Chapter 204

“Invest! We absolutely have to invest! Have you all forgotten what happened with J Province TV Station back then?”

The words of a high-level executive at Guagua Video ignited the gossiping souls of everyone else in the room.

Thinking back to when J Province TV Station had that falling out over contract terminations with the people under Zhou Mingxing, many in the industry were waiting to watch the joke unfold.

Back then, however, everyone expected the joke to be on Zhou Mingxing and Wei Sheng’s group.

After all, these days everyone was breaking their necks trying to get into the state system. This was especially true for those in the entertainment industry; having a connection within the system not only provided a protective umbrella but also gave priority access to many main-theme^[1] resources. As it turned out, Zhou Mingxing and Wei Sheng didn’t cherish what they had, but instead made a fuss about running away. If that wasn’t seeking their own deaths, what was?

Granted, J Province TV Station had indeed been a bit unscrupulous. Not only did they use commission ratios from years ago to exploit their artists, but they also wanted Wei Sheng to make them big money while simultaneously being unable to stand the sight of him earning too much. They repeatedly allowed internal personnel to spread rumors, smear, and investigate him. Wei Sheng wasn’t a fool; it would have been stranger if he hadn’t run.

But later events proved that they had laughed at the wrong people.

After leaving the protection of the TV station, Wei Sheng and his team didn’t fizzle out. On the contrary, their careers flourished more than ever. Especially Wei Sheng; when he was at J Province TV Station, he could barely be considered a rising minor star. But after the contract termination, he not only established his own artist studio as a boss but also invested in businesses in other fields.

Without the constraints of a status within the system, there were simply too many projects this kid could take on. Just by participating in a random variety show, he actually managed to unearth an ancestral secret recipe and made a massive push into the pharmaceutical industry. Now, that Yuanxi Biotech was almost becoming the leading enterprise in Nine Streams County.

Just tell me, isn’t his luck with money incredible?

With J Province TV Station as a “precedent,” the executives at Guagua Video thought it over and realized this wouldn’t do! They absolutely could not let Wei Sheng’s family take all the profits.

Clearly, their group had been the first to propose this program. Even if there was to be an investment, they should be the first to invest. Only if they waived their rights should it fall to outsiders.

They hadn’t announced a waiver yet, so how could they agree to let Wei Sheng and Hu Qianqian have an exclusive investment?

“Then it’s settled. The group’s investment share must reach over 50%. For the rest, following previous practice, interested shareholders and group executives can take appropriate stakes. As for Boss Wei and President Hu, CEO Yao, you see if leaving 20% for them is enough?”

Yao Chunming: “…”

For some reason, he felt that the leaders of their group had once again been blinded by profit.

But whatever. Since the big boss had spoken and group executives could invest, maybe he should take out some money too and follow the God of Wealth to earn some pocket money?

Hu Qianqian was still at home calculating finances with her husband, seeing how much money they could currently pull together to invest in this show. She had no idea that the “full investment” they envisioned had already shrunk to a 20% stake.

However, this show was originally Guagua Video’s proposal. If they wanted to take the lion’s share of the investment now, Hu Qianqian couldn’t exactly snatch the bread out of the original creator’s mouth, could she?

Fortunately, her main reason for agreeing to participate in this show was to help those underprivileged women who lived in hardship and had no way to change their current situation. Whether she invested or not didn’t really matter.

Only Liang Yi and Wei Sheng, those two shrewd characters, understood after a moment’s thought that Guagua Video had likely misunderstood something. They were suddenly caught between laughter and tears.

They truly hadn’t thought about making big money from this show. In fact, as long as Hu Qianqian was happy, it was worth losing a bit of money to produce it. Their family didn’t lack this bit of money anyway; they just viewed it as doing charity for Hu Qianqian.

Who would have thought that their act of taking full responsibility would look to Guagua Video as if Wei Sheng, the industry’s recognized “God of Wealth,” was certain this show would be a huge moneymaker? And that he was scrambling to snatch up the investment?

This was truly a beautiful misunderstanding.

“Still, CEO Yao and the others aren’t entirely wrong. If this show is done seriously, it might not necessarily lose money.”

Wei Sheng’s eyes darted around. He felt he could use another show to help build hype for the one his mother was participating in. For example, the large-scale skill competition program about to officially launch on Guagua Video – “The Way of Shennong^[2].”

Since they were produced by the same platform and both were programs invested in by Guagua Video, using a show that had already started broadcasting to boost a new, unreleased show was something Guagua Video would surely do themselves, even if he didn’t mention it.

True to their reputation as the kings of industry competition, in order to get this new variety show online as quickly as possible, Guagua Video actually adopted a method of holding auditions while registrations were still ongoing. They very quickly produced the first episode.

At the audition site.

Li Erni stood on stage feeling somewhat nervous. Beside her were nine other contestants.

The number of people signing up for this audition was simply too large, so the preliminary rounds involved ten people coming up at once, using a “ten down to five” selection process.

In order to scrape together enough travel expenses to attend the audition, Li Erni and her younger sister, Li Sanni, had sold the long hair they had grown for over a decade. Their two thick, glossy black braids sold for a total of one thousand yuan. Fearing that their mother would see they had sold their braids and take the money away, Li Erni didn’t even dare go home. After selling the braids and getting the cash, she jumped on a bus and fled that very day.

