Tacitus didn't know that while he was puzzled by this confusing game's confusing mechanics, the viewers in his livestream were observing his reactions the entire time.
To be precise, they weren't watching his reactions, but rather the reactions of the virtual character he controlled.
That white-haired boy virtual avatar with cat ears.
Normally, streamers maintain a calm expression and placid demeanor throughout their broadcasts, so after facial capture, their virtual characters only display a simple default expression—a smile.
While smiles are pleasant to look at, they become tiresome when seen constantly.
But because Tacitus was currently so confused that he'd forgotten to manage his expressions, his virtual character deviated from its usual emotionless smile, displaying a rare look of puzzlement.
In the middle of the screen, the white-haired boy's eyebrows drooped, his half-closed eyes seemed filled with confusion, and his usually upturned mouth corners were pressed into a straight line, making him look pitiful yet adorable.
Even more eye-catching were the usually perky cat ears on the boy's head, which had slightly drooped along with his confused expression.
The fans who witnessed this change in expression in the livestream instantly felt their hearts struck by the gesture.
Quick-fingered fans immediately took screenshots, added the word "dejected" below, turned it into an emoji, and shared it to fan groups, immediately receiving an enthusiastic response.
[Cute!]
[Can facial capture really make virtual avatars show such expressions? That's impressive!]
[The ears! Moving ears! They can even droop down!]
Fans collectively expressed that they had never before seen such an adorable reaction from Tacitus's virtual avatar!
Why hadn't they discovered such cute expressions when he previously streamed detective and horror mini-games?
At once, fans working overtime requested leave, students in evening self-study sessions used their break time, and fans playing games immediately closed their games. They all overcame various difficulties to open the livestream, just to see this confused little expression replicated again.
Even some of the song fans who had originally left because the streamer wasn't singing today returned to the livestream room after seeing this reaction.
Moreover, this practical "dejected" emoji gained recognition from many people, quickly circulating among fans on the Dulu Dulu platform on a small scale, invisibly attracting a wave of casual viewers for Tacitus.
The diligently streaming Tacitus was completely unaware of all this. He generally disliked looking at the comment section while streaming and was still focused on figuring out the game.
After confirming that this game could indeed only be played by pressing the right arrow key to move right, Tacitus gave up trying to understand it and peacefully resumed streaming.
Having already received the money, what else could he do but close his eyes and finish the stream?
Tacitus had almost anticipated a cold, empty livestream room with no one posting comments. To avoid distressing himself, he simply hid the comment section and concentrated on streaming.
But he discovered that this game was considerably more refined than he had imagined.
Although the controls were extremely simple—so simple that they only required pressing the right key, without even being able to control speed—the game's details were quite exquisite.
All materials in the game were actual footage, and the protagonist would encounter various events and different people on his journey to the right. Their dialogues were even different, though unfortunately, once the protagonist approached them within a certain distance, they would stop talking, and there was no way to go back to check.
Currently, the protagonist was wearing a school uniform and appeared to be walking through a corridor after school. As he passed by, he seemed to hear some classmates whispering, but with a twitch of Tacitus's hand, the protagonist advanced one step, passing these people.
Then he noticed these people's actions suddenly changed—they stopped talking and looked up, staring at the protagonist.
An ordinary person might have been startled by this sudden change in behavior.
But the slow-to-react Tacitus only belatedly realized—could this be the scary part of the game?
No good, he was being paid to do a job; he couldn't have no reaction at all to such frightening moments.
He cleared his throat and called into the microphone with an elongated voice: "Ahhh—their expressions changed—their staring is so scary—"
After yelling, he felt he had completed his task, contentedly shrunk back into his chair, and continued crunching on his potato chips.
A wave of question marks floated across the livestream chat.
Many of these viewers had been attracted by the "dejected" emoji and curiously clicked into the livestream, but instead of seeing the dejected expression, they witnessed the streamer blatantly lying.
