189: Chapter 189 The Scrap Metal Uncle was dumbfounded: Why is your house leaking?

On short video platforms, people had already started analyzing it with a straight face.

"Don't be fooled by the launch event. Holographic projection is essentially still projection; once the ambient light gets strong, it's bound to fail."

"The stage at the launch event was naturally dim; it's impossible to replicate that at home during the day."

"Whoever buys it will find out; it'll probably only be interesting for three days."

"14,999 for 'future technology'? I think it's 'future suckers'."

In the comment section below, there were plenty of "rational, neutral, and objective" critics.

Wang Jun had spent half the day debating people in several tech groups.

By the end of it, he actually started to feel a bit unsure himself.

He sat in the living room, looking at the fifty-inch television that he had been using for four or five years, then glanced down at the order page for Mirage.

The logistics information showed: Out for delivery. It would arrive in forty minutes.

Wang Jun stared at the page for a good while, and in the end, he closed the refund button.

"Damn it."

"I've already bought it."

"God Lu can't really be trying to scam me, right?"

Forty minutes later, the doorbell rang.

Wang Jun practically sprang off the sofa to open the door.

The delivery box wasn't very big, but it was heavy.

The outer packaging was extremely minimalist, without even any superfluous, flashy promotional slogans; there was only a clean and sharp Guanghui Technology logo.

Wang Jun carried the box into the living room, his heart beating a few beats faster.

He had originally intended to secretly test it out by himself first, but after thinking about it, he turned on his livestream instead.

The title was also very simple: [Mirage has arrived, real unboxing by an ordinary family, no hype, no hate.]

He had posted quite a bit of digital content on this account before; he didn't have many followers, but he had accumulated a few active ones.

As soon as the stream started, a crowd of people flooded in.

"Front row seats for the show."

"It's here, it's here, the first batch of victims testing it out."

"Brother Wang, remember to turn on all the lights!"

"Don't try to create a mood like the launch event; test it hard in the daytime!"

Wang Jun grinned and cursed while unboxing.

"You guys don't look like you're here to watch a review; you look like you're here to watch me pay an IQ tax."

A row of comments immediately floated across the screen:

"Correct."

"That's right."

"We're just here to watch it fail."

Wang Jun huffed.

"Fine, today I'll show you what a real man's test looks like."

He peeled away the packaging layer by layer. The Mirage console lay quietly inside.

It looked even quieter and had more texture than it did at the launch event.

It didn't have that bulky, traditional appliance feel.

Instead, it looked more like an industrial art piece that had been restrained to the extreme.

Wang Jun placed it in the center of the living room, connected the power, connected it to the internet, and bound the device.

While operating it, he followed the demands of the comments, turning on all the main lights and side lights in the living room, and even pulling open the curtains.

The natural daylight flooded in all at once. The entire living room was so bright that there wasn't a hint of mysterious ambiance left.

"Is this ruthless enough?"

"Is this environment real enough?"

The comments flooded in frantically.

"Enough."

"Very enough."

"Failure pre-ordered."

"Start it, Brother Wang."

Wang Jun took a deep breath and pressed start. The next second.

The living room gave a slight jolt. It wasn't a sound. It was a change in spatial perception that was hard to describe.

Immediately after, the wall, which had been empty and white, seemed to suddenly be infused with the colors of a soft sunset.

In the distance, the horizon unfolded bit by bit. The shimmering light of the waves spread across the floor.

The area by the window even seemed to have been rewritten into an oceanfront terrace, and the light of the setting sun extended the depth of the room itself.

Wang Jun stood where he was, stunned. He had originally thought that at most it would just be "an image on the wall." But as it turned out, this wasn't an image at all. It was as if the entire room had been transported to a different space.

The comments section went blank for a split second. The next second, it exploded.

"Holy shit?!"

"No, what is this?!"

"Is this really a projector?!"

"Brother Wang, don't just stand there, say something!"

Wang Jun opened his mouth, but it took him a long time to squeeze out a single sentence.

"I... holy shit."

