At four in the afternoon, Jiang Yu started her livestream right on time.
The moment the stream went live, the viewer count skyrocketed from single digits to eight hundred. Yesterday’s debunking post by that big yellow-V influencer had clearly brought her the first wave of hate-watchers.
The barrage flooded the screen like a dam had burst.
[Oh? The scripted streamer is back? What are you burying in the sand today?]
[Heard you used a live blue-ringed octopus for a stunt yesterday. Shameless, huh? Desperate much.]
[I’m not leaving until you perform swallowing a sea urchin whole.]
Jiang Yu set up her camera, her cool, plain-featured face appearing in the center of the frame.
She adjusted the tripod angle, looking as if she were gazing at an empty landscape, utterly oblivious to the filth flooding the screen.
Only when the barrage slowed slightly did she speak flatly:
“Yesterday someone said I buried things in advance.”
“Fine.”
She paused. “Today, you pick the spot. Drop place names in the barrage, and I’ll go wherever it lands. Any tidal flat on this island works.”
For a split second, the livestream went silent.
Then the barrage went insane.
[??? WTF???]
[Did I hear that right? She’s letting the haters pick the spot? That bold?]
[Ladies, this is our chance! Send her to Dead Fish Beach! The one on the north side!]
[Yes yes yes! Dead Fish Beach! That place stinks so bad even fishing boats steer clear. Let’s see her dig up a gold nugget there!]
The words “Dead Fish Beach” formed a perfect wall of text, quickly uniting everyone’s opinion.
Just then, A-Wang’s WeChat voice message popped up.
Jiang Yu glanced at it and hit speaker directly.
His loud, boisterous voice blasted through the livestream: “Sis! Whatever you do, don’t get any crazy ideas about going to Dead Fish Beach! That place is a floating garbage dump—thick, stinking mud. The locals avoid it like the plague. Forget seafood, you can’t even find a ghost there!”
This official confirmation from a local only poured fuel on the fire.
[Go to Dead Fish Beach! Scared, streamer? Just admit you’re chicken!]
[HAHAHA, even the locals say there’s nothing there. Let’s see you fake this one!]
[Crash incoming. I’ve got my popcorn and soda ready.]
Jiang Yu said nothing more. She silently packed up her tripod, slung it over her shoulder, and gave the camera a nod.
She turned off the voice message, hoisted her makeshift gear, and walked step by step toward the north side of the island.
Half an hour later, when the camera was set up again, the schadenfreude in the livestream was practically spilling out of the screen.
The frame showed a beach that truly lived up to its name.
Gray-black mud glistened with an oily sheen, half-rotted seaweed piled into small mounds, and the stench seemed to pierce through the screen and crawl up your nose.
Not even a single sideways-scuttling sand crab was visible in the frame—just a lifeless expanse.
Jiang Yu’s expression didn’t change. She took off her shoes and stepped barefoot into the ankle-deep muck.
[HAHAHA, cold enough for you? If there’s anything in this place, I’ll do a handstand and drink seawater on the spot!]
[LOL, is the streamer’s face turning green? Still toughing it out.]
[Pack it up, folks. There’s no way to script this one.]
But in the view the livestream audience couldn’t see—the moment Jiang Yu’s soles touched the mud—
Beneath the sludge, those dim, lifeless patches ignited like a river of stars suddenly set ablaze. Dense clusters of golden light blazed to life, their brilliance surpassing anything from the past two days combined.
Jiang Yu’s eyes widened just a fraction.
She crouched down, and amid the sea of mocking barrage, plunged both hands without hesitation into the cold, reeking mud.
First scoop.
She dragged out a red-shelled crab the size of a washbasin, its massive claws waving with full vigor.
Barrage: [???]
Second scoop.
Three wild blood clams, each bigger than an adult’s fist, were tossed into her bucket.
Barrage: [??? What’s going on???]
Third scoop.
A string of purple mussels as long as a forearm was pulled out intact.
Barrage: […Are my eyes broken?]
Ten minutes.
