Gan Lan hadn’t used the squid and agar powder she prepared yesterday, so she planned to make grilled squid and agar jelly today.
First, she checked the Happy Dreams Platform to see if her live stream channel had finished maintenance. After all, Happy Dreams was only a mid-tier platform. The sudden influx of hundreds of millions of viewers had caused it to crash, making Gan Lan consider whether she should switch platforms altogether.
Upon logging into her channel’s backend, an eye-catching official message stood out among the pile of private messages. She clicked it open.
Happy Dreams Admin: [Hello, the live stream channel has been successfully restored. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.]
Happy Dreams Admin: [Congratulations on upgrading to the top traffic streamer on our site. The system will dispatch a signing contract to you shortly. We look forward to having you join us.]
Gan Lan opened the contract and reviewed it. The terms were excellent: every time she started a broadcast, she would be guaranteed a spot on the front page, and her revenue share was a staggering ninety percent.
It seemed the platform had made many concessions to keep her. Gan Lan felt it was quite good. The contract also stipulated that they would strengthen system maintenance for her channel, guarantee no future crashes, assign multiple platform administrators to her, and ensure that no abusive remarks would ever appear again. These were all things Gan Lan needed.
Becoming the top traffic driver for a mid-tier live-streaming platform didn’t seem like a bad idea at all. Furthermore, the streaming restrictions were quite lenient—two hours a day was enough.
The more Gan Lan read, the more satisfied she became. She couldn’t help but nod and signed the contract right away. After all, having stayed in one place for so long, she did feel a bit of sentimental attachment to it.
After sending the signed contract over, she went to check her account balance in the backend.
She hadn’t realized it before, but the sight gave her a real fright! She actually had a balance of over a hundred million.
Gan Lan was shocked! How could this be? She hurriedly checked the source and found it all came from gifts. The largest, the Cosmic Starship, cost one million per piece. Ten of them would be ten million, and that day, she had seen the screen completely spammed with Cosmic Starships.
Looking at the backend, her gift revenue share had already been updated to ninety percent. Yesterday’s stream had received a total of one hundred Cosmic Starships. Combined with other gifts, Gan Lan netted over a hundred million! What kind of concept was this!?
She was truly astounded. Were the viewers in her channel really that wealthy? Yan Yifei and the others were way too rich as well, casually tipping tens of millions at a time. What surprised her even more was that Wu Mingyu had actually gifted twenty of them yesterday—that was twenty million. Wasn’t that a bit too extravagant?
Gan Lan didn’t know what to do now. Yesterday, she hadn’t realized these gifts were so valuable. Even though they claimed it was to support a friend, they had only eaten together three times. Taking so much money from them made her conscience uneasy.
Besides, she had no use for this much money. Gan Lan had always believed that having enough to spend was sufficient. Suddenly having such a vast fortune made her a little panicky. Her daily expenses weren’t large, and her income was stable. The Credit Points earned from her stall and video downloads were already more than enough.
She didn’t need this extra income. Her purpose for streaming was to spread Huaxia cuisine. Having people spend massive amounts simply to support her left her feeling quite unsettled.
She decided to refund all the large gifts she received yesterday at the ninety percent rate dictated by the platform’s rules. She wouldn’t refund gifts under one hundred Credit Points, as there were simply too many, making the process far too troublesome.
She also disabled the channel for all gifts over one hundred Credit Points in the backend. Tipping a few or a few dozen Credit Points as a token of appreciation was enough; there was no need for tens of thousands, millions, or tens of millions.
She asked the platform admins to help with refunding the money to the accounts, and requested that they attach a message to each refund: [I accept the sentiment behind your support, but the Credit Points are unnecessary. I have money! Aside from the ten percent deducted by the platform, I have refunded the full amount. Please don’t spend so much next time. I am very grateful for your support!]
Happy Dream Live Platform Building.
Admin A was dumbfounded after seeing Gan Lan’s private message. It was truly their first time seeing such a request. If someone didn’t stream for money, what were they doing it for?
He nudged Admin C, who was sorting documents on the other side. "Come quickly and look! The most bizarre streamer in history has appeared!"
Still organizing the files in his hands, Admin C didn’t even lift his head. "There are bizarre streamers every day," he said calmly. "Is there a need to make such a fuss? Have you never seen the world?"
"No, come and read this private message," Admin A said excitedly. "It’s from the streamer who caused our platform to crash for the first time in history yesterday."
Admin C was curious. Hearing this, the other admins also crowded over. The truth was, this platform was only considered a second-rate, minor platform on Mingyang Star, basically devoid of top-tier traffic-driving streamers. However, the live stream platform did host quite a few novel channels, so the overall traffic was still passable. Now that they suddenly had such a streamer, how could anyone not be curious and envious?
"God, has this streamer lost their mind? To actually return freely given Credit Points?"
The admins chimed in one after another. "Yeah, she really is the biggest weirdo. If I had such a massive sum of Credit Points, I’d be living in luxury every day!"
"But this workload is rather massive. Shouldn’t we report this to the General Manager?" Admin C asked.
"We definitely should. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a request like this. Usually, it’s kids stealing their parents’ Credit Points to tip streamers. I’ve never heard of a streamer voluntarily refunding money."
"That’s true. She really is the undisputed champion of oddballs. I guess people really are different!" The admins gossiped and discussed, the office air thick with envy.
Meanwhile, Admin A had already arrived at the General Manager’s office.
"General Manager, there is a matter I need to report to you."
A young man in a suit, looking to be only in his early thirties, sat behind the desk. Hearing this, he put down his pen and glanced up at Admin A. "Speak."
"The food streamer who caused the platform to crash has proposed something unbelievable," Admin A said. "I couldn’t make a decision, so I came to ask you." Saying this, he opened the private message Gan Lan had sent and showed it to the man in the suit.
The man in the suit read it thoroughly, and a smile broke across his somewhat stern face. "Do exactly as she asked, and do it quickly! Once this is done, our top traffic streamer is going to go viral again. She truly is our platform’s lucky star. Go, get it done immediately!"
"Yes, understood," Admin A said.
Looking at the closed office door, the man in the suit shook his head and laughed again. How interesting. This was truly too interesting. Next time she went live, he would personally go and meet this miraculous streamer.
After receiving the private message from the admin, Gan Lan breathed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness there were admins to handle such a massive workload, otherwise, she didn’t know if she’d ever finish issuing those refunds.
With a faint smile, she took out the ingredients needed for today, prepared the seasonings one by one, and got ready to start her live stream.
Looking at the ingredients laid out on the table, she felt two dishes were a bit too few. In that case, she would add flower pastries to the menu.
After purchasing the necessary rose jam, Gan Lan let out a breath of relief. Fortunately, rose jam was available. She tasted it and found the flavor to be quite good—very authentic! Otherwise, making and properly fermenting her own rose jam would take at least a month.