Pei Qian felt a little panicked, but quickly calmed himself down.
“Stay calm, stay calm.”
“The VR experience area just opened, so it’s a novel attraction. It’s normal and reasonable for everyone to come try it out.”
“After this wave of enthusiasm passes, the VR experience area will definitely have few visitors, and Slackin’ Internet Café will be able to lose money again.”
“Temporary popularity leading to long-term losses—that’s still a good deal.”
After reassuring himself this way, Pei Qian stood up, intending to sneak up to the second floor to take a look.
Although he knew the second floor was likely packed, getting customer feedback was still important.
What if the occupancy rate was high, but customers weren’t satisfied?
He briefly spoke with the waiter, asking him to save his seat as he would come back down to eat later.
It was only morning, yet the internet café was already nearly full—such a bustling scene hadn’t been witnessed for at least several months.
If Pei Qian were to go upstairs now, his spot would likely be taken by someone else, so he needed the waiter to keep an eye on it.
Following the crowd to the second floor, Pei Qian was shocked by the scene before him.
So many people!
Although Pei Qian had anticipated beforehand that there would be many people and all positions would be occupied, only after arriving did he realize how naive he had been.
Not only was every spot taken, but there were also two people waiting in line behind each position!
To allow players to move freely within the VR space, each spot in the VR experience area was quite spacious, with partitions separating players from those on either side.
The pathway behind was also quite wide.
Now, there were many people standing in what was originally a walkway, clearly all waiting in line!
Now Pei Qian understood why there were so many unfamiliar faces downstairs.
Because the familiar faces had already come up to the second floor to play, or were already in line!
Slackin’ Internet Café’s queuing system was similar to those of the Snack Market, Thriller Hotel, and other businesses. If it was full, customers could get a number at the bar, and the staff would arrange everything according to queue priority and the end time of each device’s session. There wouldn’t be situations where latecomers got lucky.
This was to ensure the best possible experience for most people, preventing situations where someone who arrived early would be jumped in line by others.
Logically, these people should have been waiting downstairs in the internet café area for their numbers to be called, but clearly, their enthusiasm for VR was so high that they preferred to stand upstairs and watch!
The equipment in the VR experience area included keyboard and mouse, headphones, a monitor, and the complete Doubt VR headset. The keyboard and mouse were fixed to a foldable table board that could be extended when in use and hung on the wall when not needed.
The monitor displayed what was being shown in the VR headset.
Of course, if players didn’t want others to see, they could choose to turn off the monitor display. But “Animal Island VR” was a cute casual game with nothing inappropriate, so there was no need to turn off the monitor.
Thus, a situation arose where one person played while two people behind them watched, and the watchers were thoroughly enjoying themselves!
The VR headset was an all-in-one device with a battery, allowing wireless play, but it could only last for a little over two hours. The original design intent was for people to play for two hours, then take a break to charge the headset and avoid excessive immersion, which could be tiring.
For home users, this made sense, since the VR headset was their own, and they could play in short bursts whenever they had free time.
But at Slackin’ Internet Café, it was different. Many people made a special trip—how could they leave after just two hours?
Of course, they wanted to play as much as possible!
However, Xiao Peng had clearly anticipated this issue and designed the VR headset’s charging/data cable to be suspended from the right wall.
This cable hung from the ceiling, so even when playing in wired mode, players didn’t have to worry about getting tangled in the cable. The experience was not much different from wireless mode.
The customers watching from behind chatted casually.
“Seeing it up close, it’s even clearer than in Qiao Laoshi’s video. This game is amazing—it can simulate all the archery movements. I can’t wait to try it.”
“I knew the VR experience area was opening today, so I rushed over as soon as the internet café opened, but I still arrived too late! Many people were already queuing before the doors opened.”
“I don’t know how much longer I’ll have to wait. It’s frustrating.”
“No worries, buddy. I’ll play for an hour at most. If the experience is good, I’ll go home and order a VR headset to play at home!”
“There are too many people here. Should we check out a Slackin’ Internet Café further away?”
“Don’t bother. They’re definitely queuing there too. Just wait here patiently.”
“It seems we can only play ‘Animal Island’ here. What about ‘Fitness Battle’?”
“There’s no smart fitness clothing rack here, so how could we play that?”
“If you want to play ‘Fitness Battle,’ you can go to the nearby Star Bird Fitness. They have a complete set of clothing racks and VR headsets.”
“Really? How do they charge?”
“They have various options—monthly, yearly, or per session. Plus, they just opened a new store nearby, so there probably aren’t many people yet.”
“Then I won’t wait in line here. With more than ten people ahead of me, who knows how long I’ll have to wait. I’ll go there to try it out first!”
The VR experience area had a constant flow of people—new customers continuously came up from downstairs to see what the VR experience area was like, while others grew impatient and left the second floor.
