Love Bitstream: Chapter 4 - What a Hot Thread
Chapter 4: What a Hot Thread
The next day, Chi Zhen had classes all day. As soon as evening classes ended, he and Luo Song rushed to the cafeteria for dinner. After returning to their rented apartment, Luo Song began preparing for his sales livestream, while Chi Zhen got ready to stream games.
Luo Song’s sales streams required him to show his face, so his prep work was much more complicated than Chi Zhen’s. He had to do makeup, style his hair, change clothes, adjust lighting, and filters. He was always telling Chi Zhen that showing your face helped grow followers. Even for gaming streamers, having a tiny webcam window in the corner was better than not using a camera at all.
“Look at all the big streamers—who doesn’t show their face? Besides, you’re handsome too.”
But Chi Zhen was somewhat socially anxious.
Just imagining himself showing his face and talking in front of one or two hundred people made him feel like he would suffocate.
His face looked decent enough, but his personality was pretty boring. Both online and in real life, he had few friends.
Honestly speaking, he probably was not suited to being a streamer at all.
Money was simply powerful enough to make him compromise.
At exactly seven o’clock, Chi Zhen sat down in front of the computer and started his stream on schedule.
Yesterday’s accident still left him uneasy. He first logged into the game and checked his messages and mailbox. After confirming nothing unusual had happened, he entered the livestream room and clicked Start Streaming.
Unexpectedly, the moment he went live today, more than a hundred viewers flooded in immediately, while the comments scrolled nonstop.
[Starting on time. Streamer’s got guts.]
[Xiao Chi, don’t tell me you still haven’t checked the forums today?]
[Chaos gremlin reporting in. First, let me send the streamer some gifts. Streamer, good luck.]
Before Chi Zhen could even react, viewers had already sent him a wave of gifts. Most were only the cheapest one-yuan gifts, but small amounts added up.
Completely baffled, Chi Zhen thanked everyone first before asking, “What happened on the forums? Did something big happen?”
[I suddenly sympathize with him]
[Please go catch up on the forums first, thank you]
Chi Zhen immediately grew nervous. “Does it have something to do with me? Something related to yesterday?”
[You guess]
[Can’t say it’s completely related to you, but also can’t say it’s completely unrelated either, emmmm]
“Don’t scare me, brothers,” Chi Zhen said while opening the official Quest for the Azure Heavens forums.
Chi Zhen rarely browsed the forums unless there was a game update and he wanted to read strategy posts.
Normally, the forum content breakdown was: 1% strategy guides, 99% gossip and drama threads.
And most of those drama threads were relationship drama.
After a while, players began joking that Quest for the Azure Heavens should really be renamed Quest for Love Under Heaven, because these people clearly came looking for romance instead of seeking the Dao.
The game itself did not even have a marriage system, yet that still could not stop wave after wave of players from pursuing online romances and becoming Dao companions.
Chi Zhen truly could not understand online dating, especially in games. The person you met was not even a real person—just a virtual avatar. You did not know whether they were tall or short, fat or thin, human or ghost.
So he rarely browsed the forums, mainly because he simply could not understand all the love-hate drama.
The moment he opened the forum homepage, Chi Zhen instantly knew which thread he was supposed to read. Pinned at the top of the forum was a blazing-hot thread titled: “818: The Complicated Love Polygon of Way of Heaven Guild Goddess Misty Autumn Rain” The thread already had more than two thousand replies, five HOT tags, and over twenty pages.
The original poster gleefully described how Goddess Misty Autumn Rain had made a “desperate simp-style” confession to Endless Time the previous night, only to be coldly rejected. Then they vividly narrated how the goddess’s confession scene had accidentally been livestreamed, and how players scrambling for materials had turned the carefully arranged romantic setting into utter chaos.
After that came the gossip. Apparently, Misty Autumn Rain had long maintained an ambiguous relationship with Cold Sword Shadow, the guild leader of Way of Heaven and a well-known top-tier player. Cold Sword Shadow had apparently been simping for Misty Autumn Rain for ages—sending her countless materials, riding around maps with her on mounts sightseeing, even allegedly being spotted watching peach blossoms together at Bianchun Mountain. During raids, he had spoken flirtatiously with her over voice chat, and the thread even included screenshots of the two sightseeing together.
