Chapter 35

By the time the guests left, it was already past eight in the evening.

After helping his mother finish the household chores, the mother and son sat on the sofa for a while longer, chatting until around nine-thirty, when Hu Fen rubbed her eyes and yawned: "You really don't need me to take tomorrow off? I still have plenty of vacation days left."

"Mom, it's fine—I'm just going to take out that motorcycle and fix it tomorrow. You go to work as usual."

"Alright!" Hu Fen didn't press further, standing up. "Then get some rest early, son."

Qin Yun nodded, scrolled on his phone for a while, giving a few likes to friends' Moments posts, then washed up and went to his room to rest. The sheets and bedding were all freshly changed, carrying a unique scent that gave him a sense of calm.

That night, he slept extremely comfortably, waking up refreshed and full of energy. He picked up his phone—it was barely past seven-thirty. But his mother had already left him a WeChat message: she had gone to work.

When he stepped outside, breakfast was still in the pot, still warm.

Qin Yun quickly finished breakfast, went downstairs to stretch, and prepared to begin his work for the day.

At Fang Nan's request, he stopped shooting in vertical mode. After adjusting the settings and setting up the camera, he began recording his first segment.

"Hello everyone, I'm Qin Yun…"

"... This is my father's motorcycle, a Yamaha. It's been sitting here for fifteen years already—look, it's covered in a thick layer of dust, and many parts have completely aged out…"

"... Today, I'm going to fully restore this bike, bring it back to life… First, let's take it apart and carefully inspect which parts need replacing…"

Qin Yun rolled the motorcycle out of the storage shed, laid a large cloth on the ground, positioned the camera at multiple angles, and began disassembling it while explaining each step.

"This Yamaha YB125 was definitely a cool ride back in the day, but times have changed—it's all rusted now."

The tires were long dead, useless— he removed them first and tossed them aside. Then came the handlebar assembly; many of the old screws were rusted shut, requiring considerable effort to loosen.

Next came the seat, side panels, chain guard, fuel tank, and gear-shifting mechanism—each step was precise, plain, and devoid of any unnecessary motion.

In less than an hour, the dusty motorcycle had been reduced to a pile of parts, scattered across the ground like corpses.

He turned off the video recording and took a short break.

Since this was right under the residential building, passersby occasionally stopped by, and a few curious ones lingered to chat for a moment.

After reviewing the video footage, Qin Yun held his phone, thought for a moment, and simply edited the caption of the climbing video, then posted it directly to his Douyin account.

The video's title: "After Losing My Job, I Free-Climbed the Fanzi Cliff on Mount Taishan—Pure Rotten Tomato Vibes."

After confirming the post, he stopped checking it and began meticulously inspecting each part—keeping what was still usable, replacing what wasn't. Many components would need to be hunted down at local repair shops.

"After sitting for so many years, some parts are guaranteed to be ruined—rubber, wiring. No matter how good their original quality was, after all this time, the rubber will have aged, the wiring will have oxidized—these are irreversible."

Qin Yun held up several pieces of rubber and wiring in front of the camera, pointing out their decayed condition.

Then he set them down and pointed to another area in the frame: "Look here—throttle cable, clutch cable, brake cable—they're almost certainly all dead too. And the fuel lines—you saw them earlier, they're so brittle they crack at the slightest squeeze."

"So, if we want this motorcycle—which was still running fifteen years ago—to come back to life, we'll need a complete overhaul inside and out."

Soon, Qin Yun gathered all the completely aged and damaged parts together, listing every replacement needed in meticulous detail—a dense, dizzying list.

"Most of these parts can't be ordered online anymore, but no problem—we've got several motorcycle repair shops here that have been around for decades. I'll take you around to hunt them down one by one. If we're lucky, we'll finish repairing this bike today."

Just a few hours later, as he turned off the recording, his phone suddenly erupted in a string of "ding-dong-ding" notification sounds. Confused, he checked—it was all private messages from Douyin.

He opened the Douyin app and immediately saw the "99+" message indicator. Opening the messages, he confirmed it: the video he'd posted hours ago had gone viral.

The likes had surged past three thousand. Views were modest—only fifty to sixty thousand—but that made its potential even clearer.

He knew from experience that videos with around three thousand likes typically averaged thirty thousand views. His had only fifty to sixty thousand views but already three thousand likes—a twenty-to-one like-to-view ratio—guaranteeing the algorithm would push it into a much larger traffic pool.

He was thrilled—his first video had blown up. A perfect start.

He clicked into the video, opened the comments—there were already hundreds.

"My mom asked why I was kneeling while looking at my phone. I said I was watching God."

"So awesome—who is this climbing god? I've never heard of him before—is there really someone like this in China's climbing scene?"

"My mom just saw my pants were wet and beat me up—but I know I peed myself from fear."

"If you walk by the river often, you'll get your shoes wet. I hate these bloggers who play with their lives."

"In just a hundred meters, my heart rate hit 150."

"God-level skills."

Among the comments were plenty of hostile ones, but Qin Yun ignored them—he didn't care. No video ever pleases everyone; some people just enjoy arguing for the sake of it.

