The next day, Chen Jincheng slept in. He'd gotten back too late last night.
After washing up, he walked out of his room.
It was a villa.
A rented one.
When he got to the living room, he saw a woman in her thirties on the phone, a huge smile on her face. The woman wasn't exceptionally beautiful, but her voice had a gentle quality.
"Finally awake?" The woman hung up and greeted him as he came downstairs.
"Sister Hong, what's got you so happy?" Chen Jincheng asked with a smile.
Sister Hong was his current assistant.
Their acquaintance began during a video shoot. He'd originally paid a young woman to act in a scene, but who would've thought her older sister would walk in on them? She assumed he was trying to pursue her sister and, funnily enough, started trying to play matchmaker, as if she were terrified her little sister would never find a boyfriend.
What's more, when he later needed to hire an assistant, Sister Hong was among the applicants, and she ended up getting the job.
Sister Hong was very capable. She didn't just handle assistant duties; she could manage many different things in a well-organized manner.
Later, he learned that hiring Sister Hong had been a stroke of luck. She had previously worked in human resources management at a well-known major tech company. She was returning to the workforce after having a child, but her old position had been filled. When looking for a new job, she couldn't compete with younger, single women. She had stayed because the salary he offered for an assistant wasn't low, and the job also offered a good amount of free time.
"What else could it be? You went and secretly dropped an original song at the bar, keeping even me in the dark." Sister Hong handed him a phone, her tone slightly complaining. "Good thing my husband was watching your stream and told me. I stayed up all night contacting a few clippers and managed to get a small trending topic going for you. I'll arrange a time for the clippers who helped to come over. You'll need to cooperate and film a few videos with them!"
The truth was, she really wanted to complain. After all, her husband spent all day watching a scumbag's live stream and was constantly shouting "666," which made her want to get a couple of washboards ready for him.
Chen Jincheng took the phone and, sure enough, saw a trending topic about himself: "Has Ancestral Master Chen Jincheng's Persona Collapsed?"
The topic was immediately eye-catching. It gave off the feeling that there was some juicy gossip to be had, making it highly likely that people would click on it.
Clicking on it, he saw that dozens of accounts were posting videos of him singing "Trajectory" at the bar last night.
These were clearly clipper accounts that specialized in editing content from internet celebrities. Some of them were even dedicated to clipping him, editing out the best quotes from his streams.
These kinds of clipper accounts were technically against the rules. If the original creator wanted to, a single report would basically get the account taken down.
However, most internet celebrities wouldn't do that. When these clipper accounts gain traction, they become an indirect source of massive traffic, equivalent to paying for a "Dou+" boost, and can even be used to push trending topics.
You could say that the more people making clips, the greater the popularity, which meant the person being clipped was getting more famous.
That's why many internet celebrities even authorize these clipper accounts to edit their content. Some, once an account gets big enough, will even pay the owner a salary or recruit them to become part of an official clipping team.
He himself had recruited two such clipper accounts, but their follower counts weren't that high—just over 300,000 fans each!
Of course, he couldn't possibly have dozens of accounts dedicated just to him. But a single content creator often clips more than one internet celebrity. For those operating as a studio, they might edit a whole group of internet celebrities at once and manage many clipper accounts simultaneously.
The dozens of accounts posting his video from last night all at once was a perfect example of this kind of operation.
And the price he had to pay was simply to have a meal with a few of the clippers and let them film some videos during the process.
Chen Jincheng clicked on the trending topic and casually watched the two most popular videos:
"Many of you are no stranger to Ancestral Master Chen Jincheng. Last night, he sang an original song at a bar, truly embodying the phrase 'A top-tier scumbag is perfect at everything except loving her.' He's 180cm, handsome, can write original songs, and the key is, it's actually really good..."
"Sisters, who gets it? When the biggest scumbag sings the most heartfelt song, he's actually so charismatic. It's a shame there's no full version of 'Trajectory' yet..."
The best part of these two videos was the clip of the chorus from the song "Trajectory."
"I'll stare into space, then forget you, and then shut my eyes tightly."
"Thinking that one day someone will take your place, so I'll no longer have to miss you!"
Just these two lines of lyrics had tons of people in the comments begging for the song:
"Song name please, it sounds so good!"
"I searched the two lines of lyrics online, but nothing came up!"
"Is it a new song?"
"..."
A lot of people were drawn in by the song, which meant they could build more hype around it later.
Sister Hong added, "You need to apply for the online copyright fees for this song first and sign the digital contracts, especially with Tiao Yin. If the song blows up, you'll have more leverage to negotiate the price."
"Yeah, I'll have Lao Chen go to the bar with me this afternoon to record the song and shoot a video while we're at it." Chen Jincheng was well aware of this. He was planning to make a good sum of money from Tiao Yin to solve his funding issues.
Of course, besides the copyright fees, there was also revenue from digital music downloads. He had to produce the full song and upload it to music platforms. That would bring in some money too.
"Okay, I'll notify Lao Chen in a bit!" Sister Hong nodded, then added a reminder, "By the way, that Xiaobai from your stream last night—you're going to sign her? Last night's script was pretty good. I checked her Touyin Number and she's gotten some attention. With her looks and figure, she'd be perfect to stir up some CP hype with you and do a romance script!"