This original poster was terrifyingly dedicated. Not only did they have screenshots from last night’s confession scene, they even had screenshots from four or five months ago showing Cold Sword Shadow and Misty Autumn Rain sightseeing together—and more than one at that. There were even screenshots from raid chats.
Things like: “Big brother will protect you.” “Did the boss hit you too hard just now?” “Who attacked you? Big brother will avenge you.” Reading them made Chi Zhen’s scalp tingle.
At the end, the thread mocked Cold Sword Shadow for never expecting that the goddess he had spent over half a year simping for would suddenly turn around and confess to Endless Time from within his own guild—and in such an over-the-top way too. Now the whole incident had been livestreamed and become the laughingstock of the entire server.
Misty Autumn Rain was a joke. Cold Sword Shadow was an even bigger joke. Imagine treating Endless Time like a brother and honoring him as the guild’s ace player, only to discover that Endless Time had apparently stolen away his girl at some unknown point and then dumped her.
After finishing the post, Chi Zhen: “……”
He no longer wanted to keep reading. His mouse moved toward the close button, only to be stopped by the wildly scrolling comments.
[Don’t! You only read the original post! Keep going!]
[The stuff below is even more dramatic!]
[Otherwise, how could it possibly hit twenty-plus pages!]
Chi Zhen scratched his head. “No, seriously, this thing’s way too long. Can some kind soul summarize it for me? If I read twenty pages, I might as well end the stream afterward.”
[Can you show at least a little enthusiasm for gossip??]
[The melon’s literally been spoon-fed into your mouth and you still won’t eat it?!]
Chi Zhen sighed. “Brothers, I have reading difficulties. I can’t read posts this long. By the time I finish, it’ll be morning.”
[Aren’t you a freaking college student? How did you even get admitted?]
Chi Zhen confessed honestly, “Junior college, brother.”
[I freaking knew it!]
[What’s wrong with junior college? That’s considered highly educated among streamers #smirk]
[Summary guy is here — Someone checked the original poster’s posting history and discovered this was a throwaway account. A year ago, the account replied to a recruitment post for Dominating the Firmament guild and left a YY voice-chat ID, telling applicants to add her. Since Way of Heaven and Dominating the Firmament have always hated each other, people started suspecting this black-post was deliberately made by someone from Dominating the Firmament.]
Chi Zhen actually knew a little about this gossip already.
Quest for the Azure Heavens had a PvP mode called Guild Wars. Once per week, hundreds of players fought in chaotic battles. The winning guild became the strongest guild of the week, staying at the top of the rankings for seven days straight while also receiving generous material rewards from the system to develop their guild realm.
This mode first eliminated smaller guilds with fewer than a hundred members. Then it forced the larger guilds to diligently and tirelessly develop their guilds every single week in order to compete for first place.
The materials were secondary. The real issue was the vanity of ranking number one—it drove all the major guilds crazy.
As the two largest guilds on the Moonfall Starsinking server, naturally they fought each other so fiercely that they practically wanted to bash each other’s skulls in.
[Here comes the juicy part: someone discovered that the YY account left by the OP belonged to Ink Glass, the best friend of Dominating the Firmament’s vice guild leader’s wife! And Dominating the Firmament’s vice guild leader, Dark Desire, used to be a high-ranking officer in Way of Heaven!]
[Streamer, I suggest you focus on posts 824L, 1135L, 1689L, 1730L, and 1842L]
At this point Chi Zhen was already becoming confused.
The moment people discovered the original poster was from Dominating the Firmament, Way of Heaven’s members immediately began flaming both the OP and Dominating the Firmament. Dominating the Firmament members naturally refused to take it lying down, and the two sides began cursing each other out in the thread.
Dominating the Firmament accused Way of Heaven of slander, claiming the YY account had not actually been left by the OP at all—it had merely been quoted from someone else’s reply. Way of Heaven retorted: if the poster was not from Dominating the Firmament, then how did they immediately know the YY account belonged to one of their guild officers?
Dominating the Firmament mocked Way of Heaven’s guild beauty for humiliating herself and then lashing out afterward. Way of Heaven countered by saying maybe that streamer had actually been planted by Dominating the Firmament on purpose to orchestrate this whole thing!