If you say it's good, I'll say it's bad. If you say it's bad, I'll say it's good.

Qin Yun refreshed the page—the like count was still rising. His guess was right: the algorithm had pushed the video into a larger traffic pool. But while likes surged, his follower count barely moved—only a few hundred so far.

Still, surpassing a thousand was clearly within reach.

He thought for a moment, then sent the video to Su Huan and Fang Nan: "Posted the video. Like, follow, comment, collect—all four in one click."

Su Huan was in a meeting, listening to her boss speak. Her phone vibrated on the table. She shifted back slightly, opened it, and saw it was from Qin Yun.

If it were anyone else, she'd ignore it outright. But since it was Qin Yun, she decided to risk opening Douyin.

Luckily, the video was muted—otherwise she'd have been publicly humiliated.

"Already liked and shared. The comment section's calling you 'god.' Feeling proud?"

Fang Nan was more direct: "I dropped three hundred Doujia on you. Enjoy the hype, Yun-ge."

Qin Yun read their replies, thanked Fang Nan, then resumed filming, capturing a clean, clear video. Though the bike hadn't been repainted or polished yet, it already looked far cleaner.

Good thing he'd laid down the cloth first—otherwise dragging it would've been a nightmare.

After hauling everything back into the storage shed, Qin Yun drove off to the repair shops.

But parts for a motorcycle over a decade old were hard to find. He visited three shops before gathering all the needed replacement components. He followed his list precisely—each time he found a part, he checked it off visibly in the video.

After grabbing a quick lunch out, he got home past one in the afternoon.

By now, he was sick of the constant "ding-dong" of Douyin messages—it was unbearable. Most were random requests or ads. Even some that looked like collaboration offers, he doubted and ignored.

He was nobody right now. Even if someone wanted to collaborate, he wouldn't accept any ads yet—no point.

He dragged the bike out again, reopened Douyin, and saw the most-liked comment—making him slightly embarrassed.

Tourism Tai'an: We admire the creator's bravery! The Fanzi Cliff on Mount Taishan has treacherous terrain and complex rock structure—free climbing poses serious safety risks. We remind all visitors: while admiring the scenery, please follow park safety rules and stick to designated routes.

"Hahaha, dead. So the video creator snuck in to climb—and now the official authorities are on his case."

"This thing harms both others and yourself; if you die, fine, but how much loss will Mount Taishan Tourism suffer?"

"Idiot upstairs, confirmed."

"I understand the video creator's thinking—if they notified the authorities, they'd never approve it."

"Is the video creator serious? What do you mean, 'don't learn from me to do this—you might die accidentally'? We don't even have the strength for this; you're way too optimistic about us. This warning is completely unnecessary."

"+1, I get dizzy just watching—let alone climbing barehanded, even with a rope I'd piss my pants."

"Truly incredible. Though I don't agree, I admire it. I've always held deep respect for those brave enough to challenge their limits."

At this moment, the video's likes had reached one hundred thousand, and the views had approached three million.

Undoubtedly, this video had gone viral.

But Qin Yun hadn't expected that what truly made this video explode wasn't any of that, but a vague screenshot comment.

"Doesn't the video creator look familiar? Look everyone—isn't his outline a bit like the one in this picture?"

"It does look similar, but I can't tell—this picture is so blurry."

"One's in Hebei, the other in Shandong—that's quite a distance apart."

"It does look alike, but I'm not sure."

The picture in this comment was precisely a screenshot from his video rescuing people on the Jing-Tai Expressway, only slightly distant and blurry, with only a faint outline discernible.

Of course, if it had ended there, it would've passed unnoticed—but unexpectedly, the Hebei traffic police replied beneath this comment.

"Great eyes, OP."

Who were the Hebei traffic police? They were official authorities. And since the accident had occurred precisely on the Jing-Tai Expressway within Hebei's jurisdiction, didn't that say something?

Instantly, this comment, due to a flood of replies, rocketed to the top, and the video's likes and views began surging upward. Almost every time he refreshed, the numbers changed.

His follower count surged along with it.

"What the hell..."

Qin Yun stared in disbelief.

The number of comments in the comment section also skyrocketed.

"So he's the hero who saved people! No wonder—I can only say: Hero, I bow to you."

"Bro, I've followed you. To reach out in moments of crisis—truly a hero."

"Wow, the person I admire is such a handsome guy, and he climbs cliffs barehanded with no gear—how weird is this world?"

"Not weird at all. Only someone utterly confident and fearless would dare rescue others in such a situation."

"Looking forward to the video creator challenging El Capitan in the U. S."

Qin Yun suppressed his inner joy and checked his private messages again—they were overrun. Besides messages from netizens and fans, most were from MCN agencies, all seeking to sign him.

Although only half a day had passed since he posted the video, these MCN agencies, having tasted success, could clearly see his potential—if they grabbed him, the traffic would be insane.

Qin Yun ignored them all, didn't reply to a single one. He took a deep breath, closed TikTok, and resumed filming his car repair video.