''i'm not squealing, you are''
Everyone's enthusiasm really confused Li Xiaoru. She had only just finished with her studying during the weekends and had nothing to do during the evening. She just thought of logging on to see what Liu Man was doing.
However, when she entered the live-stream, she realized that Liu Man's popularity had been way out of her expectations and imagination. To her, even more surprisingly, Liu Man, who was always known as the one who was only pretty and had no real skills, was writing calligraphy! Liu Man had never told any of them that she knew how to write calligraphy. That girl really was deep on the inside...
TL's Note: 'Liu Man never told any of them.' By them, she meant she and Wang Nina.
Also, Li Xiaoru couldn't understand any of the characters she was writing.
...If a tree doesn't get cut by an ax, then there would be no other things that can harm it. Although there wasn't any use of it, there wouldn't be any hardship.
TL's note: We're not really sure about what this means, but we think it's some type of Chinese idiom/metaphor (?)
As Liu Man wrote down the last word, her brush stopped moving, and she rubbed her sore wrist.
"Finally, it's finished! You deserve bouquets of flowers."
"Your calligraphy is so good! The words filled two whole rice-papers, and I don't recognize a single word!"
"My admiration for you in my heart is just like a river, rushing in and never breaking. Only my gifts will show you how much I admire you."
Ramble on to me if you need anything gifted you 100 Hearts;
Cookie the biscuit gifted you 100 Hearts;
A nest of snakes and rats gifted you 100 Hearts;
Honey's huge claws gifted you 100 Hearts;
...
Everyone started gifting Liu Man hearts just like before. Within all the spamming, there, suddenly popped out:
I'm a vet gifted you 100 Fairytale Carriages.
...
...
...
...
...
Everyone suddenly stopped giving gifts.
"Did I see it wrong?"
"No, you didn't see it wrong, but my hands are shaking now."
"Oh, fuck. 100 Fairytale Carriages! I've never seen anyone gift any live-streamer 100 Fairytale Carriages all at once. This person must be the richest out of the richest!"
"My god! The animations of Fairytale Carriages are playing on my screen nonstop. Is it going to replay itself 100 times??"
"Of course, we can never compare ourselves with those who have mines in their backyards. I feel like the gifts I just sent seem too little..."
TL's Note: Some previous chapters mentioned that a Fairytale Carriage was worth 5200 virtual coins on this application and 10 coins is about 1 RMB. This means, 100 Fairytale Carriages would be equal to 52000 RMB.
ALSO. 520 in chinese means 'I love you.' ;DDD
Not only were the viewers stunned, but Liu Man was also way too shocked. She immediately asked "I'm a vet,"
"Did you press it wrong?"
"No, I did not. I did want to send you 100 Fairytale Carriages," Yu Zhan typed out this line of words with his long and fast fingers. This was the first time he had come onto this live-streaming platform, and he had studied carefully the rules about the gifts here. The gift that costed the most was the Perfect Castle, and it costed 13140 coins. The second most expensive was the Fairytale Carriage which costed 5200 coins.
He could actually just send Liu Man 100 Perfect Castles... But Liu Man would never accept it.
TL's Note: Woah, that would be 131,400 RMB... Approximately 19,000 USD, I- ''us mere mortals could never''
Indeed, Liu Man couldn't even take these 100 Fairytale Carriages, "This gift of yours is way too expensive, I really can't take it."
The corners of Yu Zhan's lips went up, for he expected that. He continued to type, "Who told you I really intended to give you all this money for free? I was going to buy that calligraphy work of yours. I'll text you my address, and you can mail it to me, using that address. Fifty-thousand and two hundred, for a really great calligraphy piece. I think that it's really cheap, and it's worth it."
His words suddenly inspired others.
"Oh no. Why didn't I think of buying her work? What if sis becomes a famous celebrity one day? Then, her work would really be worth a lot of money."
"Her work is worth a whole bunch of money, even now..."
"Hmph, someone already did it... I'm definitely going to order her work the next time she live-streams herself writing calligraphy."
...
And just like that, Yu Zhan successfully stopped Liu Man from feeling doubtful.
After Liu Man closed her life-stream, she found a message from "I'm a vet" in her direct messages on the application. His address was in an apartment at the center of the capital city, where most upper-class people lived in. In addition, Liu Man heard of the price of this kind of apartment before. They sold each square meter at more than five-hundred thousand RMB.
