Mingmei opened the Beauty Detector and studied it for a while, only to discover that it could even assess her own appearance.
That was interesting.
She decided to test herself.
[Target: Mingmei
Appearance Score: 70 points (60 points is average)]
Mingmei looked at the score, then walked over to the mirror and carefully examined her face.
Her current face resembled her original one by about sixty to seventy percent, except that her current appearance was somewhat better.
Her skin looked fair, but upon closer inspection, tiny pimples were visible, and there were blackheads around her nose.
Her figure looked quite good, but she actually had a little excess fat around her waist and thighs. It became noticeable when she wore more fitted clothing.
However, the collagen in her youthful face helped conceal these imperfections.
Wait a minute. If her current face only scored seventy points, did that mean her original face might not even have reached a passing score?
Honestly! She had spent more than thirty years growing up, and what did she have to show for it?
All those years of skincare products had gone to waste!
Mingmei opened the Newcomer Gift Pack, and a flash of golden light suddenly swept across her vision.
…What was that? Some cheap special effect from a low-level online game where equipment dropped from monsters?
A line of text appeared on the system panel.
[Congratulations, Host! You have received the Newcomer Gift Pack.
The following items have been awarded:
Good Luck Candy × 3
Detoxifying and Beauty-Enhancing Pill × 1
Perfect Body-Shaping Pill × 1
Language Mastery Skill Books × 5]
Mingmei rolled her eyes.
Good grief! That flash of golden light had made her think she was getting something amazing.
The Detoxifying and Beauty-Enhancing Pill and the Perfect Body-Shaping Pill each cost 500 points, while each Good Luck Candy cost 100 points. Only the Language Mastery skill books were particularly noteworthy, costing 5,000 points apiece.
Looking more closely, Mingmei discovered that the Detoxifying and Beauty-Enhancing Pill and the Perfect Body-Shaping Pill could only be used by the person who purchased them, and each could only be purchased once.
The system also recommended that the host use them before going to sleep.
The Good Luck Candy granted whoever ate it good luck for the next thirty minutes. Of course, this meant ordinary good luck. For example, someone might buy a lottery ticket for two yuan and win a few hundred yuan.
Winning a jackpot worth hundreds of millions, however, was still impossible.
That was decent enough.
Language Mastery came in the form of skill books. Clicking on one would grant the host mastery of a chosen language, allowing her to communicate with foreigners almost as naturally as a native speaker.
She could also choose which language to learn.
Mingmei remembered the background the system had created for her. She had lived in Paris as a child, so mastering French was essential.
She already knew English and spoke it quite well, so there was no need to waste a skill book on that. She could simply spend the next couple of days reviewing it.
That left her with four Language Mastery skill books.
Wonderful!
After finishing all that, Mingmei turned her attention back to the livestreams.
She scrolled through several more, but at this time of day, almost everyone was singing or dancing. The gamers and entertainers hadn’t started streaming yet.
She opened the Beauty Detector and began swiping up and down the screen.
This person looked quite attractive, but she had apparently undergone cosmetic surgery. Her appearance score was only sixty-five.
Since sixty was the average score, sixty-five was merely ordinary.
This guy looked rather handsome, but his nose had probably been altered. His appearance score was only sixty-three.
This person’s score was above seventy, but his voice was average. Worse, he deliberately made exaggerated facial expressions at the camera and came across as even more greasy than those self-proclaimed high-quality men online.
Next, next!
After checking a few more people, Mingmei finally stopped scrolling.
The current livestream showed a young man wearing a diving suit.
He was a dolphin trainer at an aquarium.
His username was “Dolphin Trainer MuMu.”
The Beauty Detector displayed the following information:
[Target: Xu Mu]
[Appearance Score: 87 points (60 points is average)]
Mingmei’s eyes lit up.
Xu Mu wasn’t the typical pretty-faced idol that was fashionable nowadays. Instead, he had a sunny, healthy, masculine charm.
He didn’t have enormous, bulging muscles, but he was still impressively built. His eight-pack abs and biceps were clearly defined, and he was at least 180 centimeters tall.
Xu Mu wore a smile as he sat beside the pool with his feet in the water. A silvery-white dolphin swam right beside him.
