Chapter 147: Coattail Rider

After returning home, Bai Renzong sat in front of his computer and began making preparations for his livestream.

"Wouldn't it be better to take a day off today?" Han Jiayi looked at him with a heart full of pity. "You've been doing high-intensity livestreams constantly lately."

"Because the broadcast hours from those few days of visiting restaurants out of town weren't quite enough," Bai Renzong sighed. "Besides, our popularity is currently at a rising peak, so we need to seize this opportunity and work hard. The Cat House platform has already mentioned that after this quarter concludes, they will readjust our contract value based on our popularity."

In fact, after the restaurant-review video of "Yunmengze" went viral, Dog Kennel Studio had also extended an olive branch to their studio, expressing a willingness to sign him with an annual salary of thirty million, but Bai Renzong politely declined their kind offer.

On one hand, it was a matter of contractual integrity. He had already signed a contract with Cat House, and jumping ship during the contract period not only violated professional ethics but also required paying a hefty breach-of-contract penalty. Once that penalty was deducted, the raised salary would practically amount to nothing.

On the other hand, because he had only just established a foothold at Cat House and his fan base was not yet solid, a rash transfer might result in failing to build popularity at Dog Kennel while simultaneously losing his existing fans, which would truly mean losing the wife and the army.

Therefore, Bai Renzong still intended to focus on streaming well at Cat House first, and then evaluate whether the price offered by Cat House after this quarter ended was reasonable. If not, he would consider switching platforms once the contract term expired.

At that moment, Han Jiayi rolled up her sleeves, took some ingredients from the refrigerator, and seemed ready to head to the kitchen.

"Are you hungry?" Bai Renzong asked curiously.

"How could that be?" Han Jiayi couldn't help smiling, then pecked him lightly on the lips. "I'm just worried you ate too early this afternoon and will get hungry tonight, so I plan to make you something to eat. You can have a little if you get hungry during the broadcast."

Having a girlfriend like this was simply blissful. Bai Renzong couldn't help feeling deeply moved.

At that moment, he was struck by a strong realization that he was no longer a child whom no one loved or cared for.

There would be someone worrying about whether his stomach was empty, someone hoping for his good health, someone replying to his messages instantly, someone remembering his birthday, and someone accompanying him no matter what he did.

Just thinking about it filled his heart with an overwhelming sense of happiness.

"Jiayi." Unable to restrain himself, Bai Renzong wrapped his arms around Han Jiayi's shoulders from behind and pulled her into his embrace. "During the Spring Festival this year, I'd like to take you home to meet my parents. What do you think?"

"The Spring Festival..." Han Jiayi calculated the time. Next year's Spring Festival would be at the end of January, which meant there were still a little over three months left...

However, time wasn't the main point. The significance of meeting the parents was what mattered.

After meeting the parents, the next step would probably be a proposal... Han Jiayi covered her mouth and thought to herself.

"Mm!" Han Jiayi nodded gently. "I think this timing is fine..."

Only then did Bai Renzong smile, leaning in to plant a light kiss on the tip of her nose. "It's a deal then? I'm going to take a shower."

After showering and helping Han Jiayi blow-dry her hair, Bai Renzong started his livestream once again.

"Good evening everyone, I'm back again. Shall we try a newly released game today?" Bai Renzong greeted his viewers before launching into a Soulslike game titled "Blood Night."

As he played, he provided commentary for the audience, and the distinctive feature of Soulslike games was their exceptionally high difficulty.

Although it was his first time playing this game, he had plenty of experience with Soulslike titles to begin with. Combined with his lightning-fast reflexes, his journey along the way went relatively smoothly, though this game still fell quite a bit short compared to "Blasphemy."

"Viewers, have you noticed that the difficulty curve of this game is very strange?" Bai Renzong frowned. "It's... not smooth at all, and the hit feedback is garbage. Rather than relying on skill, it feels more like it relies on... items?"

With that, Bai Renzong demonstrated: "See that? As long as you use the in-game items properly, fighting monsters is as easy as cutting vegetables. But while regular enemies are this simple, the boss is ridiculously hard. Especially since the first boss is already this difficult, it's practically enough to make people quit. This difficulty setting is completely unreasonable. For anyone who isn't a Soulslike fan, I don't recommend this game; it's far too hard to pick up."

After ending the livestream that night, he used the broadcast footage the following day to record an appreciation and critique video for "Blood Night" and published it on D Station.

The rest of the routine went on as usual, heading to Yijiaxiang at noon to stream while eating.

However, when Bai Renzong finished his shower in the evening and prepared to start his broadcast, Wang Bei suddenly sent him a message: "Old Bai, there's a comment under your latest video that I don't know how to handle. You should go take a look."

Curious, Bai Renzong pulled out his phone and checked, finding a comment pushed all the way to the top which read: "Calling this game's boss difficulty too high—have you ever thought it's just because you're too trash?"

The commenter's ID was "Master Zuo."

"Isn't that just a keyboard warrior? What's so rare about that..." Bai Renzong muttered in confusion.

Yet, after reading the replies underneath, he realized the matter wasn't so simple.

Although the person initially appeared to be just a hater coming to pick a fight, in the interaction under this comment, "Master Zuo" and other viewers slowly staged a self-directed performance.

