Chapter 6: The 6th Day of Livestream Selling
Lin Zhao did not feel discouraged when he failed to receive a reply from that customer named Gray, who seemed to be surfing the internet under his real name. He had long since prepared himself for a drawn-out battle. Even the fried chicken he sent to his aunt had been two freshly ordered portions.
The number of viewers in the upper-right corner of Lin Zhao’s livestream room, which had previously always been pitifully small, could now be considered to have skyrocketed.
Of course, this “skyrocketing” was only relative to his previous viewer count. In reality, there were probably only a few dozen people, fewer than a hundred. The numbers were not fixed. Some people left after a while, some joined after a while, and some people… came in and out repeatedly.
The one thing they had in common was that all their IDs looked extremely foreign. At one glance, they were clearly the ones he had drawn in the lottery.
Lin Zhao was not surprised by this traffic result. After all, the mainframe was so stingy, and it was free. What more could he ask for? A bicycle?
The free family members all seemed very cautious. Most chose only to observe and not speak. Lin Zhao simply felt that they were like his aunt Lin Mingzhu: they did have some vigilance, but not much, because quite a few of them were still using their real names online.
Of course, some people had given themselves screen names. At least, Lin Zhao felt they were probably screen names.
If someone’s real name was actually “Garbage Bag,” then he truly had nothing to say.
A customer whose ID was Mechanic also expressed a desire to try a sample and had already submitted a delivery address through the backend.
Only, compared with the canned goods, this Mechanic seemed more concerned about other matters. He asked a whole pile of key questions, such as how delivery worked and what the exchange rate for currency conversion was.
Mechanic: [Your mouth movements are different from ours. Why can I understand what you’re saying?]
The questions were both sharp and straight to the point.
Fortunately, Lin Zhao had long since prepared for this.
Beside him, 1114 began refreshing subtitles on its round “face,” acting as its host’s teleprompter. Displayed on it were all the explanations they had thought up before the stream began.
Half true and half false, each with its own phrasing, but it could all be summarized as—the livestream room’s built-in functions.
Lin Zhao answered the first question first. “Of course the mouth movements don’t match. That’s because we actually don’t speak the same language. It’s just AI doing real-time translation.”
Plenty of AI software could already do this nowadays. Forget changing the streamer’s language; some could even change the streamer’s race into Ultraman.
The actual situation was about the same as what Lin Zhao said, except the bilateral translation was being carried out by System 1114.
This system with its brain damaged from the crash claimed to carry translations for every language in the entire universe. Whether it was sound waves, symbols, electromagnetic signals, biochemistry, or quantum information, it could convert them into one another. What reached both sides’ ears would be the mother tongue they were most familiar with.
“Because my translation relies on mental power, even a minority language used by only two people in the entire universe can be taught to the host,” 1114 praised itself.
Lin Zhao had absolutely no interest in a language only two people in the entire universe knew. He only continued explaining to Mechanic that currency conversion worked like Alipay, all based on real-time exchange rates.
As for point-to-point transmission…
To be honest, Lin Zhao initially felt that no matter what, this could not be made up. The only reason he could think of was that the offline distribution network was extremely powerful, so powerful that it was like Pizza Hut opening a street-facing restaurant right across from the customer’s home, which was why frozen raw steak could be delivered to the door within two hours of placing an order.
But 1114 had displayed some news pages to Lin Zhao with a look of surprise. They had happened in China, recently—in fact, to be precise, after that Draconid meteor shower.
Some express deliveries and food deliveries had already achieved arrival within ten minutes.
It was just that this kind of news only happened in certain local areas of China, and very soon afterward, no one discussed it much. The news was still there, but the views were pitiful.
1114 speculated, “It should be because everyone is already used to this, so there isn’t much value in discussing it anymore.”
After all, when 1114 collected internet information, it had also seen things like the fastest delivery record for the first Double Eleven order being twenty-seven minutes from even earlier times. With China’s rapidly changing iteration speed, compressing that time to a dozen minutes, or even under ten minutes, did not seem that strange.
1114 looked even more Chinese than Lin Zhao, who had been born and raised in China. It puffed out its chest proudly. “After all, our motherland is just such an infrastructure maniac.”
Lin Zhao did not know whether he had been convinced or not, but in any case, he used this explanation to convince Mechanic.
Mechanic had also tried using other guesses to test Lin Zhao, but Lin Zhao always looked completely unresponsive, because as far as he knew, he truly knew nothing.
Of course, it was also because he had no time to interact with Mechanic anymore. His first customer, Mr. Gray, reappeared. He still looked so hurried and urgent, ignoring all kinds of minor details and cutting straight to the point.
[How many canned goods do you still have? How much? I want all of them, including the samples!]
Order, payment—done in one smooth motion, as though he were afraid someone would snatch them away.
And then, something magical happened.
Mr. Gray’s order seemed to activate some kind of button that awakened the world. The viewers who had still been observing before also joined the ranks of those wanting to buy. Some even skipped the sample trial entirely, starting to attempt bidding higher prices to snatch up the canned goods that had not yet been delivered.
Was it only fragrant when people were fighting over it?
Lin Zhao really could not understand what these foreigners were thinking. He only held to the principle that business must be honest, and according to payment order, he sent all the remaining canned goods in one go to the first person who had placed an order, Mr. Gray.