Xu Mu had around seventy to eighty thousand followers, and several hundred people were watching his livestream.
At that moment, he was explaining facts about dolphins to his audience.
“Dolphins are a collective term for a group of aquatic mammals belonging to the dolphin family…”
Xu Mu had a very pleasant voice: clear, bright, and refreshing. Unlike the deliberately husky, breathy, or deep voices that many popular online influencers affected these days, his voice sounded natural.
It immediately caught Mingmei’s attention.
Livestreaming on Kuaiyin was rather interesting. A streamer would only be notified that a new viewer had entered the room if that person stayed on the page for more than ten seconds.
After Mingmei stayed for over ten seconds, a notification appeared in the livestream.
[User “Sunshine Mingmei” has entered the livestream.]
Since she hadn’t obtained a title yet, there were no special visual effects.
Even so, it was a pleasant surprise for Xu Mu.
Finally, a new viewer!
After graduating from graduate school, Xu Mu had started working at the aquarium. Recently, with the rise of online livestreaming, the aquarium’s management had slammed a hand on the table and ordered the staff to start livestreaming as well.
As a result, Xu Mu, the most handsome employee, had been entrusted with the task.
Unfortunately, most viewers were only interested in the short, several-dozen-second clips of his explanations or videos of dolphins acting cute. Those clips had earned him some followers, but very few people were willing to watch his full livestreams.
Even when one or two people occasionally stayed, they were usually there because of his looks and tended to post strange comments.
At first, a livestreaming agency had noticed his appearance and offered him a contract. However, Xu Mu was only interested in dolphins. His family was reasonably well-off, so he didn’t have to worry about buying a house or a car, and his monthly salary was sufficient for his needs.
Therefore, he hadn’t switched careers to become an internet celebrity. Instead, he continued livestreaming about dolphins seriously.
The several hundred people watching him at the moment were mostly aquarium employees, their family members, and students recruited by Xu Mu’s graduate-school advisor.
Only a handful were genuinely interested in dolphins and wanted to learn more about them.
This had left Xu Mu feeling rather discouraged on more than one occasion.
And now, a new viewer had finally arrived!
Xu Mu cheerfully greeted her.
“Welcome, Sunshine Mingmei, to my livestream! I’m your host, MuMu. Let me help you learn all about dolphins!”
Mingmei posted a comment.
“Go ahead. I’ll listen.”
Xu Mu was immediately encouraged and began explaining the different types of dolphins in even greater detail.
The comments section became livelier, too.
“Senior, that’s not fair! Why weren’t you this serious when we watched your livestreams?”
“Senior, that’s not fair! Why didn’t you welcome me when I entered?”
“Senior, that’s not fair!”
“Senior, that’s not fair!”
“Senior, that’s not fair!”
The comments section was filled with people chanting that it wasn’t fair.
Seeing the comments, Xu Mu smiled sheepishly. He even looked a little embarrassed.
“Well, um… you all went to the same university as me, so we’re already familiar with each other. It’s just that we finally have a new viewer today.”
The comment section erupted in friendly laughter.
Xu Mu cleared his throat twice and continued his explanation.
Mingmei listened for a while. Xu Mu was very professional, but there was one problem: his explanations were too technical. Many viewers felt as though they were sitting through a lecture, so they quickly lost interest.
Mingmei clicked on the recharge page and added one million yuan to her account.
She wondered why the platform only allowed her to recharge one million yuan at a time, then returned to Xu Mu’s livestream.
His voice was still as pleasant as ever.
After enjoying it for a while, she opened the gift menu and selected ten Spaceships.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
The comments section suddenly went quiet.
Then the sound effect of a spaceship rang out, and a cartoon-style spaceship appeared on the screen. It flew from the far left to the far right, leaving a starry night sky in its wake.
The special effects are actually pretty good! Mingmei thought.
Then a line of text appeared on the screen.
[User “Sunshine Mingmei” has sent the streamer 10 Spaceships!]
After enjoying the special effects, Mingmei continued sending gifts.
For several minutes, the entire screen was devoid of comments. Countless spaceships flew across it, and layers of starry night sky covered most of Xu Mu’s face.
