Lin Wei spent the next six hours obsessively checking his jade slip.
Views: 0
Engagement: 0
Subscribers: 0
Every five minutes, he'd pull it out, stare at the unchanging numbers and feel his anxiety ratchet up another notch.
[Stop refreshing. You're going to drain the spirit stone powering your communication array.]
"Someone should have seen it by now," Lin Wei muttered. He was sitting in his shack, freshly washed and wearing clean robes. His Attraction Rating had jumped to 4.7 according to the system, turns out not smelling like a corpse helped but it didn't matter if no one was watching his fucking content.
[The sect network has thousands of posts per day, Host. Your video is buried fifteen pages deep in the feed already. This is completely normal. Patience.]
"I have fourteen hours left!"
[Then we should make MORE content! Volume increases visibility. The algorithm favors active creators. Plus, you need practice. That first video was... adequate. Let's aim for 'actually good.']
Lin Wei rubbed his face, exhaustion and stress making his hands shake slightly. "What kind of content?"
[Great question! Let me show you some EXAMPLES from my database.]
A screen popped up showing what looked like sample videos from previous hosts. Lin Wei leaned forward, desperate for any guidance that might save him from the Humiliation Aura.
The first video showed a cultivator in a basic meditation pose—simple lotus position, hands in a standard formation seal. Clean. Professional. Exactly what he'd expect from cultivation content.
"See? Like that. I can do..."
The image flickered.
Suddenly the cultivator's pose looked... different. The camera angle had dropped lower, emphasizing the curve of their spine and the line of their thighs. Their robes had somehow become form fitting, clinging in ways that highlighted rather than concealed. Dramatic lighting came from an impossible angle, casting shadows that made everything look charged with tension.
"What just happened?"
[Oh! Sorry, the example library is glitching. These are old files from previous hosts. Let me find something more appropriate for your current skill level..]
The screen flickered again.
Now it showed someone doing stretches, but the stretches were... extremely suggestive. Legs spread wide in a split, back arched like a bow, face turned toward the camera with heavy lidded eyes and parted lips. The way they moved made it look less like cultivation and more like...
Lin Wei's face went hot. "That's not cultivation! That's basically foreplay!"
[Technically it IS cultivation! Enhanced flexibility training is very important for Qi circulation through the lower meridians. Also very popular with audiences. This one got 47,000 views and 3,200 comments! Most of them were marriage proposals!]
"I'm not doing THAT."
[Of course not! Your Shamelessness stat is way too low. You'd just stand there looking like a terrified virgin—which you are—and ruin the whole effect. I'm just showing you the full spectrum of possibilities. Let me find something more your speed.]
The screen cycled through several more examples, each one somehow more provocative than the last. A "sword form demonstration" where the cultivator moved like they were performing an exotic dance. A "breathing exercise" that involved a lot of slow, deliberate hip movements and barely concealed moaning. A "Qi circulation guide" where the instructor was in a bathtub with strategically placed soap bubbles.
"These are all insane! Is this what your previous hosts did?!"
[The successful ones? Yes! The ones who died of embarrassment or gave up? They tried to do boring orthodox content that nobody watched. You want to succeed? You need to be INTERESTING. But fine, fine. Let's start simpler. How about this: do a basic cultivation demonstration, but make it ENGAGING. Show your face, explain what you're doing, be natural. Think of it as teaching someone who knows nothing about cultivation.]
Lin Wei took a breath. That sounded reasonable, teaching. He could do teaching.
"Okay, teaching. Just... normal teaching, no thirst traps."
[Exactly! Set up your recording array. Let's make take two!]
Twenty minutes later, Lin Wei was positioned in front of his recording array again. He'd cleaned up the space as best he could, moved the clutter out of frame, swept the floor, arranged his sleeping mat to look less pathetic. It still looked like a shack but at least it was a clean shack.
"Ready?" he asked the system.
[Ready! Remember: be natural, be engaging, make eye contact with the camera and for the love of the Dao, try to SMILE. You look like you're attending your own execution.]
Lin Wei forced his face into something approximating a smile.
