Chapter 213: 210: Dreams
Today, tickets for the audience were incredibly hard to come by. For Bi Fang’s debut interview show, countless people wanted to delve deeper into the life of the legendary adventurer. Even Matthew had to pull quite a few strings to finally grab these two audience tickets, dragging his friend Fitz along to watch the live show.
Fitz arrived, looking travel-worn: “My goodness, I just saw so many fans outside. They’ve blocked the entrance. They’re actually waiting for Bi Fang to come out, but the show doesn’t end until eleven o’clock.”
The show was to start at eight, meaning that the fans would be standing outside for over three hours—insane!
Matthew nodded. Bi Fang rarely appeared in public outside of livestreams; his private life was almost a blank slate to the public. This episode of Amy’s interview show had fans of the idol going absolutely wild.
The two of them discussed Bi Fang, both eager to know what questions Amy would ask and which topics everyone was curious about.
Soon enough, the television station’s Amy Interview Show started. Bi Fang appeared alongside Amy on a semicircular platform, the whole studio decked in white to focus the audience’s attention squarely on the host and guest.
The audience, looking at Bi Fang on stage, felt a sense of strangeness—as if he was somewhat different from usual, but upon closer inspection, it was indeed him.
To be camera-ready, Bi Fang had naturally groomed himself, and was dressed in a chic suit, a complete turnaround from the disheveled figure he cut during wilderness livestreams. Under the professional lighting, he seemed more dignified and overwhelmingly charismatic.
The female fans below the stage saw an even more handsome Bi Fang, with an unbeatable demeanor, and cheers and whistles were non-stop.
“Good evening, everyone! Did you all have a good Christmas holiday?” Amy greeted the audience and, as per tradition, delivered an opening monologue, promptly introducing her guest.
“It is a great honor to have with us today the greatest adventurer of our time—he has faced off alone against a black bear in the Qinling Mountains, raced with wolves in the Arctic Desert River, discovered prehistoric creatures in the desert’s heart, explored underground worlds, and recently, he piloted a hang glider and led eighteen geese across Europe, defeating poachers in the process!”
“He is a legend, an epic, our hero—Bi Fang! Maybe you are more familiar with his other nickname, which is…”
“GOD FANG!!!”
Four beams of light swept across the audience, finally focusing intensely on Bi Fang as he rose from his chair and gave a modest bow in acknowledgment.
With just a few sentences, Amy had worked the audience into a complete frenzy, heating up the atmosphere swiftly.
“God fang!”
“God fang!”
“God fang!”
The fans repeated Bi Fang’s nickname over and over, the chanting filling the space for over three minutes before Amy finally gestured with her hands for the audience to calm down, and slowly, they did.
Amy turned to Bi Fang with a smile, “It seems our audience has given you a very warm welcome. Did you expect your fans abroad to be this crazy about you? I even heard you were signing autographs for half an hour at the door and almost delayed the show.”
“That’s right,” Bi Fang nodded. He had seen his share of fans’ crazy antics before but never imagined it happening because of him, “I was prepared before coming, but I didn’t expect everyone to love my livestreams so much. Thank you, thank you all.”
If the discovery of prehistoric creatures left an impression of the name Bi Fang, then this migration of geese had made his name resound loudly.
“Wow, your English is really good. Did you have any experience abroad before?”
“I’m sorry, I haven’t. Maybe it’s because I learned it well in school.”
“Whoa, were you a top student?”
The two casually chatted about some very ordinary topics. Amy, an experienced host, used these simple questions to help Bi Fang, who was on a talk show for the first time, relax and ease his nervousness.
Once the mood was set, Amy pulled out a stack of cards and began to ask the questions she had prepared. But before she did, she added a comment.
“Actually, our team also invited Étienne, but his father, Mr. Elvan, firmly refused, the reason being that Étienne had taken too much time off for the goose migration and needed to catch up on the schoolwork he had missed. I can’t even imagine, a young hero who dares to face a lynx with a knife, sitting down under his parents’ urging to do homework with a pencil.”
The audience below let out laughter and also felt regretful, as most of them knew Bi Fang because of the goose migration and couldn’t forget the equally brave Étienne.