Dominating the Firmament claimed that perhaps Misty Autumn Rain herself had intentionally arranged this to promote herself, only for it to backfire horribly, and now she was trying to shift blame onto others!
Chi Zhen: #Shocked
Then the professional gossip detectives dug up information about Ink Glass’s best friend, Crystal Heart, who happened to be the Dao companion of Vice Guild Leader Dark Desire. Back in the day, Dark Desire had famously pursued Misty Autumn Rain with great fanfare while still in Way of Heaven. In Luojing City, he once set off fifty-two “One Life, One World, One Pair” fireworks in a row. The system announcements had flooded the server nonstop, shocking the entire player base.
But Misty Autumn Rain rejected him on the spot.
Even after being rejected, Dark Desire continued following behind the goddess without complaint, openly caring for her and selflessly helping her. Around that same time, Way of Heaven’s guild leader—and Dark Desire’s good brother—Cold Sword Shadow also began showing affection toward Misty Autumn Rain. And Misty Autumn Rain’s attitude toward Cold Sword Shadow became… rather interesting. She neither accepted nor clearly rejected him.
Thus began a melodramatic story of brothers turning against each other over love. Furious, Dark Desire left Way of Heaven and defected to their rival guild, where he met Crystal Heart and quickly became Dao companions with her.
Rumor said Crystal Heart had been the one chasing after Dark Desire. Deep down, she had always felt dissatisfied that Dark Desire had never treated her with the same devotion he once showed Misty Autumn Rain. After all—fifty-two fireworks worth one hundred thousand spirit stones each. In a subscription-based game that barely required spending money, that was an earth-shattering spectacle.
So the bystanders reasonably concluded that out of ordinary human emotions—jealousy and resentment—Crystal Heart’s best friend had created the thread to mock Misty Autumn Rain.
Then Crystal Heart and Ink Glass themselves appeared in the thread, accusing the bystanders of being Way of Heaven trolls making things up. They also declared that getting rejected after a confession was not embarrassing; what was truly embarrassing was lashing out wildly afterward and dragging others into it.
On Way of Heaven’s side, Misty Autumn Rain’s best friend Frost Purple Jade also appeared and posted warning mail messages that Crystal Heart had privately sent to Misty Autumn Rain, declaring herself the rightful wife and telling Misty Autumn Rain to know her place, stay away from Dark Desire, delete each other from friends lists—or else she would kill her on sight.
The two sides battled back and forth spectacularly.
Finally, Misty Autumn Rain herself appeared and ended the thread with one sentence.
[Things in-game should be settled in-game. Acting like keyboard warriors on the forums isn’t my style. Everyone—see you in the wilderness maps.]
“Wilderness maps” meant outdoor maps. Players could not kill each other inside the three main cities, but outside in the wilderness there were no restrictions.
You could fight one-on-one. Many-versus-one. Or even bring an entire raid group just to hunt a single person.
“See you in the wilderness” basically meant: You’re on the kill list now. From now on, whenever we meet in-game, one of us dies.
Before Chi Zhen could even untangle the complicated relationships, twisted emotional developments, and intense love-hate drama inside this thread, his game suddenly began blasting nonstop warning sounds.
[Ding! You have been added to the hostile list by player Misty Autumn Rain. Should you meet in wilderness maps, blades have no mercy. Please be careful.]
[Ding! You have been added to the hostile list by player Frost Purple Jade. Should you meet in wilderness maps, blades have no mercy. Please be careful.]
[Ding! You have been added to the hostile list by player Cold Sword Shadow. Should you meet in wilderness maps, blades have no mercy. Please be careful.]
[Ding! You have been added to the hostile list by player Crystal Heart. Should you meet in wilderness maps, blades have no mercy. Please be careful.]
……
Chi Zhen’s chat channel was completely flooded with kill-on-sight notifications. There were so many he could not even scroll to the top.
After all, it was two major guilds…
[Congratulations to the streamer for receiving the deluxe kill-list package!]
[666, send gifts everyone, there’s entertainment ahead!]
Chi Zhen cried out, “No, wait! I can understand Way of Heaven putting me on the kill list, but why is Dominating the Firmament targeting me too?!?!”
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