Listening to the gift sound effects, Xu Mu was completely stunned. He looked as though he couldn’t process what was happening.
After a while, he finally recovered and hurriedly said, “Thank you to the viewer named Sunshine Mingmei for the gifts! Thank you so much! Friend, you don’t need to send any more gifts. I’m only here to introduce dolphins. You really don’t have to spend money!”
Mingmei glanced at the more than fifty Spaceships she had already sent and took a moment to post a comment.
“Your explanations are very good, so I’m tipping you.”
Xu Mu saw the comment and quickly thanked her. Before he could say anything else, Mingmei started sending gifts again.
[User “Sunshine Mingmei” has sent the streamer 90 Spaceships!]
[User “Sunshine Mingmei” has sent the streamer 100 Spaceships!]
[User “Sunshine Mingmei” has sent the streamer 110 Spaceships!]
[User “Sunshine Mingmei” has sent the streamer 120 Spaceships!]
…
Magic City University, Biology Department Dormitory
“Yuanyuan, look!” Wang Yaru called to her roommate and close friend in the neighboring bed. “A rich lady has entered Senior Xu Mu’s livestream!”
“What? What?!” Ma Yuanyuan immediately scrambled out of bed and climbed onto Wang Yaru’s bed. “What rich lady? Where is she?”
Wang Yaru handed her the phone.
“Look! This user named Sunshine Mingmei has already sent Senior Xu Mu more than three hundred Spaceships!”
“Spaceships?”
Ma Yuanyuan hurriedly grabbed her own phone.
“Is it on Kuaiyin?”
Wang Yaru nodded repeatedly.
By this point, Mingmei had sent Xu Mu more than 350 Spaceships.
Ma Yuanyuan opened her senior Xu Mu’s livestream. Nearly ten thousand people were watching now.
Sending more than fifty Spaceships triggered a recommendation on the platform’s main page, and all these new viewers had arrived through that recommendation.
As soon as Ma Yuanyuan entered, the viewer count exceeded ten thousand, triggering another wave of traffic. The number of viewers quickly surpassed fifteen thousand.
[User “Sunshine Mingmei” has sent the streamer 400 Spaceships!]
“Holy—crap!”
The two girls exclaimed in unison.
Wang Yaru opened the gift menu to confirm that each Spaceship really cost 5,000 yuan, rather than five yuan or fifty yuan.
She activated the part of her mathematical brain that she rarely used outside advanced mathematics classes and calculated the amount.
Four hundred Spaceships meant two million yuan!
In such a short time, this Sunshine Mingmei had already sent gifts worth two million yuan!
“Damn! This person is loaded!” Ma Yuanyuan calculated the amount herself and exclaimed.
“Hey, Yaru, how do you know it’s definitely a rich woman?”
Wang Yaru rolled her eyes.
“Isn’t that obvious? The male bosses are busy sending gifts to those female streamers. Who would bother visiting a male streamer’s room unless they were a rich woman? Besides, look at the username! Sunshine Mingmei, with a picture of the sun as her profile photo. Only women around my mom’s age would use a name and profile picture like that!”
After saying that, she opened Mingmei’s profile.
“Besides, her profile clearly says she’s female!”
Ma Yuanyuan agreed.
“True.”
Then she turned back to the screen and exclaimed another loud, “Holy crap!”
The number of Spaceships sent had already reached five hundred!
“Rich lady, feed me! I’m hungry!”
Someone posted this comment.
Ma Yuanyuan glanced at the username and realized it was her roommate.
So she quickly followed suit and posted, “Rich lady, feed me! I’m hungry!”
Soon, more and more people began posting the same comment.
Before long, the entire comments section was flooded with those six Chinese characters.
After sending six hundred Spaceships, Mingmei finally stopped.
Xu Mu swallowed nervously and asked cautiously, “Sunshine Mingmei? Are you still there? How about adding me on WeChat later? I’ll return the money to you.”
Mingmei thought he was an interesting person, so she posted a comment.
“No need. It’s for you. You have a very nice voice, so keep talking.”
As soon as she posted that, the comments section exploded again.