"If you're so good, you do it!" one viewer had written, with the timestamp of that comment being 2:29 PM.

Just two minutes later, at 2:31 PM, "Master Zuo" smoothly seized the opportunity to drop various video links of his own within the comment thread, stating, "The hitless clear video is right here, go see for yourself," followed by a self-introduction: "I've seen too many UP hosts like this who have no skill and only blame the game for being too hard. I specialize in Soulslike games myself, a skill-focused UP host. Those who want to learn techniques can come check me out."

Furthermore, this Master Zuo "coincidentally" also streamed on the Cat House platform, so he proceeded to post his livestream room link right underneath Bai Renzong's video.

Seeing this, Bai Renzong couldn't help laughing out loud: He thought it was just a hater, but it turned out to be a self-promoter.

The other party's goal was nothing more than trying to forcefully latch onto his popularity, wasn't it?

At that moment, Han Jiayi also emerged from the shower and curiously poked her little head over to look at his phone screen: "Old Bai, help me blow-dry my hair. What are you looking at?"

Her face was right in front of him; if he leaned forward just a tiny bit, he could kiss it. It was delicate and rosy, exuding a faint scent of osmanthus, quite alluring.

How could Bai Renzong resist that? "Mua!" he gave her a smack on the cheek: "Someone trying to leech off our traffic."

"This person..." Han Jiayi carefully examined the reply, then frowned and said, "Hmph, talking so arrogantly—I'm going to go see just how impressive his videos actually are!"

Taking advantage of the opportunity while Bai Renzong blow-dried her hair, she also pulled up the UP host's videos to watch.

Bai Renzong glanced over a few times as well. Judging from the videos published by "Master Zuo," this person indeed played various Soulslike games, primarily the Dark Souls series, alongside others like Bloodborne and Sekiro, and also dabbled in 2D Soulslike titles like Blasphemy and Blood Night. Moreover, this UP host had been making videos for two years.

To call him a small UP host—he did have over a hundred thousand followers. Yet judging by the various metrics of his videos, including likes, coin donations, and view counts, he lagged behind even certain rookie UP hosts.

Only after watching the videos did Bai Renzong understand why: he emphasized being "skill-focused" far too much, yet offered zero instructional value. His videos were completely filled with an air of showing off, and such an attitude naturally evoked aversion in viewers.

In reality, all of his videos were edited together without a single unedited live playthrough; anyone could produce that kind of edited footage given enough repeated attempts.

Rather than saying his gaming skills were impressive, it was more accurate to say his video editing skills were genuinely formidable.

"This person actually dares to look down on my Old Bai!" Han Jiayi said with puffed-up cheeks, preparing to fire off an angry comment.

"Oh, forget it, silly girl." Bai Renzong smiled as he turned off the hair dryer, planting a light kiss on her temples where a rich fragrance emanated from her soft hair roots. "Engaging with a person like that is just giving him free traffic."

"But, but!" Han Jiayi's delicate brows furrowed slightly as she stared intently at Bai Renzong.

Bai Renzong could practically see her little brain working furiously, so he didn't interrupt her and waited for her to come up with an excuse.

"It's just... even you can clear the game from my studio without taking a single hit. If you don't put out a video, it'll, it'll make it seem like our studio's game difficulty is somehow inferior to that game," Han Jiayi argued with a straight face.

"Hmph..." The corners of Bai Renzong's mouth curled up slightly; he simply couldn't hold back his smile any longer.

Han Jiayi tried hard to keep her expression tight, but inside, she was beginning to panic: Oh no, I'm going to get exposed...

"Alright then." Bai Renzong smiled and nodded. "However, shall we do it in a more challenging way?"

"What do you plan to do?" Han Jiayi instantly perked up, looking just like a little cat that had spotted a teaser wand.

"Doesn't this person also stream on the Cat House platform?" Bai Renzong chuckled. "Let's go. Let's challenge him to a duel."

With that, Bai Renzong walked over to his computer.

"A duel?" Han Jiayi asked curiously. "How do we duel?"

"He streams on the Cat House platform too, and I checked—his broadcasting hours are from seven to twelve in the evening, which happens to overlap with ours," Bai Renzong said with a smile. "We'll go to his livestream room and challenge him to a skill-based broadcast match."

"Eh?" Han Jiayi froze, opening her pretty eyes wide as she instantly grew flustered. "Is this really okay though? Would it be, too... like proactively picking a fight? Won't this just end up giving the other guy even more traffic?"

"We're just going for a 'friendly' exchange," Bai Renzong said with a smile, navigating to "Master Zuo's" livestream room.

The opponent was a man sporting a thin mustache, around thirty years old, looking entirely unremarkable. The popularity in his livestream room wasn't particularly high either—a bit over a hundred thousand in heat index and more than twenty thousand followers, with the chat room scrolling at a trickle. It paled completely in comparison to Bai Renzong's broadcast room.

Yet Bai Renzong had been streaming for less than a month. Both were UP hosts transitioned into live streamers, yet one was in the clouds and the other in the mud—that was the gap in a foundational fan base.

Bai Renzong naturally knew the other guy wanted to latch onto his popularity, but did letting the other guy piggyback on his traffic bring him any disadvantages? Not at all. On the contrary, as long as he utilized this opportunity well, he could attract a massive wave of followers for himself.