Chapter 112: Girls Also Smoke, Drink, and Get Perms

Wang Lin's analytical skills were not weak, but he still couldn't keep the audience.

The original seven or eight million viewers quickly plummeted to one million after Jiang Zhe went offline, and the numbers were still dropping.

"Even though Wang Lin's science popularization is decent... I can find the answers to everything you're explaining just by following Teacher Jiang's content. Sorry, I'm out."

"I really want to support you, Wang Lin; I've decided to leave my phone on the stream, but I'm going to sleep."

"Keep it up, Wang Lin; I'll come back next time."

"..."

The departing viewers had more or less encouraged Wang Lin before leaving.

Because...

Wang Lin had skill, but it wasn't even a tenth of Jiang Zhe's. He simply couldn't retain the netizens who wanted to leave.

Inside the leadership conference room, Old Zhao couldn't help but shake his head helplessly at the sight.

Wang Lin's father, Old Wang, had already arrived at the conference room from the monitoring department ahead of time.

He watched his son's science popularization content, which consisted of leftovers from the Grandfather Paradox; he had thought his kid could compete with Jiang Zhe.

But now, looking at the number of people in the stream...

Old Wang's expression was grim, and he felt very uneasy.

"Why is it like this? Is the gap between my boy and Little Jiang really that obvious?"

At this moment, Old Wang began to doubt his life choices.

To the side, Old Zhao and Old Wang exchanged a glance but said nothing.

The other leaders in the conference room also stayed for a symbolic moment before finding excuses to leave one after another.

The people's eyes are sharp. Seeing his old friends leave one by one, Old Wang realized exactly how massive the gap was between his boy and Jiang Zhe.

As the audience continued to leave, a pop-up suddenly appeared in the stream.

However, it wasn't a system-placed advertisement, but a way the backstage director had thought of to retain the audience: a forum.

As soon as this news was posted, many viewers who hadn't left yet clicked on it.

"Holy crap, finally a gathering place!"

"This should have been done long ago. I can never find anyone to discuss the content with normally."

"Quick, quick, everyone get in there and join; I want to post my thoughts and see how many people agree with the original theory I proposed."

"To be honest, ever since Jiang Zhe's mystery-solving stream appeared, those paradox rankings and paradox websites have been paralyzed; nobody goes there anymore. Having a dedicated Jiang Zhe forum now is fantastic!"

"..."

The audience was incredibly excited. Hundreds of thousands of viewers entered, becoming visitors to the forum. Some netizens with graduate student status immediately registered as members and began posting to discuss life and the world.

Posts appeared one after another, and soon hot topics emerged on the homepage list.

[Poll: What will Jiang Zhe talk about tomorrow night?]

[Reincarnation, Targeted Rebirth, Team Rebirth, and the Collective Unconscious—browsing this is definitely worth it!]

[Is quantum consciousness, i.e., the soul, really produced out of thin air by the brain? I express my doubts.]

[Analysis: The difference between 3D humans and higher-dimensional humans—you and I can all become gods!]

[Shocking: Quantum consciousness is highly likely to form its own conscious universe!]

...

On the other side.

Kyoto.

It was just ten o'clock in the evening here.

The busy streets were sparsely populated.

Winter had arrived; it was freezing, and heavy snow was falling.

This was the time when most office workers had just finished work.

On a bus heading toward the suburbs outside the Fifth Ring Road in Changping.

Groups of young men and women wearing headphones simultaneously opened their phones.

Because they had all received an unusual stream promotion at the same time.

[Unsolvable paradoxes? I have explanations for all of them. Everything you're interested in will be answered here!]

"Solving paradoxes?"

"Not interested!"

A few individuals swiped away the system's stream promotion.

Work was exhausting enough; who wanted to watch some stream about solving paradoxes?

There were plenty of people like this.

In an instant, the system's so-called 'precision targeting' was reduced by 30%.

"The host is quite handsome, though. But even if you're handsome, you can't disturb my desire to go home and sleep!"

...

Inside the subways heading toward Fengtai, Chaoyang, and Tongzhou.

Thanks to the heating in the subway, most people who had just finished work were still fairly alert.

Upon hearing the voice-broadcast pop-up advertisement, many people's eyes lit up.

"Which company came up with this delivery method? It actually bypassed my phone's firewall to give me a voice broadcast?"

"Was my phone hacked by something?"

With judgmental eyes, the passersby opened the link.

[Unsolvable paradoxes? I have explanations for all of them. Everything you're interested in will be answered here!]

They did a thorough check and found it wasn't a virus, but an advertisement from Qiandu.

