Chapter 98: Chapter 93 Lucky Ones in the Tide
At the same time when Tian Liangwei gave the order.
In stark contrast to the solemn—even you could say silent—atmosphere within the USTC campus was the commotion online.
This time, USTC did not restrict live streaming rights; as long as a media outlet or individual was inside the USTC campus, they could live stream the entire disinfection process.
Bilibili, Weibo, Douyin, Kuaishou, Bytedance.....
You could say that all live streaming platforms had media rebroadcasting entry points.
Among them, Bilibili, an established site for otaku, had been criticized for its worsening commentary environment in recent years, but compared to other domestic platforms, the quality of its members was still slightly higher—especially after activating level-blocking features.
As a result, naturally, the number of Bilibili users had been steadily increasing, and many media outlets chose to open live stream rooms there.
Click——
CTO Gong Zenghui pushed open the door to the technology department and walked straight to a bald programmer:
"Old Ye, how’s the server load looking?"
"Oh, it’s President Gong."
The Old Ye that Gong Zenghui referred to was Ye Xu, the technical director of the live stream department. Upon hearing the question, he quickly took off his headphones and rubbed his nonexistent hair, saying:
"We’re currently seeing real site traffic reach a level of 30 million, with about 400,000 visits per second.
Luckily, we applied for a server expansion from Penguin Headquarters this time. Otherwise, whether USTC would land in a joke, I don’t know, but we’d definitely be the joke."
"My goodness, 30 million?"
Upon hearing the numbers Ye Xu reported, a trace of excitement instantly arose on Gong Zenghui’s face.
He then hurriedly moved to the technical booth to look at the data himself.
Aurora Big Data once released a report on Bilibili’s daily active users, which is widely recognized as the most authoritative related statistics, even generally considered more reliable than financial reports.
According to this data, Bilibili’s maximum daily active users are 3.7 million, with a monthly high of 130 million.
After deducting bots, buy-clicks, and other fake accounts, the real daily active users might be around 22 million or so.
The peak during the Bilibili New Year Festival hit around 40 million, and the S-series finals might momentarily exceed 50 million.
And now, just with one USTC live stream, the actual traffic has been brought up to a level of 30 million; how could Gong Zenghui be anything but pleased?
He then opened Weibo and found that the topic ’#USTCdisinfection#’ had shot to the number one position, marked with a glaring red ’explosive’ symbol behind it.
Recall, the last time such a situation occurred on Weibo was quite a while ago.
After closing his phone, Gong Zenghui continued asking Ye Xu:
"Old Ye, which live streams currently have the highest popularity?"
Ye Xu quickly tapped away at the keyboard and responded:
"Wannan Tuantuan is the most popular, followed by Sichuan Province Observation, third is The Paper News, fourth.... huh?"
"What’s up with the fourth?"
"The fourth is a personal user on Bilibili named ’Our Arsenal is Invincible’."
"A personal user?"
Gong Zenghui raised his eyebrows, somewhat surprised, and said:
"Why is his popularity so high?"
Ye Xu tapped away a few more times and quickly extracted the live stream keyword profile, saying:
"This up seems to be a student at USTC, with a dorm location close to one of the disinfection points. Coupled with his previous 20K followers due to cat-clip editing, by chance, his live stream went viral."
Upon hearing this, Gong Zenghui was momentarily stunned, then understood, nodding his head.
Looking at every major event in internet history, there are almost always one or two lucky individuals who emerge.
They briefly gain exposure at tens of millions, or even higher, traffic levels.
A more recent example is the fish-head man during the nucleic acid test in Manzhouli, which went viral after being inadvertently captured by CCTV, garnering more than 310 million views in three days.
Going back further, you have Contract to Publish, Noodle Bro, Xin Xiaodai, and much earlier, Douyu Sister Lan, etc.
Bilibili also has a user named LC Sula, who attracted a million fans with a single game video.
Some are like a flash in the pan, while others take off financially free as a result.
Wang Muyi is unsure which type of person he’ll become, but at this moment, this USTC second-year math student knows one thing:
His hands are shaking a bit, and his mind is a bit chaotic.
The live stream has 27.345 million people, and the barrage speed is like a Gatling gun rattling past.
Almost every few seconds, his followers increase by seven or eight.
And all he’s doing is broadcasting the scenes visible from his dorm room to the internet.
Wang Muyi, a USTC sophomore in the mathematics department, born in an ordinary family in Sichuan Province.
Average appearance, just over 170 cm tall, in his lifetime, aside from good college entrance exam scores, he hardly had any dazzling highlights—and even after entering USTC, this one skill seemed less prominent.
However, this standard mortal has quickly surged to the fourth hottest rank on the entire platform, surpassing countless media voices in a short time due to his proximity to the scene, along with a small follower base.
Sometimes, one’s destiny is just this unpredictable.
Andy Warhol once said:
Everyone could be famous for 15 minutes.
This saying has sparked broad debate on the internet. Some view it as truth; others see it as toxic motivation.
Wang Muyi isn’t qualified to judge whether this saying is true or false, but he knows clearly that the current situation is probably the rarest opportunity of his life.
So he bit his back molars hard, striving to keep his voice from breaking, responding to some barrage inquiries while expressing gratitude:
"Yes, yes, I’m inside USTC..."
"Yeah, right across is the sports field, we’re on the seventh floor... What? Cleaning? The dorms were cleaned two days ago, there are definitely no cockroaches inside now..."
"Thank you, ’Pastoral Song is a Loli’, for the gift of a Meow Gal. Thanks....."
"Open the door? I’m not daring to open it, okay? That time in Building 14, I even went to check specially, a whole bunch of cockroaches crawled out from the piping. I’m sure USTC succeeds this time..."
At the same time.
On the East Campus of USTC, students like Wang Muyi who initiated live streams were not in the minority.
Some had high visibility, while others less so, each of their situations differed.
Ke Da’s cybersecurity department promptly identified these students, but the school administration did not shut down their live streams, only communicated through class monitors advising them not to badmouth the university, or discuss sensitive topics.
Meanwhile.
Journalists from several major media outlets, whether willingly or reluctantly, also put on protective suits, starting to warm up during the gap.
Almost the entire internet was waiting for a signal.
After about ten more minutes.
Still in the same dorm room, Wang Muyi gradually adapted to the explosive traffic and started talking about some trivial matters:
"The final exam difficulty at USTC is okay, GPA actually..."
As he spoke, his roommate suddenly let out a loud shout:
"Look down there, the security department is moving!"
Upon hearing this, Wang Muyi was stunned for a moment, then quickly stood up, grabbing the tripod holding his phone and dashed to the window.
At this moment.
Not far from their dorm at the sports field disinfection point, a few security personnel in protective clothing suddenly walked in.
........