Are You Crazy? He’s only an Intern Lawyer?
Chapter 488 - 484 Kneeling to Beg for Food? Live Streaming is Too Dark

Chapter 488: Chapter 484 Kneeling to Beg for Food? Live Streaming is Too Dark

Wednesday, evening.

In a room of the Lin Mansion.

Zhang Wei never expected that one day he would be caught off guard with a preemptive strike.

He had planned to negotiate a settlement with the company on behalf of his client.

But his opponent had made the first move.

Now, he was put on the defensive.

However, he had also guessed that Zhu Pitte wouldn’t settle easily, so being sued was within expectations.

If there was any surprise, it was that the attorney representing them was Sun Kongwen.

The chief disciple of Fierce Tiger Hall’s Master Tang wasn’t thinking about saving his own boss but chose to battle it out in court with him instead.

Clearly, it was for revenge.

But this was not an easy vengeance to exact.

With this thought, Zhang Wei climbed the stairs to the second floor and gently knocked on the door.

Knock, knock, knock...

"What is it, what is it?"

Inside the room, Zhao Xiaoxiao had already changed into a Silly Turtle onesie and opened the door with a disgruntled face.

"Second daughter, are you resting?" Zhang Wei chuckled, his face kind.

But the sharp second daughter had already guessed that the person before her needed something.

"Spit it out, who do you want to look into?"

"Second daughter, how can you think that way? Can’t I just come to see how you are? It’s as if I can’t visit you without a reason," Zhang Wei replied with a feigned hurt tone.

"Haha!"

Zhao Xiaoxiao rolled her eyes, giving Zhang Wei a look that said, "I’ll believe you’re just visiting when hell freezes over."

"Alright, Try Flying Online, Zhu Pitte, dig up dirt on this kid for me!" Zhang Wei conceded with a sigh after being met with his "second daughter’s" reproachful gaze.

"Haha!" Another scoffing laughter.

Zhao Xiaoxiao revealed an expression as if to say, "You still think you can fool me?" and then she shut the door right in his face.

Seeing the second daughter’s reaction, Zhang Wei knew she had taken on the task, and he felt at ease.

The rest, he would leave up to time.

...

Thursday morning.

Zhang Wei got up early and opened his WeChat to find that his second daughter had sent him a document around 2 a.m.

"My, my, up all night, weren’t you?"

Touched that his second daughter had been busy for his sake until so late, Zhang Wei held a steaming bowl of century egg and lean pork congee and softly knocked on the second floor’s room door.

"Second daughter, I warmed some congee for you. Staying up late is bad for your health. Have some while it’s still hot, and then sleep a bit more. But don’t forget to clock in later, OK?"

"I got it, you’re such a nuisance..."

With sleepy eyes, Zhao Xiaoxiao finished the congee with Zhang Wei’s help and then went back to sleep.

Seeing his second daughter acting so childishly, a fatherly smile spread across Zhang Wei’s face.

Having such an adorable daughter is truly wonderful~

After breakfast and washing the dishes, Zhang Wei took the materials provided by Zhao Xiaoxiao and headed next door.

Early in the morning, he saw Luo Xiaobu already waiting at the gate of the martial arts school, pacing back and forth.

"Radish, up so early?"

"Zhang Wei!"

The moment Zhang Wei appeared, Luo Xiaobu approached him as if he’d found his savior.

"Zhang Wei, do you think Bobo and I have a chance?"

"You..." Zhang Wei carefully looked Luo Xiaobu up and down.

It must be said, the guy was actually quite handsome, of course, that was among those weighing over 250 pounds.

Her face was round and plump, her belly round and plump, and just the tonnage alone gave a sense of solidity.

"Radish, do you know who is the big boss of our law firm?"

"Of course I know, Lin Xiangtian, President Lin, the big boss of Jincheng Law Firm and the most famous lawyer in Dongfang Capital!"

Speaking of him, Luo Xiaobu’s eyes were filled with admiration and longing, as if stars were about to pop out of his eyes.

But Zhang Wei thought to himself that such a boss wasn’t really all that impressive in his eyes.

"Then you should know, our boss’s tonnage is pretty similar to yours, right? Look at him, not only does he have a wife, but he also keeps a mistress on the side, has an adorable and clumsy daughter, and an extremely annoying son, family happiness, career success..."

Luo Xiaobu nodded solemnly, but then he realized something about that statement seemed very off.

"Zhang Wei, are you trying to say that I can be as successful as President Lin of Jincheng?"

