Chapter 5 – Decided to Live Broadcast

Translator: ChuRen/ YuQiChen

After dinner, Su Shaobai excused himself and pulled Tang Xingchen up to the rooftop terrace on the second floor to ask about live streaming.

“Ge, you really want to do live streaming?” Tang Xingchen thought he was joking.

“Yeah!” Su Shaobai responded confidently. Though he had never streamed before, he had watched videos about brewing and thought it should be similar.

“No, ge, do you know how many people live in the empire? Over sixty billion. And do you know how many people do livestreams?” Tang Xingchen’s eyes widened. If live streaming was that easy to make money, he would have done it long ago. He wanted to make Su Shaobai understand how difficult it really was. “I checked six months ago—over three billion people livestream, and more than six billion watch videos.”

“That’s a lot,” Su Shaobai nodded and smiled, leaning closer to Tang Xingchen. “But you can’t give up before you start.”

No matter what, he wanted to contribute to this family. Besides, he had to find a survival skill in this era; before that, live streaming was a very good way to try.

Tang Xingchen paused, blushing, and murmured, “Ge, do you know that when you smile, it’s very…”

His gaze flickered, and he was too shy to look directly at Su Shaobai.

Su Shaobai blinked, his delicate face showing confusion and innocence. “What?”

Tang Xingchen secretly glanced at Su Shaobai. “Affectionate.”

Su Shaobai: …

“Meow!” The little kitten hiding in Su Shaobai’s arms stretched out its head and paw…

“Ah! Stinky cat, you’re scratching me! I’m going to fight you!” Tang Xingchen screamed, baring his claws and trying to grab the kitten. Just as he reached out, another paw swipe came.

“Tuanzi, stop messing around,” Su Shaobai quickly pushed the kitten down and held Tang Xingchen back, afraid he would get scratched again. “Xingchen, let me see if there’s any bleeding?”

“Su-gege, it’s bullying me,” Tang Xingchen said, his face turning red with anger.

“I’ll teach it a lesson. Let me see if you’re bleeding. If there’s bleeding, you’ll need a rabies vaccine!” Su Shaobai was worried—Tuanzi had scratched him twice before but hadn’t drawn blood, so he was afraid Tang Xingchen might have a problem.

“Rabies vaccine? What’s that?” Tang Xingchen asked curiously.

Su Shaobai was momentarily stunned and replied, “It’s what you get if you’re bitten by a cat or dog!”

Seeing Tang Xingchen still looked confused, Su Shaohai also felt puzzled.

“Ah, he’s already been vaccinated, no worries,” Tang Xinghe suddenly ran out from outside. Although she couldn’t understand much of Su Shaobai’s words, her intuition told her not to let him explain further or there would definitely be trouble. She quickly changed the subject, “Su-gege, you said you want to do live streaming?”

“Yes, I want to give it a try.” Su Shaobai shared his idea with Tang Xinghe, even explaining the brewing process.

Brewing is very complex. Climate plays a part, and each kind of alcohol has a different fermentation period. In ancient times, brewing cycles ranged from 7 to 10 days, or 21 to 28 days, and even two to three months. In winter, fermentation times would extend further. So the Chinese emphasize the harmony of “timing, location, and people” in brewing.

“Timing” refers to the climate; “location” means the brewing crops and water; and “people” is the brewer’s experience. Missing any one of these would result in wine that’s astringent, sour, or spoiled; the right combination yields fine, exquisite liquor.

After hearing this, Tang Xinghe felt stirred, but prudently asked, “May I ask, do you brew entirely with machines or…”

“Handmade! Almost all my family’s brewing is done by hand,” Su Shaobai replied. By the 21st century, most brewing relied on machinery, but his grandfather was stubborn, saying machine-brewed liquor lacked soul and tasted different, insisting on traditional craftsmanship. So their production volume was always small, mostly custom orders.

