"A promotional collaboration?"
Chen Jue’s heart stirred. He hadn’t expected someone to come knocking for a collaboration after he’d only posted two videos.
After chatting with them via private message, Chen Jue got a general idea of how this promotional collaboration worked.
On video platforms like Bilibili and Douyin, there are product promotion sections. As long as you put a merchant’s product link in that section or in a pinned comment, you earn traffic revenue from valid clicks, regardless of whether anyone makes a purchase.
If a click converts into a sale, you also earn a commission on each order.
Many popular online influencers and major content creators make a fortune by accepting these kinds of commercial collaborations.
However, this was the first time Chen Jue had encountered something like this, so he felt it was best to be cautious and used his work computer to look it up online.
Using his main job’s office computer to earn side income—Chen Jue was really taking his slacker job at Hengtong to the absolute limit!
After some searching, he confirmed that this type of promotion was just the most basic form of collaboration. Later on, there were upgraded, custom-tailored collaborations like "product placements" and dedicated promotional videos for merchants.
Those kinds of collaborations were priced based on follower count and video influence, and they were not cheap.
Chen Jue’s "Brother of Special Skills" account didn’t even have 10,000 fans yet. His influence was limited, so no one would offer him that kind of product placement deal.
So, after some consideration, Chen Jue agreed to the merchant who had proactively reached out.
To be safe, Chen Jue first used a secondary account to add the WeChat contact they sent and then asked what kind of products they sold.
He never would have guessed it was a studio that made cold weapons!
The studio was called Rainbow Light. They produced things like swords, Tang-dynasty sabers, long spears, Martial Arts Darts, and traditional bows. Their designs were unique, they accepted custom orders, and their sales on various e-commerce platforms were quite decent.
The Darts that Chen Jue had previously bought online were actually made by them.
What a coincidence, right?
With this collaborative relationship, he could ask them for a discount in the future if he wanted to custom-order Darts or have some other cold weapons made for fun.
After finalizing the collaboration with Rainbow Light Studio’s marketing manager, Chen Jue followed the video platform’s promotion tutorial and added Rainbow Light’s shop link to his backend.
The process was simple, almost a fool-proof, one-click setup. Chen Jue didn’t even need to sign an agreement himself.
This was because it was a third-party promotion. The merchant and the video platform signed the contract; the video creator just took a small commission, while the platform took the lion’s share.
’Am I finally starting to cash in?’
’That was surprisingly fast!’
Chen Jue counted on his fingers. It had been exactly one week since he started posting videos.
For a merchant to approach him this quickly, it was all thanks to his superb [Hidden Weapon Throwing] technique.
Without a special skill like that, he really wouldn’t have been able to attract so many viewers, clicks, and comments.
...
Having successfully taken the first step in his side hustle, Chen Jue was in high spirits.
His afternoon slacking-off-to-exercise routine became even more energetic.
He cycled through using a grip strengthener, holding his Horse Stance, performing the Squeezing Valley Dao, and doing Eye Health Exercises. His cubicle was partitioned off anyway, blocking part of the view and giving employees a bit of privacy.
Aside from Shen Shikun in the next seat, who could vaguely see what Chen Jue was up to, it was basically impossible for other colleagues to notice his little movements.
He trained, took appropriate breaks, and looked up information on exercises that interested him. He also finished reviewing the Class-A clients assigned by the system in what felt like seconds, earning another 0.02 Free Attribute points. The afternoon passed quickly.
The so-called Class-A clients mentioned here were high-quality customers from a banking perspective, such as those working in public institutions or as civil servants.
These clients had stable jobs and the largest asset pools, making them a premium customer group in the financial industry with lasting credit value and stable financial situations.
When approving loans for such clients, barely any out of ten thousand would default, and even then, they would eventually pay it back. It was very rare for these to become bad loans. In the past, whenever Chen Jue encountered such clients, he would approve them with his eyes closed.
Now at Hengtong, with a powerful risk control system pre-screening everything, his approval speed was naturally measured in seconds.
However, he noticed Shen Shikun in the next cubicle also furiously clicking his mouse, blitzing through client approvals. He seemed to be in a rush to leave for the day, paying no mind to things like client group classifications, delinquency rates, or bad loan rates.
Chen Jue was slightly stunned by the sight and couldn’t help but think: ’Well, I’ll be damned!’
Their workday was eight hours long, but the two of them probably spent less than thirty seconds actually working. The rest of the time was spent either slacking off or daydreaming—completely neglecting their duties.
For a corporation like Hengtong to have hired both Chen Jue and Shen Shikun, two "Wolong Fengchu" masters, it must have had eight lifetimes of bad luck!
