49: Chapter 49: Livestream Room Rewards Flood the Screen: Rocket Effects Fill the Entire Screen

The moment Chen Wu helped Li Meng out of the octagonal cage, sparks suddenly burst from Grandpa Wang's bronze statue. The old man tremblingly put on his reading glasses and studied the jumping reward button on his phone screen for a long time. His withered finger hovered over the 'Rocket' icon for three seconds before he finally clicked it—as this virtual gift worth 1,000 yuan streaked across the screen with a golden-red flame trail, the training hall's surveillance showed the seal characters on the statue's base suddenly brighten by half a degree.

"Get Little Chen a good set of protective gear." The old man grinned at the camera with his toothless mouth, the dry tobacco pouch on his chest bobbing with his laughter. He didn't know what kind of tsunami this bullet comment attached to the reward would trigger; he only felt that the sense of proportion in Chen Wu's recent 'Mountain-Leaning Strike' had more flavor than the fists he used to fight across ten miles and eight villages in his youth.

The bullet comment section of the global live stream froze for half a second before exploding. The user with the ID 'Taiji Successor Zhou' immediately followed up with 10 rockets, the special effects casting a flowing golden light on Li Meng's pale face—Elder Zhou had just finished an IV drip in the hospital ward, and his hands were shaking so much he couldn't even enter his password smoothly, yet he completed the payment through sheer obsession. When the System broadcasted 'A reward from a certain hospital in Shanghai,' the medical staff in the VIP box noticed that the old man's heart rate had suddenly become much steadier.

"182 million online! The reward amount has broken 50 million!" The commentator's voice cracked. In his twenty years in the industry, he had seen crazy rewards at celebrity concerts, but he had never seen a scene like this: users looking like farmers sent 'Flowers' with Pinyin bullet comments, white-collar workers collectively used corporate accounts to spam 'Rockets,' and even overseas viewers specifically topped up RMB just to let foreign language blessings on the effects float past Chen Wu's figure.

The servers, which technical staff had urgently expanded, sounded an alarm again. The density of reward effects had reached a point where the match footage was barely visible, forcing the platform to activate the 'Layered Display' function—the bottom layer was a golden carpet of 'Flowers' from ordinary users, the middle layer was a web of light woven from 'Rocket' trails, and the top layer consisted of rainbow trajectories traced by 'Spaceships' from whale users. The three layers combined perfectly fused with the blue-gold color of Chen Wu's 'Qi' field.

The translation team of a certain overseas live streaming platform collectively collapsed. Bullet comments sent by Chinese viewers like 'Baji Fist yyds' and 'peace lock locked in' simply couldn't be translated literally, so they were eventually unified as 'Invincible Oriental Mysterious Power.' This clumsy translation unexpectedly triggered a craze, and foreign netizens began using 'Mysterious Power' as a synonym for rewards, hitting the Twitter trending list in just half an hour.

Just as the closing bell rang on Wall Street, James swept the analysts' reports onto the floor. This financial tycoon, known for his calmness, was roaring at his phone: "Top up another 1 million dollars! My rockets must suppress that Dubai Prince's!" On the screen, the effects of his ID 'Wolf of Wall Street' and 'Dubai Sheikh' were fighting tooth and nail, golden-red rockets and golden sports cars colliding into virtual fireworks beside the trajectory of Li Meng's 'Cloud Hands'.

His assistant's tablet showed even more staggering data: the global virtual gift consumption driven by this live stream had already exceeded the total for the entire Christmas season. Even more bizarrely, every time Chen Wu's 'Qi' flow lit up in the slow-motion footage, Wall Street gold futures would see a slight uptick, as if the financial markets were also 'rewarding' this martial arts grand event.

A satellite base station in the Brazilian rainforest suddenly overloaded. An indigenous chief poked the screen with fingers painted red, while his tribesmen behind him held spears and imitated the 'Mountain-Leaning Strike' posture. The 'Tribal Totem' effects they sent carried a sense of primitive power, creating a transoceanic resonance with Grandpa Wang's bronze statue. When news came that the System would convert the reward amounts into medical supplies, the entire tribe danced in celebration, the firelight from their spear tips reflecting the golden light from the phone screens.

In the director's office of the Tokyo Budokan, Kimura was bowing to the live stream. He had just used the tuition fees of all the students in the dojo to send 100 rockets, the effects forming the words 'I'm sorry' on the screen—this Karate Great Master, who had once declared that 'traditional martial arts are dead,' was now having his Disciples copy Chen Wu's 'Cross-Strike.' Seeing his reward effects merge with the gifts from Chinese viewers on the screen, the old man suddenly understood what his Master meant before passing away: 'Martial arts have no borders.'

A group of delivery riders in Shanghai suddenly stopped en masse outside the stadium. They lined up their electric bikes in a circle, their phone screens facing the direction of the octagonal cage, and everyone sent the delivery fees they had saved up for half a day. When 1,000 'Flower' effects bloomed simultaneously, the station manager leading them shouted at the camera: "Chen Wu let us know that even delivery guys can have a Wuxia dream!" This shout made the reporter on the scene suddenly choke up, the camera panning over the riders' oil-stained phone cases, most of which were covered in Wuxia stickers.

