2.1: Directly Going Live

◎The female zergs who scrolled onto the live-stream room: If this is real, I’am calling the police!!◎

~*~

The male zerg with dull, dim silver hair raised his head from the washbasin, and in the filthy mirror was reflected a gaunt, sickly face.

The foundation of this face’s features was not bad: naturally smiling lips, a pair of deep-gray classical almond eyes whose corners, even when he wasn’t smiling, were adorned with a trace of quiet, gentle smiling-ness.

But the deep dark circles beneath the eyes ruined the lingering charm of this good appearance; the terrible skin, the dry-thin, slightly sunken cheeks, and the overlong, slovenly-hanging fringe combined to produce the look of a decadent addict.

Shi Cunjin combed the slovenly fringe back with his hand, revealing the whole face and the gray eyes; his gaze was clear-cold and calm.

This bit of temperament was like the finishing touch to a dragon’s eye, turning the listless-postured addict into a young youth just recovered from a serious illness, somewhat handsome, somewhat sickly.

And Shi Cunjin had indeed just recovered from a serious illness.

Ten minutes earlier, with the twins’ help, he had found the injection needles and healed the wounds all over his body.

Interstellar medicine lived up to its name: one needle, five minutes, wounds all over the body healed.

The too-fast healing overdrew the body; Shi Cunjin forcibly ate two tubes of the nutrient solution that had been kept together with the treatment needles, and only then was released from the dizzy, head-swollen state, seeing things noticeably more clearly.

The healing brought a bout of deficiency-weakness and profuse sweating. Smoked by the stench of blood and sweat all over his body, Shi Cunjin couldn’t stand it, and the first thing he did upon coming back to life was go to the toilet for a small clean-up.

He wiped his face dry and returned to the bedroom. The twins were at that moment crouching beside the bed, tightly stuck together like two little kittens leaning on one another, not daring to get on the bed.

Seeing their maternal uncle come out, their two pairs of eyes followed him unwaveringly, but they themselves did not, as before, approach directly.

The original body previously had a bad attitude towards the zerglings. The twins were still wearing the clothes of the day they had come; the cuffs had gone dark: stains from wiping Shi Cunjin’s sweat and blood.

The twin zerglings’ last blood-kin zerg was the original body; however much the blood-kin zerg disliked them, they could only timidly follow along. Earlier they had hidden, not daring to come out, and after coming out they did not dare hide again.

Shi Cunjin switched on the bedroom’s small light, dim but with light, beckoned to the two zerglings, his hoarse voice gentle beyond measure: “Luo Lai, Luo Li, come over here to me.”

The twins exchanged a look, stood up ill-at-ease hand in hand, and slowly drew near.

Shi Cunjin stroked each of the two brothers’ silver hair in turn, and praised: “you did very well helping your maternal uncle just now.”

“I’ll help you change into a set of clothes, then you eat two more tubes of nutrient solution and go to sleep, all right?”

The twins, having been cold-violenced by their blood-kin zerg for two days, with Shi Cunjin’s attitude being slightly better, blinked their big eyes and immediately nodded, obedient, huddled-jostling they stood one in front, one behind, helping each other take off the other’s clothes.

They could look after themselves and were also extremely obedient. Shi Cunjin took note of this point.

Perhaps, even by the original owner’s elder brother’s side, the twins hadn’t been very free; they were far too good at reading faces.

Thinking of the original body’s personality and coldness, Shi Cunjin gave a sardonic smile in his heart, rummaged two clean pieces of clothing out of the bedroom wardrobe, and changed the twins into them.

The clothes were long-sleeved T-shirts the original owner had worn at age 10, old but not dirty; on the twins the hems hung down to their knees.

Once they were dressed, Shi Cunjin coaxed them onto the bed, sat at the bedside, tore open two tubes of nutrient solution and fed them to them.

The nutrient solution and the treatment needles were both monthly-allowance supplementary mailings the original owner’s elder brother had sent back; there was still one box of nutrient solution left.

A box was 3 rows, a row was 10 tubes. As Shi Cunjin coaxed the zerglings to eat, he calculated: used carefully, this nutrient solution could last 3–4 days.

Thinking of that group of bullies’ extortion warning, his heart sank, but he didn’t show it.

When the twins had finished eating, Shi Cunjin collected the empty tubes, tucked the blanket over them, stroked each head in turn, and instructed: “Sleep well. Your maternal uncle will be right in the living room.”

The twins nodded obediently, and this time the elder brother Luo Lai spoke in a tiny voice: “…Good night… we’ll be obedient.”

