Chapter 207

Seeing that the hype generated by the pilot episode had fermented sufficiently, Guagua Video struck while the iron was hot. They chose Friday at 8:00 PM to officially launch the first episode of the first season of The Way of Shennong.

Seeing the words “First Season,” Wei Sheng could not help but twitch his lips twice. If he remembered correctly, those two words were nowhere to be found in the original planning proposal.

In other words, the program was initially planned as a one-off season.

But now, seeing that this themed variety show was about to become a massive hit, Guagua Video acted as if they had taken a dose of regret medicine and unhesitatingly added “First Season” to the title.

If there was a first season, there would naturally be a second and a third.

If it were not for the fact that he also had an investment in this show, Wei Sheng would have had to “discuss” the matter of appearance fees for the several TCM masters with the production team.

Surely, if the show became a hit, the appearance fees for the second season could not stay at the current standard?

Had they not seen how, since the pilot went viral, sponsors of all kinds had flocked in? The number of advertisements had increased by more than twenty in one go. They had recouped their costs in an instant, had they not?

He also wondered what method Guagua Video intended to use to cram in so many advertisements without increasing the show’s runtime.

However, Wei Sheng was quite happy that the show’s popularity was rising, mainly for the sake of the contestants.

The more popular the show became, the more opportunities these contestants would have in the future.

If nothing else, even if they were eliminated, as long as enthusiastic viewers were willing to sponsor them to continue their education, their future paths would be much easier to walk.

Not to mention that as long as they broke into the top thirty-two, there was prize money to be had. Even if they did not reach the finals, as long as the audience remembered them, there would be plenty of internet companies willing to sign these contestants who came with their own built-in traffic.

In any case, Wei Sheng had already instructed his subordinates to keep an eye on this season’s contestants.

If there were any promising talents who failed to advance, they were to sign them immediately. These contestants already had a foundation in traditional Chinese medicinal herbs; they could memorize so many types of herbs and dared to express themselves in front of the camera. Their memory and expressive abilities were not bad at all. With a bit of training, would they not be perfect for Yuanxi Biotech’s livestreaming rooms?

At this moment, all the contestants who had entered the auditions had no idea that as long as they performed well during the competition, regardless of whether they advanced, they would have a chance to be brought under Wei Sheng’s wing. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the broadcast of the first episode.

Guagua Video intended to shock its competitors, so it released several “king-tier” contestants right in the first episode.

The first to appear was Li Erni. Wearing an old school uniform with frayed cuffs, she stood on stage looking as shy as a weak novice. But as soon as she opened her mouth, she recited the entire Shennong’s Classic of Materia Medica from beginning to end without a single stumble.

The second to appear was the herb-gathering girl, Fan Lingling, who had been criticized by some netizens for being “too utilitarian.” This girl not only knew more than a hundred common herbs in Y Province like the back of her hand, but more terrifyingly, in order to earn more money, she could accurately judge the age, grade, and price differences of many relatively precious herbs across different harvest seasons.

Put it this way: if no mentor on site was willing to take her as a disciple, Wei Sheng was willing to hire her with a high salary to become a Management Trainee in the procurement department of the Yuanxi Biotech pharmaceutical factory for focused cultivation.

With this unique skill, if she were sent to procure medicinal materials, would those middlemen still think they could pass off inferior goods as high quality or fool Fan Lingling? Not a chance!

The 105 minutes of the first episode passed by before anyone realized it. When the host appeared at the end, many viewers grew anxious: how could an episode be so short? They had not seen enough.

However, seeing the youths who had passed the round take off the old clothes they had brought from home for the auditions and put on the “sect uniforms” meticulously designed by Hu Qianqian and her team, the audience was enthralled. The blue and white color scheme was refreshing and spirited, and the narrow-sleeve design was very convenient for gathering herbs on the mountain or engaging in group brawls. This outfit looked like it belonged to either a sword cultivator or an alchemy cultivator^[1] in an immortal hero drama.

Ahhh! This show was simply too good to watch. It was both a tear-jerker and blood-pumping, a real-life version of a casual level-up power fantasy, was it not?

