In 2013, domestic video-sharing platforms were locked in a brutal struggle for market share and user traffic, a period marked by significant incentives offered by most of these sites. Any blogger with a modicum of ambition and willingness to create content could easily secure a recommendation slot, and it was during this time that many of China’s top video bloggers made their fortunes.
Qin Zixin, however, remained oblivious to these long-term strategies, driven as she was by a mercenary streak that favored immediate financial gain. She sought only quick-gain, low-effort projects, finding the prospect of long-term revenue too arduous. She had no interest in innovating; for her, money was only real once it was firmly in her grasp. As for those earnest souls diligently crafting original content, they deserved a nod of respect, nothing more. Should their videos prove popular, Qin Zixin would unhesitatingly steal them and upload them to foreign platforms, given that YouTube’s incentives were also quite generous.
Seizing the current opportunity to monetize traffic, she swiftly began pirating videos.
Even if content creation incentives were to become a future trend, Qin Zixin felt no panic. She could simply concoct a ‘nonsense generator’ to mass-produce meaningless drivel, pairing it with her computer’s text-to-speech function to create marketing-style videos.
This was a skill she had only acquired through hands-on instruction from her online group; her memories from her ‘previous life’ contained none of these rather unsavory methods.
She certainly understood how to be utterly unscrupulous.
She had not informed the system about her video piracy scheme for profit, acting entirely on her own initiative. Yet, the system, too indolent to intervene, secretly relished the prospect of Qin Zixin eventually facing consequences.
While the videos downloaded, she idly attempted to watch one, only to find the internet speed too throttled by the uploads. Reluctantly, she gave up, collapsing ungracefully onto the floor. She opened her phone’s instant messaging app and tapped on Yang Qichao’s avatar.
– Chaozi, any news on the back-to-school exam?
– It’ll cover everything you were supposed to learn this holiday. You’re doomed.
The frigid reply from the other side infuriated Qin Zixin, causing her to roll on the floor. Suppressing the urge to snap back, she continued to play coy.
– Bro, you’re my big brother. Could you highlight the key points for me? Once school starts, I’ll cling to you every single day.
– ‘Love.jpg”Love.jpg”Love.jpg’
After sending two consecutive messages, the other party simply replied, – Heh.
‘Damn you to hell!’
Qin Zixin rolled into the bed frame, tears stinging her eyes from the sudden pain. However, she paid it no mind, swiftly recomposing herself. She sent a voice message, her tone dripping with the sweetest, most alluring charm.
– Chaochao~, please~, won’t you save little ol’ me~?
She sent it.
After a prolonged silence, the other side returned a ‘Poop.jpg’ meme.
Qin Zixin, completely losing her composure, threatened him bluntly.
– Fine, just you wait until school starts! You’re going to regret this!
Still feeling unsatisfied, she sent another meme.
– ‘What causes your anal sphincter to relax.jpg’
Qin Zixin, brimming with malice, sent the image with a fierce scowl, her delicate face pouting so much that one could have hung a water bottle from her lips.
‘Damn it, did I play too rough with him before? Now this straight-laced guy is completely immune to my charms.’
‘You know exactly what you did. If I were him, I’d have dealt with you on the spot. You scoundrel, always picking on honest people for your pranks.’
The system found this amusing. It rather hoped Qin Zixin would bomb her back-to-school exams and then get her bottom smacked by Tang Yuyu. This mischievous girl was far too wild; she deserved every opportunity for a good lesson.
Qin Zixin slowly rose from the floor, her lithe, boneless body slumping into the computer chair, a mix of worry and frustration clouding her mind. Having grown up with Yang Qichao, Qin Zixin had once effortlessly captivated him with her alluring appearance. However, several times she had taken her games too far, ensnaring him in schemes that left him deeply wronged. Now, Yang Qichao had finally awoken to her true nature, realizing that this seemingly celestial childhood friend was, in fact, rotten to the core.
This scoundrel, overflowing with mischief, possessed not an ounce of feminine shyness or integrity.
Especially when he discovered her alternate account, Grand Master Hunyuan, he had stared at her in shock as she, like a seasoned connoisseur of illicit content, brazenly distributed unapproved resources across multiple chat groups.
Indeed, he was even in her resource group, a group into which Qin Zixin had personally added him right before his very eyes.
Qin Zixin had intended to unleash a grand assault of decadent culture upon her childhood friend, but her efforts had been in vain.
Though he hadn’t left the group, he never spoke, remaining uncorrupted by the various temptations and nihilistic remarks found within. Sometimes, Qin Zixin maliciously mused that, in a way, Yang Qichao was the literal embodiment of digital detachment.
Just as she was about to head to the kitchen for a bottle of yogurt, Yang Qichao sent a PDF named ‘Key Points.’ With a sudden change of demeanor, Qin Zixin’s exquisite, jade-like face, which had been clouded with frustration, brightened instantly. Happily, she immediately sent a voice message:
– I knew Chao Ge was reliable, mua!
