Chapter 35

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

After helping his mother tidy up the house, the mother and son sat on the sofa for a while, 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, liking a few friend circles, then washed up and went to bed. The sheets and bedding were all freshly changed, carrying a unique scent that gave him a sense of calm.

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

He stepped outside—the breakfast was still in the pot, still warm.

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

At Fang Nan’s request, he stopped shooting in vertical mode. He adjusted the settings, set up the camera, and 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—look, it’s covered in dust, and many parts have completely aged out…”

“...Today, I’m going to fully restore this bike and 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 once a real showstopper on the road. Too bad times have changed—it’s now rusted all over.”

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, and he had to wrestle hard to loosen them.

Next came the seat, side panels, chain guard, fuel tank, and gear-shifting mechanism—each step 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 fallen soldiers.

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

Since he was working under the apartment building, passersby occasionally stopped by, some curious enough to linger and chat a bit.

After reviewing the footage, Qin Yun held his phone, thought for a moment, and simply edited the climbing video’s caption before posting it directly to his Douyin account.

The video’s title: “After Losing My Job, I Free-Climbed Shanzizi Cliff on Mount Tai—Pure Tomato-Splat Vibe.”

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 quality was back then, after all this time, the rubber will have degraded, the wiring oxidized—irreversible damage.”

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

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. 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 degraded and damaged parts into one pile, listing every replacement part needed—dense, overwhelming, enough to make anyone dizzy.

“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 recording, his phone suddenly erupted with a string of “ding-dong” 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.

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: 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 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 and opened the comments—already hundreds of them.

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

“So badass—who is this climbing god? I’ve never heard of him. Is there still someone like this in China’s climbing scene?”

“My mom just beat me because my pants were wet. I told her I was scared into peeing.”

“You walk by the river often, you’re bound to get your shoes wet. I hate these bloggers who play with their lives.”

“One hundred meters, my heart raced to 150 beats per minute.”

“God-level skills.”

Among the comments were plenty of hostile ones, but Qin Yun ignored them—he didn’t care. No video 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 likes kept climbing. His guess was right: the algorithm had pushed the video into a larger traffic pool. But his follower count grew slowly—only a few hundred so far.

Still, crossing a thousand was clearly within reach.

He thought for a moment, then sent the video to Su Huan and Fang Nan: “Posted it. Like, follow, comment, save—all four.”

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

If it were anyone else, she’d ignore it. 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 comments are 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. The bike still hadn’t been repainted or polished, but at least it looked much cleaner now.

Good thing he’d laid down the cloth—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 fifteen-year-old bike were hard to find. He visited three shops before gathering all the needed replacements. He followed his checklist closely—each time he found a part, he marked it with a checkmark visible in the video.

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

By now, the constant “ding-dong” of Douyin messages was driving him crazy. Most were nonsense—requests, ads. Even some that looked like partnership offers, he doubted and ignored.

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

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

Tourism Taian: We admire the creator’s bravery! Shanzizi Cliff on Mount Tai has treacherous terrain and complex rock structure. Free-climbing poses serious safety risks. We remind all visitors: while enjoying the scenery, please follow park safety rules and stick to designated routes.

“Hahaha, dead. So the creator snuck in to climb, and now the official authorities are calling him out?”

“This guy’s a menace. If he falls, he’s dead—but how much damage will that cause Mount Tai Tourism?”

“You’re an idiot. Verified.”

“I get what the creator meant—if he’d notified the authorities, they’d never have approved it.”

“Is the creator serious? ‘Don’t try this—it could kill you.’ We don’t even have the skill to try. You’re overestimating us—this warning is pointless.”

“+1. I get dizzy just watching. Even with ropes, I’d pee my pants.”

“Truly impressive. I don’t agree with the stunt, but I respect it. I’ve always admired those who dare to push their limits.”

At this point, the video’s likes had reached one hundred thousand, and views neared three million.

Undeniably, the video had gone viral.

But Qin Yun hadn’t expected the real catalyst for its explosion—not the likes or views—but a vague screenshot comment.

“Does this creator look familiar to anyone? Look—doesn’t his silhouette resemble this image?”

“Kinda looks like it, but it’s too blurry to tell. This picture is terrible.”

“One’s in Hebei, one’s in Shandong—how could they be the same?”

“Looks similar, but not certain.”

The image in the comment was a screenshot from Qin Yun’s video of rescuing someone on the Jing-Tai Expressway—slightly distant and blurry, only the outline vaguely recognizable.

If that were all, it might’ve passed. But then, the Hebei Traffic Police replied to the comment.

“Sharp eyes, OP.”

The Hebei Traffic Police were official. And the accident had occurred precisely on the Jing-Tai Expressway in Hebei—what else could that mean?

Instantly, the comment surged to the top as replies flooded in. Likes and views skyrocketed. Every time Qin Yun refreshed, the numbers changed again.

His follower count also shot up rapidly.

“Holy shit…”

Qin Yun stared in disbelief.

The comment section exploded in volume.

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

“Bro, I followed you. You reached out in a crisis—you’re truly a hero.”

“Damn, the guy I admire is not only a handsome dude but also free-climbs without gear? The world’s gone crazy.”

“Not crazy—only someone confident and fearless would risk their life to save others in that situation.”

“Looking forward to the creator tackling El Capitan.”

Qin Yun suppressed his joy and checked his private messages again—they were overrun. Besides fan messages, most were MCN agencies trying to sign him.

He’d only posted half a day ago, but these MCNs, having tasted success, immediately saw his potential. If they caught him now, the traffic would be endless.

Qin Yun ignored them all—didn’t reply to a single one. He took a deep breath, closed Douyin, and resumed filming his motorcycle repair video.