It's obvious you're not scared at all! Look at the cat ears on your virtual avatar! Not only are they not drooping, they're even happily twitching!
But these viewers didn't expect that this was just the beginning.
Tacitus the streamer wasn't yet aware that his livestream room had suddenly gained many casual viewers attracted by the emoji. He still thought only fans were watching his performance, and combined with the client's already bizarre contract requirements, his attitude became increasingly unrestrained.
The lights went out when the protagonist was halfway through.
After two seconds of silence, he languidly said: "Did you see that, friends? The lights went out! It's pitch black! So scary!"
The bathroom door creaked.
Tacitus interestedly stopped in place, clicking his mouse several times, trying to make the bathroom door sound again. Halfway through clicking, he remembered he should act more frightened, but it was already too late. He remained silent for a few seconds, then silently walked away.
A classmate's eyes inexplicably turned red and bled.
Tacitus seemingly concernedly asked: "What's happening? Is it conjunctivitis? Should you go to the health office? Oh no, I'm really not gloating, I'm actually quite scared, truly."
A bloodstained figure closely followed the protagonist.
Tacitus crunched his chips: "I think that person's clothes need washing."
Both this streamer's original fans and the new viewers just attracted by the emoji saw a side of this streamer that few had known.
How could there be such a pure, unaffected... horror game stream?
Of course, some people left the livestream feeling underwhelmed when they didn't see the reactions they wanted, but more viewers were used to seeing game streamers who pretended to be scared even when they weren't. This was the first time they'd seen someone turn a horror game stream into a sleep-inducing ASMR session. Out of curiosity, a large majority of viewers who had been drawn in continued to stay in the livestream room, watching the streamer broadcast.
Furthermore, a quick-fingered editor immediately cut together the intense parts of this game, paired with Tacitus's calm and unbothered performance, and uploaded it to the Dulu Dulu main site. The view count quickly soared, pushing it to the recommended section on the main site's homepage.
Tacitus's virtual avatar became famous overnight!
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But Tacitus himself was currently completely unaware of this.
He interestedly pressed the right key on the keyboard, controlling the character to move continuously to the right.
Of course, during this process, the controllable character also reached stages similar to "endpoints," though after the screen went black, accompanied by another school dismissal bell, the character would return to standing in the corridor.
However, he noticed that each time the game restarted, the character would stand at a different starting point. The game time would be different, and the final destination wouldn't necessarily be the same.
For example, the first time he reached the end of the corridor, the boy in the game went up the stairs, and shortly after, a dark shadow flashed past the window, ending that day;
When the second stage of the game began, the boy was standing in front of the bathroom door and finally stopped at the classroom door. This time seemed a bit later than when he first reached the end of the corridor, with the sun outside nearly setting;
The third restart showed the boy holding several books, standing at the classroom door, and ultimately reaching the teachers' office. This time should have been during the day;
The fourth time, the boy appeared in the corridor from the stairwell, and judging from the window, it was morning with bright light. A girl in the corridor was arguing about something, and the boy eventually returned to the classroom;
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Although the times differed, the game process always involved walking from one end of the corridor to the other. However, the atmosphere in the corridor grew increasingly eerie, sometimes with sudden jarring noises, shadows appearing and disappearing, door frames wrapped with "do not enter" signs that didn't affect students coming and going, making it difficult to distinguish between fantasy and reality.
Now it was the seventh day, with the sunset as brilliant as on the first day.
The boy silently walked through the corridor.
What struck Tacitus as strange was that this game sequence was simpler than the previous ones, with no flickering lights or lurking shadows, and no classmates casting strange glances at the protagonist along the way.
The entire corridor was empty, with the only difference being—countless eyes growing from the corridor walls.
They stared fixedly at the boy in the game interface.
At first, these eyes merely moved their gaze following the boy's advancing steps, constantly watching him; but the further the boy walked, the more malevolent their gazes became. Gradually, red bloodshot lines appeared in their eyes; further ahead, the entire eyes turned red; and even further, the eyes even dripped red tears of blood...