What made the audience feel even more comfortable was that, although it was a competition-based variety show similar to an idol survival show, the entire program had neither eccentric contestants nor scheming manipulators. A group of “disciples” from humble backgrounds relied on a burst of lonely courage to change their fates, using their skills to earn high scores. In a sea of survival shows filled with brothers stabbing each other in the back, sisters fighting, and foul atmospheres, it was a breath of fresh air.

After the contestants advanced in the first episode, the audience could not help but project themselves onto the participants, beginning to look forward to their next challenge.

At the same time, Guagua Video placed a real-time popularity chart for the advancing contestants of The Way of Shennong in the most prominent advertising slot on their homepage. After clicking in, any member at the Silver level or above on Guagua Video had between one and ten voting opportunities per day to vote for their favorite contestants.

Starting from the semi-finals, every contestant’s score would consist of two parts: the on-site judges’ scores and the “Contestant Popularity Chart points.”

In other words, even if a contestant temporarily lost during the judging segment, as long as their popularity chart points were high enough, they could still crush their opponents with their total score and smoothly advance to the next round.

As expected of Guagua Video, the most money-grubbing video site on the entire internet!

While netizens grumbled and cursed, they spent money to upgrade their membership levels on Guagua Video just so they could cast a few more votes for their favorite contestants every day.

However, everyone’s grumbling was mostly in jest. To begin with, Guagua Video had the lowest membership fees among all video sites, and upgrading from a Silver member to the top-tier “Super VIP” only cost less than a hundred yuan more in annual fees. This was much more cost-effective than spending money directly to vote.

After all, a Super VIP could not only cast ten votes a day for their favorite contestant but also unlock exciting highlights of the next episode in advance!

Let it be clear, they were not the kind of brainless fans who would shamelessly give the platform money just to see a few exciting highlights ahead of time. It was mainly because these children were just too pitiful.

Netizens expressed their sentiments one after another: These younger brothers and sisters have no corporate backing and no wealthy parents to protect them. They don’t even have a talent agency. Truly, besides us fans, there is no one else who can help them.

And so, one vote at a time, they stubbornly welded this newly launched, all-amateur variety show into the number one spot on the Guagua Video Variety Show Rankings. From the premiere to the finale, for four whole months, it didn’t just dominate the top spot; its popularity and view counts exceeded the second place runner-up by a staggering one hundred million!

To put it simply, it was the kind of landslide victory that made every other variety show on the list completely lose their competitive spirit.

The list had ten spots in total. The bottom nine combined had a popularity score of less than one hundred million, while The Way of Shennong enjoyed a popularity score of 180 million all on its own…

It was only at this moment that other video platforms fully realized just how terrifying it was when an all-amateur variety show, devoid of big-name stars or gossipy catfights, actually went viral.

This was because the vast majority of people in this country actually lived in the same world as the contestants. They had tasted the same hardships as the contestants and knew how difficult it was for them to get where they were today. Therefore, it was easier for them to empathize. They projected their own lost dreams and hopes onto these participants.

This love even transcended the typical relationship between fans and idols, because among the audience members voting for the contestants, many were big shots who had already made names for themselves in various industries.

A certain Olympic champion insisted on logging onto Guagua Video every day to vote for Fan Lingling, even posting the voting link on her personal weibo to call upon her own fans to support her.

This was because her father, a former small-time contractor, had been owed project funds by an unscrupulous developer. On New Year’s Eve, he was surrounded in his home by a group of workers demanding their wages. During the scuffle, he was accidentally pushed to the ground, suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage, and passed away after failed rescue efforts.

An A-list actress from a farming background also posted the voting link for Fan Lingling on her personal weibo. She was luckier than Fan Lingling’s second sister in that she possessed a resilient heart. Her family had been poor when she was young and couldn’t afford school uniforms or backpacks, so her mother bought fabric to sew them for her by hand. She was often mocked at school.

Back then, the school cafeteria offered three tiers of boxed lunches. Because her family was poor, the actress always ate the cheapest kind, consisting of two taels of rice and a single vegetable dish. Since the seaweed and egg drop soup at the cafeteria was free, she endured it until she finished junior high, at which point she decisively dropped out of school to work in the city.

Recalling this past before, the actress used to think she had it rough. But compared to Fan Lingling’s second sister, she felt incredibly fortunate that she had been thick-skinned enough! No matter how much her classmates mocked her, she never let it get to her enough to jump off a building and commit suicide.

