Night fell, and the calls of various insects echoed through the mountains.
High on the mountain behind Lin Xian Village, Hu Xia was livestreaming the nocturnal scenery. Under the starlight, the night sky looked mysterious and alluring.
Looking up, one could see a dense tapestry of stars, woven into a magnificent and beautiful Milky Way.
Hu Xia remarked with a sigh, "You can only see a starry sky like this in a place without light pollution. When I was a kid, you could see this everywhere."
"So beautiful. When I was little, I used to love lying on the roof of my old house and watching the stars."
"Ah! That reminds me of when we used to thresh wheat as kids. I loved lying on the haystacks and gazing at the stars. Those were truly happy times!"
"You really can’t see a sky this clear in the city."
"..."
Many people in the chat expressed their nostalgia. With the spread of urbanization, light pollution, and environmental pollution, the starry skies that were once a common sight in childhood had indeed become a precious thing.
"Alright, tonight’s plan is to look at the stars with an astronomical telescope. Let’s all enjoy it together."
Hu Xia climbed the Arrow Tower and began to adjust the astronomical telescope, pointing it at the Moon first.
When the view from the lens appeared in the livestream, the netizens were stunned.
"Sister Hu, you don’t need to use an image enhancer. This footage looks way too fake."
"Exactly. That telescope has a maximum of 140x magnification. It should only be able to see the finer details of smaller craters, rilles, and mountain ranges on the lunar surface. It’s impossible for it to capture such a clear image."
She glanced at the image on her phone. ’It looks exactly the same as what I see directly through the telescope, what’s the problem?’
"Huh? I’m not using an image enhancer! It looks just like this when you look through it with your own eyes. Is there something wrong with it?" Hu Xia asked, puzzled.
"Impossible. You can’t get this kind of image with that type of astronomical telescope. You can almost see the rocks on the Moon’s surface."
"The streamer should ask Boss Lin. This image is obviously fake. It probably has some smart device inside that automatically fills in the image."
Hu Xia called out to Lin Feng, "Boss Lin, everyone is saying the image from your telescope looks too fake! Did you install some kind of smart device in it?"
"No, I just bought this telescope online. If you guys don’t believe me, we can take it apart right here."
Hu Xia glanced at the chat and said, "They don’t believe it. They’re saying the image is AI-rendered. Can we take it apart and have a look?"
The video from the daytime had already caused a huge controversy; she couldn’t have the same problem happen again at night.
"Fine. Since no one believes it, let’s take it apart."
To prove their innocence, Lin Feng had Hu Zhiming do the work while he directed, following the netizens’ instructions to the letter.
"Everyone saw that. We checked everything according to your requests and didn’t find any smart devices."
"Next, I’m resetting the stream’s camera right in front of you all. In a moment, I’ll film the view directly with my phone camera. The image really hasn’t been processed."
After explaining, Hu Xia began to film again. The entire process, from reassembling the telescope to capturing the image, was broadcast live.
The result was the same as before. Even the footage from her phone camera looked identical.
"I’m really not lying to you. This is what it looks like with my own eyes, too. If I were really faking it, I wouldn’t make it so obviously fake, right?"
"If you still don’t believe me, any netizens in Wuyuan County can come here and try it for themselves."
The viewers in the livestream remained unconvinced, and Hu Xia was at a loss. She felt that this stream wasn’t going very well.
Hu Xia said worriedly, "Boss Lin, this could lead to some negative backlash. I knew we shouldn’t have streamed this."
Lin Feng was completely unconcerned. "It’s fine, it’s fine. My place isn’t even finished yet, so any negative attention is still attention. Besides, we’re not faking anything. Once the tables turn, this place might just go viral."
Hu Xia looked at the telescope. ’He’s right. As long as it’s not fake, this could be huge once the truth comes out.’
Moreover, negative news spreads with more heat than positive news. Netizens love to grab their popcorn and watch the drama unfold.
"Well, if you’re not worried, then I guess it’s not a problem. This place of yours is really strange. The Arrow Towers down there are like this, and now this telescope up here is the same."
"It might be the special geographical environment. If you hadn’t come to film, I never would have known about this."
...
After returning home, Hu Xia quickly edited the video and posted it online.
However, even before she posted her video, numerous clips were already circulating online. Paired with the Arrow Tower video from the morning, the debate among netizens had pushed the topic straight onto Weibo’s hot search list.
Among them was a verified account named "Professor Guan Jian," whose bio identified him as a "Physics Professor." He loved to chase this kind of clout and immediately sprang into action after seeing the trending topic.
He carefully studied the videos, even using AI to analyze them, before publishing his own take.
"Absolutely preposterous! As a physicist, I must point out that the so-called phenomenon of enhanced visual clarity from the Arrow Tower in streamer @HuXiaV’s video contains obvious logical paradoxes and errors in basic physics!
The supposed ’difference in clarity between the ground and the tower’ completely violates the fundamental principle that light travels in a straight line. No known optical effect would allow someone standing on a tower a few meters high to see objects on the same horizontal plane with a significant increase in clarity, similar to a telescope.
A careful analysis of the video footage (especially the changes in focus and chromatic aberration when switching between the ground and the tower) reveals clear signs that the camera lens parameters were manually adjusted. The streamer claimed she ’didn’t adjust the lens,’ yet she cannot explain the inconsistencies in the physical properties of the image. This is a common technique used in ’faked’ livestreams.
Some students mentioned water vapor refraction, but the weather in the video was clear, and all ten Arrow Towers exhibited the same effect. The probability of that is lower than winning the lottery. The so-called ’experiment’ seems more like a pre-arranged script.
The location is currently under construction. For the streamer to push this ’supernatural’ gimmick at this time, combined with the background of the ’sky-high priced grapes,’ makes her commercial marketing and traffic-grabbing motives blatantly obvious.
As for the later footage from the astronomical telescope, it is a complete insult to my intelligence. I won’t even bother to comment on it in detail.
Conclusion: This is a meticulously planned visual deception, exploiting public curiosity about science for sensationalist hype. I call on the platform to conduct a thorough investigation and uphold the integrity of information online! I demand that the streamer @HuXiaV apologize for this cheap stunt, or she should be held responsible for misleading the public!"
This long, inflammatory post, filled with "professional jargon" and moral criticism, was quickly reposted by a large number of marketing accounts and self-proclaimed "debunkers."
"Professor Guan is right! The principles of physics are right there. It’s obviously fake!"
"@HuXiaV, are you going to respond to Professor Guan’s accusations? Cat got your tongue?"
"How much did the boss of Lin Xian Village pay you to put on this show?"
"..."
Because they couldn’t find Lin Feng’s account, Hu Xia became the direct target of their attacks. Many people flooded her video’s comment section, accusing her of faking the video and creating hype.
When she posted the video, she knew the content of the livestream would be highly controversial, but she hadn’t expected it to be this extreme.
What had started as an online discussion about whether the phenomena in the video were truly possible had, after Professor Guan Jian’s post, devolved into a full-blown case of cyberbullying.
Those marketing accounts and debunkers, in coordination with Professor Guan, guided netizens to dogpile Hu Xia while simultaneously fanning the flames of the topic to gain greater benefits for themselves.
Hu Xia paid no attention to the online harassment. She simply posted a video statement: "The videos I filmed are not faked in any way. The content is real and valid. Anyone who thinks I’m faking it, we can verify it on-site and face to face!"
After posting it, she began to worry about the grapes. Compared to being cyberbullied, saving the remaining grapes was the most pressing issue she needed to solve.