Li Xiang's social media account was named "Brother Xiang's Secluded Little Farmstead." He fussed over everything from registering the account to publishing the first video, not getting to sleep until after two in the morning.
Luckily, he didn't have to get up early for work. And now that he was a Tier One Extraordinary, he was brimming with energy, so staying up a little late was no big deal.
The initial content might have lacked any real highlights, and with so many people already doing the same thing online, the reception remained mediocre for several days after posting. The video only garnered a little over a thousand likes and five or six hundred followers.
Li Xiang didn't take it to heart. If it took off, great. If not, he'd figure something else out.
As a Tier One Transcendent, did he really need to worry about survival? It was merely a question of his quality of life.
In the countryside, with a few acres of land, you would never starve to death, no matter how poor you were. Besides, the mountains were full of delicacies and wild game.
Li Xiang set up his phone again and began documenting his journey of renovating the backyard.
He didn't livestream because he had too few followers, and his new account needed more video content to fill it out.
'The first step is always the hardest,' Li Xiang thought. 'In the early stages, I shouldn't worry too much about the numbers; I just need to focus on making good content. And even if I weren't doing this for social media, I'd still be renovating the backyard. Once it's done and the place is nicer, Grandma and I will be the ones to enjoy it.'
It was a bright and clear autumn day. In the Li Family's backyard, the persimmon tree was heavy with fruit, its branches and leaves swaying gently.
Two big yellow dogs were tearing around the newly renovated backyard, while a pregnant old cat napped lazily on the roof. In the distance, a flock of chickens and ducks played in the woods, searching for tasty morsels.
Li Xiang measured out the right spots on the bodies of the three large water vats and marked them with charcoal. Then, following the lines, he used a cutting tool to slice a thin, horizontal "long line" into each of the three vats.
These three long lines were about twenty centimeters long and five millimeters high, cutting clean through the vats. When the bamboo pipes brought in the mountain spring water, it didn't take long for the clear, sweet water to begin gurgling out. The "Overlapping Waterfall" had taken shape.
'It's actually quite beautiful. My handiwork and aesthetic sense aren't half bad!' Li Xiang took a few steps back, stroking his chin as he admired his work, filled with a sense of accomplishment.
Next, he needed to find a few large bluestones to place downstream from the waterfall and then dig a drainage ditch.
"This is great, this is great!"
After his grandmother came over to see it, she couldn't stop praising the "Overlapping Waterfall" Li Xiang had made. It was running water, so it wouldn't freeze in the winter. She was already getting eager to do laundry and cook with it.
"Grandma, just wait a few days. Once I finish building the kitchen, we'll start cooking out here in the backyard."
His grandmother said emotionally, "It's so good to have my grandson back. That little tiled house out front is so many years old, all tattered and worn. I worry it'll collapse whenever it snows in winter. Moving over here is good, so good."
The old woman couldn't help but wipe away her tears.
"Grandma, what are you doing? Don't worry, with your grandson here, the best days are still ahead!" Li Xiang had this confidence. 'With the system on my side, I'm totally the chosen one. There's no way things can go too badly for me.'
「Meanwhile, over 1,500 kilometers away」
At Li Xiang's former company, an ex-colleague was scrolling through a short-video app at his desk after lunch when he suddenly came across a familiar video. The ex-colleague jumped up in surprise and yelled to the person next to him, "I can't believe I just saw a video from Li Xiang!"
"The guy who just quit? What's he up to?"
The ex-colleague showed the video to the other person and said, "He actually went back to his hometown to farm! He's even doing social media and posting short videos!"
"Let me see, let me see."
Soon, the news that Li Xiang was making short videos spread throughout the company, sparking a flurry of discussion.
The manager from before heard about it too and couldn't help but scoff. "Does he really think it's that easy?"
The woman who used to order him to fetch her packages pursed her lips and chimed in, "Exactly. Look, he only has a handful of likes and comments, and just a few hundred followers. Haha, and someone like that thinks he can make it in short videos?"
The girl who had been on better terms with Li Xiang, Chen Huanhuan, also curiously searched for his account. After clicking on it and watching for a moment, she couldn't help but smile softly. In the video, Li Xiang looked so serious and handsome, even though his clothes weren't great and he was covered in sweat.
'But why do I feel like I can almost smell a pleasant scent coming through the screen?'
'I hope you succeed, Brother Xiang!' Chen Huanhuan silently wished Li Xiang well, then decisively liked and followed his account, even leaving a comment below.
Elsewhere, some of Li Xiang's university and high school classmates also came across the video. Most of them just gave it a glance before swiping away.
Some even snorted, 'What is this? Why does this app keep recommending such garbage videos?'
In reality, for a new short-video creator, the chances of acquaintances seeing their content are actually quite high.
Li Xiang hadn't paid to promote his videos, so naturally, most of the initial viewers were people he had crossed paths with before.
...
After digging the drainage ditch, Li Xiang gathered sand and pebbles from the creek and lined the bottom of the ditch with them. Now, it could no longer be called a drainage ditch, but rather a miniature "babbling brook" for the backyard.
He even dug up some unusual-looking aquatic plants and planted them in the ditch, and scattered in some river snails he had gathered.
At a bend, he widened a section specifically to plant some Copper Coin Grass.
In the plant shops of big cities, a small pot of Copper Coin Grass could sell for dozens of yuan, but back in Li Xiang's hometown, it was just a common weed, free for the taking.
With the "backyard brook" finished, Li Xiang started cutting down bamboo to build the kitchen.
He used mortise and tenon joinery in many places. For the kitchen roof, he laid down a waterproof tarp covered with a thick layer of thin bamboo branches and leaves, securing everything with wire and nails.
He also paved the kitchen floor with stones and laid out several small paths in the backyard with flagstones to make it easier to walk when it rained.
A little farther away, he built a gazebo complete with a table and chairs, and even crafted a swing and a lounge chair.
Finally, with enough footage for his second video, Li Xiang began editing, adding music, subtitles, and so on.
He had to admit, it looked pretty good after editing. Li Xiang watched it several times, and seeing no issues, he wrote a simple caption and published it.
This time, perhaps because of the effect of the mountain spring Overlapping Waterfall, along with the "sensational" clip of his High-Density Blade slicing through a bowl-thick bamboo stalk in one swing, the video finally gained a small wave of traffic. It received over 30,000 likes, his followers grew to seven or eight thousand, and there were more than two thousand comments.
Li Xiang smiled, feeling quite successful. 'After all, I'm just starting out. I can't set my expectations too high.'
However, when some of his former colleagues and classmates saw it, they remained dismissive.
"Only seven or eight thousand followers? What's the use of that? I don't believe someone like him could ever become a major influencer."
"Exactly. There are tons of influencers out there, but no way Li Xiang could be one of them. He was always so quiet and reserved, had zero social skills, and doesn't even have any talents!"
"The ultimate goal of getting traffic is to sell products. What could he possibly sell? The guy's a terrible speaker."
Many people made such jealous remarks from behind their screens.