Even Tacitus, who was bold to the point of feeling nothing, felt a bit creeped out at this point. While saying "these eyes might need some eye drops," he controlled the game character step by step forward.
Step by step, he found himself seemingly approaching the endpoint, and the screen began to show noise and static like a television with signal problems. Despite the blurry image, Tacitus could still discern that the endpoint in the game scene seemed to be the same as before the first scene transition—the ascending stairwell.
The boy approached the endpoint step by step, and the screen grew increasingly red and dark.
At the moment he finally climbed the stairs, a piercing noise suddenly rang out, like a human curse or screech. But the boy, as if unable to hear any of this, turned and climbed the stairs, disappearing at the end.
The game was over. After pondering for a while, Tacitus felt that although the game's story was incomplete and unclear about what was being told, the atmosphere was crafted quite well, with somewhat of a horror game flavor.
It just didn't look like an advertisement at all—the two large words "Advertisement" in the livestream title seemed to have been added for nothing.
Just as he was puzzling over this, the completely black screen suddenly lit up, revealing a large line of text and a small line—"The Web," meeting you this summer at the cinema.
Tacitus and the livestream viewers suddenly realized—it was a movie advertisement.
With the stream reaching this point, Tacitus stretched lazily, feeling that although the process had been extremely unrestrained, he had successfully completed the entire stream without breaching the contract, which was something to celebrate. On a whim, he searched for the movie "The Web" with his viewers, only to disappointingly discover that apart from this livestream, there hadn't been any promotion for this movie anywhere, which left him somewhat confused.
But this wasn't something he needed to worry about. So Tacitus closed the search engine and finally opened the comment section that had been closed all evening.
Although he didn't know why there were unusually many comments in the section, he didn't immediately sense anything abnormal. He yawned—his virtual cat avatar also yawned along with him, ears twitching—and breathed a long sigh of relief, saying: "Well, today's stream ends here. I know it was tiring for everyone to watch me play a horror game, and I probably won't play horror games again in the future if I can help it. Finally, thank you to the client daddy, and we'll see you tomorrow, meow."
After saying this, Tacitus ended the stream at lightning speed.
As for waking up the next day to find that his horror game clips, tagged with the keyword "The Web," had shot into the top ten trends on the Dulu Dulu main site—naturally, he had no way of knowing about this yet.
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Since even Tacitus himself hadn't yet discovered that his horror video had gone viral, Shao Yichen naturally hadn't noticed either.
After all, her initial idea of "creating a game for streamers to promote" was purely the result of her tug-of-war with the system.
Three hundred thousand yuan wasn't enough to negotiate a collaboration with a video platform and secure an advertising spot. Fortunately, Shao Yichen had targeted a livestreaming platform. With a quick thought, she naturally came up with the approach of finding platform streamers to advertise.
But regarding how to promote, she and the system had a disagreement—no, her plan was rejected by the system.
Her original plan was to spend two hundred thousand yuan, give a script to a streamer, and have them read the advertisement according to the script, thus achieving the promotional purpose.
But unexpectedly, the system immediately rejected this plan!
The reason was simple—two hundred thousand yuan for one advertisement was too expensive; the system mandatorily required each advertisement to be priced below ten thousand yuan.
This meant Shao Yichen's promotion plan changed to finding at least twenty streamers to conduct promotions separately.
This touched Shao Yichen's psychological bottom line.
Twenty streamers, and according to the system's requirements, they had to be streamers with some fame. It wasn't fear of the ten thousand, but fear of the one-in-ten-thousand chance—given her luck, she'd probably encounter one or two streaming geniuses among these twenty people.
And if such a streaming genius organized some activity with her advertisement, wouldn't that create the possibility of it going viral?
Twenty streamers was far too many!
Just as Shao Yichen was about to give up, she noticed a special exception in the system's rules.
"If streamers broadcast games, payment is based on the number of games."
