Chapter 201

After reaching an agreement with Yang Pingzhou, Wei Sheng took the second proposal and personally visited CEO Yao of Guagua Video. This was the group executive who had been frequently inviting him and Zhou Mingxing to dinner lately.

CEO Yao had not expected Wei Sheng to return the favor so quickly.

Moreover, it was a grand gift.

The variety show proposal Wei Sheng gave CEO Yao was not just a simple competition-style show following the Immortal Cultivation Level-up Style trope!

CEO Yao looked like a titan who commanded the winds and clouds in the capital markets. Fearing that the old gentleman had been an “immortal” for too long and might not understand the hardships of the common people, Wei Sheng briefly explained the origins of this plan.

“When we at Yuanxi Biotech organized the Traditional Chinese Medicine Planting Cooperative in Yuan Stream Township, it was with the consideration that many children in remote mountainous areas who struggle with academics wouldn’t have to leave for the city to work at such a young age. They could stay in their hometowns to grow medicinal herbs. It might look like they have no ambition, just being farmers, but as long as they are diligent, they won’t earn less in a year than they would outside.”

“However, during the actual operation, we discovered a problem. Because of their low education levels, many of these teenagers and young adults clearly want to succeed in this industry, but because they have no masters to guide them, they can only grow common Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs that require no technical skill and fetch low prices.”

“CEO Yao, young people are the future and hope of our country’s Rural Revitalization efforts. Therefore, we hope to use this program to truly help those young people who are willing to stay and develop in the countryside!”

“They might not have a talent for studying, and their families might not have the money to enroll them in various tutoring classes or pay their way into university. But actually, I feel that these young people who stay in the villages are the ones who need to learn the most.”

“It’s just that what they need to learn isn’t the exam content that gets them into university, but skills that allow them to truly take root in the countryside and revitalize it!”

“So, CEO Yao, look at this. The promotion rules we designed for Guagua Video’s variety show aren’t limited to just the skill of growing medicinal herbs. Instead, like the settings in online cultivation novels, the five elements of Gold, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth^[1] serve as the channels for contestants to advance.”

“For example, electrical and plumbing skills, carpentry, masonry, even culinary arts, or the operation of specialized vehicles-all of these can serve as bonus points.”

“In investing in this show, what we want to do is not to cultivate a batch of internet celebrities for the countryside, but to truly train a group of talents who can do real work for the cause of Rural Revitalization. A group of young people who, even if they lose the boost of internet traffic in the future, can still live well in the countryside based on their own abilities.”

While Wei Sheng was talking eloquently across from him, Yao Chunming, the CEO Yao who had finished reading the entire program proposal, unknowingly developed a suspicious shimmer of moisture in his lowered eyes…

Few people knew that the current CEO Yao Chunming, who was worth hundreds of millions, was also a child from the mountains.

The city children could hardly imagine how bitter the first twenty years of Yao Chunming’s life had been.

Before he was even a year old, one winter, the family truly had no money to buy meat. To ensure his wife and child could have a bite of meat for the New Year, his father followed the villagers up the mountain to hunt wild boars. Unexpectedly, he was knocked off the mountain by a restless herd of boars. By the time he was found, he had already stopped breathing.

Later, his mother, a lone woman with a child, found it impossible to survive. She gave him to his eldest uncle’s family and remarried.

Those years in his uncle’s house were better left unsaid! In short, after he became successful, neither his uncle’s family nor any of those relatives and friends were able to get a single cent of benefit from him!

The only reason he hadn’t retaliated was because, although his uncle’s family had mistreated him and embezzled the house and land his father left him, they at least hadn’t killed him.

At sixteen, having just finished junior high school, Yao Chunming was sent out to work by his aunt. At first, because of his young age, he suffered countless hardships following a master. He broke his arm at a construction site and couldn’t work, yet he still had to wash clothes and cook for his master, or else he wouldn’t get any food.

If not for an accident a few years later, Yao Chunming would likely have been like the other peers in his village, spending his whole life as a manual laborer earning money on construction sites.

That day was his twentieth birthday. A birthday cake was naturally out of the question. After finishing work at the construction site in the evening, by some strange whim, Yao Chunming took a detour to the night market, wanting to order a clay pot rice for himself. This kind of clay pot rice with many toppings cost over twenty yuan a pot. Normally, he would never be willing to spend that, but since it was his birthday, Yao Chunming wanted to indulge in a small extravagance.

Who would have thought that on his way back after eating, he would accidentally save a girl who was nearly dragged away by two small-time thugs.

That girl was the daughter of the big boss who founded Guagua Video.

The big boss didn’t make him a son-in-law just because he saved his daughter; that only happens in “live-in son-in-law” novels. However, the big boss did give him a job and sponsored his education.

Thus, he went from a construction worker moving bricks to a high-level executive at Guagua Video. The hardships he endured in between, the number of people who looked down on him or treated him with contempt… those painful memories were simply unthinkable. Thinking of them made it easy to want to take revenge on society.