[...That's genuinely terrifying. Never mind. Just be yourself, melancholy and dead inside is apparently your brand now.]
He activated the recording array and settled into a cross-legged position.
"Hello again. Lin Wei here, also known as TrashPhoenix on the sect network." His voice came out steadier than he felt. "Today I'm going to demonstrate basic Qi circulation, the foundational technique that all cultivation builds on. This is especially useful for people with... damaged meridians, like mine."
He closed his eyes and began guiding his Qi through the standard circulation pattern. With the Lust Core installed "even in its dormant state" the energy moved more smoothly than it had in years. It still hurt, still felt like pushing honey through cracked glass but it actually was moving.
"The key is to breathe in rhythm with your Qi flow," he explained, falling into the teaching mindset. "Inhale as you draw energy up from your lower dantian, exhale as you guide it through your meridians. The pattern should feel natural, not forced."
He fell into the familiar rhythm, explaining each step as he went. It felt good, actually. Like he was finally doing something he understood, teaching made sense. Teaching felt safe.
Behind his closed eyes, he didn't notice the recording array beginning to glow brighter.
Much brighter.
[Oh! Oh no. Uh, Host? We have a situation.]
"Don't interrupt, I'm concentrating on the circulation..."
[The array is glitching! It's activating an auto-enhancement filter I haven't unlocked yet...]
"WHAT?!"
Lin Wei's eyes snapped open.
The recording array was glowing with soft pink light. The air around him had started to moving like heat waves, and was that... wind? Inside his closed fucking shack?
A gentle breeze picked up from absolutely nowhere, lifting his hair in a way that would have been dramatic if it wasn't completely impossible.
"What the hell is happening?!"
[The Thirst Enhancement Filter! It's a premium feature that shouldn't be accessible yet, but apparently the array detected your Lust Qi signature and auto-activated! I CAN'T TURN IT OFF! The array is running on automatic!]
The lighting in the shack shifted dramatically. The harsh morning light streaming through the cracks became golden and warm, casting everything in a flattering glow that made his skin look luminous. Shadows appeared in impossible places, highlighting the line of his jaw and the curve of his neck.
Lin Wei tried to stand up, but his body moved in slow motion.
"Why am I moving so SLOW?!"
[SLOW MOTION EFFECT! It makes everything look more dramatic and sensual! Just—just keep going! The array will run out of power eventually! Probably! Maybe!]
Lin Wei had no choice, he was trapped in the middle of his cultivation demonstration but now everything felt absolutely fucking ridiculous. The phantom wind kept blowing his hair at perfectly timed intervals. When he shifted his position to continue the circulation pattern, the slow motion effect made it look like some kind of sensual dance move.
He tried to maintain his explanation, but his voice came out lower, slightly breathy from the effort of fighting the slow motion effect.
"As you... guide the Qi through your meridians... maintain... steady breathing..."
He moved his hands in a standard formation gesture. In normal speed, it would have looked clinical and educational. In slow motion with dramatic lighting and phantom wind, it looked like he was caressing invisible curves in the air.
"This is a fucking nightmare."
The wind picked up again, catching his robes and billowing them open slightly at the chest. Not enough to be indecent, but enough to show a glimpse of collarbone and the lean muscle of his torso.
[Actually, Host, you look REALLY good right now. Your Attraction Rating just jumped to 6.2, the lighting is doing wonders for your bone structure!]
"I DON'T CARE ABOUT MY BONE STRUCTURE!"
But he was committed now, and the array was still recording and he couldn't stop it without losing the footage entirely. So Lin Wei gritted his teeth and pushed through to the end of the cultivation cycle, trying desperately to ignore how absolutely ridiculous this all was.
He moved through the final circulation pattern, his hands tracing the meridian pathways in the air. The slow motion made every movement look deliberate and loaded with meaning, the lighting made his skin glow and the wind made his hair flutter at dramatically appropriate moments.
When he finally finished and opened his eyes, the array's glow faded immediately. The wind stopped, the slow motion effect gone.
Lin Wei sat there, breathing hard, staring at the now normal recording array with a mixture of horror and disbelief.
"Please tell me that didn't save?"