Chapter 1: Sign a contract and become an anchor!

The bright white light of a computer lit up the dim room a bit.

Yu Yan poured himself a glass of water and returned to his screen. During this interval, he had received five messages on YY, all from a friend named “Autumn Will No Longer Come”.

“Xiao Yan Ge, do you want to be an anchor?”

“I know an anchor, a great god on StarTV, whose name I can’t disclose yet. He’s recruiting new anchors for the platform.”

“The salary isn’t bad; there’s a base salary, and all the machines and equipment would be provided by him. All you have to do is relocate to them.”

“Xiao Yan Ge? Are you still playing?”

“Xiao Yan Ge?”

He quickly set down his glass of water and replied,

“Playing, what about you guys?”

Yu Yan was a PUBG accompanying player. He usually did business on a voice platform called YY and got paid 60 yuan an hour.

He’d only been in this business for a month. Generally, other people could only get 15-30 yuan/hour in the first month, but he was different.

This was only because he was strong and had previously been ranked first on the Asian servers. Among the numerous different teams and anchors ranked on the Asian servers, he stood out like a fresh stream of water.

Also, he had a nice voice.

This “Autumn Will No Longer Come” was one of his regular customers.

To clarify, when he said ‘regular customer’, it really just meant that this player had reserved him for the past few days.

Autumn Will No Longer Come: “Playing, you can queue us.”

Yu Yan shifted back to the game window, clicked on the ‘ready’ button, and after a few seconds, entered the game, starting the one minute countdown of the match.

Autumn Will No Longer Come: “Did you see what I just said?”

Yan Xiaoyan: “Saw it, still, I better not go, sorry about that ah.”

There still wasn’t a reply from the other side after a long time, and the match quickly started.

PUBG was a shooting game that had become very popular recently and was also nicknamed ‘’Chicken Dinner”. The maximum number of players in the match couldn’t exceed 100. Once the match started, the players would get put onto the same plane and then each had to choose the spot they would parachute to. There were guns, medicine, and other supplies scattered on the ground. All the players would fight each other, and the last player or team who survived was declared the winner.

The game mechanic that brought all the scattered players on the map together was called the Poison Circle. The circle would continue to shrink after set periods, and players located outside the Poison Circle would begin to take damage. The farther away from this circle, the more damage you took. The location of the poison circle on the map was random each time, and the last circle was called the “final circle” by the players.

“Where are we jumping?” came a voice from the earphones.

Although there was only one boss that hired him as an accompanying player, the boss would usually make the best of things and bring along two friends, so they could play in a regular 4-man team.

“Anywhere is fine ah. Your thigh is here, just jump.”

“The thigh can’t carry all three of us ah, why don’t we play the wilderness? What do you think, Xiao Yan Ge? ”

Yu Yan said, “I’m fine with anything, flag it ba, and I’ll jump with you guys.”

Every city on the map was designed very particularly. There were several popular cities on the map, and players who liked gunfights had the tendency of jumping to these spots, which made the gameplay very exciting.

Playing the wilderness meant jumping to an empty area, striving to survive to the final circle and then try to catch the enemy off guard to happily eat up all the chicken.

Yu Yan jumped and parachuted down with them, landed, and then opened three houses in a row. He couldn’t find a single gun in any of them.

Gunfire resounded outside.

“AHHHk2014;” the girl player immediately screamed in YY, “People here, people are here! I have people here!”

Yu Yan’s ears hurt from all the screaming. He opened the door to another house and finally found an AKM. He immediately picked up the gun and its ammunition and said, “Did the person see you?”

The girl was so nervous that she spoke in a breathy tone, “Seems like they didn’t. I hid behind a door. I haven’t found a gun.”

“Okay, you hide well.” Yu Yan chuckled a bit, “I’ll come save you.”

“Wait, there seems to be more than one person!” The girl was quiet for a while, probably because she heard some footsteps. “There’s three of them! It’s over. What to do…”

While passing by the neighboring house, Yu Yan specifically picked up two grenades. “It’s okay, don’t move.”