"No, I’m telling you that guy has a good dad, but you don’t!"

Luo Xiaobu: "emmm..."

In any case, Zhang Wei headed straight into the martial arts hall, and after hesitating, Luo Xiaobu followed closely behind.

Inside the martial arts hall, Zhang Xinwu was already practicing in the early morning.

However, today, there was a girl in fluffy training clothes beside her.

The two girls assumed the starting stance of martial artists.

"Throw a punch!" Following Zhang Xinwu’s delicate shout, the two girls threw punches simultaneously.

"Ha!" Zhang Xinwu and Bobo, each threw out a punch.

The difference was that when Zhang Xinwu’s punch was thrown, the air in front of her seemed to swirl with a flow of Qi.

As for Bobo, when she threw her punch, the pair on her chest trembled so much it involuntarily attracted the onlookers’ eyes.

"Radish, stop looking, we’ve got important stuff to handle. Silly little brother, what are you doing standing there in a daze, not practicing with your sister in the morning?"

Zhang Wei, with a look of disdain for wasted potential, pulled Luo Xiaobu along and poked the still daydreaming Zhang Xinyan with his finger.

Just look at you guys, lacking any resolve. Is it just because of G-cups? Are they really that attractive?

Zhang Wei muttered to himself, then remembered the days he spent with Jessica, especially her "assets."

"Hm... maybe the feel of G-cups is a bit better..."

Suppressing the wandering thoughts in his head, Zhang Wei set down a portion of the printed materials on the table in the main hall of the martial arts gym, then started organizing and looking through them.

After 40 minutes had passed, the morning practice session ended.

Zhang Xinwu’s face was calm, not showing much fluctuation in her breath, whereas Bobo, practicing martial arts for the first time, had a red face and was out of breath, with a faint sheen on her forehead from sweating.

"Sorry, Lawyer Zhang, I need to take a shower!"

"It’s okay, go ahead."

Zhang Wei waved his hand, dismissing her.

"I’ll heat the water for you!"

Upon seeing this, Zhang Xinyan quickly ran out.

"This..."

Witnessing this, Luo Xiaobu hurriedly followed, "I will help too!"

It looked like Luo Xiaobu and Zhang Xinyan were going to have a tough fight in the woodshed!

Zhang Wei didn’t care about these things, as he continued to look through the materials his second daughter had given him.

An hour passed by.

Bobo finally changed into her clothes, while Luo Xiaobu and Zhang Xinyan appeared with dust-covered faces, even their clothes bearing traces of having been ripped, each casting a somewhat resentful look at the other.

Those glares were as if they were ready to kill each other.

Without a doubt, they must have had a fierce fight in the woodshed.

Normally, with Luo Xiaobu’s skills, he would have had no chance against Zhang Xinyan, but for the goddess in his heart, Luo Xiaobu must have exceeded his usual performance.

"Cough, cough, since everyone’s here, come on over!"

Zhang Wei beckoned to the group and then began writing on a blackboard behind him.

"First, let’s talk about the current issue. At the moment, Tiger Fish Network is preparing to sue Miss Lin with the reason being a breach of the live broadcasting contract. She has repeatedly missed live broadcasts without any reasonable explanation and without the company’s knowledge, and unfortunately, this is true."

Bobo lowered her head, a look of embarrassment on her face.

"Don’t be scared, Bobo, we support you!"

Luo Xiaobu immediately cheered on his goddess.

"Yeah, we support you!" Zhang Xinyan beside her also nodded in agreement immediately.

They then exchanged a glance, their eyes full of animosity.

It seemed that over the course of these two days, the annoying little brother Zhang Xinyan had also become a fan of Bobo, which made Luo Xiaobu feel the hostility.

"Thank you..." Bobo said weakly, her voice as low as a whisper.

Zhang Wei did not care much about that and continued to speak, "The second issue is about the live broadcast contract!"

"This live broadcast contract stipulates that for three years, you must live stream under the name of ’Take You Flying Network,’ and now, you are barely into the second year of the contract. Here is your handwritten signature and your fingerprint!"

Bobo lowered her head again.

Seeing this, Luo Xiaobu was displeased.

"Zhang Wei, can you say something good for once? These are all bad news, not good at all!"

"Good news? There’s none, but a pile of bad news. That’s not right!" Zhang Xinyan chimed in from the side.

Zhang Wei looked at the two who were in cahoots and couldn’t help but want to complain internally.