She tapped her belly, struck by inspiration.
Why not use the pretext of game streaming to find someone to stream!
She immediately called Qin Lu, asking if he had any movie props and scenery photo materials, as she wanted to use these materials for promotion.
Qin Lu initially thought this call meant Director Shao Yichen had suddenly had a change of heart and wanted to rescue him from the sea of editing torment, so he was particularly enthusiastic and delivered the materials extremely quickly. Little did he expect that after receiving the materials, the director would simply say "do well, keep it up!" and toss him back to the editing team, leaving him to continue suffering mutual torment with the twins and Jiang Miaomiao—truly pitiable to the point of tears.
But Shao Yichen was completely oblivious to having pushed Qin Lu back into the fire pit. She submitted these materials to the system, chose "game" from the system's promotion options, and simply designed a boring game method—continuously walking from left to right through a corridor. She also specifically noted that the game should be made in multiple segments, so the system would pay for the streaming of each segment separately, though the streamer would only think they were streaming one game.
In this way, Shao Yichen successfully exploited a loophole in the system, managing to spend twenty thousand yuan on one person through the game streaming method.
She had even specifically selected a streamer known as a "gaming black hole" to prevent any accidents from happening during the game stream that might disrupt her plan.
Now she was satisfied, believing she had successfully implemented her strategy of throwing money into water and spending without making a splash, completely putting this matter behind her.
As for now, Shao Yichen had more important things to do—prepare for the premiere.
That's right! After two weeks of effort, the four-person team led by Jiang Miaomiao had successfully completed the film's editing! Now the film was entering the pre-release preparation stage, and the premiere was just around the corner!
Currently, Shao Yichen didn't know exactly how the film had been edited; she only knew that apart from Jiang Miaomiao being full of energy and confidence, the other three appeared to have suffered varying degrees of psychological trauma.
Qin Lu would appear physically drained at the mere mention of these two weeks, looking as if he couldn't bear to recall the past, mumbling: "Three days without sleep... even during my busiest deadline rushes, I never went three days without sleep... finishing a tutorial in one afternoon... producing the first draft in three days... then endless revisions... rejected first draft, make a second draft... I've never had editing experience before, I really can't take it anymore..."
Although Nan Rongyu's complexion seemed fine, he would become tearful when mentioning the post-production, patting Shao Yichen's shoulder and complaining at length, as if he had been greatly insulted: "That Jiang Miaomiao! She actually thought our rock music didn't match the plot! Forced us to use unplugged acoustic guitars for the soundtrack! She completely failed to recognize where the true soul of our band lies!"
Shao Yichen: "So did you end up doing rock music?"
Nan Rongyu: "We did it for the end credits."
Shao Yichen: "What about Nan Rongzhou?"
Nan Rongyu: "He's playing drums with me in the end credits."
Shao Yichen: ...Isn't that completely unchanged from before?!
It seemed the band's soul remained that discordant soul. While somewhat relieved, Shao Yichen also shuddered, recalling the two's noisy performance.
Nan Rongzhou's concerns differed from the above two, representing the most normal worry among the three.
"Director Shao, Cinematographer Jiang Miaomiao said these sections, these sections, and these sections of the plot only feature the deceased character, so she's assigned me alone to handle them," one evening before the editing work was complete, Nan Rongzhou called Shao Yichen, and as soon as the call connected, she heard him sounding as if he had a stomachache, "but I don't know how to handle it."
Hearing this, Shao Yichen was somewhat surprised: "Weren't you enjoying yourself with music before? How come now that you're responsible for the soundtrack, you seem quite troubled?"
"Before, I was making music with my brother, working together with someone," the voice on the phone grew increasingly quiet, summed up in one word: timid. "Now I'm doing it alone—and what's more, using acoustic guitar! I haven't played unplugged guitar for several years..."
"Where's your brother?" Shao Yichen asked curiously.
