Chapter 17 – Forum Moderator’s Recommendation

While Lu Chen was in his humble underground abode, he was chatting with his fans in the Feiton chat room. 10 kilometers away, in Science and Engineering Dormitory Room 307, Wangyu was currently patrolling his “territory”.

It was already the middle of the night, and the dormitory lights had long been switched off. In the dark room, there was only the light from the laptop screen that barely lit up the surrounding area around the desk.

Wangyu’s slim face looked pale under the light. His messy hair indicated that he was the type of person who did not take care of himself. However, the eyes behind his spectacles was full of energy, without a trace of weariness.

He skillfully operated the mouse in his left hand as he used the computer.

Wangyu was extremely passionate about his work as the moderator of Bei Hai forum; which he did during his spare time. Even during middle of the night, he was earnestly managing his own discussion forum board, using the moderator’s authority to remove all illegal posts, while simultaneously dealing with disputes between members.

Bei Hai City Forum, also known as the Bei Hai Universities Forum, has 20 years of history. It is a well known BBS ¹ used by many universities which has gathered a large number of users among the university students in the capital. The popularity of the forum had always been very high.

There were numerous discussion boards within the Bei Hai City Forum including dozens of sub-forums from different universities and other sub-forums like the [International News], [Hot Topics], [Lifestyle], [Free World] sub-forums.

Wangyu was one of the three moderators of the [Free World] sub-forum – a popular discussion forum where members talk about anything and everything. Many members liked to share stories of their studies, their lives, their vacations, even their relationships, and often included pictures or videos in their posts.

There were many crooks among the members of forums. As the popularity of the discussion board increased, so did the amount of problems that occurred. These problems ranged from advertisements, intermediary agents, and promotions. Endless amounts of problematic posts would appear and require a moderator’s discerning eyes to discover and remove to preserve the harmonious atmosphere of the discussion board.

Wangyu skillfully removed two advertisment posts, banning both of the accounts. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw that the time displayed in the bottom left corner of his screen was 1:50 AM.

It was already almost 2 AM!

He couldn’t help but yawn, feeling a trace of weariness. He prepared to shut down the computer and sleep.

You can’t stage a revolution without a healthy body! Staying up late too often harms the body.

Just then, his right hand’s index finger unconsciously twitched, causing the mouse wheel to turn half a revolution, and, subsequently, the page on the screen to scroll down. A post soon appeared on his screen.

[I found a handsome guy tonight at Reed Lake with an amazing song!]

The post had a very long title and it was published at 8:15 PM. The account name was Minnie Baby. Looking at the title and ID, there was a high chance the member was female. However, this had no effect on the popularity of the post as the number of clicks only reached slightly more than 100 and had a meager 15 replies.

Unpopular posts like this were numerous within the Bei Hai Forum. Just use the [Free World] sub-forum as an example. Tens, even hundreds, of new posts could be posted within a single minute during peak periods. Without a sensational caption or continuous comments, these posts would not exist for more than a few seconds on the forum.

Out of curiosity, Wangyu opened this post.

The content within the post was extremely simple — only a 3 minutes and 25 seconds long video was attached.

Handsome guy? Nice song?

Wangyu snickered disdainfully and clicked on the video.

He decided to finish watching this video before he headed to bed. If it was one of those promotion posts, it would naturally be removed immediately!

After starting the video, the sound of guitar and a voice immediately poured out the computer’s loudspeaker.

Wangyu jumped in fright and quickly paused the video, guiltily looking at his roommate who had already gone to bed. He plugged in his headphones that he wasn’t very fond of and pressed play again.

The video was recorded on a phone camera with the location clearly stated in the title of the post.

It was obvious that the videographer was secretly recording from the way that the lens were sneakily swaying about and the poor audio quality.

Wangyu can be considered experienced and knowledgeable. He knew that many “secret” recordings were prepared beforehand to hype something up. However, this video clip was clearly not prearranged and the surrounding was extremely authentic.

The content of the video was a young man performing on stage at a bar, wearing a blue T-shirt with jeans. While the appearance of him hugging the guitar was indeed a little handsome, it was not enough to shock the whole world.

What had truly moved Wangyu was Lu Chen’s voice.

“… You have always been careful. Asking to lend my eraser, you unexpectedly told me that you liked being with me…”

The clear, clean voice with a trace of nostalgia made viewers sentimental and regretful, unconsciously stirring up their feelings. Instantly, numerous past events surfaced in his mind.

Despite only hearing a small segment, Wangyu had been hooked.

He thought of his junior high school deskmate — her delicate, pretty appearance and shy personality. She had been harassed by him, but she had never made a big deal of it. The girl who he had long forgotten had also said that she liked to be with him…

However, Wangyu, at that time, did not understand a maiden’s heart.