She whispered in agreement, obediently crouched down and dared not move a muscle.

The enemy was downstairs, so Yu Yan jumped over from the neighboring room into the target house, thereby occupying the high ground, and then crouched directly in the stairway to block the people.

The people downstairs had heard his footsteps, and after they were sure that he was the only player, they all rushed upstairs together.

Yu Yan immediately threw out a grenade, then took out the gun, and tried to headshot the enemy!

Countless shots rang out as the girl looked at the lower left corner of her screen nervously. The health bar of her teammate with the ID of yanxyan was decreasing and decreasing——

Until the health bar turned red.

All of a sudden, everything went quiet.

“All right, they’re all dead.” The boy’s voice sounded out, carrying the impression of a smile, “Come out and loot them.”

The girl felt out of breath.

It was over, only her heart had started fluttering.

“Xiao Yan Ge,” Another male voice sounded. It was Yu Yan’s boss of the past few hours, “Autumn Will Not Come”, who had spoken. He joked, “How are you this awesome, my friend is about to promise you her heart.”

The reason why he called him Xiao Yan Ge was because he didn’t know how old Yu Yan was and didn’t know what to call him, so he just combined the titles and called him that.

The girl was a bit embarrassed. “… What are you saying.”

Yu Yan looted some accessories and medicine to put into his inventory. “It’s fine, if a heart is offered then I’ll take it.”

Autumn replied, “Haha, such bullshit.”

Any player who wanted to enter the inner circle just after gathering up items would have to face a wave of ambushes. Out of Yu Yan’s three teammates, two of them couldn’t really play. Only Autumn was a bit of a better player, so it basically boiled down to a two vs. four situation.

In the end, he won the shootout, but his three teammates were all dead.

Yu Yan carried the hope of the entire team on his shoulders and successfully reached the final circle.

He laid by the tree, and watched the number of survivors in the upper right corner of his screen grow smaller and smaller. At last, it became three.

The other two survivors were in the same team, so it was going to be a two against one fight.

The other side behaved very arrogantly, relying on their superior numbers and crazily sprayed all around.

Yu Yan never bore well with this kind of haughtiness. He straightened his back, and when one of the members of the other team was reloading bullets, he immediately got up and shot at him!

At the same time, that person’s teammate discovered his position, and countless bullets rained down at him!

[You used an AKM to beat mxllwe]

In that very second, he quickly turned his mouse to the right, and accurately aimed at the position of the other person. He continued to press down on the mouse and skillfully shot the gun——

Two seconds later, the screen paused.

[Big Fortune and Great Delight, you’re eating chicken tonight!]

Yu Yan had been victorious in the battle of two against one. He had won the match with a tiny sliver of his health left.

“Awesome!” the girl cried out excitedly.

Yu Yan was relieved. After he quit the game, his YY rang again, but this time it was a private chat.

Autumn Will No Longer Come: “Xiao Yan Ge, let me ask you something. Don’t be angry ah.”

Yu Yan typed out the word okay in reply.

Autumn Will No Longer Come: “… Are you using some kind of cheat software to play?”

This kind of thought was actually pretty common if someone played so well and wasn’t affiliated with any team or livestream channel.

Yu Yan had lost count of the number of times he had been asked this question.

Seeing that he didn’t reply, the other side quickly sent another message.

Autumn Will No Longer Come: “I don’t mean anything else by it ah. I just wanted to tell you that you can still use the software while livestreaming, but just… you can’t be too obvious about it, you understand? Nowadays, a lot of anchors use stuff like that, it’s very normal.”

Yan Xiaoyan: “No, I’m genuinely very strong.”

Autumn Will No Longer Come: “…”

Someone knocked on Yu Yan’s door. His food delivery order had arrived. He received the delivery, told the other party that he wasn’t going to play anymore, and turned off the game to focus on eating his meal.

—

Getting up the next day, Yu Yan was just getting ready to login to YY to do business when an email popped up in the lower right corner of his screen.

[StarTV: The application of this anchor is approved. Please confirm your personal details and contact information… ]

He had just taken a bite of his youtiao, but when he saw the name of the sender of the email, he became so excited that he stopped chewing.

