Chapter 66: A Call from the Platform

The next morning when he woke up, he first called his mother to soothe the worry that had been weighing on her for days, then called Su Huan.

Now Su Huan was just like his agent, handling all the coordination with DJI.

"Hello, are you awake?"

"Yeah, I'm up. Where are you now?"

"Still at Wulan Village down the mountain. I'll head to town in a bit, take a car to the city, then fly straight back to Hangzhou."

"Alright, I'll wait for you in Hangzhou. DJI is very satisfied with your livestream and has raised your rating. For your next livestream or video, we can keep negotiating the price upward."

"That's great, thanks to you. But I have an issue here, and looking at it now, it's no small matter."

"Oh? What issue?" Su Huan was taken aback for a moment.

"It's about the current arrangement between the three of us—you, Fang Nan, and me. It's not very proper. My follower count keeps growing, and the commercial rates keep climbing. If I keep paying Fang Nan the old price, I can't bring myself to do it. And then there's you…"

"I'm fine, I only help you out in my spare time." Su Huan said quickly.

Qin Yun shook his head: "I'm planning to set up a studio. I'll give you a commission for your part."

"I don't want your money." Su Huan blurted out, but the moment she finished she felt it sounded a bit off, so she added, "We're all old classmates, why bring money into it?"

"Let me handle this." If Qin Yun were still just doing small-time stuff, then naturally everything would be easy to talk about, but after one livestream he had earned close to a million, so he had to formalize this matter, otherwise problems would easily arise.

"Help me look into what procedures are needed to register a studio, and how best to cooperate with Fang Nan? I don't really understand this stuff either, so help me draw up some rules?"

Su Huan pressed her lips together and nodded: "Alright, but we'll have to wait until you're back."

"No problem, that's it for now, I'm about to head out."

"Bye!"

After ending the call with Su Huan, Qin Yun replied to a few WeChat messages from friends, then opened Douyin and checked the backend.

The backend was now full of little red dots; those third-party platform MCN agencies were practically going crazy trying to sign him. But Qin Yun paid no attention to any of these messages—he could never sign with a third-party agency.

Among the private messages, there were a few friend requests, and he gave them his WeChat ID.

Qin Yun took a look and saw Bo Lang Ge and Feng Liu Jie were among them, along with several others who turned out to be celebrities and major Douyin streamers.

He thought it over, then added these WeChat contacts one by one. In no time, friend-accepted notifications popped up one after another.

The first to send a WeChat message was unmistakably Feng Liu Jie, who opened with a full-body photo.

A young woman with a graceful figure, fair skin, high looks, and long hair draped over her shoulders. The photo was followed by a line: Qin Ye, my name is Han Wei, founder of a financial company in Shanghai, a rich second-generation.

Qin Yun's face darkened, thinking to himself: are you trying to tempt me? Would I, Qin Ye, befriend you just because you have money? When I make friends, I don't look at strength, only looks.

"Hello Han Wei, I'm Qin Yun. Thank you for your support in the livestream."

"Qin Ye, you're too kind. When you come to Shanghai in the future, be sure to look me up."

"Definitely!"

After a while, several more big-spending fans sent messages over, and Qin Yun replied to each one with neither servility nor arrogance.

"Qin Ye, I'm Zeng Luo, boss of a small company in Shanghai. Can't compare with you, Qin Ye. When you come to Shanghai, you must let me play the proper host."

Bo Lang Ge's name sounded a bit feminine, but from his voice you could tell he was very much a man.

Qin Yun showed no favoritism, and was quite polite to all these patrons. Even with several big Douyin streamers and some celebrities, he didn't get overly enthusiastic.

Arriving at the town, he took a car and quickly reached the city. After buying a ticket on the earliest flight, Qin Yun waited in the terminal.

"Adding what DJI paid, just five days of livestreaming and I made over eight hundred thousand—it's basically like picking up money."

Qin Yun was full of emotion. Thinking back to his time in Beijing, working overtime day in and day out, he made at most just over three hundred thousand a year. The contrast in earning speed was just too stark.

Although it was impossible for every livestream to bring in such high earnings, compared to a regular job, the money came in way too fast. No wonder more and more people were getting into livestreaming.

Most importantly, his livestream wasn't replicable. You could say there were plenty of outdoor streamers like him on Douyin's livestream platform, but there was simply no one of the same type with similar abilities.

Rock Climbing LV1, Combat Skill LV1, Zoology LV1, Botany LV1, Archery Skill LV1—these skills were the foundation that let him handle the wilderness livestream with ease. Without these skill boosts, he couldn't have been so relaxed.

Encountering wolves, he could only scurry away; facing a ledge he couldn't cross, he could only take the long way around; running into a Siberian tiger, he could only wait to die.

It was precisely these skills that set him apart from other streamers on the platform. This very uniqueness ensured that if he kept going down this path, he would definitely become an even bigger streamer.

This was a foreseeable future!

But, just as he had said in the livestream, he was only a temporary wilderness survival streamer. Others didn't know he had a system on him, and for a long time to come his livestreams would most likely follow the missions.

If allowed, he would treat every check-in mission as a livestream. Of course, the prerequisite was that the check-in mission was suitable for livestreaming.