...
When quitting time arrived, he changed his clothes, clocked out, and bolted.
Perhaps because his balance had improved from practicing [Horse Stance], even descending the stairs felt much smoother than before.
He took the stairs down to the underground garage, timing himself at 4 minutes and 30 seconds—another half-minute improvement from yesterday.
’I’ve seen those Parkour masters in short videos. They can clear a whole flight of stairs in a second and descend a full floor in two.’
’To jump down 17 floors like that would probably take just over half a minute?’
Chen Jue muttered to himself, feeling like he still had a lot of room for improvement.
After driving out of Hengtong’s complex, he didn’t head straight back to the talent apartment. Instead, he found a chain optical shop in a nearby commercial street.
After a day of staring at the computer, Chen Jue had discovered that his old glasses no longer seemed to match his current eyesight.
They felt uncomfortable after wearing them for a while, so Chen Jue decided it was time for a replacement.
As soon as he entered the shop, a clerk in a white coat greeted him enthusiastically, "Hey, handsome! Looking to get new glasses? Want to get your prescription checked first?"
Chen Jue nodded, took off his old glasses, and handed them to the clerk.
Chain optical shops like this were fully equipped and even had a professional optometrist on-site. In just a few minutes, the prescription of Chen Jue’s old glasses was determined.
"Left eye, 550. Right eye, 600. And you have astigmatism in both."
"You’ve had these glasses for a few years, haven’t you? The materials are an older type."
"If you haven’t changed them in so long, your prescription must have gotten a lot worse!" the optometrist said, commenting from experience as he brought out a report with the test data.
"Yeah, it’s been a few years," Chen Jue nodded and followed him into the examination room.
He rested his chin on the autorefractor. The lens focused on each of his eyes—the same familiar green field and red house.
But when the optometrist saw the real-time prescription displayed on the machine, he froze.
"Huh?"
"How did your prescription go down?"
"Left eye, 450; right eye, 500. How can it be so different from your old glasses!" The optometrist muttered in surprise, then tested Chen Jue two more times, but the result was the same.
Now, the optometrist was completely bewildered.
Anyone who wears glasses for nearsightedness knows that once a prescription starts getting worse, it doesn’t stop. It usually only increases; it doesn’t go back down.
The only exceptions are corrective surgery or extremely rare cases of natural vision recovery.
But Chen Jue obviously hadn’t had corrective surgery, so these test results left the optometrist utterly baffled.
Refusing to believe it, he ran the test a few more times, but the result remained the same. The optometrist and his assistant both exclaimed in disbelief.
After a long delay, they finally brought out the trial frame for Chen Jue to test his vision on the eye chart.
"Up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right."
After finishing the eye chart test and accounting for the astigmatism measured with the trial lenses, Chen Jue’s final prescription should be around 480 for his left eye and 520 for his right. This was a significant improvement compared to when he got his glasses a few years ago.
"So, handsome, want to pick out a new frame?"
"And what kind of lenses would you like? We have Zeiss, Essilor... all high-end imported brands." After the exam, the clerk immediately started her sales pitch.
Getting glasses at a physical store wasn’t cheap these days, especially with imported lenses. A custom pair would cost several thousand yuan at least.
However, since Chen Jue had mastered the vision improvement methods of red light exposure and [Eye Health Exercises], his prescription was decreasing day by day. Getting such expensive glasses would be a waste of money, as they’d be collecting dust in just a few days.
So, after a moment of thought, Chen Jue chose the cheapest domestic lenses.
He even picked the lowest-quality tier. Including the frame, the whole thing would only cost 100 yuan.
"Huh?"
"Sir, are you sure you want such low-quality lenses?" The clerk was also a bit stunned. Most customers who came here wanted good lenses that were comfortable and offered better eye protection.
Cheap resin lenses tend to yellow after a while, and their quality, including stain resistance, is poor. Very few people actually buy them.
For Chen Jue to ask for the cheapest, low-end lenses right off the bat truly flabbergasted the clerk.
Furthermore, Chen Jue didn’t just want one pair of lenses. He reeled off a series of numbers, "Give me one pair each for 300, 200, and 100. Just use this frame for all of them. I can swap them out myself!"
"Huh?"
"Sir, will you even be able to use lenses with those prescriptions?" The clerk was now completely lost.
She could never have imagined that this peculiar young man in front of her possessed the heaven-defying ability to correct his own vision!
After confirming with Chen Jue several times and seeing him scan the code to pay the quoted price, she finally relayed the prescriptions for all four pairs of lenses to the optometrist so he could start cutting and processing them.