“Today’s shots were particularly good. OK, that’s a wrap!”

With Director Zhu Xiaocai’s command, today’s filming tasks were completed.

Pei Qian was quite composed about this.

He was used to it!

Today they were shooting on location, filming on the road, and borrowing Pei Qian’s previously rented Cayenne.

After all, constantly filming in the office could lead to viewers’ aesthetic fatigue, so they needed to continuously try new material.

But regardless of how they changed the subject matter, the core remained the same.

Since the conversation with Pei Qian last time, Zhu Xiaocai and Huang Sibo had accepted Pei Qian’s view, completely abandoning the idea of accepting hard advertising and focusing wholeheartedly on the plot!

Though every episode couldn’t possibly be full of climactic moments and perfect, they could at least maintain a consistent level.

So far, the videos with more enthusiastic responses have had about 600,000-700,000 views, while those with fewer responses have still had 400,000-500,000.

For a newly launched series of short videos, this was already an extremely impressive achievement!

After packing up the props, everyone prepared to head home.

Huang Sibo said to the group, “You guys go ahead, I have some personal business.”

The others didn’t ask further.

Huang Sibo casually hailed a taxi and went to a café where he had arranged to meet a friend.

More than ten minutes later, he arrived.

Huang Sibo got out of the car and looked at the familiar yet somewhat strange building in front of him, feeling an inexplicable sense of being in another world.

On the second floor of the building were four large characters: Shangyang Games.

This was the gaming company where Huang Sibo had previously worked.

Before, Huang Sibo had been a bottom-tier general planner at this company, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say he had been exploited. Naturally, he didn’t have many friends there.

He only had one fellow bottom-tier planner who was also exploited, with whom he got along reasonably well.

After all, they were in the same situation—fellow sufferers who shared some mutual understanding.

Later, Huang Sibo interviewed and joined Tenda, and although he still occasionally kept in touch with his former colleague, he rarely mentioned anything about his work.

Why?

On one hand, Huang Sibo had always suspected that he might have made a mistake and joined a fraudulent company, so he didn’t dare tell his friend.

Later, when he discovered that the company’s benefits and treatment were genuinely that good and the game had become a huge success, he felt too embarrassed to tell his friend.

He was afraid his friend would feel unbalanced…

After that, Huang Sibo had been busy with short video work, and his friend had been constantly working overtime, so they never found an opportunity to meet.

Finally, after the New Year, both of them had some free time, so they arranged to meet and catch up.

Huang Sibo sat in the café for a while, and before long, his friend arrived.

He was about 5’7″ tall, with a physique somewhat out of shape due to long-term overtime work. Although he looked a bit introverted, he was quite neat and clean overall.

If there was anything special about him, it would be his hands, which were quite attractive—white, delicate, and smooth, indicating he hadn’t done much manual labor as a child.

“Yiqun, over here.”

Huang Sibo raised his hand to signal.

His friend immediately spotted Huang Sibo and sat down across from him.

His full name was Ma Dubiao, but generally no one called him by that name; everyone called him Ma Yiqun.

Ma Yiqun worked as a narrative planner at Shangyang Games.

He had graduated from the Chinese department of a prestigious university, and his family was well-educated.

The name had been given to him by his grandfather, who was a professor of ancient literature at the university.

As for why he had decided to work as a narrative planner at a game company?

That was a long story.

Ma Yiqun, like Huang Sibo, was a bottom-tier general planner, but his life was slightly more humane than Huang Sibo’s.

Because Huang Sibo’s position was as an executive planner, Chief Planner Old Liu would pile all kinds of work on him, regardless of whether he could finish it.

As a narrative planner, Ma Yiqun also had to shoulder many executive planning tasks, but since he still had a lot of narrative work to do, he received fewer assignments overall.

Moreover, narrative work allowed for some dawdling.

For instance, naming equipment and writing descriptions might take only three or four hours to complete, but Ma Yiqun could procrastinate for two days and submit the work on the third day, and Old Liu wouldn’t find it inappropriate.

After all, the efficiency of naming tasks completely depended on one’s state of mind, so Old Liu wouldn’t push too hard.

So, Huang Sibo couldn’t bear it anymore and angrily resigned.

While Ma Yiqun remained conflicted, wavering for several more months.

“Sibo, why do you look a bit tanner?” After sitting down, Ma Yiqun immediately noticed that Huang Sibo’s complexion seemed darker.

“Really? Maybe it’s because I’ve been frequently shooting outdoors lately.” Huang Sibo handed over the menu. “I’ve already ordered coffee. See what you’d like to drink, my treat.”

“Shooting outdoors?”

Ma Yiqun took the menu and casually ordered a latte.

Hearing Huang Sibo’s words, Ma Yiqun was completely confused.

He had never heard of game developers needing to shoot outdoors…

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I’m no longer in the gaming industry. I’m making short videos now. Have you seen ‘Mr. Pei’s Daily Life? That’s what we’re filming.” Huang Sibo said.

Ma Yiqun’s eyes gradually widened.

“‘Mr. Pei’s Daily Life is produced by you guys? Damn! That video series has been popular lately. I’ve been watching every episode without missing any! What do you do there? Scriptwriter? Production assistant? Why haven’t you made a cameo appearance or something?”

Huang Sibo smiled: “How could I have any acting talent? My position… It’s hard to say exactly what I do. I run around handling different tasks. I guess you could say I’m one of the partners.”

“That’s great. It seems like you’ve found an industry that suits you, congratulations.” Ma Yiqun was genuinely happy for Huang Sibo.

“I think you could do it too, your novels…”

Ma Yiqun waved his hand, interrupting Huang Sibo: “Ah, let’s not talk about the novels.”

He took another look at Huang Sibo and noticed that not only had his complexion improved, but he seemed full of energy.

“It feels like you’ve experienced a lot these past few months. Your mental state is completely different. Tell me all about it.”

The coffee arrived quickly.

Huang Sibo took a sip: “Let’s talk about you first. How’s the company doing?”

“How could it be? Same as before—lifeless, stagnant.” Ma Yiqun’s expression showed slight frustration.

Facing his former fellow sufferer, Ma Yiqun opened up and began to vent the frustrations he had been holding in.

“A while back, Old Liu, I don’t know what got into him, insisted on pricing a new version knife at 888 yuan!”

“The key is, this knife isn’t even a particularly rare item. If it were limited to one per server, selling it for 888 would be fine, but selling 100 per server at 888? Isn’t that insane?”

“Yet Old Liu was adamant about 888. Not a yuan less!”

“Later, we found out he was envious of ‘Sea Fortress.’ He thought if the Fire Kylin in ‘Sea Fortress’ could sell for 888, then our knife could too!”

“Sure enough, after it went online, players tore it apart!”

“The boss gave Old Liu a severe tongue-lashing. We could hear the shouting from the meeting room while sitting at our desks…”