This time, it really wasn't because he lacked vocabulary. It was because his brain was truly left with only those two words.

He subconsciously took two steps forward, as if wanting to confirm whether that ocean was real or fake. Of course, he couldn't touch it. But the problem was—to the naked eye, it was really there. And it wasn't flat. It had layers, it had space, it had a sense of depth.

After Wang Jun came to his senses, the first thing he did was turn the main lights up another notch. Then he walked directly over and pulled open the curtains on the other side as well.

The natural light was stronger now. But the ocean didn't disappear. Only the most extreme contrast between light and dark was weakened slightly, but the overall effect remained ridiculously stable.

The people in the livestream who had been sarcastically commenting about it "dying in the light" went silent on the spot.

Wang Jun laughed.

"Didn't you say it would be useless as soon as the lights turned on?"

"Come on, turn it up brighter and let me see."

As he spoke, his confidence grew, and he switched to a forest scene.

The next second, the seaside sunset vanished. The living room transformed directly into a wooden cabin in the forest. The sound of the wind, the shadows of the trees, the dappled spots of light, even the sense of depth in the corners of the room changed.

The small living room, originally just over ten square meters, felt like it had been forcefully stretched into an entirely different place.

Wang Jun stood where he was, suddenly turning his head to look at his fifty-inch television. A black frame. Bulky. Sticking out there. Compared to the entire space that had just been rewritten, it looked like a relic from a previous era.

The comments section started frantically egging him on.

"Brother Wang, you can sell the TV now."

"Keep it as an antique?"

"Who needs a TV anymore!"

Wang Jun stared at the TV for two seconds, disliking it more the longer he looked. Then, in front of the tens of thousands of people in the livestream, he took out his phone and made a call.

"Hello."

"Do you buy scrap?"

"I have a fifty-inch TV here, come and take it away."

The livestream went crazy with laughter.

"Holy shit, hahahaha!"

"You're actually selling it?!"

"Brother Wang, are you for real?"

Wang Jun hung up the phone, sat down on the sofa, and crossed his legs.

"Why keep it?"

"My home has already entered the future, why keep worshiping this old antique?"

Half an hour later, the scrap collecting uncle walked in carrying a snake-skin bag. But the moment he looked up, he stood frozen at the doorway.

Because at that moment, Wang Jun happened to have switched to a deep-sea scene. The entire living room was bathed in a deep blue, with schools of fish slowly swimming past the walls, and there was even light shimmering overhead, as if there really was seawater flowing above his head.

The uncle remained silent for a full three seconds before he managed to squeeze out a sentence.

"Your room... why is it leaking?"

The audience in Wang Jun's livestream exploded with laughter.

"This is legendary, hahahaha!"

"Leaking, that's hilarious!"

"Uncle: Did I walk onto the wrong set?"

"Uncle: Are you guys filming a sci-fi movie?"

"Uncle: Cultivating in secret without me?"

In the end, the fifty-inch TV was taken away by the uncle for eight hundred yuan. The moment the TV was carried out, the living room felt completely empty.

And that empty space, once the Mirage scene spread out, actually made the entire room look more complete and comfortable.

Wang Jun sat on the sofa, looking at the empty TV wall, then looking at the future-tech projection filling the room, and suddenly felt incredibly satisfied. It was a genuine satisfaction. It wasn't just the novelty of buying a new toy. It was a sense of solid reassurance that "I didn't make the wrong purchase."

He turned his head to look at the camera and grinned.

"Brothers."

"I've only got one thing to say right now."

"God Lu didn't lie."

"This thing is fucking awesome."

In the livestream, the comments completely flooded the screen. And what Wang Jun didn't know was that just as he was selling the TV to the scrap collector for eight hundred yuan, this clip of the livestream had already started spreading like wildfire online.

Furthermore, in a way that was even more grounded and devastatingly effective than last night's launch event, it violently tore through those layers of skepticism and hit pieces. However, this wasn't the beginning of Mirage truly breaking into the mainstream. Because a few hours later, another video would completely change the direction of the discussion across the entire internet.