After hearing Su Shaobai, Tang Xinghe looked at him differently. The empire’s machine brewing technology was mature; usually, liquor could be produced in two to three days. Brewing for seven to ten days was considered intermediate craftsmanship, while a month-long brew served the empire’s upper class.

In this process, two things were indispensable: advanced machinery and psychic power.

Not to mention offline, many brewers live stream online. The hottest streamers had billions of fans. Among them, one brewer’s process lasted five to seven days and had tens of billions of followers—a staggering number. Another was a master brewer with advanced skills and over a hundred billion fans, the famous young heir of the Ellis family, renowned in the empire for brewing. Many noble brides and grooms aspired to marry into his family, but his heart belonged to the empire’s emperor, targeting the empress’ throne!

“Su-gege, as far as I know, you don’t have psychic power. How can you endure such long brewing times?” Tang Xinghe asked, not to belittle him, but making an observation. Brewing superb handmade liquor demanded very high psychic energy. Since she knew Su Shaobai lacked psychic power, how could he bear the prolonged mental demands?

Psychic power greatly affected whether high-purity liquor could be brewed. There were rumors that high-purity liquor could treat mania. “High purity” meant not a high alcohol content, but how clean the impurities were. This involved psychic power. People said the higher the psychic power, the better the effect of the brewed liquor. The Ellis family’s young heir had a 2S-level psychic rating.

Of course, it was just a rumor. No one confirmed it, although the special medicines did contain alcohol.

“Why can’t brewing happen without psychic power?” Su Shaobai was puzzled. How did brewing relate to psychic energy?

“Without psychic power, the resulting brew is bitter, sour, and spoiled,” Tang Xinghe suddenly realized. Su Shaobai’s brew would probably taste like that and think it was good!

“If it’s not the crops or water, then it’s the technique,” Su Shaobai said seriously when talking professionally. “Believe me, I’ve been in the brewery with my grandfather since I was three.”

He even foolishly sneaked a sip as a child, which sent him to the emergency room. Grandpa always teased him that he was bad at studying because he got dumb from drinking too young.

Tang Xinghe saw how earnest he was and held back her warnings. Still, brewing wasn’t easy. Even for beginners starting simply, many supplies were needed—most importantly, a sterile room.

Su Shaobai was taken aback. A sterile room?

“No need for that. I’m brewing baijiu—such high purity can kill anything,” Su Shaobai replied. When he was a child, he had also asked his grandfather this question after reading brewing books. His Grandpa said that in ancient times, there were no sterile rooms, so how did people not get sick from drinking?

Besides, one traditional step involved spreading the grains out and even treading barefoot on sorghum or rice. They talked about bacteria and sterility, but as long as the brewery was clean—with no dirt except from the tools and people involved—it was fine.

Tang Xinghe was dumbfounded hearing Su Shaobai talk about treading barefoot.

Seeing Tang Xinghe was still shocked, Su Shaobai didn’t press her further. However, he learned that brewing here didn’t require treading.

Holding Tuanzi, Su Shaobai went back to his room and took clothes to shower. He brought the little kitten along; after running around all day, its fur was covered in dust.

When they came out clean, they just met Tang Xinghe, who was still recovering. She stared wide-eyed, and even before she could speak, the overwhelming psychic pressure nearly flipped her eyes back and made her faint.

“What’s wrong?” Su Shaobai asked, puzzled by her frozen stance.

Tang Xinghe shook her head, tears in her eyes.

“Well, I’ll go back to my room. You should rest early too.” Su Shaobai planned to find the most essential ingredient tomorrow—rice. He worried rice here might be different from Earth’s and affect the brewing result.

Tang Xinghe watched Su Shaobai’s disappearing back and nodded through tears.

She specialized in history and knew that five thousand years ago, humans only had human form. With time, they evolved to possess dual forms. After this transformation, they gained powers beyond the human form. The higher the psychic power, the longer they could maintain their true form and the stronger their strength was. This little kitten looked small but had maintained its transformed state for a long time—its psychic power was definitely extraordinary, and it must be quite old.

