茶杯狐 -CUPFOX

Chapter 188: A Lifetime of Glory (2 -in-I Big Chapter)

Sitting in his computer chair, Xiang Kun stared blankly at the discussions about “the three Baldies” on the screen, feeling utterly dejected.

He thought that his ostentatious cooking video would be soon forgotten by netizens, but then a bunch of mischievous dubbed versions emerged.

He thought these dubbed versions would quickly bore netizens who would then move on to new materials, but then they linked his previous “back view photo” and “heroism video”.

He didn’t need to read those comments or search the related topics to know what the discussions would be like.

It looked like the popularity was not going to die down anytime soon.

Luckily, he has changed quite a bit these past few months, having gone bald, so his old classmates and acquaintances generally couldn’t recognize him—even his own mother couldn’t. It would be a tall order for others.

Only very few people could discern his true identity from these photos and videos.

Otherwise, his true identity would have been dug out by now.

What now?

Well, just let it slide. After all, he had no intention of stealing the limelight.

However, a quick calculation in his mind made him come up with an idea that he thought might work. He would discuss it with You Meng come daybreak.

Xiang Kun remembered his Al assistant project. He opened an input interface that looked like a simple text editor. The only difference was that there were a few simple keys at the bottom of the text input interface. The interface had virtually no UI design to speak of. Xiang Kun entered a line of text: “Hello everyone, I’m Tang Xiaona.”

Then he hit the play button below.

Then, Tang Baona’s voice spoke the next sentence. The voice was gentle and the tone was flat, but it sounded quite natural and smooth. At first listen, there would be no sense of incongruity, let alone the idea that the words weren’t spoken by a real person.

But with Xiang Kun’s ears, he still found a lot of problems.

Although he had already built the entire framework of his “Al assistant” plan quite early – including confirming the system architecture, data structure, key algorithms, and module functions – he was still unsatisfied with what he had done with the project.

The main cores were still existing, mature schemes. All he was doing was better integration and modification.

Nevermind whether the finished product could meet his needs, just the process of implementation would require a considerable amount of time and other costs. It wasn’t something he could accomplish immediately on his own.

Moreover, after several months of strange evolution, Xiang Kun suddenly felt that his “Al assistant,” which required so much time and cost to create, should not just be “good enough.”

On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Xiang Kun had asked Tang Baona to provide voice samples for him, which she had agreed to. The sample collection was completed quite early. He had made targeted modifications to an existing open-source voice synthesis model and, after training, it successfully imitated Tang Baona’s voice.

Although he had been working on it sporadically, after more than a month, it was basically completed.

However, Xiang Kun was a bit dissatisfied with the outcome. Although the overall fluency in text reading, understanding of the context, lexical analysis, syntax analysis, and pragmatics had greatly improved compared with the original voice synthesis model…

In the big picture, it hadn’t really surpassed the current top-level standards. Whether abroad or domestically, text-reading voice synthesis Als were already doing a superb job. Some of the bottlenecks they faced, his creation also had not broken through.

That’s why Xiang Kun felt that his “Al assistant plan” was indeed a dilemma – it was tasteless, but it was a pity to discard it.

Boredly staring at the input box, Xiang Kun suddenly entered a sentence: “Xiang Kun, you’re so handsome.”

He then unchecked the option “Automatically adjust tone according to context” and chose “Gentle” from the specific tone options.

“Xiang Kun, you’re so handsome–”

Hearing Tang Baona’s voice softly and slowly saying this sentence, Xiang Kun couldn’t help but get goosebumps. He felt a little embarrassed. He thought for a moment, then changed the tone to “Angry”:

“Xiang Kun! You’re so handsome!”

Although the tone was heavy and sounded full of rage, Xiang Kun laughed because he imagined what Tang Baona would be like saying this. The

“gentleness” and the “anger” were tones he rarely heard from the real Tang Baona.

There were six specific tone options in total. After trying out each one, Xiang Kun suddenly felt that he had chosen a bit of an indecent sentence to test it.