It looks like you two lack education.

Maybe I should ask Simple-minded person and Sister Xiao Wu to get you two moving your muscles?

"Still on the issue of the live broadcast contract, I want to say that this contract is a trap, but live broadcasting is a nascent industry. Overall, the industry lacks standard contracts, so this contract you signed does carry legal weight. This means that ’Take You Flying’ or any company for that matter can find loopholes, and they could exploit you hosts to varying degrees with these unequal contracts."

Having said this, Zhang Wei looked at Bobo and asked, "By the way, when ’Take You Flying Network Company’ signed the contract with you, did you consider looking for another agency at the time?"

"No, when I came to Dongfang Capital, I actually wanted to be a model at first. But then I heard that you can make money online, so I thought about becoming an internet celebrity. So, I registered an account on Tiger Fish, and then the agency contacted me, and I inexplicably signed with them."

"Is that so? Did you have any doubts at the time, any questions about the contract terms?"

"No, they said this was the industry standard, that all live broadcasters sign this way. They also said they were giving me a very favorable deal. Anyway, it was Sister Li who communicated with me. She was very nice to me at the beginning and even arranged a rental house for me, so I agreed."

Upon hearing Bobo’s response, Zhang Wei indicated he understood.

So they tricked the newcomers because they didn’t understand the industry.

"Speaking of, Zhang Wei, how bad is this contract?"

Luo Xiaobu, who was trying to follow the conversation, promptly asked.

"Didn’t I tell you before? Out of 1 million in tips, she only gets 75,000," Zhang Wei pointed at Bobo, as if the number itself was indictment enough.

"1 million in tips, and she doesn’t even get 10 percent?"

"Yeah, the platform takes 50 percent, the agency takes 35 percent, the agent takes 7.5 percent, and she’s left with the remaining 7.5 percent."

"Goodness, out of 100 percent of the income, she gets less than 10 percent?"

Unable to bear it, Zhang Xinyan also piped up, "Isn’t this like begging on your knees?"

"Exactly, being an internet celebrity host is like begging on your knees."

Zhang Wei chuckled and opened a live streaming platform on his phone.

"They have to kneel not only to the live streaming platform but also to the agency and even the agent. And of course, they can’t forget the platform’s users, the real tippers."

"But even with that, how many people wish they had the chance to kneel?"

Hearing these words, Luo Xiaobu and Zhang Xinyan looked at each other.

The live broadcasting industry is too tough, isn’t it?

These agencies and platforms do nothing but still get to take so much money from the hosts?

"That’s not right, I registered on a live streaming platform before, and I didn’t sign any contract. Isn’t it better not to sign a contract?" Zhang Xinyan eagerly raised his hand to speak.

"It’s useless. Without a contract, you might not have to split with the agency, but the platform still takes half," Zhang Wei explained, opening the platform’s registration page.

"Look, if you want to register as a host on this platform, you need to agree by default to the "Live Broadcasting Contractual Terms". Remove the dozens of pages of meaningless rules, and the most important clause is the 50 percent revenue share."

"The rest is unimportant. The 50 percent revenue share is a rule established by all platforms, kinda an unwritten rule."

"As for the annoying little brother, did you have any real fans in your broadcast room aside from the bots? You didn’t even get any tips, so what does the revenue share have to do with you?"

Seeing the registration terms, Luo Xiaobu fell silent.

Hearing Zhang Wei’s last remark, Zhang Xinyan also fell silent.

You’re attacking people and now you’re attacking their hearts too!

"So, if Miss Lin didn’t sign with an agency, wouldn’t she just have to split 1 million with the platform and she could take home 500,000 herself?" Just then, Zhang Xinwu, who had been silent till now, raised her hand.

"In theory, yes, but Sister Xiao Wu, you’re oversimplifying it."

Zhang Wei couldn’t help but smile slightly and then clicked on the homepage of the live streaming platform.

"Do you see anything wrong with these featured broadcasters on the homepage?"

"What’s wrong?"

All three of them leaned in closer and saw that the homepage featured eight broadcasters, each with a viewer count exceeding several million.

"Look at their IDs!" Zhang Wei hurriedly reminded them.

The three of them quickly looked.

The eight broadcasters on the homepage each had a prefix in front of their names.

"Fantasy Guild xx, Dream Economics xx, Big Nose Entertainment xxx... Huh, and there’s an ID like take-you-high-xxx?"