What kind of person has her family really got involved with?

After returning to his room, Su Shaobai dried the little kitten and saw it still sitting dazed and motionless. Thinking about it, he hugged it, guessing the bath had scared it.

He took out his terminal and decided to check the Starnet first. Besides discussing brewing with Tang Xinghe, he’d also indirectly asked how to use the terminal.

“Tuanzi, Grandpa always says I got stupid from drinking. But I think I’m pretty smart,” Su Shaobai chuckled and ruffled the cat’s head.

Tuanzi: The old man’s right.

“AIAI, are you there? Please open Starnet.” Su Shaobai spoke naturally, like calling the AI assistant “Xiao Yi¹my brother calls his AI assistant Xiao Ai hahahah” on his phone back in the 21st century.

“I’m here, master. Starnet is now open.”

The terminal emitted a soft voice, projecting a beam of light that materialized a large screen before Su Shaobai—about the size of a TV. The interface resembled various apps from the 21st century.

Su Shaobai asked AIAI to find the Starnet livestream company rankings and decided to pick the hottest platform, “M4 Live”. This was a tremendously powerful streaming platform in the empire, commanding forty percent of the traffic on Starnet’s live platforms—an impressive figure.

Tang Xinghe had searched for the two famous brewers; they were also on this platform.

To better understand the brewing scene, Su Shaobai checked the rankings and discovered that brewing was the top trending category here. It seemed the people of the empire were very passionate about brewing.

What puzzled Su Shaobai was that among the top names on the leaderboard, the first eight bore the title “XXX Brewer”, while the rest were titled “XXX Distiller”.

He wondered: was there a difference?

Unable to figure it out, he gave up thinking and proceeded to register. After fiddling around, he found the backstage interface for setting up his own stream. Filling in the personal information, a page appeared:

Livestream name:

Nickname:

After some thought, Su Shaobai set the livestream name as “Brewing Livestream” and his nickname as “Brewer Su Shaobai.”

He clicked confirm.

Once the channel was established, he looked at the zero followers and zero subscribers, quietly determined that he would make sure many, many people would come watch.

Satisfied, he closed Starnet and fell onto his bed. He was tired.

Tuanzi, who had been quietly still all along, struggled free from Su Shaobai’s arms after he closed his eyes, climbed to his chest, and gazed at the young man with a lotus-like face. The kitten’s dark eyes overflowed with intense, terrifying emotions.

The sleeping Su Shaobai didn’t realize that the M4 platform on Starnet was already buzzing uncontrollably.

[Heh, what a sight today. Where did this fool ‘brewer’ come from? He even dared to name his channel just ‘Brewing Livestream’? Am I still half-asleep or did I see wrong?]

[Zero followers, zero subscriptions. I want to see who this frog-in-the-well is.]

[When he goes live, let’s raid his room.]

[A ‘brewer’ acting this cocky? His profile shows no honors or certifications—and he’s got the nerve to use that name? Even our little Prince Hera²no he’s not a prince, its just that his fans call him the little prince didn’t dare do that!]

[That’s because when Prince Hera started his brewing stream, he was only a junior distiller, not qualified to use that name.]

[So is this guy qualified? He’s uncertified, no credentials—just a random passerby. Where does he get off calling himself a brewer? Ridiculous.]

[Hold on, hold on. Our little Prince is already a senior brewer now.]

[That’s not the point. The point is he named his stream ‘Brewing.’ What does that mean? Is he stepping on everyone’s heads? The name ‘Brewing Livestream’ weighs heavily; does he have the right to use it?]

[Argh, I hear that the little Prince plans to rename his channel to ‘Brewing’ on his birthday, but this guy took it first. What now? The platform doesn’t allow duplicate names!]

[Make him give it up.]

That night, Starnet would not sleep, but the one stirring this storm was fast asleep.

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• 1
  my brother calls his AI assistant Xiao Ai hahahah ↩︎
• 2
  no he’s not a prince, its just that his fans call him the little prince ↩︎