Like the trip to Shou County—the footage was still rotting on his hard drive, and he hadn't thought about posting it.

"Passengers heading to Hangzhou Xiaoshan Airport…"

As the boarding announcement sounded, Qin Yun slung his luggage over his shoulder and stood up. Suddenly, the phone in his hand rang—an unknown caller.

Qin Yun thought for a moment, then chose to answer, even though it was most likely a spam call.

"Hello, who's calling?"

A male voice came through the phone: "Mr. Qin, hello, I'm from Douyin's official team… my name is Chen Mo."

"Hello Mr. Chen, what can I do for you?"

"Here's the thing, Mr. Qin. After platform review, your wilderness survival livestream shows tremendous potential and prospects, so our Douyin platform would like to sign with you. I wonder if Mr. Qin is interested?"

Qin Yun's interest was instantly piqued. He had that much face now? A direct phone call instead of a backend notification?

He had no interest in joining a guild or MCN agency, since it was easy to get screwed over. But if it was the official platform, well, that wasn't off the table?

"Mr. Chen, what benefits come with signing with the platform?"

"Here's how it is." Seeing that Qin Yun was interested, Chen Mo perked up. He actually hadn't held out much hope, since most streamers chose guilds or MCN agencies—those companies were flexible and had concentrated resources, unlike their platform where resources were more scattered.

Although they were the official team, compared to those companies, they really didn't have any particularly outstanding advantage. For smaller streamers, it was even far worse than going to an agency.

"If Mr. Qin chooses to sign, we'll offer an A-class streamer contract: an annual salary of eight hundred thousand, with gift revenue split ninety-ten."

Qin Yun asked eagerly: "What streamer ranks are above A-class?"

"There's S-class, SS-class, and SSS-class. Different ranks naturally come with different levels of support."

Right now his gift split was thirty-seventy, platform thirty, him seventy. If he signed, he'd get an extra twenty percent—that was no small sum. Plus the annual salary, plus platform support benefits.

However...

"What are the streaming conditions after signing?"

Qin Yun wasn't dizzy with these benefits; he knew that behind benefits there must be a reason that would make the platform act this way.

"If you sign with the platform, you need to guarantee a monthly effective streaming time of over a hundred hours, otherwise your salary will be deducted according to the duration of absence. Apart from that..."

Before Chen Mo could finish, Qin Yun cut him off directly.

"Mr. Chen, you said the monthly effective streaming time must be over a hundred hours? How is this effective time calculated?"

If he were always in the wilderness, a hundred hours would be a piece of cake, but he couldn't stream every day, so this hundred-hour duration was definitely a standard he would find hard to meet.

"There will be a measurement standard here. You can understand it as: when you're streaming, the number of fans online just needs to reach one two-hundredth of your total fan count."

Qin Yun was instantly speechless. He had just checked, and his fan count had broken five million — quite exaggerated.

But one two-hundredth is 25,000. Unless every stream of his is as thrilling and dangerous as rock climbing or wilderness survival, he wouldn't dare guarantee it.

"Please continue."

Chen Mo: "The contract term is three years. Within those three years, you're not allowed to stream on other platforms. That's all there is. More specifics need to be put down on paper."

Hearing this, Qin Yun had already rejected it in his heart.

Setting aside the contract term, just the requirement to limit his streaming time alone meant he absolutely would not sign.

This feeling of being bound, of losing freedom — he absolutely could not accept it.

"Thank you, Mr. Chen, for clarifying, but no need. I don't want to sign for now."

Chen Mo had originally been quite confident. After all, only a handful of people on the entire platform had A-level contracts, and he believed the benefits were enough to knock this fellow called Qin Yun out cold.

When the other party said "thank you," he didn't even bother to listen carefully to the content, just laughed.

"Great..."

But the moment this sentence left his mouth, he sensed something was wrong.

"Mr. Qin, what did you say?"

Qin Yun held back his laughter: "Mr. Chen, I'm not considering signing for now. Sorry."

"Mr. Qin, do you feel the benefits aren't enough?" Chen Mo said, a bit anxiously. "These can be discussed further later."

Big brother, an 800,000 annual salary — higher than mine. What more do you want?

"Mr. Chen, I don't want my streaming time to be restricted."

Chen Mo was instantly at a loss for words.

After ending the call, Qin Yun shook his head inwardly. Just the one condition of not wanting his streaming time restricted — this kind of unrestricted constraint would never be approved, whether by officials or by corporate institutions.

Compared to the Douyin platform, these MCN agencies were even less likely to.

In the end, however, Chen Mo didn't refuse outright, only saying he needed to go back and report the situation to the higher-ups before discussing further.

Before boarding the plane, Qin Yun received a message from Feng Liu Jie Han Wei:

"Qin Ye, I built a fan group, all some 'pretty good' fans. Want me to pull you in?"

"Sure, thanks for the trouble."

The "pretty good" fans Han Wei mentioned clearly meant wealthy ones. Qin Yun certainly wouldn't refuse this kind gesture — keeping wealthy fans happy was a必修课 for streamers. Qin Yun was a natural at it; these were all his potential future backers.