On Monday, Liu Man had two exams. When she finished, she would be officially on winter break starting from that afternoon.
Liu Man went from her house straight to the place where the exam would take place. During the exam, seats were pre-designated, and Liu Man sat in the back row. Li Xiaoru had a whole mind of questions she had wanted to ask Liu Man, but she sat too far away from Liu Man. During the exam, she turned her head around to look at Liu Man several times, and the expression she showed was difficult to be read.
After the two exams ended, Liu Man, as promised, went with her two roommates to the cafeteria for lunch.
Li Xiaoru opened her mouth several times as if she wanted to mention something, but she never did. She looked at Wang Nina, who was standing beside her, and who didn't know about what she knew. In the end, Li Xiaoru never got a chance to ask the questions she wanted to ask. There had been a long time since she had watched Liu Man's live-streams, and her impression on the live-streams was still stuck in the beginning. Liu Man, selling her AJs and filming activities with her cat. There weren't many people watching, and it seemed a bit quiet, but there was still a bit of interaction.
But when did Liu Man's live-streams start to become so popular?
Li Xiaoru really couldn't think of an answer to her questions. She really became stunned the previous day's night. Those thirty-thousand viewers, and countless gifts, and those spamming comments. She knew that Liu Man was now really on fire.
TL's Note: on fire = famous/popular
Although she was always very confident in Liu Man's live-streams, she had never expected it to get so popular in such a short amount of time.
Li Xiaoru was really curious as of to how Liu Man did it, but she didn't want to ask Liu Man in front of Wang Nina.
Wang Nina's personality was a bit bourgeoisie, with the aloofness of an artist. In her heart, she never really approved of things like live-streams and cyber-stars, for they seemed, to her, very 'low.' She helped Liu Man at the beginning, only because they were friends. Later on, she never went back online. A few days before, because she thought the application was a waste of space, she had deleted the live-streaming application.
Liu Man didn't live in the dorm for most of her time, but Li Xiaoru and Wang Nina did, which meant that they spent more time together. From her understanding of Wang Nina, she felt that if Wang Nina knew how popular and famous Liu Man had become, she would feel uncomfortable and things could go wrong.
Li Xiaoru felt that she'd rather ask Liu Man on WeChat through private messages than to ask her face-to-face after winter break.
Liu Man had no idea about Li Xiaoru's thoughts. She finished her lunch with her two roommates, wished them an early Happy New Year, and went straight back home without returning to her dorm.
It was now winter break, and the students were relaxed.
However, Liu Man had just started to become busy.
That afternoon, she called Manager Huang again.
Huang Shiting saved Liu Man's number. He greeted her directly right after he picked up the phone, "Hello, Ms. Liu."
"Hello, hello." Liu Man said.
"I heard that Ms. Liu had done something very unbelievable recently."
Liu Man paused for a moment, "Did the news reach Hong Kong already?"
"Nowadays, the internet is very advanced. Not to mention Hong Kong, even Los Angeles, on the other side of the Earth would know immediately, as long as you posted on the internet."
Huang Shiting was a very busy man. Of course, he didn't have the time to go through things on Weibo. However, Liu Man created too big a business, that now, everyone in the circle of Chinese cat food sellers knew that a Chinese Mainland live-streamer named "Princess Man," had exposed all the entire business of fake cat food in Mainland China.
Because she had repeatedly mentioned Hong Kong Westland Trade Ltd., these days, the customer service department of Huang Shiting's company had been way too busy because of the calls coming in. The calls were mostly about whether Liu Man's speech had been real. In addition, the sales rate directly increased, and now it grew higher and higher every day. It was as if it was going to multiply itself by 2 every day, and the sales rate went right over all of the other companies who sold cat food. The storage room, which stored a lot of products for Chinese New Year, almost had gone empty. They had to request for some new cat food from the New Zealand factories.
Huang Shiting never thought that his kindness of one moment would've brought such huge benefits to his company. They had fought against the Mainland Chinese dealers who had sold fake cat food for many years now. They had sent emails containing admonitions, litigations, and even letters from their attorneys. However, the other side was never afraid, and they still managed to have quite a great business going on. These people were not afraid of the real cat food dealers, because they had people supporting them.