Disregarding whether he had replied, she promptly clicked download on her computer.
****
The following day, Qin Zixin’s traffic monetization plan suffered an epic defeat.
Her face fell as she stared at her account backend on the video platform.
For reasons unknown, six of her seven accounts had been abruptly banned within days due to copyright infringement and video piracy. The remaining account held nearly fifty videos, with a combined total of nearly three million views. Yet, the comment section was filled with users lambasting her for ‘reposting and claiming originality.’
– Li Kui and Li Gui’s videos are linked together.
– Can video pirates just go die?
– Are you XXXX? How dare you claim this as original? Truly, a shameless person is invincible.
All her videos were either unwatched, with empty comment sections, or utterly swamped with vitriol.
Qin Zixin clenched her silver teeth in fury. Just as she moved to delete the comments one by one, she found she couldn’t. Once a Bilibili account received too many reports, the user lost the ability to perform such operations; a permanent ban was now only a matter of time.
Her side hustle, active for less than two months, had come to an abrupt end. She had earned just over four thousand yuan in total, but much of that money remained trapped in her accounts, inaccessible.
‘These B-station netizens are so annoying! I was just making it convenient for them to watch videos without needing a VPN, and making a little extra money along the way. It’s not like it was coming out of their pockets! Are they really going to complain about me profiting off foreigners? Cixi paid so much in reparations, what’s wrong with me taking a little back?’
Unable to delete the comments, Qin Zixin slammed her fist onto the desk in a fit of rage, tears instantly welling up. Whether from pain or indignant frustration, the golden pearls streamed down her face like a broken string of pearls, ceaselessly.
‘I hate this! I hate this!’
As tears fell, she blew on her jade-like hand, which now throbbed from hitting the desk. The more she blew, the more aggrieved she felt, her voice even taking on a nasal whine.
‘I warned you when you started this, not to act on every whim. Different platforms have different sensitivities to video piracy, and even doing the same thing can yield different results. This is just a few insults; haven’t those beasts in your group insulted you enough? Why are you crying now?’
Seeing Qin Zixin in such a state, the system felt a pang of sympathy. Despite always mocking her, this girl was, after all, someone it had watched grow up. Ethically, she was like its granddaughter. They say there’s a special bond with grandchildren, not to mention their own peculiar relationship.
Although this stubborn girl’s personality had gone severely awry, she usually listened to its advice.
‘I’m not crying! Why did this website have to ban my account?! I was just making some hard-earned money, such a paltry sum each month! And they ban my account without returning my money!’
Qin Zixin initially put on a brave front, but the more she thought about it, the more wronged she felt. Her tears weren’t solely from the insults; they were mostly from the loss of her money after the ban. For nearly two months, her seven pirating accounts had been operating without incident. However, in the past few days, they had been successively targeted, and a significant portion of the money in several banned accounts was now unretrievable. Qin Zixin had just made a rough calculation, estimating a sudden loss of at least three thousand two hundred yuan in projected income.
She had been pirating videos for less than two months. In the first month, the traffic wasn’t substantial, totaling less than seven hundred yuan. In August, traffic had clearly surged, and she had initially been quite pleased. But as traffic rose, so did the number of critics, leading to her accounts being banned and her money vanishing.
As Qin Zixin wallowed in self-pity, the system once again discreetly vanished. Seeing the girl fail to profit from her illicit ventures, the system secretly gloated, feeling its efforts in buying traffic for mass reporting had not been in vain.
It had all the time in the world to guide this stubborn girl onto the right path.
‘Crying over a few thousand yuan, how utterly ambitious of you. Hey, stop crying. I’ve got a gift for you, it’s in your treasure chest.’
Through mysterious powers and anonymous accounts, the ‘System’ had amassed a considerable fortune over the past decade, all intended for Qin Zixin after her undergraduate graduation. However, until now, the system had provided Qin Zixin with nothing more than a few sets of clothes and shoes. After all, merely relying on its memories, Qin Zixin had already learned numerous skills, most of which simply lacked practical application.
Moreover, if it were to give money to this stubborn girl, who knew what kind of trouble her unruly nature might stir up? It was better to keep a tight rein on her from the start, at least ensuring she didn’t go astray before adulthood.
Meanwhile, the custom-made clothes and shoes it provided her were of the highest caliber. The system had previously given her several outfits, each meticulously crafted with exquisite fabric, precise stitching, and impeccable tailoring.
Unfortunately, her body developed too quickly, and soon she couldn’t wear them anymore. When Tang Yuyu eventually gave these clothes to her cousin, Qin Zixin couldn’t help but cry.