Pei Qian stood near the staircase, being jostled by the crowd, feeling somewhat despondent.
Normally when he visited, he often encountered people asking for his autograph, which he found annoying. But today, nobody asked for his autograph—everyone was fixated on the VR headsets, making Pei Qian feel even worse!
It was truly a sad story.
Moreover, as Pei Qian listened to these people’s discussions, he suddenly felt something was amiss.
“Star Bird Fitness? Why does that name sound so familiar?”
Pei Qian was certain he had heard this name before. As he went downstairs and ate his breakfast, he suddenly remembered.
Wasn’t this the gym he had instructed He Desheng to invest in?
Previously, when Pei Qian was buying property, he happened to meet Che Rong. Che Rong mentioned that he ran a gym that had been struggling in recent years. Things had just started improving after meeting a benefactor, so he was taking money out of his house and investing it in the gym.
When Pei Qian heard this—a struggling gym where even the owner had to sell his house to keep it afloat—wouldn’t investing some money be guaranteed to lose money?
Plus, it would be in direct competition with Tenda’s managed fitness centers, creating a perfect scenario of internal competition.
So Pei Qian had told He Desheng to secretly invest some money in this gym through Yuanmeng Venture Capital’s normal investment process.
But now… how had Star Bird Fitness become associated with “Fitness Battle”? And what was this about a complete set of clothing racks and VR headsets?
As Pei Qian ate his breakfast and pondered, he felt increasingly uneasy.
There seemed to be some hidden details he had either not noticed or ignored!
Seeing that the internet café was getting more and more crowded, Pei Qian felt that if he didn’t leave soon, he wouldn’t be able to maintain a low profile. So after finishing breakfast, he immediately got up and left.
Afterward, he pulled out a mask from his pocket and put it on, then searched for nearby Star Bird Fitness locations on the map.
It was about 2 kilometers away, while the nearest managed fitness center was nearly 3 kilometers away.
Seeing this location, Pei Qian was somewhat dissatisfied.
Why open so far from the managed fitness center? It should be closer!
It would be best if they were face-to-face.
A fitness center typically covered an area of about 3 kilometers, or maybe only 2 kilometers if competition was fierce.
After all, for customers choosing a fitness center, distance was a core factor to consider.
If it was too far, carrying bags to the gym would be exhausting before even arriving, leaving no energy or motivation for working out, making it impossible to stick with it.
This Star Bird Fitness store was five kilometers away from the managed fitness center, meaning their customer bases were essentially non-overlapping. It couldn’t compete with the managed fitness center, so there was no possibility of stealing customers or reducing the managed fitness center’s profits.
Moreover, looking at the map, Pei Qian discovered that Star Bird Fitness’s location choices seemed deliberate.
Most of their branches were all 3-4 kilometers away from managed fitness centers!
It wasn’t close enough for the fitness centers’ customer bases to overlap, but it wasn’t too far either. Jingzhou was large, and managed fitness centers couldn’t cover the entire city. Star Bird Fitness’s new stores were just far enough from managed fitness centers that explaining it as coincidence seemed somewhat suspicious.
According to the map search results, Star Bird Fitness’s largest flagship store was near Yuanda Tiandi, but like other branches, it was also some distance away from places with Tenda industries like Yuanda Tiandi and Jinsheng Plaza.
Pei Qian suddenly felt that something seemed off about this Star Bird Fitness at every turn.
He had previously thought it was just an ordinary, struggling gym, so he invested some money out of humanitarian concern.
But now it appeared the situation was definitely not as simple as he had thought!
There was no need to check on Slackin’ Internet Café anymore—the VR experience area would definitely be popular in its initial period.
Given the current level of enthusiasm, even if it eventually cooled down, that wouldn’t happen for at least another two or three months.
No point in fixating on places where he had already stumbled, but what was going on with Star Bird Fitness?
Pei Qian called Xiao Sun to drive over, deciding to visit Star Bird Fitness’s largest flagship store.
He needed to get to the bottom of Star Bird Fitness’s situation!
…
Meanwhile, the Star Bird Fitness flagship store had also officially opened.
Che Rong was extremely efficient. After receiving the news from Mr. Li, he immediately arranged for a large-scale purchase of VR headsets and had them installed in various branches as quickly as possible.
Since Doubt VR headsets had already been adapted for the smart fitness clothing racks, installation was relatively easy. Both wired and wireless connections were possible—this had been planned in advance by Shangyang Games when developing the “Fitness Battle VR Version.”
A cable could be hung down directly from near the smart module on the smart fitness clothing rack, serving both data transmission and charging functions without affecting workout movements.
When not in use, it could simply be hung to the side.
Everything was matched as a set and easy to install. Employees at various Star Bird Fitness branches worked diligently after receiving the equipment and successfully completed the installation.