She sympathized with the tragedy of Fan Lingling’s second sister. Although it was too late to save the girl who had shared her plight, if the sister’s spirit was watching from heaven and saw her younger sister making it out of the mountains, she would surely feel comforted, wouldn’t she?

Unsurprisingly, Fan Lingling, who had been fiercely attacked by haters, became the contestant with the highest popularity in the first season. The fan-hater wars on the public forums under the hashtag #TheWayOfShennongFanLingling generated threads thousands of posts deep every day.

Li Erni, the student with the superhuman memory who was hailed as the “Strongest Brain” of the first season, was also very popular. She ranked just below Fan Lingling, and the gap in their vote counts was not large.

Fan Lingling had many celebrity fans, but among Li Erni’s supporters, many were teachers from primary schools, middle schools, and even universities. Well, you understand, right? Although teachers might not have much individual influence, they could mobilize their students and the students’ parents to help vote.

This was especially true for some township schools, where many teachers encouraged their students to watch the program whenever they had time. The number of students from township schools who could test into key high schools or get into university was simply too low. For the vast majority of students, those with better family conditions might attend a regular high school or vocational school to learn a bit more, while those with poor conditions might just head out to work in the city after junior high.

Compared to manual labor, the teachers naturally hoped their students could learn a craft. For example, although The Way of Shennong was marketed as a variety show, every episode involved a massive amount of knowledge regarding Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs. Every competition was packed with practical information!

Put it this way: after following the first season, the teachers even felt they could go into the mountains to gather herbs and earn some extra cash. After all, everyone knows what the salary and benefits are like for unofficial rural teachers^[2].

With this army of teachers helping out and frantically soliciting votes for the top student Li Erni, she became a permanent fixture in the number two spot on the rankings.

Ranked behind Li Erni was Wen Zhuangcai. This kid did not fail his father’s expectations; he really was a top-tier talent! However, he was at a disadvantage because he hadn’t been exposed to much knowledge about Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs in the past. Even with his last-minute cramming, he couldn’t quite match the years of accumulation Li Erni had from learning under her village’s barefoot doctor.

This showed that when children from poor families were mocked for having a “narrow horizon,” it wasn’t because they were born with such a personality; it was simply a matter of their living environment.

If a rural girl grew up in a home where she could only eat the head and tail of a fish and wasn’t even allowed to touch the roe, is it reasonable to expect her to name the famous production regions of caviar or the differences in taste and etiquette between them? Isn’t that just making things difficult for her?

Wen Zhuangcai’s IQ might not be inferior to Li Erni’s, but in terms of professional knowledge, he still had a lot of catching up to do.

Yan Xingxing, who had appeared in the pilot episode, also had decent results in the auditions. Her current popularity ranked eleventh.

But even for the contestants ranked lower on the list, their search volumes and other data metrics were astonishing. Precisely because they were all unknowns before participating in the show, many fans who liked them had no idea who they were before watching, which led to even more people frantically scouring the internet for information about them…

The mood among the high-level executives at Guagua Video was bright and sunny lately. To reward the contestants, they specifically approved a fund to give every contestant who made it into the semi-finals a one thousand yuan red envelope. This was so they could go shopping or buy some good food during their breaks from the competition.

Such a small amount of money was practically negligible compared to the massive advertising fees Guagua Video earned from the show. But for many of the contestants, the fact that they could get one thousand yuan just for participating in a competition, with room and board fully covered, made the show seem too good to be true. They didn’t even want to go home.

It was precisely because the program’s rewards were so enticing that the contestants had been preparing for the semi-finals with even greater fervor lately. Every time the cameraman responsible for filming behind-the-scenes footage went to the hotel and knocked on a random door, he would find the contestants either sitting at their desks memorizing texts or hiding in the bathroom to study. It was a good thing the hotel rooms had power twenty-four hours a day; if this were a school dormitory, the hallways would likely be filled with people trying to study by the glow of the streetlights at night.

After finishing a round of filming, the cameraman returned home to find his own brat hiding in his room playing on his phone, making him so frustrated he nearly rolled his eyes into the back of his head.

They were all the same age, so why were other people’s children so hardworking while his own child acted as if he had been born just to seek revenge on his father? It was infuriating!

(End of Chapter)