Chapter Five: The Blockade That Failed

"Then we broadcast it ourselves," Qinghe said. Chenzhou circled sixteen county towns. They had no major clubs but hundreds of lottery shops, pool halls, barbecue restaurants, and campus societies that watched pirated highlights. In his former life, a small company called Wildfire Streaming captured this market and was later acquired by Hanhai for 1.2 billion. Today, Wildfire had twenty-seven employees and capacity for eighty thousand viewers. "Buy it?" Qinghe asked. "Trade our content for fifteen percent." Wildfire founder Liang Ce arrived that afternoon in a wrinkled plaid shirt. "Two million reservations against eighty thousand capacity? We collapse in ten minutes. Hanhai will make us a joke." "Don't put two million people in one room."