He had refused Autumn’s invitation yesterday, not because he didn’t want to take part, but because he had other plans—he had previously applied for a local StarTV anchor sponsorship.

As the name implied, a sponsored anchor would sign an internal contract with StarTV. The content of this contract was more rigid than that of an ordinary anchor, and there was basically no possibility of job hopping in the next three years. Similarly, StarTV would also help provide preferential support by recommending the sponsored anchors.

Although the conditions and penalties of such a contract were a bit much, their platform was still better than the livestream platforms used by other anchors. Yu Yan played the game well and naturally knew some experts. Some of them had been thrown into a pit by some famous hosts and thus couldn’t earn a penny from these livestreams even after several months.

After adding the StarTV contact person as a friend, the first sentence from the other party was:

“Do you use cheat software to play?”

…

Why was he always running into this question recently?

“Not using any.”

“Your game ID was sent to me, but where do you live? Do you have the equipment to keep up with the demands of a livestream? Our company is headquartered in Jincheng. If it’s convenient, come here directly for an interview and to sign a contract.”

Jincheng… that was a bit far away.

“… It’s a little far away. I can’t sign without coming to Jincheng?”

“No, we also have an electronic contract, but it’s a bit more cumbersome to send it back and forth. You can fill in your relevant information and send it over ba.”

The signing process was really complicated. When he received the electronic contract, he took the contract and went to see his lawyer uncle, who was his real uncle.

“Yu Yan, you’re…” Yu Minyang looked at the contract and frowned. “You’re already 19 years old this year, and you’re still addicted to this game?”

“Uncle, I’ll start livestreaming. It’s a job,” Yu Yan replied.

“I don’t approve of this!” Yu Minyang threw the contract onto the table. “Your parents passed away early on, and I didn’t have any resources before, so I couldn’t support your schooling, and I really regret that. Now, your uncle has a few resources, but when I offered to let you go to school again, you didn’t want to. I also offered you an internship at the company, but you didn’t want that either, and now you want to be some kind of game anchor? No way!”

“Uncle… Forget it, I’m disturbing you. Don’t be angry.”

Yu Yan picked up the contract and got ready to leave.

He knew that Yu Minyang was trying to do his best for him, but armed with only his junior high school education, he didn’t have the cheek to do an internship in Yu Minyang’s company, let alone allow the other party to provide for his further education.

“Wait!” Yu Minyang hurried to stop him.

After a long moment, Yu Minyang sighed heavily, “Hand it over for me to look at!”

After all the due processes were completed, Yu Yan smoothly became a game anchor.

He didn’t waste any time. The very next day, he filled in his livestream information. After it was created, he took his cellphone and carefully copied down his livestream room number. At last, he started his livestream and the game all in one go.

He was a little nervous.

But this tension only lasted for less than two minutes.

Not because of any other factors, but because after two minutes had passed… His stream had no viewers.

This was also normal. To be on the safe side, StarTV only recommended anchors after they’ve met the required stable livestream schedule for a month. Without any recommendations, there would be almost no exposure. Only those who were close to him would see this studio.

He sighed and was about to enter the game match-making queue when a line of black characters suddenly appeared in the chat bar on the right of the screen.

[1 has entered the livestream]

Yu Yan felt that he had never been so nervous even when he played in the final rounds of the game by himself.

He licked his lips and pretended to be calm. “Welcome to my livestream, 1.”

On the other side, the man’s hand hovering over the red X button suddenly froze at the sound.

This anchor’s voice was clean and clear, with a youthful air. Just by listening, you could tell he wasn’t very old. He seemed to be a little nervous since he was stuttering a bit as he spoke.

While Yi Chen was hesitating, the other party had entered his match and had already killed an enemy.

He gently lifted his eyebrows and looked at the cold and quiet livestream. For some reason, in the end, he didn’t exit the room. StarTV’s client screen hung on his computer, as he picked up a file lying on his desk and looked at it.

The author has something to say:

This is a product of playing games and playing with itchy hands. It’s future is indeterminate.

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