He still wanted to be a good person.

Yao Chunming was not someone who liked to dwell on past bitterness or sweetness, and he almost never spoke of his childhood to others. But at this moment, clutching those few thin sheets of A4 paper, Yao Chunming could no longer suppress the surging tide of emotion.

“Boss Wei, if this can be accomplished, the children in the mountains will surely thank you!”

In the proposal Wei Sheng showed Yao Chunming, he had made a small modification. He set the eligibility criteria for contestants at a per capita annual family income of less than fifty thousand yuan.

In this way, although the production team would lose some wealthy contestants from privileged backgrounds who might even bring their own funding, this show might become the first competition program in history specifically held for children from humble families.

More importantly, in Wei Sheng’s proposal, he didn’t just prepare generous prize money for the advancing contestants. All the contestants who made it into the final sixteen would have the opportunity to formally take a master on the spot, truly becoming disciples of those titans of Traditional Chinese Medicine Studies.

Of course, this mentor-disciple relationship was not the same as a doctoral advisor taking on students at a medical school.

Wei Sheng had included a bit of personal interest here. He required that the mentors invited by Guagua Video for this program must be experts and scholars in TCM Studies who already had a cooperative relationship with Yuanxi Biotech. This way, mentoring would be much more convenient.

Universities and hospitals could not simply recruit a farm boy without any academic background, but the laboratories established under Yuanxi Biotech and their subsidiary pharmaceutical factories certainly could.

When the time came for the mentors to accept disciples, if it was inconvenient to keep them by their side, they could completely leave them with Wei Sheng for a few years of “advanced study.” Theoretical knowledge could be self-taught, and practical experience could be slowly accumulated through work.

To put it bluntly, the opportunity was being handed to them. If they did not cherish it or refused to settle down and study, even the most legendary expert or professor would not be able to pull them up.

In essence, this program was an opportunity, an entry ticket, for those children from humble backgrounds who had no chance of getting into prestigious institutions but happened to be interested in TCM Studies.

Whether they could change their fate and truly convince those experts and scholars to accept them as disciples would depend on whether they had the persistence and willpower.

Yao Chunming was practically itching to see the broadcast results of this program immediately.

In today’s society, there was a desperate need for such a positive program to tell children from humble backgrounds not to believe in toxic cynicism! The door to a better life has never been closed to anyone!

We have no way to change our birth, nor can we choose our families, but our future lives are ultimately held in our own hands.

Yao Chunming still remembered when he was working on a construction site. Back then, his dream was to save up a hundred thousand yuan, return to his hometown, reclaim the family housing plot from his eldest uncle’s family, and build his own house to marry a wife!

If it hadn’t been for that conviction supporting him, he wouldn’t have chosen to work night shifts on the construction site just to earn a bit more overtime pay. If he hadn’t worked the night shift, he wouldn’t have accidentally saved the big boss’s daughter, and the subsequent stories that completely changed the fate of his life would never have happened.

However, Yao Chunming never felt grateful to his uncle’s family, nor was he thankful for the hardships of fate. He knew that for everything he had today, the only thing he needed to thank was his own hard work and struggle.

He believed that those rural youths from the same background as him must also be waiting for such an opportunity, a chance that could change their destinies.

This would surely be a hot-blooded, explosive program!

What made Yang Pingzhou burn with envy and hatred was that while the TV Station was still sluggishly going through the approval process, Guagua Video had already lightning-fast assembled the main creative and production teams. Even the program mentors were ready-made. Boss Wei’s Yuanxi Biotech cooperated with so many big shots in the field of Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs that they were practically spoiled for choice.

Even more exasperating was that the detestable Guagua Video had actually opened the audition registration channel before them!

Suddenly, everyone was flocking to Guagua Video’s side.

What could be done? Were they going to be completely outmaneuvered?

But they couldn’t blame Wei Sheng for this at all. Wei Sheng had clearly given the planning proposal to the TV Station in advance, but their program approval process was slow. Furthermore, since it was appearing on television, it was considered a matter of prestige. As for who to invite as mentors, the internal factions of the TCM Association had to engage in their own “palace intrigue” first…

In short, their current situation was: approval still pending, mentors not yet selected.

Yang Pingzhou: o(╥﹏╥)o

This was exactly why traditional media couldn’t compete with new media!

Wei Sheng expressed his disdain for Station Director Yang’s act of fake crying.

Lord Director, how do you have the face to cry?

Don’t think I don’t know that you’ve already secretly contacted the education system. Once a notice is sent out, the auditions for all primary and secondary schools can start immediately. This was originally a Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs knowledge competition aimed at the education system. Did you really want to make an Immortal Cultivation Level-up Style show?

To this, Yang Pingzhou expressed: If the Bureau of Radio and Television^[2] were willing to approve it, they would definitely want to make an Immortal Cultivation Level-up Style program! That kind of thing sounds like it would have a massive audience, right? Not only would kids love it, but many young people at the station would love it too!

(End of Chapter)