“That’s really too bad.”
Bi Fang couldn’t help but chuckle at the thought of Étienne doing makeup lessons under Elvan’s urging.
“Yes, otherwise the migrating duo could have been reunited on our show,” Amy said as she flipped over the first card. “As far as I know, when you first started live broadcasting, you were ridiculed by netizens for the nickname ‘god fang,’ right?”
“Yes.”
“Why was that?”
“Because they thought the nickname was too tacky.”
“Tacky?” Amy repeated the word Bi Fang had used.
Bi Fang hadn’t expected that the opening question of the show would be about this, but he answered truthfully. The reason he had chosen that nickname at the beginning was to attract as many viewers as possible. Although he was ridiculed at the time, it had achieved its effect.
With each live broadcast, Bi Fang had been forging his own godlike status, and today, when people mentioned that nickname, they no longer felt doubt at first; instead, they gradually became convinced.
The audience below gasped in surprise; they hadn’t expected Bi Fang to have such an experience, but now it seemed that the nickname ‘god fang’ was indeed deserved.
“Indeed, if I saw that nickname, I’d definitely want to go in and see what kind of skills a man who dares to use the name of a god has. It seems that the live broadcasts of ‘god fang’ were not all smooth sailing,” Amy nodded. “So, my second question is, why did you choose to live broadcast, or rather, why do you love adventuring? Is there a reason?”
The audience was also curious; they could only see Bi Fang’s thrilling adventures time after time but didn’t know what was driving him to continue.
“Well,” Bi Fang scratched his eyebrow, obviously, he couldn’t say it was because the System made him live broadcast. He had always believed there was a reason why the System chose him. If the Wilderness System had given the task to a shut-in, would he have achieved his current success?
Would they willingly take on those side quests given by the System?
A person’s success cannot be separated from help from the outside, but it’s actually one’s personal choices that truly make the decisive factor.
Bi Fang thought for a while, then said to Amy, “Let me tell you a story.”
Amy nodded.
“When I was a child, I grew up in the city. I attended a New Year’s Eve party when I was in high school. When I arrived at the venue, I saw hundreds of young people crowded together. The memory is still very vivid. There were many couples hugging each other, and someone sprayed canned beer on me.”
“But after the party, I couldn’t get a taxi for two full hours, so I walked on the streets for a long time. The blocky stores were lit with high saturation lights, and young people with tattoos on their backs were riding high-powered motorcycles under the traffic lights. They had cigarettes in their mouths, blowing smoke, and fashionably dressed girls had their legs exposed even in the cold winter, wearing stiletto heels that were at least ten centimeters tall…”
“Day after day, the surrounding skyscrapers grew toward the sky, like a dense bamboo forest, and it seemed that one day they would grow to touch the sky.”
“All of this made me very uncomfortable. I didn’t know where to go. It was that day that I found out I really didn’t know how to enjoy myself.”
Amy echoed, “Was that when you realized you didn’t fit in with city life? Or felt that this wasn’t the life you wanted?”
“Yes, it was at that time that I felt I should pursue something. Of course, I’m not saying big cities are bad. Some people are in small places but they like the bustle and glamour, and some people are in big cities but they like tranquility and nature. Everyone has their own aspirations, and that’s all very normal.”
Bi Fang leaned back in his chair, feeling that sharing his past was an interesting experience. His connection with the world had become a bit closer, and the audience below listened attentively. Nobody pursued the truthfulness of the story, because it had been many years, and the truth was no longer verifiable.
Many people think that investigating a person is easy, even to the point of finding out how many times they peed as a child, but they are mistaken. When you’re nobody, no one really cares about you, and once information is buried by time, it is much harder to know the truth.
So at this moment, Bi Fang could speak freely of his past. Who would have known that among those at the New Year’s event there was a future adventurer who would be renowned around the world?
It was from that time onwards, Bi Fang dug deep into his heart, discovering that he shouldn’t just be a nine-to-five office worker in the city, what he truly yearned for was not that.
“So, if you truly aspire, then just go for it, don’t worry too much about those who doubt you. As long as you can take care of yourself, not everyone in a big city is miserable, and not everyone in a small place is bored. It all depends on what kind of person you are.”