Chapter 5: The Echo in the Arena
The massive donation from "GoldenGaze" hung over Qu Tang's days like a specter, its golden glow casting long shadows in her mind. The credits were a fortress, buying her months of security and the means to significantly improve her craft, but the shroud of anonymity felt like a collar waiting to be snapped tight. She was almost certain it was Jin Chen—the flashy, grandiose nature of it reeked of his lion-like pride. It was a message as clear as if he had spoken it aloud: I see you. Your success exists because I allow it. Remember your place.
Instead of cowing her, the message ignited a fiercer, more stubborn determination. She would use their money as a weapon for her own freedom. She invested in a professional-grade audio interface that captured the subtle nuances and breathy whispers of her voice, eliminating all trace of the amateurish quality Bai Youyou had mocked. She bought a soft, halo-like light ring that flattered her features and made her seem to glow on camera, and she splurged on quality ingredients for a special cooking stream about "Mooncakes," tying the sweet pastries to a poignant story about family reunion and the Mid-Autumn Festival from her lost world.
She could feel the weight of "GoldenGaze's" unseen presence in every stream, a silent, judging audience of one. This invisible, oppressive pressure pushed her to be better, sharper, more innovative than ever before. Her next idea was born from this very need to prove herself, to stand her ground not just to her growing audience, but to that unseen, judging watcher. She needed a platform bigger than her channel.
The Beast World's entertainment sphere was not limited to small, personal streams. It had Arenas—vast virtual colosseums where streamers could host live, themed events, competing for real-time donations and subscriptions on a scale that dwarfed regular channels. The most prestigious of these was the "Starfall Arena." To win there was to be catapulted into the interstellar spotlight.
It was a colossal risk. It would put her directly under a microscope, her low-grade status, her humble origins, and her simple setup visible to a potential audience of millions. Failure would be public and humiliating, a setback she might not recover from. But success would mean massive exposure, a loyal army of supporters, and a powerful buffer against both Bai Youyou's petty schemes and her ex-husbands' disturbing interest.
After careful thought, she decided on a theme: "Echoes of the Past: A Night of Ancient Song and Story." She would perform a live, uninterrupted hour-long set, alternating between a soul-stirring song and a short, chilling horror story, all tied together with the poignant, unifying theme of memory, loss, and the echoes that linger long after the source is gone.
The day of the event, her anxiety was a live wire under her skin. She prepared meticulously, choosing a simple qipao-style dress of dark blue silk, the best garment she owned now, its elegant lines a stark contrast to the frumpy, desperate clothes of her past. She rehearsed each song, each pause in each story, until her voice was smooth as polished jade and her timing perfect. As the final countdown to her entry into the virtual Arena began, her palms were slick with sweat. She closed her eyes, placed a hand over her racing heart, and repeated her mantra: I am not the cannon fodder wife. I am Qu Tang. I have commanded stages of a hundred thousand. This is just another stage. This is my stage.
The transition was instantaneous and dizzying. The familiar, cramped confines of her pod vanished, replaced by the breathtaking, staggering scale of a digital colosseum. She stood on a central platform, a lone, small figure under a swirling cosmos of holographic nebulae and alien constellations. Countless holographic avatars of viewers filled the towering seats that stretched up into the digital heavens—beastmen of every species and class, their digital forms flickering and shifting like a vast, restless sea of stars. The sheer, immense scale was terrifying.
But as the Arena's host—a flamboyant peacock beastman with iridescent tail feathers that shimmered on the display—announced her—"Please welcome, a voice emerging from the silence, a teller of forgotten tales, the songbird of the Trench Sector... The Little Nightingale!"—a familiar, electric calm descended upon her. The spotlight found her, and the roar of the virtual crowd became a distant hum. This was her element.
She began not with a greeting, but with the clear, melodic, piercing note of a nightingale's call, a pure, organic sound that cut through the artificial space and instantly silenced the murmuring crowd. Then, without a pause, she launched into a powerful, soaring ballad about a phoenix rising from its own ashes. She poured every ounce of her own journey into it—her tragic death, her bewildering rebirth in this strange world, her constant fear, her fragile, stubborn hope. Her voice, amplified and purified by the Arena's perfect acoustics, was breathtaking, filling the vast space with raw, undeniable emotion. In the crowd, she saw avatars still, saw the first wave of donations start to flow across her display like a gentle, encouraging river.
After the song's last note faded into a respectful silence, she did not bow. Instead, she stepped closer to the edge of the stage, her image projected giant and clear for every single attendee to see.