The younger brother, Luo Li, half a beat slow, followed along: “…Luo Li will be obedient too.”

The zerglings’ voices were thin and tender, hiding poorly-concealed dismay and timid dependence; within every desperately compliant movement was the dread of being abandoned.

This point touched the inside of Shi Cunjin’s heart.

Shi Cunjin had come out of an orphanage; he ran from a negative starting line to becoming a novelist with an annual income of a million; the hardships within that could be imagined.

The tempering of his youth had left him without any thought of marrying and having children, and now to suddenly have two extra children to look after, he naturally felt awkward in his heart.

The twins’ careful, cautious ingratiating made Shi Cunjin recall a very long time ago. He was silent for a moment, then pinched the twins’ cheeks: “Good. Your maternal uncle likes obedient zerglings the most.”

The twins’ eyes at once turned crystal-bright, emerald green, and under the dusky-yellowish light they truly were like two little kittens.

“Sleep.” Shi Cunjin stood up and turned off the light, lightly pulled the bedroom door half-closed, and went out and switched on the living room’s small light; a crack of warm light spilled into the dark bedroom, as if their blood-kin zerg had never left.

On the bed, it was a long while before the two zerglings spoke in tiny voices.

“Obedient.”

“Be loved.”

The living room.

Shi Cunjin pushed the clutter on the dining table to one side, sat down, and began to fumble with the smart-brain wristband on his wrist.

Zerg race’s technology was advanced; the smart-brain wristband integrated identity ID, phone, and computer all in one, and although the model was old, its basic functions were complete. On the border star it also counted as a luxury item, and was a 15th-birthday present from the original owner’s elder brother.

Shi Cunjin searched for the frequently-used accounts, and clicked into each web link to look, and nearly had his eyes dazzled blind.

Most of the web links were luxury-goods official sites; the followed accounts on the social platforms were all fair-skinned-rich female zergs, so-and-so famed-and-illustrious military female or other, romance movies, jumbled-up shopping-discount accounts and so on; the image of a money-worshipping and dream-loving user leapt out vividly from the web.

Shi Cunjin paid it no mind, and directly started searching the currently hottest social platforms, clicked into the first four portal websites and skimmed them quickly: news, propaganda, military, entertainment… entertainment!

He clicked in at once. This was an entertainment platform gathering eating-drinking-playing-having-fun, the forums of every major campus district, chasing-and-worshipping male-zerg celebrities, and all kinds of strategy guides.

In Shi Cunjin’s view, it was like a combination of LOFTER + Weibo + YouTube, the largest platform for young zergs’ leisure socializing nowadays, bar none.

He opened the live-stream section; under the section were 6 channels.

Mecha, tactics, extrasolar systems, games, knowledge, tournaments.

Shi Cunjin then, from the hot chart, saw the real-time live-now ranking: 40% were explaining this year’s newly released mecha actual combat and its maintenance techniques, 40% were live-streaming alien planet exploration, and 20% were assorted miscellaneous games.

Without a single exception, these streamers were all female zergs, and what they streamed was all rather hardcore, technique-school stuff, exactly the same as in the original owner’s memories.

Shi Cunjin typed “male zerg” into the search bar, and the navigation gave over a million+ pages of videos.

His eyelids twitched. Truely, it really was beyond-imaginable how many.

Shi Cunjin looked carefully at the first page, and as expected, there was not a single male-zerg streamer’s live room. He flipped roughly toward the back: 90% of the pages were compilation clips of male-zerg stars filming romance movies, and a small portion were videos explaining techniques for dating male zergs.

Apart from this, there was no further news of male zergs making appearances online.

The otaku-dance sections, chat rooms, and virtual streamers that Shi Cunjin had seen on LOFTER— there was not a single one of those!

He slowly breathed to control and steady his state of mind, knowing clearly that right now he had no the capital to be an interactive streamer.

In an era with technology this developed, the most mainstream social platform actually had no active male zergs. This in itself was an abnormal thing!

The original book provided in the system was missing most of the plot, and the original body’s memories understood not even half a bit of law. Shi Cunjin did not know whether male zergs could not livestream or whether all male zergs simply disliked showing their faces in public; with key elements missing, Shi Cunjin was left extremely passive!

Even though in his mind there was a flourishing age of entertainment, he couldn’t, in one burst of impulse, livestream showing his face with no regard for consequences.

He was not the original novel’s male lead gong, that one-in-ten-thousand S-grade. If he actively exposed his gender and identity on the developed Starnet, it wouldn’t long before the Red Poison Ant Gang immediately broke down his door to pay a visit.