Chapter 212

Two days later, Fan Lingling and the others accompanied Grandpa Wang to the county town again. This time, they brought all the wild Tianma^[1] from Grandpa Wang’s house. After visiting several shops, they actually managed to sell it all for over twenty thousand yuan.

Grandpa Wang was beaming with joy, insisting on inviting them to his home for a meal.

Over twenty thousand yuan. This was more than half a year’s income for his family in the past.

The four companions originally did not want to eat at Grandpa Wang’s house. They knew that if they went, Grandma Wang would certainly slaughter a chicken. However, the chickens they raised were kept to lay eggs to provide nutrition for the grandchildren. Killing one chicken meant a dozen fewer farm eggs every month.

That goddamned Wang Huaizhi! Just because the old home could raise chickens and provide eggs, he actually refused to even give money for the children’s formula. If they ate one of Grandpa Wang’s laying hens, wouldn’t the little grandsons lose a significant portion of their rations?

However, at Wei Sheng’s suggestion, Li Erni and the others agreed to go to Grandpa Wang’s house for dinner.

They soon realized what Wei Sheng’s suggestion was intended for.

“We can’t visit someone’s home empty-handed, can we? I bought some things for Grandma Wang and the others. Help me carry them over,” Wei Sheng said with a smile as he opened the car’s trunk.

The five children who lacked parental love were indeed pitiful, but weren’t Grandma Wang and her husband pitiful as well?

When they set out for the city to sell the Tianma, Wei Sheng had noticed that Grandpa Wang couldn’t even find a pair of new shoes decent enough to wear for visiting relatives. The only “presentable” item on him, a leather jacket, was likely a second-hand donation from a charitable person; it had been worn for so long that much of the leather was peeling off.

Therefore, while the children were helping the old man sell the Tianma, Wei Sheng had driven to a nearby mall. He bought two sets of new clothes and shoes for both Grandpa Wang and Grandma Wang, a whole crate of powdered milk for the two youngest grandsons, and for the three older children, a large snack gift pack and a large stationery gift set each. Additionally, he picked up household essentials like cooking oil, rice, and noodles, as well as a large crate of apples.

It wasn’t that the supermarket lacked better or more expensive items, but those wouldn’t have been appropriate. If they were too valuable, Grandma Wang and her husband probably wouldn’t accept them. Instead, these daily necessities didn’t look overly expensive, so the two elders wouldn’t necessarily refuse them.

Wei Sheng’s gift-giving skills had been personally cultivated by Grandpa Hu. Sure enough, seeing the three oldest grandsons jumping for joy while clutching their snack packs, and seeing that large crate of milk powder, Grandma Wang wiped away tears, unable to voice any words of rejection.

She could only slaughter the fattest, largest rooster in the house, along with a plump Muscovy duck, intending to treat Wei Sheng and the others well.

As they were leaving, looking at the sparsely populated mountain village, Yan Xingxing couldn’t help but whisper, “Will we come back again?”

Although her family was also poor, her and her brother’s childhood clothes were still kept. If they could come back to Qidaowan Township, Yan Xingxing planned to talk to her parents and pack up those old clothes and shoes to bring over.

“Don’t worry. We might not come back, but Boss Wei definitely will.” The teacher in charge of the production crew was a die-hard fan of Wei Sheng. While filming these past few days, she had seen Wei Sheng take people to the Village Committee several times. It made her almost want to quit her job at Guagua Video to go work for Boss Wei.

One look was enough to know that Boss Wei was planning something big in Qidaowan Township.

Wei Sheng was indeed quite optimistic about Qidaowan Township. The two teachers who came along had mentioned that the climate and environment here were very suitable for growing Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs like Tianma, Sanqi^[2], and Dendrobium. Most importantly, many local people had the habit of going into the mountains to gather herbs.

This meant that the villagers not only recognized many common local medicinal herbs but also had a certain understanding of their growth environments and habits.

If a Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herb cultivation base could be developed in Qidaowan Township, they would save a lot of effort on personnel training.

After the group stage ended, Li Erni’s group successfully advanced. Next, they would be reshuffled. Through a random draw, four contestants would again be matched with one teacher to follow that teacher in exploring the entire process of a single medicinal herb, from sprouting and growth to processing into medicine.

After entering the Top 32 evaluation, the group score consisted of three parts.

The first part was still the expert panel’s scoring. The criteria were the skill levels of the eight groups in terms of medicinal herb knowledge and processing techniques during the filming process.

The second part was the popularity score for each group on the show’s official blog. Once the group results were out, netizens could vote for the groups on the official blog. The more votes a group received, the higher their comprehensive score and the greater their chance of winning.

The third part was the added popularity of the individual contestants. This tested the luck of the contestants during the grouping phase.

No matter which industry one was in, luck was very important. This was especially true for those studying medicine. Some might accidentally cure a prominent figure through a stroke of luck, or unintentionally discover a good prescription that could sustain them for a lifetime. Meanwhile, others who worked clearly hard just lacked that bit of luck and remained mediocre their entire lives. Therefore, in the selection mechanism, the production crew had included “fortune” as an invisible assessment standard.

This was particularly true during the grouping phase. Even if you were a poor student, if you were lucky enough to be drawn by several top students and joined their team, you wouldn’t even need to exert much effort; your elite teammates could carry you to victory.