Frustrated, he closed the window, changed his clothes, and went for a run up the hill. By now, he had already carved several paths up that small mountain.

When he came back from the “exercise”, it was already broad daylight. Although he didn’t sweat much, he had gathered a lot of dirt from running up the hill and needed a shower.

Back at his computer, seeing that the time was about right, Xiang Kun called You Meng. He knew that You Meng got up early every morning since he had to prepare food for his restaurant.

“Are you up yet? What are you doing, buying groceries?” As soon as the call connected, Xiang Kun asked.

“Up. The shop’s temporarily closed, so no grocery shopping. Why are you calling so early? Did you watch the video my wife shot for me? We filmed it according to your script.” You Meng asked curiously.

“Yeah, I saw it. We’ll talk about that later. You haven’t renovated your kitchen yet, have you?” Xiang Kun asked.

“Not yet. Director Liu said that after listening to my plan to only do rabbit meat, he could help see if we could change to a better location for a lower price. Anyway, the business in the whole commercial street is not good now, and prices are low, so we don’t need to invest money in renovation here.”

“Still, try to keep this shop, especially the kitchen. Also, don’t bother renovating the kitchen for now.”

You Meng was confused: “Didn’t you say to create some…persona or something, that it doesn’t matter about other places, but the kitchen should be clean and bright?”

“There’s been a change in plans. I’m going to let you ride a wave of popularity. Well, it’s not exactly riding; it’s our own popularity.”

The idea that Xiang Kun came up with last night was for You Meng to shoot a new video using the same kitchen as a backdrop.

They didn’t explicitly promote the relationship between You Meng and the bald guy’s cooking video either. Simply putting up You Meng’s cooking video, the idle and silly netizens, incapable of finding Xiang Kun’s real identity, would surely notice that the background of You Meng’s video is the same as that of Xiang Kun’s video, and then concentrate their attention on it — Xiang Kun didn’t believe that these silly netizens, who could even compare the back of his three bald heads, wouldn’t notice the clearly identical kitchen backgrounds.

Once netizens took notice, they would naturally feel excited about uncovering the truth. Then, the traffic and heat would naturally be drawn. They could then think of ways to “tell a story”. During this process, Xiang Kun would never appear, his identity being an ongoing “mystery”. The more mysterious he remained, the greater the curiosity of the netizens, in turn, the more focus they would put on the known clue, “Youlong Restaurant”.

As long as they manage to draw customers from the internet to the restaurant, and get them to taste their dishes, their goal would be achieved.

Ultimately, they still have to rely on the taste of the food to retain customers.

Of course, the quality of the cooking videos made by You Meng would also have to be decent. Like the one he sent to Xiang Kun last night, there was no way it could make the cut.

They chatted for a while longer, and Xiang Kun told You Meng not to change location yet. He could ask around whether any neighboring restaurants were available for sublease. Then he started to wrap up the call.

“By the way, there’s something I needed to tell you,” You Meng suddenly remembered. “The farm we visited in Chongyun Village has already been taken over by someone.”

“Oh, that can’t be helped, I’ll find another place,” Xiang Kun didn’t mind. He had actually planned to give up on that place, but he keenly noticed a sense of anticipation in You Meng’s voice, feeling that there was more to be said. As expected, You Meng snickered a couple of times and said, “Guess who took it over?”

Xiang Kun’s heart skipped a beat, he immediately said: “It wasn’t Director Liu

Caifu, was it?”

“Huh? How did you know?” It was You Meng who was taken aback this time.

Xiang Kun looked at the ceiling and sighed silently. Who else would be capable and likely to take over the piece of land in Chongyun Village and be someone he could guess, other than Deputy Director Liu Caifu of Chongyun Village?

“What is he using that land for?” While Xiang Kun had already somewhat guessed the answer, he couldn’t help asking.