Tang Yuyu’s cousin was Tang Manwen, the daughter of Tang Yuyu’s younger brother, Tang Longlong. While her looks and figure couldn’t quite compare to Qin Zixin’s, she was still an exceptionally rare beauty, her appearance closely resembling a younger Tang Yuyu. Her personality was infinitely better than Qin Zixin’s.
Gentle, charming, and understanding, yet her purity was merely superficial. After all, with Qin Zixin, the Lich King, as an influence, Tang Manwen had pretty much learned everything she needed to know through osmosis.
She was a year older than Qin Zixin, attending her second year at Nanling City First High School. First High was a key high school in Nanling City, second only to Nan Shi High. In previous years, its acceptance rate into top-tier universities hovered around eighty percent, and it was climbing year by year, showing strong potential to rival Nan Shi High. Tang Manwen typically ranked among the top hundred students in her grade there, placing her at least at a 985 university level. Coupled with her looks, she had no shortage of rich young men pursuing her as their goddess.
Unlike Nan Shi High, First High allowed students with decent, though not necessarily top-tier, grades to enroll by paying tuition.
Although it was also a public school, during the wave of school reforms in the 2010s, First High’s principal, Kong Yucheng, had managed its operations skillfully, earning a hefty sum. Notably, First High had even established an ‘Innovation Class,’ which sounded ordinary but was filled with children from wealthy families. Most of them bypassed the domestic college entrance exam route, opting to study abroad directly after their third year.
Normal students admitted to First High paid an annual tuition of only 1,500 yuan, while those who bought their way in had to pay a minimum one-time fee of 300,000 yuan, with annual tuition costing 120,000 yuan. To enter the Innovation Class, the expenses were even higher, totaling over 400,000 yuan a year in various scattered fees.
This was already at the level of American consumer spending, but many affluent parents were willing to spend lavishly for recommendation letters to prestigious foreign universities. Precisely because of these ‘young masters and ladies,’ First High’s atmosphere, compared to Nan Shi High, fostered an intense culture of competition among students.
While school uniforms were mandatory, students would compete with watches, sneakers, and backpacks—any mass-produced industrial product imbued with some inexplicable, meaningless subcultural significance was fair game for their private comparisons.
Taking sneakers as an example, they would compete over limited editions, branded collaborations, and colorways. This overly affluent lifestyle, detached from production, had impoverished the minds of some students to the point where they were unknowingly exploited as ‘leeks’ to be harvested. First High’s principal even actively encouraged this competitive atmosphere; if students competed over what they wore and used, he would provide them with a place to compete over what they ate.
First High had two canteens: the old canteen, whose prices were similar to those in regular school canteens, but its food quality was significantly inferior to Nan Shi High’s, and it remained unrenovated. The newly opened canteen, however, was sumptuously decorated, with solid wood tables and chairs. In addition to meticulously prepared Chinese dishes, it even offered French, Thai, and Japanese cuisine.
Yet, its prices were very ‘market-oriented’; a meal there would cost a boy at least fifty yuan to feel about eighty percent full.
But aside from that, everything else was fine. Young people were merely vain, not malicious. Although children from wealthy families engaged in extensive competition, the atmosphere was quite good for the vast majority of ordinary students.
Otherwise, following conventional tropes, Tang Manwen might have been coerced by a wealthy scion, becoming a ‘canary in a gilded cage,’ a plaything watered day and night.
The narrative returns to Qin Zixin.
Qin Zixin’s alluring and peerless jade-like face still bore tear streaks, a sight piteous to behold. However, upon hearing the system mention compensation, her distress vanished. She instantly performed another swift change of expression, becoming cheerful once more. Her bare feet directly touched the floor; she couldn’t be bothered to find the slippers she had just kicked somewhere.
She hurried to her large wardrobe, where her rabbit was still playfully thumping vigorously. From the bottom shelf of the wardrobe, she pulled out an extra-large biscuit tin. Inside were her old graphics card, a marmot skull specimen, fish scale crafts, and other items.
This was her treasure trove, a collection of miscellaneous trinkets and odds and ends she had accumulated for over a decade. Many were curious little gadgets her godfather, a merchant marine, had brought back from his travels around the world.
At this moment, her eyes immediately spotted a watch that had appeared in her treasure trove.
It was an exceptionally delicate and exquisite mechanical watch. The watch face bore no numbers, instead featuring a silver-enameled painting: two plump, adorable yellow birds perched on a peach blossom branch, rendered in an extremely vibrant and cheerful style. The pure platinum cathedral hands were even inlaid with jewels at their tips. The watch’s diameter was estimated to be less than 30mm, which only enhanced the exquisite detail of the pattern. Tiny gems were also inlaid on the hands and lugs.
Qin Zixin fell in love with it at first sight.
She then took the watch and lay on her bed, meticulously examining it under the incandescent light, her bad mood instantly vanishing.