The current him is still a single dog!

The 3 minutes 25 seconds long video quickly ended, but Wangyu instantly replayed the video.

He listened to it over and over again.

Repeating the song five times, Wangyu was still unsatisfied since the version he heard was not complete. He opened the search engine and used a sentence of the lyrics to do a keyword search.

What Wangyu didn’t expect was that he could not find any similar songs on the internet!

Could this be an original song?

Wangyu didn’t want to believe it, but the irrefutable facts were placed in front of him. The poster also did not leave any other clues, not even a song name.

Likewise, the replies were sparse and they were mostly comments like, “this song is good”, “which bar is that?”, “he’s so handsome!”, and so on. There wasn’t any hints to what he was looking for.

After thinking for awhile, he replied to the post. “This song is really good, let me recommend it to the others. By the way, I would like to ask what the song name is from the original poster. Thank you!”

Using the authority as a forum moderator, he added a trophy on the post.

Hesitating for a moment, he subsequently added the Moderator’s Recommendation Medal.

When posts on the forum receives a Moderator’s Recommendation Medal, it would automatically be pinned at the top of the forum for everyone scrolling through the forum for 24 hours.

Such high-ranked medals weren’t unlimited and Wangyu’s authority limit was 10. What this meant was that Wangyu could only award the Moderator’s Recommendation Medal to 10 different posts per month.

More importantly, once a post was pinned, the post would be judged by a countless amount of people.

Therefore, moderators who cherish their reputation would never give out their Moderator Recommendation Medals easily.

Wangyu did not regret his actions.

He watched the video a final time, then, silently closed his computer and went to bed.

As the night deepened, he tossed and turned restlessly.

….

Monday morning, the sky was gloomy and tiny droplets of rain fluttered about.

As always, Lu Chen woke up early. After swiftly washing up, he changed into the sports attire he bought recently and left his house for his morning jog.

Ever since he left school and came to the capital alone, he had never done any physical exercise. The reason being that he lacked the time and money.

The proverbial scholarly poor and martial rich — in order to have a good physique, ensuring adequate nutrition was important. Eating and drinking well enables the person to develop a strong and powerful body. Otherwise, it would just be a futile effort.

Lu Chen usually worked two part-time jobs; he didn’t even have enough time to rest. Coupled with his un-nutritious meals of instant noodles, it was nearly impossible for him to train his body.

However his current situation was totally different. He had a new goal in life and ambitions for the future.

In order for him to achieve his goals and ambitions, just having a strong body was not enough!

Welcoming the drizzle that hit his face, Lu Chen jogged along the riverbank until he reached a small park.

He was warmed up from his running. Relying on his memories, he started to do some stretching for his bones and muscles.

The bone structure of the 22 years old Lu Chen was already fixed, and his muscles lacked the necessary elasticity and toughness. It was basically an impossible task to complete the exercises within his memories.

Just a few simple exercise already made him feel as if there were countless ants moving about his whole body, biting him. It was so difficult to bear that he had wanted to lie on the ground to rest immediately.

However, Lu Chen managed to persevere on.

There’s this old saying, no pain, no gain, and no one’s success was simple. Even if he had the treasure trove from his dreams, he was not willing to become wasteful trash that only relied on his treasure trove.

Gritting his teeth, Lu Chen toughened up his bones and pushed onward with all of his energy!

Lu Chen followed a pattern, completing sets of exercise while sweat soaked his clothing. His limbs gradually became numb as time went on. He ignored the strange gazes directed at him and persevered on in the midst of a slight drizzle.

After finishing his workout, it felt as if his body didn’t belong to him, and he wanted to just drop dead on the ground. However, he was unable to immediately rest as he had to relieve the weariness in his limbs by taking a walk.

Without a strong willpower, it was impossible to persevere on.

Looking at a few years back, when Lu Chen’s family was still well off, Lu Chen would have never tortured himself like this.

His father’s death and the hardships of life brought out his newfound tenacity. Lu Chen did not bow down to fate, resulting in him being more mature than others of his age and knowing how to cherish the opportunities given to him.

This training regime naturally came from MoRan’s memories. Within the dream, MoRan was an actor that had good acting skills and talents, but had always been a supporting actor for others.

Moran’s memories revealed to Lu Chen that, if he is able to persevere on and follow this training regime, his body would become more nimble and powerful and be able to complete actions others couldn’t.

Lu Chen firmly believed in this.

His originally heavy pace gradually became lighter, and a trace of comfortable heat spread through his limbs. This was the effect of a workout on the muscles and bones, and he started to increase his pace while jogging.

However, the direction he was jogging towards was not his home but, rather, his morning part-time job.

He was going to resign.

1. BBS (Bulletin Board System) is basically internet forums and discussion boards