In just ten short minutes, under the gaze of nearly two thousand viewers, Jiang Yu’s plastic bucket was full.
The barrage shifted from mockery to a screen full of question marks and ellipses, finally coalescing into one existential question:
[Wait… since when did Dead Fish Beach secretly stock up without telling us?]
Just then, an old man in waders carrying half a bucket of cat’s eye snails appeared at the edge of the frame. It was Old Chen.
He’d just been taking a shortcut, but when he saw what was in Jiang Yu’s bucket and the tidal flat beneath her feet, he looked like he’d seen a ghost. The cigarette in his hand dropped to the ground with a soft thud.
He rushed over in three quick strides, pointed at Jiang Yu’s bucket, and shouted at the top of his lungs in front of thousands of viewers:
“Impossible! I’ve been on this island for thirty years. I brought people out to dig this dead beach ten years ago—not a single crab, not even a clam shell to be found!”
The barrage exploded.
[!!! A local fisherman with thirty years of experience just confirmed it! This is real!]
[Thirty years and even he’s never seen this! Is this streamer a koi fish reincarnated?]
[I mean, this isn’t luck anymore—this is Metaphysics! This is magic!]
Old Chen’s appearance became the final straw that crushed all doubt.
The viewer count crazily surged past five thousand!
Jiang Yu ignored Old Chen, who was already starting to question his own existence. She sensed that deeper beneath her feet, a clump of purple-golden light was especially bright.
She kept digging down.
Suddenly, her fingertips touched a hard, smooth surface.
Not stone.
Her heart stirred. She carefully brushed away the surrounding mud.
A jar-shaped object completely wrapped in black sludge slowly revealed its outline.
Jiang Yu picked it up, walked to the seawater’s edge, and rinsed it over and over with clean water.
As the black mud washed away, a warm blue-green hue gradually emerged under the setting sun.
It was a blue-and-white porcelain jar.
The jar was painted with interlocking lotus patterns, its glaze ancient and unadorned—definitely not a modern craft.
The entire livestream room went completely silent at this moment.
After a full five seconds of stillness, the barrage exploded like a flash flood, utterly unhinged.
[Antique??]
[Blue… blue-and-white porcelain??]
[I’m literally kneeling! Digging up blue-and-white porcelain in the internet’s most universally acknowledged garbage dump—what kind of insane luck stat is this?!]
[From today on, you’re not the unlucky one—you’re my one and only boss, Metaphysics master!]
Facing a screen full of worship, Jiang Yu remained exceptionally calm. She didn’t try to open the porcelain jar. Instead, she took off her jacket, carefully wrapped it in layers, and set it beside the bucket.
She stood up, faced the camera again, and raised that bucket full of lively, jumping seafood. Her tone remained cool:
“Not sure if it’s an antique—need to have it appraised.”
“But these—these are real.”
“Dead Fish Beach. The place you all chose.”
The moment the words landed, the face-slap was complete.
The livestream room was left with nothing but a screen full of “kneeling,” “I’m sorry, boss,” and “Please share the Metaphysics formula!”
After going offline, the backend data popped up: peak viewers 5,347, new followers 2,188, tip revenue 862.5 yuan.
More importantly, clips of her stream were already being frantically shared. The hashtag #BlueAndWhitePorcelainFoundAtDeadFishBeach began trending on short-video platforms.
Jiang Yu looked at the tip records, and her finger stopped on one ID.
“Deep Sea Tide-Watcher.”
This account hadn’t sent a single barrage message the entire time, yet it had silently gifted 88 of the platform’s most expensive Deep Sea Heart gifts. One person alone had contributed nearly all of the tips.
…What a strange ID. Like a gaze cast up from the depths of the sea.
What she didn’t know was that at the very moment she went offline, in some ancient clan, an old bell in the ancestral hall that hadn’t rung in centuries was gently struck, as if by an invisible hand.
In a long-dormant internal group chat, a screenshot from her livestream was quietly posted.
Beneath the screenshot, a question followed, laced with shock and cautious probing:
[Elders, is this… that disaster star who was cast out of the family… Jiang Yu?]