Chapter 34 : Unfinished Business (Part 1)

The next morning, Péi Wanyi reluctantly put on the silk scarf Jiang Yanlin had lent her.

“Don’t like it?”

Jiang Yanlin leaned against the side of the sofa, holding a water glass, and glanced at her.

Seeing that Péi Wanyi didn’t speak, she laughed.
“I also have a choker I can lend you.”

Péi Wanyi looked up, meeting Jiang Yanlin’s gaze in the full-length mirror.
—So she wants to put a dog collar on her now.

Unfortunately, not today.

Péi Wanyi tied the silk scarf, straightened her sleeves, and replied casually,
“We’ll see when I get back in a couple of days.”

So the busy woman was going on another business trip.

Jiang Yanlin thought to herself but didn’t ask, just straightening up and saying dryly,
“Remember to take out the trash when you leave.”

Péi Wanyi was almost at the door when she heard this and couldn’t help but turn back.

Jiang Yanlin had just put down her glass when she was pulled over from behind.

A toothpaste-flavored kiss, its force invading her for a long time.

When Péi Wanyi let her go, she let out a soft laugh.

“Errand fee.”

The young miss never worked for free.

The sound of the main door opening and closing, the footsteps gradually fading away.

Jiang Yanlin looked away, shaking off the stray thoughts.

She sat down at her desk, opened her computer, found the latest document, and started working.

Sometimes, Jiang Yanlin was almost pathologically demanding of her work state.

Except for the less brain-intensive work of her side hustles, at other times, she needed to be in the best possible state to work.

Especially when she was working on her main job.

Although it wasn’t quite burning incense and bathing, she still needed to be in a good physical and mental environment: wash her hands and face, tidy her desk, prepare a large glass of water, find suitable music or white noise, and finally, wipe the keyboard clean before getting into the zone.

But these material factors were not what truly mattered.

When Jiang Yanlin was writing, what she needed most was a certain psychological state.

And these states were closely linked to the plot she was creating.

Purely commercial scripts had a standardized template: research the market, create a popular protagonist and CP dynamic, capture the audience’s pleasure and pain points, and then reasonably fill in the plot with twists and turns. This model was already a relatively mature assembly line process.

There were endless such templates on the market. During the time when Jiang Yanlin was most in need of money, she had also opened a side account to make quick cash. Thanks to her keen market insight and her own professional abilities and talent, she had hit the mark almost instantly and made a fortune.

But very quickly, Jiang Yanlin realized that this model was not sustainable.

Good timing is all about the right time, the right place, and the right people. When the market was not yet severely saturated and the economy had not yet been hit hard, making quick money was not that easy.

When more and more people realized the business opportunities, a large number of people from all walks of life flooded the market, dividing up the already small cake. In such fierce competition, everything was difficult.

More importantly, the moment OpenAI was born, Jiang Yanlin had already realized that the sinking market would soon be the era of artificial intelligence.

The path of making quick money could only be walked for a short period.

That year, ChatGPT was a global sensation, but Jiang Yanlin’s mood was not so great.

Han Xu had not yet officially graduated at that time. His status as an Ivy League student allowed him to directly apply for GPT-4’s API access, so Jiang Yanlin, through his identity, got to experience the internal beta of GPT-4 in advance.

A week of repeated testing convinced Jiang Yanlin that the evolution of artificial intelligence was unstoppable.

Under the simple thought-imprinting, GPT-4 could already imitate any persona set for it by humans, answering questions without any flaws.

So after the test, Jiang Yanlin did not hesitate to adjust her career direction again.

The more standardized the work, the more easily it is impacted by the development of artificial intelligence.

Jiang Yanlin spent some time slowly abandoning all template-based work. The quick-money projects were completed one by one, and her main focus shifted to fields that were difficult for artificial intelligence to replace.

That is, the fruits of human spiritual civilization that cannot be mass-produced.

Although the cultural industries around the world are facing a trend of standardization, there are still a portion of people in this world who insist on the most authentic expression.

Language, words, are the eternal cornerstone of civilization.

And stories are the past and present of humanity carved on this cornerstone.

Jiang Yanlin firmly believed that human creativity has no limits.

And it will absolutely not be completely replaced.

So she no longer took on too many new assembly-line projects. The quick money that could be earned had long been earned. Jiang Yanlin adjusted her direction and began to take on those less profitable projects bit by bit.

Connections and resumes have to be accumulated slowly, but ability is obvious in any place.

It took Jiang Yanlin a long time to get out of it, to find, bit by bit, a pure creative desire.

She knew that whenever she did something with all her might, she could definitely do it.

But after abandoning the standardized method, it changed abruptly.

A person’s inspiration and creativity are not really endless. Jiang Yanlin’s projects had tight deadlines and low budgets. When she had to do double the workload, it was impossible to have time to do anything else. “They’ll just give you a sample, and you have to copy it.”

So everyone in the industry copied each other. Today, you use my material library, and tomorrow, I’ll use yours.

We’re all just workers, getting up early and staying up late to make a living. Why be so petty?

Jiang Yanlin could understand them, but she still chose not to pay for these works.

Let’s just say she was one of the few “fools.”

When she had no inspiration or creativity, she would think of many ways, but she would never plagiarize.

Once, when they were drinking online, everyone was talking about their bizarre experiences. In the end, when they voted to choose who was the “woman with the most bizarre experiences,” Jiang Yanlin was unsurprisingly elected.

“Well-deserved, ha.”

Lin Xiaoqi teased her with a smile.

Jiang Yanlin accepted this well.

She even knew why she had become like this.

When a person, in order to write about the smell of a hospital, goes and sits outside the emergency room for an afternoon.

In order to write about the temperature of desire and s*x, pulls the curtains in broad daylight and explores herself in front of the computer.

In order to write about hatred and despair, digs up the deepest scars buried for many years and savors them repeatedly.

In order to write about the thrill of spending money like water, goes to a strange city for a week and swipes her card without blinking.

In order to write about the absolute relationship between a dominant and a submissive, spends a year raising a loyal dog.

Then even the most bizarre experiences are valuable.

Jiang Yanlin had always maintained a part of herself as a cold observer.

She looked at herself as if she were a test vessel, greedily absorbing invisible energy, and finally returning fully loaded, and then converting that energy into tangible value.

These values would leap onto the paper, pieced together into a series of silent shouts she sent out to the world.

For many years, Jiang Yanlin had written her stories with her blood and flesh.

So as long as she was alive, with blood and flesh, for one more day, her inspiration would not dry up.

But not all bizarre experiences could be used as material and written into her stories.

Li Yuncheng had once invited Jiang Yanlin to do a new talk show program on YouTube together.

Each episode would invite an acquaintance or friend as a guest, in a chat format like “The Ellen Show,” but the topics and content would not be so official, but rather full of explosive points and no limits.

Jiang Yanlin was very surprised, because this was indeed something she had thought of doing herself, just with a different talk format and platform.

She didn’t expect that the two of them could have such similar ideas in this aspect.

Later, because both of them were too busy, even after choosing the first guest, they didn’t have time to implement the plan.

Jiang Yanlin was very much looking forward to this program being made.

Because the story of the first guest was really too exciting.

Jiang Yanlin had always regretted that she couldn’t write these materials into her script—because it wouldn’t pass the review.

She could only hope that one day it could be presented in the form of a program.