In the Public Welfare Foundation office at 2 AM, Lin Xue's team was cheering at the screen. Through the charity channel automatically opened by the reward System, 80 million in funds had already been targeted for donation to anti-genetic modification projects. Every donation was accompanied by a message: "Buying 'Qi' ammunition for Chen Wu," or "Giving Li Meng good medicine for his treatment." When the technicians generated a word cloud from these messages, the largest word that emerged was 'Peace.'

Applause came from the medical team's lounge. The nurses found that every time a 'Rocket' effect floated past the footage of Li Meng's ward, his heart rate monitoring became steadier. A certain medical device company suddenly contacted the hospital, willing to provide the latest rehabilitation equipment for free, on the condition that the 'peace lock' pattern be printed on the machines—this virtual totem, composed of reward effects, had now become a symbol of protection in the hearts of countless people.

Zhang Tao's interrogation surveillance suddenly captured an anomaly. When the reward comment 'Grey Shadow will surely lose' floated across the screen, this criminal who had been stubbornly resisting suddenly trembled violently, cold sweat soaking his prison uniform. The special forces members followed his gaze and discovered that the trails of all the reward effects had actually formed a 3D map of the Grey Shadow base in a surveillance blind spot—it was the collective subconscious of the global audience leaking secrets through the trajectories of virtual gifts.

The night patrol security guard at the Martial Arts Museum rubbed his eyes. The bronze sword in the display case was resonating, and in the live stream reflected on the blade, the trajectory of the reward effects was perfectly synchronized with the swaying of the sword tassel. When the 'Old Martial Artist's' 500th rocket streaked across the screen, the scabbard suddenly popped open half an inch, revealing a blade gleaming with the same blue-gold light as Chen Wu's 'Qi' flow. When the curator rushed over after receiving the call, he found that the labels of all the exhibits had an extra line of text: '2023, awakened by the rewards of 180 million people.'

Chen Wu's training hall welcomed special visitors. Over a dozen elderly people in hospital gowns entered supporting each other, the leader holding a tablet computer showing the record of their collective rewards—these retired veterans watching the stream in a nursing home had pooled their pensions to send 10 'Rockets,' with the note: 'Cleaner than our bayonets back then.' Chen Wu suddenly bowed to them, the blue-gold 'Qi' flow condensing into a small peace lock in his palm, which he gently placed in the old man's trembling hand.

When the reward amount broke 2 billion, the platform activated the 'Starlight Convergence' mode. The reward effects of the global audience formed an intercontinental river of light in virtual space; from the skyscrapers of New York to the favelas of Rio, from the Budokan in Tokyo to the old streets of Shanghai, the golden-red rockets connected end to end, eventually transforming into a giant peace lock above the stadium, enveloping the octagonal cage, the VIP boxes, and the training hall.

Tyson's overseas video call suddenly appeared in the live stream. This old boxer stood at his retirement ceremony holding his phone, with tens of thousands of boxing fans behind him. The moment he pressed the reward button, the entire venue erupted in Chinese cheers of 'Baji Fist.' "This is the ticket to a new era." Tyson's eyes turned red. "It took me twenty years to understand that a true KO isn't about knocking down your opponent, but making them better than before when they stand back up."

In Li Meng's ward, the red string of the peace lock suddenly tightened automatically. The boy was surprised to find that dense spots of light emerged on the string, each one a miniature of a reward effect. When Chen Wu pushed the door open, the light spots suddenly formed the trajectory of 'Cloud Hands,' drawing a golden arc in the air—this was a rehabilitation blessing woven for him by 180 million viewers using virtual gifts.

In the last ten minutes before the stream closed, the System popped up the global reward rankings. At the top was an anonymous user 'Martial Arts Successor' with 100 million RMB, the 'Mountain' character formed by the effects perfectly covering Chen Wu's 'Mountain-Leaning Strike'; while at the bottom was a reward from an African refugee camp, where a user with the ID 'Black-Skinned Martial Artist' sent a 0.1 yuan 'Flower,' with an attached photo showing children practicing Baji Fist on the sand with tree branches.

When the last rocket disappeared from the screen, technicians discovered a miracle: the underlying code of all the reward data was perfectly consistent with the frequency of Chen Wu's 'Qi' flow. It was as if the intentions of 180 million people worldwide, through the form of virtual gifts, had resonated with the ancient power of Baji Fist, planting a seed of Martial Arts in the digital world.

Chen Wu stood in the morning light of the training hall, the 'Qi' flow on the wooden dummy still resonating with the distant signal towers. He knew that those rockets flying across the screen would eventually dissipate, but the changes they triggered had already occurred—when a delivery rider dares to have a Wuxia dream, when children in favelas believe Kung Fu can change their destiny, when people from different countries use reward effects to exchange respect, this storm whipped up by virtual gifts has already transcended money itself, becoming a new Legacy of the martial spirit in the digital age.

And that virtual peace lock woven from 2 billion in rewards now hung in the hearts of countless people, like an inextinguishable promise: as long as there are still people willing to press the reward button for justice, for kindness, and for the light of martial arts in their hearts, there will always be light in this world.