The system-promoted advertisement was a condensed highlight reel of everything from the first to the fourth episode.

They began to browse.

They were skeptical at first, until they finished watching with doubt and then searched for "Jiang Zhe" on the internet.

Only then did everyone realize that this small stream and its simple science popularization had already attracted big shots from various academic schools.

"Su City, Jiang Zhe, mystery-solving stream host; Kyoto's Professor Hua Yunfeng, Professor Feng Zhiyuan, Kun City's Professor Ouyang Baili... A small mystery-solving host can actually get professors with high social status to pay attention? I'll follow him first and watch when I get home."

This sentiment was also everywhere.

However, some people seriously watched all the condensed highlights of the four episodes.

When they finished, their eyes, which were originally drooping with sleepiness, suddenly widened.

"Telepathy only occurs between mother and daughter, mother and son, or twin sisters, but not between father and son or father and daughter. So that's it—it's because the child is born from the mother's body that the [Cellular Connection] Telepathy occurs. This solution... is incredible!"

"The Ship of Theseus and Cloning... Holy cow, different continuity directly indicates that the Ship of Theseus and clones are no longer the original person. This solution was even verified by those biology professors from the University of Science and Technology. Damn, why did I only just discover this stream?"

"The Universe Cyclic Theory... I heard colleagues mention it before, but I didn't expect it was proposed by Jiang Zhe from Su City. It received high praise from Hua Yunfeng, Feng Zhiyuan, and others. Why haven't I seen this in foreign science magazines? Once this theory is published, it could totally crush many mainstream foreign cosmic models."

"This Jiang Zhe's Weibo has over 2 million followers with only 3 posts. He's been active for just over two and a half weeks and managed to rake in over 2 million followers. This level is not low. Tomorrow night at 8:00 PM, right? Got it."

"Quantum Consciousness Information, half on Earth, half in the universe... Hiss~ that's interesting. Followed, followed."

"..."

Although the number of people reached by the promotion wasn't huge, some had heard of it before.

It's just that people hadn't taken it to heart until they saw these advertisements and were baptized by the condensed highlights.

Soon, they decided to stay and become a part of the stream's audience.

The advertising effect in Kyoto was currently growing steadily.

...

At this moment, in a double-occupancy dormitory building at Tsinghua University.

Two sweet-looking female top students had just returned from running on the track.

One of the female students had the speech and mannerisms of a noble, while the other had a somewhat dashing and uninhibited masculine aura.

Both were star pupils under a highly respected mentor at the school, proficient in astronomy, geography, physics, chemistry, biology, and many other disciplines.

While others were in multi-person dorms, they were originally in single rooms; but because they were twin sisters, they decided to live together to look after each other.

"Sis, help me turn on the air conditioner, the ventilation mode."

The younger sister stood by the window, looking around, then pulled out a pack of Soft Chunghwa from her waist, shook out a cigarette, and lit it.

After turning on the AC, the older sister took out her laptop and sat on the soft bed, listening to music while nagging her sister as usual. "In Professor Zhuang's eyes, you're a good student. No matter what I say, he doesn't believe you're that kind of person. Yet in private, you smoke, drink, and get perms—you do it all. I really don't know where you learned your sense of propriety."

The younger sister turned back helplessly. "You have no idea; Professor Zhuang trains us like we're boys."

"The Six Arts of ancient gentlemen: Rites, Music, Archery, Charioteering, Calligraphy, and Mathematics—which one of those isn't something boys should learn?"

"We girls should have been learning the zither, go, calligraphy, and painting."

"But Professor Zhuang simply doesn't know them, and because he doesn't, he won't let us go find other professors to learn from. I think he's really overbearing!"

"Since he's training the two of us like boys, then we should do what boys do."

The older sister was speechless. "What exactly should boys do?"

The younger sister took a light puff, then turned back with a grin. "Smoke, drink, get perms, and find women."

"Your sexual orientation is going to change sooner or later."

"Heh, it hasn't changed yet, has it? Hehe!"

Hearing this, the older sister stopped talking, but on second thought, she nodded in silent agreement.

"Sometimes I even suspect Professor Zhuang is an ancient person reincarnated; he's nothing like us modern people."

[Ding-dong~]

A voice-broadcast advertisement sounded from the laptop.

Jiang Zhe's precision advertisement happened to be delivered to the older sister's laptop.

This sound immediately made the two girls look serious; the originally casual atmosphere instantly became solemn.

The younger sister stopped smoking and walked to the bedside to browse the video with her sister.