"Why do these broadcasters’ IDs all have a prefix, and ones like ’take-you-high’ at that? Could these all be agencies?"

"Zhang Wei, do these prefixes make a difference?"

Faced with their questions, Zhang Wei replied with a smile, "This is the advantage of being backed by guilds and agencies. They control the resources and popularity; they can help you brush gifts and rankings."

"Take a look at the next few pages!"

Saying this, Zhang Wei started flipping through the pages one by one.

The first, second, and third pages featured broadcasters with prefix names.

Beginning with the fourth page, the broadcasters’ names became much more random, including all kinds of odd names with geographical or city names, even special characters, abstract text, and so forth.

"The ones in the back no longer have company prefixes, nor the names of guilds and agencies."

"Right, but no one watches the back pages. If you go to watch a live stream, are you going to pay attention to the people on the later pages?"

Zhang Wei spread his hands as Zhang Xinyan and Luo Xiaobu fell silent again.

"So what you’re seeing is the advantage of the agencies. They will brush a lot of gifts for you, and once there are enough gifts, the platform will promote you with pushes and banners, attracting more viewers, which will improve the broadcaster’s ranking."

"Without the support of agencies, individual broadcasters’ rankings will fall behind, with almost no traffic. Put yourself in their shoes and think about it: if you spent so much time broadcasting every day and still didn’t have any traffic or make much money, would you keep it up?"

Zhang Xinyan really wanted to raise his hand and say he had persisted, but thinking of his past, he quenched that thought.

"Then, how much money do these agencies have to spend to help these people get ranked?" Zhang Xinwu raised her hand again.

Brushing gifts certainly comes at a cost, so did it make sense for agencies to spend so much money?

"Hahaha, Sister Xiao Wu, you’re still too naive," Zhang Wei replied with a slight smile and explained, "Have you ever heard the saying, ’The gentry’s money is paid back in full, but the common folk’s money is split 70-30’?"

Zhang Xinwu and the others shook their heads; they hadn’t heard it.

"It’s simple. When agencies brush gifts for broadcasters, ordinary users will follow suit and brush gifts as well, and there are even fan club events, various top-up activities, encouraging you to support the broadcaster by brushing gifts. All these are to stimulate you to spend money."

"And the agencies, by increasing the platform’s popularity, encourage users to brush gifts. If they don’t lead the way, would those users be so active in brushing gifts? Of course not. So the cost of brushing gifts for them is almost zero. Some agencies are even part of the live streaming platform’s own ventures. Their gifts don’t cost anything, and maybe if they brush enough gifts and guide the platform’s fans to spend, they can also get a rebate from the platform!"

"Isn’t this too dark?" Upon hearing all this, Zhang Xinwu suddenly felt a deep loathing for the live broadcasting industry.

"Dark as it is, this is the unspoken rule of the live broadcasting industry."

Zhang Wei stated that this was an unavoidable situation. The internet industry was all about outdoing each other in poor practices. No one was thinking about long-term development; they just wanted to make a quick buck or enough money to retire early after a year or two. It would be odd if things were better.

The activities around live broadcasting tips, fan circles, various rebates, and agency monopolies were all black industries that had emerged from these unspoken rules.

"Oh, right, among these agencies, I think take-you-high is the worst offender," Zhang Wei remarked, pulling out a document.

"Inside the take-you-high company, the money from signed internet celebrities has all been pocketed by Zhu Pitte, who also holds back a large portion of their salaries. He says it’s to save for you, afraid you’ll spend money recklessly. In truth, he’s using part of that money for loans or to continue brushing gifts for other broadcasters in the company. In short, it’s almost impossible to get that money; maybe if he’s in a good mood, he’ll give you a portion."

Hearing all this, Luo Xiaobu and the others couldn’t hold back any longer.

"Fuck, this is too corrupt; it’s really black!"

"Zhang Wei, we must help Bobo; we can’t let that Zhu get away with this!"

"Yeah, I can’t even watch anymore; this company has really burrowed into a money hole!"

The three of them were indignant, their faces flushed with anger.

On the contrary, Zhang Wei was very calm. After all, expecting these erudite people to suddenly develop a conscience was abnormal in itself.

In a society obsessed with quick profits, where everything is oriented towards money, being kind-hearted is already an anomaly.

But this time, Zhang Wei had no intention of understanding the other side, especially since they had provoked him.

Moreover, this time, his opponent was a lawyer from Fierce Tiger Hall, and he wasn’t planning to let it slide.

This case had to be fought!