Chapter 5: The Miraculous Pill

"Tribulation?" Caspian curled his lip.  "Those little bolts of Heaven's lightning? When they hit me, it's like an ant bite." The livestream erupted in laughter. [Melissa, your brother is hilarious. Make sure he shows up more often!] [Yeah, yeah, I wanna hear him brag.] Melissa read the live comments. She felt a little embarrassed, but the chat had never been this lively. "My brother is joking. He's been away from home for too long, so a lot of things feel unfamiliar to him," she said. "That's right. It's been ten thousand years or so. My impressions of this world are already a blur," Caspian added with a sigh. Melissa snorted a laugh.  "Come on, you look so young. How could you be ten thousand years old? Humans top out around a hundred or so. No one lives for millennia." Caspian frowned and looked her over.  "Immortals exist. Ten thousand years isn't even that long." Melissa stared at her brother, who was obsessed with cultivation, and felt both amused and helpless.  Still, curiosity pricked at her.  Where had he been in those fifteen years since he vanished?  What had he gone through?  Why did he look exactly like the teenager he had been fifteen years ago, only even more handsome?  That was the one question she could not shake. [Melissa, your brother is next level. He's already lived ten thousand years!] [Keep it coming. Melissa, don't end the stream. I love hearing your brother's BS!] [He's just like that guy at my school who's deep in his cringey teenage fantasy phase. Every day he says the world is ending, spiritual energy is coming back, and aliens will invade. You could turn his speeches into a whole book.] [Let him talk. I wanna hear him brag.] Melissa watched the live comments tick by, at a loss for words.  Still, thanks to Caspian's over-the-top, cringey teen fantasy vibe, the livestream views had been doubling these past two days.  Tips were climbing too.  If things kept up, she could pull in over $1,000 a month.  The worry was what would happen if viewers realized Caspian was fooling around and left.  She lived off streaming. Losing her audience was not an option. "If you don't believe me, I can look it up for you. The longest-lived person on record is not even one hundred and fifty." Ten thousand years was pure nonsense. She opened a search engine and typed.  The current verified record-holder had made it to one hundred and forty, still nowhere near the one hundred and fifty mark. Caspian glanced at the page and shook his head.  "They probably lived longer than one hundred and forty. You just don't know it." Back then, inside the Virtual World, he took on quite a few disciples.  They seemed to have come from the same place as he had, and they had long since returned to Earth.  If they were still alive, they should have been well past a century years old. Melissa was speechless.  Part of her wondered if Caspian's years away had messed with his head.  Every sentence out of his mouth sounded unbelievable. "I'm ending the livestream soon. If you want to look something up, just search for it. If you're stuck, I can teach you." "Fine," Caspian said with a nod. Melissa kept streaming for a little while longer, then told her viewers, "That's it for tonight. See you tomorrow." The chat did not take it well. [Just keep the stream running even if you're away. We still want to watch your brother refine pills.] [Same here. I'm pulling an all-nighter.] [Unknown Place sent one Super Rocket Gift.] [One rocket gift, don't end the stream.] Even with the temptation of that Super Rocket Gift, Melissa still did not want to keep going.  "I can't just leave it running. The platform will punish me for idling and dock my pay. My brother is home and not going anywhere. We'll continue tomorrow. Bye." She signed off and closed the streaming window.  The moment she picked up her phone, Messenger and the fan group started ringing. She checked the screen.  Her only thousand-member group had somehow filled up.  Everyone was begging her to upgrade the group to hold four thousand members.  Melissa gritted her teeth, paid for an annual membership, and upgraded her fan group to a 4,000-member group.  It shot up from 1,000 to 2,000 almost instantly.  More than a thousand people had applied to join that very night. She fiddled with things for a long while, then found the viewer who had asked for pills earlier that evening.  He had sent over his address.  Melissa looked it up and discovered it belonged to the most famous herbal shop in Jasperwood.  Rumor had it they owned the rarest medicinal stock in the city.  The venerable traditional doctor working there was so respected that even the head of Jasperwood's wealthiest family had to sit and wait his turn like everyone else.  Arrogant? Maybe. But the skill backed it up, so nobody complained. After jotting down the address, she no longer had time to manage a group chat that was blasting ninety-nine messages a second.  When she finished washing up and headed back to her room, she saw Caspian still on the sofa, studying the Pyralis brochure. "Give it a rest. Even if you stare a hole through that page, we still can't afford it." The cheapest place in Pyralis cost over eight million.  If she made over $1,000 a month, she barely had anything left after rent, tuition, living expenses, utilities, and internet.  Forget Pyralis. Even buying a regular apartment would be tough. Caspian didn't seem to register what she said.  He asked, "Melissa, do you think anyone would buy pills?" "Pills? You mean the one you gave me?" He nodded. "Yes. That one, and others." Melissa rubbed her chin, thinking.  "If the people from Millennia Pharmacy want to buy, I imagine others will too."  The viewer from Millennia Pharmacy had sent ten Super Rocket Gifts earlier.  The gift was $100 each. Ten gifts totaled to a thousand. She could take a $500 cut.  A thousand for just one pill, the viewer thought it was worth it. "If there are buyers, good. Then tomorrow, sell the pills on stream and see how it goes." Melissa stared at him, stunned.  "You're not seriously going to sell the stuff you refine, are you?"  In her mind, they were just regular pills.