudou, one portion for me.

Lin Zhao had already left a message on WeChat for Ms. Lin, whose life was peaceful and beautiful. After she got off work at noon, he would deliver it to her.

Lin Zhao, whose average daily healthy step count was usually only a few dozen steps, unprecedentedly stood outside the security door that day. He truly did not want to wait even one more minute.

His personality was just like this. On ordinary days, he looked as though he had no motivation whatsoever. But once he was attracted by something that interested him, that lazy shell of a body would instantly burst out with astonishing power.

“Ding—”

The golden elevator doors slowly opened, revealing two people inside and outside the doors who both showed surprised expressions at the same time.

Because the delivery guy was none other than Lin Zhao’s childhood friend Qin Xiaoman.

Lin Zhao was dressed in home clothes, holding a bag of chips he had just opened to satisfy his craving. Qin Xiaoman, wearing the yellow robe of a delivery worker, had a living, chubby little girl in his arms. The child was probably only two or three years old. Her lips were red, her teeth were white, she loved drooling, and she was currently putting all her effort into wrestling with a can of fruit in syrup using her plump little hands.

“Your daughter?”

“You came back for New Year break?”

The two old friends spoke at the same time.

These two good friends, who had once grown up together because they lived next door to each other, had gradually drifted apart over the years due to different choices in school, work, and other real-life reasons. It had already been several years since they had really contacted each other.

Their last chat record still stopped at the time when Qin Xiaoman had taken his girlfriend to the capital for a trip. Lin Zhao, as the “local host,” had treated the young couple to a meal of South Gate hotpot. Qin Xiaoman expressed his thanks and made an agreement that when Lin Zhao returned to their hometown, they would go eat the barbecue buffet they had loved most as children. Lin Zhao had said, “Definitely next time.”

And then this “next time” had become today, who knew how many years later.

“No, I resigned. I just moved back.”

“No, she’s my sister’s. I’m so dark my hair is almost whiter than my face. How would I have the life to give birth to such a pretty one?”

Another wave of tacit understanding.

Then both of them could not help laughing. The years that had separated them seemed to have taken something away, yet also seemed to have taken nothing away at all.

Lin Zhao still loved listening, and Qin Xiaoman was still talkative. Within less than five minutes of meeting again, he had already confessed even such family secrets as how his second uncle’s first love was actually his third uncle.

Of course, he also incidentally explained why he was taking care of a child.

“My sister has always worked at the cannery in our city, right? Good Luck. Do you still remember that brand?” Back in the day, Good Luck Cannery had been a good workplace with guaranteed income regardless of droughts or floods. Unfortunately, as the economy continued developing, forget Good Luck—even the category of canned food itself was almost being abandoned by the times. “These days, who still eats canned food?”

The cannery’s performance had declined with each passing day. By now, it had been unable to pay wages for more than half a year and had even begun trying to use canned food to offset debt.

But canned food could not turn into RMB. Forced into a corner, Qin’s older sister could only choose to charge her car with the company’s electricity after getting off work, then run her own Didi rides. Both husband and wife were doing it. Qin’s father had wanted to help his daughter go reason with the factory director, only to first get so angry that he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and was hospitalized. Qin’s mother was staying by his bedside to care for him. As for the brother-in-law’s parents, they were even more of a bizarre mess and were both out of town…

“If our elementary school homeroom teacher knew about this, they definitely wouldn’t have the nerve to say my compositions were forcing hardship where there was none anymore,” Qin Xiaoman said.

It really was too bitter. Lin Zhao did not even know where to begin comforting him.

Instead, Qin Xiaoman changed the subject. “So, brother here came up with a genius idea suited to local conditions—run delivery while taking my niece with me, and sell canned food along the way.”

The little child with two tufts of hair tied with red string also very skillfully stretched out her hand and crisply said to Lin Zhao, “Pretty big brother, eat canned food.”

Just ask, who could refuse such an adorable human cub?

In any case, Lin Zhao could not. There was even a payment QR code stuck on the child’s sleeve. It could be called extremely up-to-date.

Although selling cans one bottle at a time was really just a drop in the bucket, it was still better than leaving them at home to grow mold.

“My parents were so worried, afraid it would all go to waste. They ate it for one meal, then the next, and now when I burp, even that has a peach flavor. Who would’ve thought that when we were kids, we actually used to wish we could eat Good Luck canned fruit every day?”

Now that childhood dream had come true, it was honestly a little cloying.

Qin Xiaoman really wanted to chat with his old friend more, but his next order was about to time out.

“Aiya, I won’t talk anymore. I still have to go to the hospital tonight to take over the shift. When my sister has time to look after the child this weekend, let’s eat together. We agreed on it back then, so you’re not allowed to refuse me.”

As Qin Xiaoman spoke, he quietly blocked the camera of Lin Zhao’s phone as Lin Zhao tried to scan the code. Like a magic trick, he somehow produced another pile of cans from somewhere and stuffed them all into Lin Zhao’s arms in one go.

“Different flavors. Take them back and try them all. See whether they taste better now or when we were kids.”

Before Lin Zhao could pull back and forth with him, Qin Xiaoman, once a nimble speed-type forward on the court, had already run far away with his niece in his arms.

He was so hurried, so hurried that he did not even take the elevator, but the stairs in the fire passage instead.

The way down was bumpy, but the little child was incredibly happy. She did not know what it meant for life to be hard. She only knew that her uncle ran as fast as the wind. The stairwell still echoed with the sound of her clapping again and again.

“Faster, Uncle, faster!”

Lin Zhao looked for a long time at the cold mountain of cans in his arms. They were stacked one on top of another, looking so much like Qin Xiaoman’s happiness in childhood, already so abundant it was about to overflow.

1114’s brain, which had seemingly never started up in all these years and had long since been smashed broken, finally flashed with inspiration. Seizing the opportunity, it offered slanderous advice.

“Jiangzuo people don’t like eating canned food anymore, right? Then what about outside Jiangzuo? Outside China?”

What you do not need, there will always be someone in this universe who needs it. Afterward, 1114 could not help wanting to praise its own cleverness.

“Your Majesty, should we draw the lottery? To help our friend Xiaoman?”

In theory, Lin Zhao should have replied at this moment, “My friend, thank you.”

But in reality, what he said, his throat dry, was:

“How do we draw?”

Would there really still be people in this world who wanted to eat canned food?

Author’s Note:

There are, friend. There definitely are.

It just happens to be a wasteland plane where living supplies are extremely scarce. 233333

P.S. Presumably, smart friends have already figured out that the censored content from the system is something like “planes” and so on.

Unfortunately, this host and system have no way of knowing that for the time being. They only think they are going to do foreign trade.

Regarding livestream selling, I also looked up information online and will modify things according to the needs of the plot. Some parts are real, and some are definitely artistic creation, so don’t believe it. The overly straightforward name “E-commerce Livestream Selling” was also randomly made up by me. Being bad at naming is really too hard. In short, don’t believe it, okay.

“If you say you’ll come at four, I’ll start feeling happy from three”: quoted from The Little Prince.

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