Yan Xingxing’s luck was truly excellent. During the Top 100 round, she was drawn by the “Greatest Brain” Li Erni and the “Photographic Memory” Fan Lingling, who carried her directly into the Top 32.

When it came to the Top 32 grouping, she was paired with Wen Zhuangcai, Fan Lingling, and another very strong contestant, Xu Wenjing.

Seeing these grouping results, the fans were speechless. For a moment, they didn’t know whether to envy Yan Xingxing’s good luck or suspect that her family had spent money to buy her a “shortcut to the top.”

But thinking about the Yan family’s financial situation… forget it, they couldn’t afford it anyway!

It seemed Yan Xingxing’s luck was simply incredibly good.

Yan Xingxing’s fans wept with joy: “I hereby crown our Xingxing the Luck Queen of The Way of Shennong Season One!”

After entering the round of thirty-two, the content of the competition became increasingly substantial. The most obvious change was that the mentors leading the teams had shifted from program staff to teachers recruited by Guagua Video from major TCM colleges.

These teachers not only taught at universities but also held clinical hours at hospitals. To put it bluntly, asking a teacher to check your pulse during class saved you a two-hundred-yuan expert registration fee.

The contestants were experiencing a mix of pain and joy.

The pain came from the fact that the daily memorization load had increased. Moreover, because each teacher only had four students, it meant they would be pulled aside for one-on-one recitations. Cheating was impossible.

The joy came from the fact that the teachers taught far more than what could be learned from books. Many things weren’t even in the textbooks, allegedly because they wouldn’t pass censorship during the publishing process… This was likely what the older generation meant when they said one couldn’t become a doctor just by reading books.

Medical skill, in some ways, is like top-tier craftsmanship. Certain techniques and experiences that cannot be committed to paper are passed down through generations via the master-apprentice model and oral tradition.

The audience watched with rapt attention. Some found watching once insufficient and rewound to watch again and again.

This was especially true for those with sick family members.

To be honest, from ancient times to the present, there have been far too many doctors driven by frantic patients to the point where they dare not speak the truth or treat with a free hand. Some illnesses clearly have a chance of being saved, but because the treatment process is too risky, doctors dare not risk being sued or stabbed by family members. They cannot bring themselves to advise the patient and family to try a risky treatment, so they simply keep their mouths shut to protect themselves.

However, recording a show was different. Guagua Video knew how to find loopholes. They bypassed certain policy regulations by using the format of folklore, inviting mentors to speak eloquently about miraculous prescriptions in the form of storytelling. Moving from the function of a single herb to the effect of a whole prescription, and then to the legendary stories surrounding that prescription, the show became irresistible. It wasn’t just the young netizens who loved chasing hot topics; even the middle-aged and elderly groups, who usually never watched variety shows, were hooked.

Then, a scene occurred that left Guagua Video ecstatic and other platforms gnashing their teeth in envy.

In the month following the broadcast of The Way of Shennong, among the newly registered users of Guagua Video, the number of new users aged between 45 and 65 actually surpassed the core demographic of 18 to 29-year-olds!

Even more terrifying was that nearly 80% of these newly registered users chose to purchase the Super VIP annual card.

One didn’t even need to ask to know they were definitely after the ten daily votes that came with the annual card.

Back in the day, these uncles and aunties were willing to participate in celebrity voting even via SMS. When it came to being a fan, they were far more fanatical than the youngsters of today.

“Hahahaha, I have it!”

In his office, CEO Yao looked at the fresh statistical data, laughing so hard the crow’s feet around his eyes bunched together.

Who would have thought? The middle-aged and elderly audience demographic, which major video platforms had failed to conquer for so long, had been accidentally captured by a variety show originally aimed at the youth. Who could have predicted this?

Even CEO Yao himself wouldn’t have dared to dream of such an absurd plot twist.

In recent years, major video platforms had watched with envy, jealousy, and hate as short-video platforms nearly snatched away all the old men and women. The feeling was beyond words.

They also craved this age group. Many of these uncles and aunties were nearing retirement or already retired. Not only did they have money, but they also had plenty of time every day to binge-watch shows. If they could conquer this group and turn them into loyal users of Guagua Video, why would they ever worry about view counts again?

Once again, the lights in the Guagua Video conference room burned bright throughout the night. Company executives organized relevant departments for an overnight meeting to focus on studying the website’s recent new user data.

The results showed that this batch of new users wasn’t interested in the website’s other variety shows at all. The reason they bought the Super VIP annual cards was solely to vote for the young contestants on The Way of Shennong.

Oh, and there was another even more important reason: to catch the free expert health and wellness lectures from the mentors.

The company executives: “…”

The next day, Wei Sheng went to the Guagua Video headquarters for a meeting. As soon as he walked through the door, CEO Yao warmly grasped his hands.

“Boss Wei! Don’t leave after the meeting. Our chairman wants to invite you to dinner.”

“By the way, let’s discuss whether we can collaborate with your experts from Yuanxi Biotech to create a health and wellness program specifically targeting the middle-aged and elderly demographic?”

Wei Sheng: “…”

Can’t you find a different sheep to shear for once?

(End of chapter)