“Wait till you come next time, you can ask him by yourself. He wanted to call you initially, but I told him that you are busy, and it’s better to face-to-face talk when you come to Tongshi Town. It’s actually quite simple. Director Liu still wants to invite you to Chongyun Village. He can’t forget about the blueprint you drew before. ”

Xiang Kun felt helpless, this was a pit he dug, a sin he committed. He had no choice but to accept it.

He would have to wait until he got back to Tongshi Town to see if he could “persuade” Director Liu, to lower his expectations.

After ending the call with You Meng, Xiang Kun checked the time and contacted Tang Baona, who should be on her way to work.

He sent the video filming script that he devised for “Youlong Restaurant” to Tang Baona, and briefly explained his intentions. After a few minutes, Tang Baona replied:

“The script you wrote is really good, I think it will be fun to shoot.”

So Xiang Kun sent her the finished video that You Meng and his wife shot.

Ten minutes later, Tang Baona sent a reaction GIF of an old man squinting at his phone on the subway and a row of “…I‘.

Xiang Kun sent an emoji with spread hands: “So how should we adjust it?”

“In reality, it’s normal for them to shoot this way.

Tang Baona replied with a laughing emoji.

After some discussion, Tang Baona agreed to help. However, she admitted that she wasn’t very professional and most of it was self-taught. She could only give a few suggestions on filming, but agreed to help with the editing. Her editing shouldn’t be any worse than a typical studio’s work.

Xiang Kun, of course, was grateful for this. Then he casually asked about the

Canary Wooden Carving from last time and what her grandfather thought of it.

“Actually, I initially wanted to collect it for myself. The sparkling ‘Golden Canary’ would be a perfect pet at the side of my Saber. But after I sent a photo to my grandpa, he called and claimed it. He said he’ll keep it safe this time and won’t let my second uncle see it, preventing any trouble.”

The “golden sparkle” wood carving did not go through “Emotional Infusion”, it was just under “Super Sensory Contact”, there won’t be any more glitches. If her grandpa had nightmares again, it really wouldn’t be his fault.

Tang Baona then sent a message: “By the way, didn’t you ask me to record lots of sounds to make some Al voice? How’s that coming along?”

“It’s done, I’ll send it to you when you get home. At the moment, there’s only a version for Windows 10, it hasn’t been ported to Android and IOS yet. In fact, it might not even get ported. For now, it can only read texts. You can use it to listen to books, narrated in your own voice, it has its own unique charm ha!”

After a while, Tang Baona replied: “Send it via QQ, I have arrived at the office. Send directly and I can use the computer to try it.”

“Okay.”

After replying, Xiang Kun immediately sent over the bundled software package.

But as the file got transferred, Xiang Kun abruptly widened his eyes and made an O with his mouth because he suddenly remembered that after using the software last night, he had exited directly and didn’t delete the text in the textbox. Moreover, he absurdly enabled an automatic save function for the input box. If not cleared, the text would still be there the next time…

He swiftly tried to cancel it but it was too late, the entire file had been transferred.

“I just realised, the version that I sent to you seems to have a bit of a problem, don’t run it just yet.” Before Xiang Kun could finish typing, Tang Baona already sent a message:

Even though it was just six dots without any words, Xiang Kun knew that she had seen it.

However, he also didn’t know how to respond, so he just replied with another:

A few minutes later, Tang Baona sent a panda expression with a blank face: “When I first opened it, I didn’t notice what the text was. I just clicked play, you guess what sound came out of the speaker.”

Xiang Kun sent an apologetic finger-touching emoji.

Tang Baona then sent a laughing emoji: “Sister Chen who sits not far away from me was surprised and asked me: ‘Nana, are you a fan-girl too? Who is this Xiang Kun, is he handsome?”‘

Xiang Kun was at a loss for words and replied with an emoji crying with his face covered.

Tang Baona sent an emoji of Judge Bao: “So, you used my voice for your materials, to do these things in private?”

Xiang Kun pinched his face hard. His reputation was at stake!!

This is a misunderstanding he couldn’t clear even if he jumped into the Yellow

River!!