“Are rich people’s lives really this simple? She likes someone’s voice, so she spends several million yuan just to keep listening!”
“Rich lady, rich lady! Do you need a little accessory to hang around your leg?”
“Same question! Sunshine Sister, do you need a little accessory? Born in ’98, delicate and soft, and I can cook!”
“Sunshine Sister, do you need a little accessory? Born in 2000, I can do the social dance! If you tell me to go east, I won’t go west. If you tell me to cook, I won’t slaughter a chicken!”
“Sunshine Sister, do you need a little accessory around your waist? Born in 2001, I know how to use a smartphone and know enough to run home when it rains!”
“That’s enough, all of you! So what if she’s rich? Do you really have to lower yourselves like this? Move aside. One person groveling is enough—I can do it all by myself!”
“Good grief! The person above wants to monopolize Sunshine Sister! Brothers, charge!”
…
There were also a few comments that didn’t fit the mood.
“Heh. I wonder if she treats her own parents this well, considering she’s tipping a streamer several million yuan.”
“??? I suggest you get your head checked. If her parents can afford to let her spend several million yuan tipping someone, do you think they’re struggling? Even the cockroaches in her house probably eat better than you!”
“I used to think some people only remembered their parents when they saw cats and dogs. I never imagined someone could see a person tipping a streamer and somehow think of their parents. Impressive!”
…
Another argument broke out in the comments.
Mingmei helplessly glanced at the screen and recharged her account with more money.
Then she continued sending gifts.
[User “Sunshine Mingmei” has sent the streamer 700 Spaceships!]
[User “Sunshine Mingmei” has sent the streamer 710 Spaceships!]
[User “Sunshine Mingmei” has sent the streamer 720 Spaceships!]
…
Xu Mu was so excited that he could barely speak!
How much money did that amount to?
He had never expected to make money through livestreaming. Usually, he earned only ten or so yuan per session. Most of his gifts came from junior students at his university, who sent free gifts or passed along rewards they had won while watching other livestreams.
The most he had ever received at once was a fifty-yuan gift from his academic advisor. That day, his total earnings had exceeded one hundred yuan.
He had thought that was the peak of his livestreaming career.
Who could have imagined that someone would tip him this much?
Xu Mu was happy, but also a little disappointed.
He was happy to receive the gifts, but disappointed that they seemed to be motivated by his looks and voice rather than his explanations.
“Keep talking. I’m listening.”
Mingmei posted another comment.
Since she had tipped the livestream more than one million yuan, she was now the biggest contributor in the room. Her username stood out prominently, and every time she commented, special visual effects appeared alongside it.
Encouraged by her support, Xu Mu continued explaining and even guided the dolphin through several movements.
[User “Sunshine Mingmei” has sent the streamer 970 Spaceships!]
[User “Sunshine Mingmei” has sent the streamer 980 Spaceships!]
[User “Sunshine Mingmei” has sent the streamer 990 Spaceships!]
[User “Sunshine Mingmei” has sent the streamer 1,000 Spaceships!]
Only after sending a full thousand Spaceships did Mingmei finally stop.
She had no choice. Her phone was getting hot.
“Thank you, Sunshine Sister!” Xu Mu said before cautiously asking, “Would it be okay if I called you Sunshine Sister?”
Mingmei responded with a simple “Mm” in the comments.
Xu Mu immediately broke into a smile.
“Sunshine Sister, thank you for the gifts! Do you like dolphins? I work at the Hancheng Aquarium. If you ever visit Hancheng, you can come find me, and I’ll show you the dolphins!”
Mingmei thought about it. Perhaps she could visit Hancheng during the summer or winter holidays.
She responded with another “Mm.”
After touching her scorching phone, she decided it was time to leave and posted another comment.
“When will you livestream next?”
Xu Mu replied, “Sunshine Sister, I livestream every Friday from ten in the morning until noon. On weekdays, I usually livestream from three to six in the afternoon. I don’t livestream on Saturdays or Sundays. If I ever need to cancel a session, I’ll announce it on Weibo in advance!”
Mingmei posted another comment.
“All right. I’ll come by when I have time.”
Then she left the livestream.
After exiting, she discovered that her private messages had already reached 99+.