Sitting on the dilapidated mid-sized bus, watching her third sister’s small, thin body waving at her desperately from behind, Li Erni fought back tears. She secretly swore in her heart that she would definitely make it out of the mountains! She absolutely could not be like her eldest sister. Just to get their father a motorcycle and renovate the old family house, her eldest sister had been married off to a distant village and hadn’t returned home once in the three years since the wedding.

Whether her eldest sister was living well at her in-laws’ house, they didn’t know.

Whether her eldest sister was currently alive or dead, they didn’t know either.

Were girls raised just to be sold for money by their parents’ families? They were all children of the same parents, yet the younger brothers were treasures while they weren’t even considered human?

Li Erni had once begged her mother. She didn’t ask the family to pay for her schooling; she only asked to study for a few years under the village’s barefoot doctor^[3] to learn the craft of healing and saving people. Once she had a trade to feed herself and could earn money for the family, perhaps she wouldn’t have to get married?

She didn’t want to get married at all! She didn’t want to be like her mother, who spent her whole life either giving birth or being pregnant, and who was frequently beaten black and blue by her father’s fists because dinner was late or she forgot to feed the pigs.

She didn’t want to be like her eldest sister, who had been married off by the family to some random person without any power to resist, and now the family didn’t even know if she was alive or dead.

She wanted to decide for herself what her life should look like.

It was hard to believe such words could come from a mountain girl who hadn’t even finished middle school.

However, there really is a small group of people in the world who are smart, precocious, and gain insight into the truths of life very early on. If they weren’t born into poverty, these people might become formidable experts or scholars. In reality, many such children are ruined by short-sighted and greedy parents.

Yet, at this moment, Li Erni didn’t harbor any extravagant hopes of becoming a big boss or a great scholar. Her dream was simple and humble: to learn a craft that could put food on the table, so she could earn enough money every year to pay her family “protection fees.” This would protect her and her younger sister from being traded by their parents for a larger house, a motorcycle, or their brothers’ bride prices, just as their eldest sister had been.

“Contestant number 963, Li Erni, please demonstrate or describe your special talent.” The host’s voice rang in her ears.

Tense with nerves, Li Erni didn’t know where to put her hands or feet. When she took the microphone, she nearly dropped it on her toes.

“Don’t be nervous. We aren’t necessarily asking you to sing or dance. Just tell us what you’re usually good at doing at home. Give us a brief introduction and show us what you can.”

Li Erni steadied herself, thinking of the words the village’s barefoot doctor had said to her. A surge of courage rose in her heart. Gripping the microphone firmly, Li Erni spoke a sentence to the judges that shocked the entire room.

“I… I can recite the entire Shennong’s Classic of Materia Medica^[4] from memory, and I recognize over a hundred types of herbs.”

“What?!” The guest seating area immediately erupted into an uproar.

“Li Erni, right? Did you just say you can recite the entire Shennong’s Classic of Materia Medica from memory? Can you recite a passage for us to hear?”

How was that difficult?

Li Erni looked as if she had breathed a sigh of relief. Picking up the microphone, she immediately began reciting from the opening chapter in a continuous flow.

The judges were collectively stunned.

Li Erni recited from the opening all the way into the First Volume. Seeing that the honest girl was likely to stand there and finish the entire Shennong’s Classic of Materia Medica if no one called a halt, the judges quickly told her to stop.

“That’s enough, very good!”

The big-name mentors wouldn’t be present during the preliminary auditions. However, since they were all industry giants, they had sent their disciples to gain experience while they were busy. In today’s session, the person representing his teacher as a judge was Chai Ziming from the research institute of the Y Province University of Chinese Medicine.

As everyone knew, the most miserable part of studying medicine was that while other majors required “memorizing certain paragraphs,” medical students memorized by the “book.”

What? You can’t memorize this book? Are you supposed to flip through pages to find a reference while you’re treating a patient?

Therefore, the greatest test for a medical student was actually memory.

From that perspective alone, this contestant Li Erni was simply a perfect fit for medicine!

“May I ask, did you self-study and memorize this Shennong’s Classic of Materia Medica, or did someone in your family teach you?” Chai Ziming asked.

He actually had a suspicion that Li Erni might come from a family with a medical background. There were many barefoot doctors in the local countryside, and some herb gatherers who spent years in the mountains also knew basic pharmacology. If Li Erni truly had a foundation in this area, he wanted to act early and reserve such a promising talent for his teacher.

On stage, Li Erni shook her head with a blush. “No one at home taught me. There’s a barefoot doctor in our village. She saw that I liked this, so she gave me this copy of Shennong’s Classic of Materia Medica to read and taught me to identify some Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs^[5] commonly used by us locals.”

That was enough. Below the stage, the judges in the guest seats were already engaged in a silent war of glances.

Regardless of whether she had a teacher, the fact that Li Erni could memorize the entire Shennong’s Classic of Materia Medica through self-study meant her memory and intellect were undoubtedly those of a medical prodigy.

They had to snatch her up!

Just like that, Li Erni, who had less than six hundred yuan left to her name, successfully passed the auditions and second rounds. she moved into the “Beginner Village^[6],” which was the hotel arranged by the program crew for the advancing contestants.

This was also the first time in Li Erni’s life that she had stayed in such a high-end hotel.

It was actually just a standard business hotel, but the interior decor, the appliances, and the lavish daily buffet left Li Erni dazzled.

While the auditions were in full swing, the pilot episode of The Way of Shennong was officially launched on Guagua Video. This skill-based competitive variety show, which had been frantically reported and complained about before it even aired, was finally gathering its strength to begin its counterattack.

(End of Chapter)