Chapter One: The World Beyond the Mountains

“The streamer isn’t energetic enough! Shake it up!”
“Move those hips, move them big! If you win this PK, I’ll send you a rocket!”
“The volume’s too low. My speakers are maxed out—can you do better or not?”

Suddenly, a sharp and relentless pounding at the door shattered the lively atmosphere that never truly existed in the room. Lin Ke’s heart, already racing, skipped a beat. Anxiously, she turned off the sound on her phone.

“Who is it?” she called out.

“Who else could it be? Your landlord! What are you up to in the middle of the night, making such a racket? The neighbors are complaining!”

Lin Ke glanced at the two thick yoga mats layered on the floor beneath her bare feet, feeling less than confident. “I... I wasn’t doing anything.”

“If you weren’t, then was it me? If you can live here, then live; if not, get out! Stop disturbing others in the middle of the night with your nonsense! And the rent is due in a week—if you can’t pay up, pack your things and get out immediately!”

Landlady Aunt Chen’s shrill voice echoed down the hallway. With a loud snap, the circuit breaker was flipped, plunging the room into darkness.

Sweat dripped from Lin Ke’s chin onto the yoga mat beneath her. She barely dared to breathe until all footsteps had vanished from the corridor, only then tiptoeing to the door to quietly switch the power back on.

By the time she logged back into her livestream, not a single viewer remained. Naturally, she had lost the PK. Worse, her sudden disconnection counted as a violation, and the platform penalized her with a three-day ban—no income at all.

At last, the injustice she’d been holding in welled up and spilled from the corners of her eyes. Lin Ke sank slowly to the floor, hugged her knees to her chest, letting sweat and tears mingle. She didn’t even dare to sob aloud.

In this ramshackle, retrofitted apartment, to her left, an unemployed neighbor played video games deep into the night, the rat-a-tat of virtual machine guns making the hollow walls shudder. To her right, a young couple argued and beat their child, harsh cries and curses tangling together, setting her nerves on edge. The old man downstairs would do nothing but summon the landlady to harass her.

A rickety table, one leg propped up with tissue paper, stood beneath a dim beauty lamp that fizzed and sputtered. The array of cosmetics on the table boasted not a single brand name. Grimy walls played host to the occasional mysterious insect that scurried away at the sound of footsteps, vanishing into the cracks.

When would this life ever end?

It had been half a year since Lin Ke graduated. Her diploma came from an obscure technical college, and, to make matters worse, her major was journalism—a field in steep decline. How could she ever compete with top-tier graduates from first-rate universities?

Yet she had made it to college, confident in her abilities, serving as a student leader and the head of the campus radio station. Why, then, should she resign herself to a life in her rural hometown, or toil away in the dust of some factory, wasting her youth?

The day she received her acceptance letter, the whole village gathered in her family’s courtyard. Her frugal parents hosted a banquet for three days straight.

She was the pride of the town—the daughter who had made good after ten years of hard study, the hope of the Lin family, and the entire village.

But only when she arrived in this city of glittering lights and endless temptations did she realize how little her hard-won acceptance letter meant in the pecking order of higher education. Only now did she see that the finish line she had struggled seventeen years to reach was still far behind the starting points of so many others.

There was no turning back for Lin Ke.

Her red-tinted graduation photo still hung at the gates of her alma mater. The hopeful eyes that once looked upon her had become a hundred pointed spears, pressing her forward, making retreat impossible.

So she stayed in this city where she’d studied, but could afford nothing better than a cheap, run-down apartment. The city’s glamour and extravagance were distant, unattainable. She was caught in limbo, neither advancing nor falling back. She became a streamer, earning what she could from live broadcasts and short videos.

But how much could she really make?

Once, Lin Ke thought she’d be doomed if she never escaped the mountains. Only later did she understand that true despair was seeing the world beyond and still being unable to cross the invisible ridge.

Adding up the balances of all her e-wallets, she didn’t even have enough for next month’s rent. Her streaming account, after a week of effort, was banned again. She had no choice but to shoot more short videos, hoping to scrounge up some views.

The streaming app she used was strict, but at least it paid out quickly and generously. Short videos with over 1,000 views earned a single yuan, with instant, no-minimum withdrawal. This was her only hope of scraping together the rent.

She couldn’t sleep anyway, and hadn’t yet washed off her makeup. Lin Ke touched up the streaks where her tears had ruined it, got herself together, and headed out.

She searched for a long time but found no inspiration; northern winter nights were especially deserted. She refused to sink into the vice of bars, nor could she wedge herself into the city’s glitzy social circles. In the end, she wandered into a 24-hour café.

“It’s 1 a.m. in Jin City. Young people are still glued to their screens; the office towers across the street still shine with light. We’re all chasing our dreams, the future ahead, the road beneath our feet,” Lin Ke said, her smile fixed until two seconds after she ended the recording.

Just then, a man in a checkered shirt at the next table let out a cold laugh.

“Filming that kind of content will never get you anywhere,” he scoffed.

The man looked to be in his thirties, lazy but not sloppy, with an air of cultured urbanity—exactly the type who flirted with college girls in coffee shops.

Lin Ke instinctively took a step back, unwilling to engage with such a smooth talker, but her eyes quickly caught sight of the corner of his work badge peeking from his pocket.

That logo—wasn’t it the same as the “Cocoon Breaker” platform she streamed and uploaded short videos on?

A thought flashed through her mind. Lin Ke circled back and sat across from the man.

“Hey, handsome, do you know what kind of videos go viral?” she asked.

Though he hadn’t been drinking, the man spoke with a tipsy self-mockery. “Of course I do. We design all the recommendation algorithms. So you tell me—do I know or not?”

Lin Ke noticed the man had seen the livestreaming app on her phone, just as she had spotted his badge.

How laughable, she thought. Their platform still had such innocent creators as herself.

Dream chasers, hard workers—the kind of inspirational drivel that might have worked twenty years ago, but now, even pigs would fly away from it.

Lin Ke frowned deliberately. “You’re kidding, right? If you’re so great, why are you sitting here alone in the middle of the night?”

The man, unable to resist the provocation, slapped his badge on the table. “Take a good look—Senior Algorithm Engineer, P8 level. I make the decisions for the entire line.”

P8!

Lin Ke had seen the job levels for Cocoon Breaker online—P8 meant a million-yuan salary.

A real big shot!

Opportunity comes to those who are prepared, she reminded herself. You don’t wait for chances, you fight for them!

Her mind whirred with motivational phrases. Adjusting her tone, she glanced at the name on his badge and changed her address accordingly.

“Brother Cheng, Boss Guan Zhi—I was blind not to recognize true talent. Please forgive my ignorance! I’m begging for your advice: what kind of content will go viral?”

She pressed her hands together and blinked her big eyes rapidly—one hundred percent sincere.

Cheng Guanzhi only found it amusing.

With a tipsy flourish, he pulled out his phone, found a screenshot, and slid it across the table to Lin Ke. “Here. Make this. It’s guaranteed to go viral.”