Gray was so urgent that his heart was about to leap out of his chest. He was terrified that he would miss the greatest opportunity of his life.
The black-haired young man on the screen perhaps did not know who the viewers he was facing were, but Gray had seen quite a few familiar names.
Even if these people were not the number one figures in their respective settlements, they were still well-known, important people from various places. None of them lacked money.
It was just that, after all, everyone lived in this damned place called Kaman, where one gust of wind could blow in radiation. They were always cautious in how they did things—those who were not cautious had long since mutated into pollutants. Faced with a streamer who had appeared out of nowhere, they were naturally deeply wary at first, especially when the other party was even giving away samples.
Where in the world was there any such thing as a free lunch?
The fact that they had not attacked directly could already be considered polite.
Of course, it was also because they could not attack. Gray seriously suspected that those names that flashed by and then logged off had directly smashed their retinal assistance devices.
To be honest, if Gray had not been hanging by a thread, he probably would have made the same choice as those people.
But now, he could no longer care about so many things. Only by eating his fill would he have the strength to fight that razor boar king outside to the death again. Only then would he have the chance to survive and return to Gear Town.
Even if he could not survive, at least he had eaten clean food he had never tasted in his entire life. And the price he paid was merely the beautiful “burial object” in his hand. There could not be a more worthwhile trade than this.
Yes, what Gray paid was the orange core in his backpack.
The other side had estimated a very good price for him. So good that even after he bought all the canned goods, it had only barely shaved off a small fraction. The remaining transaction points were enough for him to buy another pile of supplies.
But how was this possible?
Zero-radiation natural food was unheard of. Gray could not judge the price of these canned goods, but at the very least, he knew what kind of astronomical price low-radiation food could be sold for in several large settlements.
Ten transaction points probably would not even be enough for the owner to let someone take a look, for fear that the sour air of poverty brought by the other party would contaminate it.
But Gray had indeed truly obtained what he wanted.
Those ten smooth, cold, and even slightly heavy cans, along with a 500 ml bottle of mineral water so clean it was unbelievable and whose radiation value was also 0, were packed together in a large insulated bag named “Jiangzuo Fried Chicken” and appeared in his arms.
The touch was real.
The weight was real.
The bright food images on the can labels, in the dim ruins of the library, seemed to be giving off the light of salvation.
Among all kinds of words, the only thing he understood was the label the young man had stuck onto the bottle of mineral water. There were only two extremely simple words written there:
Free gift.
Looking across all of Kaman, who would be generous enough to use water resources as a free gift? Even the wealthiest Iron-Blood Brotherhood could not possibly do that.
Perhaps because a person nearing death speaks kindly, the mercenary Gray, who considered himself cold and heartless for his whole life, decided that before he rushed toward that unknown-risk future, he would leave a warning in the private messages for this young man, who really seemed to have no idea how valuable the canned goods in his hands were:
Our currency here is bullets. One bottle of water is worth ten bullets. One moderately radiated apple is worth more than a thousand bullets, with a price but no market.
The taciturn mercenary had not spoken this much to anyone in a long time. But perhaps because it had turned into written form, he instead became quite wordy.
At least when he read it over again himself, he only felt that his brain must have short-circuited.
Why was he meddling in other people’s business?
There was no savior in this world—
Everyone had their own way of living. Having grown up in Gear Town, he had known since he was three years old not to try intervening in the karma of fools, unless he wanted to become a fool himself.
But he did not regret it either, for the sake of that bottle of water.
Unexpectedly, the young man who had truly ended the stream at the speed of light after selling all the canned goods soon sent a private message back. Before Gray rushed out, he asked him:
[I’ll make a presumptuous assumption that the situation on your side isn’t very good right now. Do you need anti-inflammatory medicine or antibiotics?]
Very soon, another message followed closely after:
[The cost will be deducted from the item you used as collateral.]
Stupid. Truly too stupid.
If giving people food and gifting people water could still barely fall within Gray’s understanding, then asking someone whether they needed medicine was going too far.
Gray really wanted to ask the person on the other side: Do you know how scarce medicine is in Kaman?
This was no longer a question of money. This was a necessary condition for survival in Kaman. It was your life. Would you split off a piece of your life and give it to someone else?
Yet the fool who wanted to split his life with him was still typing intermittently.
[I just asked my assistant. After deducting ten cans and the official cut, meaning the service fee, from your collateral, you still have around one hundred thousand credit points left. If you don’t want anything else, I’ll convert all of it into canned goods for you? Do you prefer fruit in syrup or luncheon meat? Is your current address convenient for receiving goods? One hundred thousand credit points’ worth of cans would be ten thousand cans. Including packaging, it would probably need eight to twelve square meters of space. How big is your place? Do you want to change the address?]
For the first time, Gray learned that a savior could actually be this talkative.
Author’s Note:
Nonsense Mini Theater:
Gray, to the protagonist: Savior.
The protagonist, to Gray: Maintaining a high-quality customer.
P.S. In the worldview where the protagonist lives, many people will later awaken all kinds of abilities and begin preparing to integrate into the Universal Alliance. To put it simply, it is a variation of the spiritual-energy-revival genre. Mentioning it here in advance~
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