"And now," she whispered, her voice dropping yet somehow reaching every corner of the vast Arena, amplified by the perfect silence, "a story from those same ashes. A story about the echoes we leave behind, and the whispers that answer from the darkness when the world goes quiet..."
She launched into a new, original horror tale, about a lonely, sorrowful spirit bound to an ancient, beautifully embroidered but discarded wedding dress in a dusty attic, its longing for love so potent it would trick young women into putting it on, only to never let them go, trapping them in its eternal, lonely yearning. She used the vast space of the Arena masterfully, letting her voice echo slightly in the pauses, making the audience feel the phantom rustle of silk right behind them, the chill of the attic air.
The Arena was utterly captivated. The donation chime became a constant, joyful melody, the amounts growing larger. She was winning them over. She was doing it! A fierce joy began to bloom in her chest.
Then, she saw it. A disturbance. A section of avatars in the mid-tier seats began to glitch unnaturally and spam the public chat with a coordinated, vicious wave of toxic messages. FRAUD! HER VOICE IS SYNTHESIZED! D-GRADE SCAM! SHE USES SOUND EDITORS! HER 'SOOTHING' POWER IS FAKE! IT'S A PSYCHOLOGICAL TRICK! I HEARD SHE NEARLY DESTROYED PATRIARCH LU JUE'S MENTAL SEA! SHE'S DANGEROUS! REPORT HER!
It was a vicious, well-funded, coordinated attack. Bai Youyou's work, without a doubt. The malicious comments spread like a digital plague, creating doubt and confusion. The flow of donations slowed to a nervous trickle. Qu Tang's heart plummeted into her stomach. She was losing them. Her voice faltered for a critical split second, the rhythm of her story breaking. The magical, immersive atmosphere she had so carefully built was crumbling around her, and she felt the cold grip of panic.
High in a private, luxurious virtual booth overlooking the entire Arena, a golden-winged avatar watched the disruption unfold. Jin Chen, from the command deck of his flagship, observed the malicious spam attack with a cold, rising fury. This "Little Nightingale" was his to observe, his intriguing puzzle to solve. This chaotic, vulgar interference was an affront to his senses. It was chaos attacking his meticulously ordered world.
Without a second thought, his claws, which usually directed the movements of entire battle fleets, flew over his private terminal. He activated his hidden, highest-level moderator privileges on the Arena platform—a privilege his supreme status and immense wealth afforded him. Instantly, his anonymous GoldenGaze account was adorned with the glowing, authoritative badge of an Arena Guardian.
In the public chat, his name flashed with imperial command, its text glowing with authority. [Arena Guardian GoldenGaze]:Silence. This nonsense ends now. Let the artist perform.
With a single, swift, decisive command, he purged the entire wave of spam bots and permanently banned the hundreds of accounts responsible. The chat was wiped clean in an instant. The disruption vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving behind a startled but impressed and reassured audience.
The crowd, seeing the swift and powerful intervention of a high-level Guardian, had their trust restored. Their support came back with a vengeance; the donations resumed with a renewed, explosive vigor, as if to make up for the earlier interruption.
On stage, Qu Tang saw the purge happen in real-time. She saw the name GoldenGaze flash with official, overwhelming power before the guardian badge faded and it reverted to a normal subscriber. Her breath caught in her throat. He had helped her. Why? To protect his investment? To maintain his own undisturbed observation? The reason didn't matter in that moment. It was the lifeline she desperately needed.
She took a deep, shuddering breath, and her confidence flooded back, stronger and more resilient than before. She finished the story with a devastatingly poignant and terrifying finale that left the entire Arena in a moment of stunned, awed silence before erupting into a thunderous storm of virtual applause and flashing donation alerts that nearly overwhelmed her display.
She ended her set with one last song, a gentle, ancient lullaby from her childhood, a song her mother had sung to her in another life. As her clear, heartfelt voice washed over the crowd, a single, massive donation appeared, its visual effect a brilliant supernova that overshadowed all others. [GoldenGaze] has donated 50,000 Star Credits.
It was not a gift. It was a statement. A claim. A predator marking its territory for all to see.
The event was a monumental success. Her subscriber count exploded into the tens of thousands. She was now a recognized, rising voice on the Starfall Arena. But as she logged out, the dazzling virtual world dissolving back into the stark, metallic reality of her tiny pod, she felt no euphoria, only a profound exhaustion and the chilling certainty that the web around her was growing more complex and dangerous. She had two powerful, opposing forces now invested in her destiny: a jealous female lead who wanted to destroy her, and a paranoid Beast Husband who seemed determined to own and control her. Her journey to freedom and redemption had just become a much narrower, more treacherous path lined with unseen perils.