As his assistant, she naturally knew her boss's plan. It was called a "romance script," but it was really a "scumbag" script.
Still, with his popularity, boosting a new girl could definitely get her that first wave of traffic. Of course, if the girl took off and got famous, their future interactions would also feed back into his own traffic.
It just meant this guy would probably never be able to shake his "scumbag" title.
"Already signed! The contract's in the car. Go get it and put it in the safe!" Chen Jincheng sat down and took the bowl of chicken noodle soup Sister Hong had already ordered for him. After eating, he also went out to the Bureau of Industry and Commerce to handle the necessary paperwork for the bar. Otherwise, if he got the bar up and running without the proper permits, it could lead to other troubles.
In the afternoon, he sent Jiang Xiaobai a WeChat message: "You up? Where are you now?"
Now that he'd signed this girl, he naturally had to build her up first. If he wanted to run an MCN, making a bunch of empty promises to attract talent was useless. It was better to make one person famous first to prove he had the ability.
In his previous life, an MCN boss had once said something like this: he had wanted to sign a certain girl, but she was incredibly arrogant and wouldn't even give him the time of day. Later, after he had successfully built up one talent to 10 million followers, another to 5 million, and six to a million each, that same arrogant girl shamelessly tried to cozy up to him every day.
Jiang Xiaobai had been up for a while. She'd noticed she had a few more followers in her account's backend. A quick look online revealed that someone had posted a video of Scumbag Cheng singing yesterday. In fact, quite a few people had posted videos from last night, including clips of her appearance in Scumbag Cheng's stream. One video with 100,000 likes happened to show the exact moment Scumbag Cheng introduced her, saying her Touyin Number was Jiang Xiaobai.
So, overnight, she had gained over 2,000 more fans, bringing her total to more than 4,000.
To think, she had been on Tiao Yin, making videos for almost a year, and only had a little over 1,000 fans. Now, after just one night of being featured by Scumbag Cheng, she had gained over 3,000.
This couldn't help but make her feel expectant.
She had already signed a contract with Scumbag Cheng, and he had said he would contact her today to teach her how to navigate the online world.
When she received Chen Jincheng's WeChat message, she replied instantly: "I'm awake! In my rented dorm!"
"I'll WeChat you when I'm there!" Chen Jincheng replied.
"Okay, waiting for you!" Jiang Xiaobai hit send, happily clenching her small fists, her pretty face filled with even more anticipation.
...
Chen Jincheng soon drove to the spot where Jiang Xiaobai had gotten out of the car yesterday. Before calling her down, he took out his dedicated streaming phone, mounted it securely in the car, and then opened Tiao Yin to start a stream.
Since the CP-hype script had already begun, it naturally had to be performed in front of his fan "bros."
Moreover, the first thing he was going to do today was take Jiang Xiaobai to buy the "battle armor" that had made the Jiang Xiaobai of his previous life a viral sensation: a "pure desire" style lace slip dress with thin straps and a transparent outfit with a black lingerie slip. He wanted to give his fan bros a sense of participation.
Soon, fans started pouring into the stream, and they were all clearly surprised:
"Well, this is a first! My bro is streaming in the afternoon."
"Cheng, are you doing an outdoor stream now?"
"I've been telling Cheng to do outdoor streams for ages. See a pretty girl, get her WeChat, and hit on her. I really want to see him get beaten up by a pretty girl's boyfriend!"
"If Cheng gets beaten up, I'll call 911 for him."
Chen Jincheng didn't mind his fan bros' teasing. Instead, he said, "Can't be helped. I have to accompany a female friend to buy a couple of work outfits. I don't know much about women's clothing, so I need my bros to help me out and give some suggestions."
The two words "female friend" immediately piqued the interest of his fan bros.
Chen Jincheng then sent a voice message to Jiang Xiaobai on WeChat. A moment later, the girl's voice came through: "Are you here?"
The voice sounded familiar to many of his fan bros.
"Xiaobai?"
"The girl from last night?"
"..."
But Chen Jincheng didn't answer his fans. Instead, he teased into his phone, "Xiaobai, I'm at the same spot as yesterday. By the way, you have stockings, right? It'd be a real shame if someone with legs as long as yours sat in the passenger seat without wearing any."
'When you're a streamer, you have to know how to get some perks for your fan bros.'
"You...!" Hearing this, Jiang Xiaobai instinctively wanted to curse him out.
'Isn't he just telling me to wear stockings for him to see?'
'Where's his shame?'
But then she remembered he was her boss in two different ways, so she could only swallow her pride and say, "I have black ones, white ones, nude ones, red ones, fishnets, polka-dotted ones, and ones with a floral vine pattern. Which kind do you want to see?"
Chen Jincheng was a bit dumbfounded to hear there were so many types of stockings.
'Are they really that varied?'
Seeing his fan bros already spamming "666" in the chat, he quickly whispered to the stream, "Bros, which kind do you guys want to see?"
All at once, the whole stream erupted in a lively and intense debate as the fan bros all started spamming the type of stockings they wanted to see.