"My brother... has certain conflicts with Cinematographer Jiang regarding musical taste, and is now fully focused on creating the end credits song."
Shao Yichen: .
So Nan Rongyu had been banished to the frontier.
She inquired: "Then why are you still helping Jiang Miaomiao?" I thought wherever your brother goes, you go.
Nan Rongzhou: "Well... I think what she says makes sense."
Shao Yichen mentally applauded Nan Rongzhou. Putting righteousness before family ties wasn't easy.
She listened to Nan Rongzhou's voice in her ear, feeling a bit of a headache.
Before her rebirth, she and Nan Rongzhou had been drinking buddies, so she naturally understood his personality.
In some ways, she and Nan Rongzhou actually shared similarities—for instance, both had been slackers before her rebirth.
But while Shao Yichen was a slacker due to laziness, Nan Rongzhou was a slacker because of... timidity.
The South Polar Bear Group had three heirs before this pair of twins, each one a genius-level figure with tentacles extending into the business world, scientific community, and even the realm of special abilities (?), making it inevitable for these ordinary twin brothers to be compared with their three siblings in whatever direction they developed, and always coming up short.
Some people in such circumstances would let themselves go wild—appearing brainless but living quite happily, like Nan Rongyu.
But others would lose some of their self-confidence in such situations—like Nan Rongzhou.
Fortunately, he had an equally ordinary yet free-spirited happy twin brother, so as Nan Rongzhou followed Nan Rongyu around making music every day, he didn't display the childhood trauma produced by being overshadowed by genius brothers.
But once he had to do something on his own, he would immediately reveal his true nature, becoming incredibly timid and hesitant, afraid of doing poorly and being compared to someone like his genius older brothers, just as in his childhood.
Shao Yichen sighed, thinking that after being friends across two lifetimes, even if she wanted to lose money, she couldn't sabotage someone at a time like this.
She began speaking: "Music is inherently a very subjective thing."
"Some people might find a song pleasant, while others dislike it or even find it awful."
"Both viewpoints are valid and correct."
Shao Yichen switched the phone to her other ear and continued: "But no matter how subjective musical taste may be, there are always some common elements, otherwise there wouldn't be distinctions between niche and mainstream."
"Therefore, if you express what's in your heart through music, it will always resonate with some people."
"Moreover, this character was custom-designed for you—who could understand him better than you?"
"I believe only you can create the most suitable soundtrack for him."
As Shao Yichen said this, she knew full well that Nan Rongzhou himself likely understood these points, but simply had no one around him to concretely affirm this for him.
His phone call was mostly to hear this kind of validation from her, to give him some peace of mind.
Sure enough, after hearing her words, Nan Rongzhou became energized, his mood elevated, and now wanted to hang up immediately.
But before ending the call, he suddenly remembered something and said to Shao Yichen: "Director Shao! I heard from Cinematographer Jiang that the editing part is almost complete! When is our premiere scheduled?"
Hearing the words "premiere," Shao Yichen suddenly remembered.
That's right, the film was about to be released—she needed to prepare the premiere venue!
Author's Note: Second update of the day~
Without realizing it, I've written quite a bit longer... if I strictly follow the chapter divisions in my outline, situations like this where I write too much will occur. I don't know why I have so many things to say (scratches head)
Thank you to the little angels who cast sovereign votes or watered with nutrient solution during the period from 2020-08-31 11:11:23 to 2020-08-31 18:39:53~
Thanks to the little angels who watered with nutrient solution: Xiao Yan 100 bottles; ?Cangshen---Floating Dream? 88 bottles; Pink Frozen Milk 30 bottles; Fei Fei, Tea Tea Seed, Corruptive Feather Peace 20 bottles; 3292221 7 bottles; Ocean Dream 6 bottles; Biyou Palace, Liao Liao 5 bottles; Fall North 2 bottles; Want to Inhale Piggy South, Making a Little Heart 1 bottle;
Thank you very much for your support, I will continue to work hard!