"Mr. Bell, you will now go to film the promotional video for your live show. The helicopter on top of the hotel is ready. My team will take you to the Florida Everglades, where alligators are rumored to be. Good luck," Mavi said to Bear with a smile.
He had barely finished speaking before Bell was completely stunned! He was still wearing a suit and was about to be taken to the Everglades?! That place was so dangerous that over 60 tourists died there every year.
"Mr. Mavi... are you saying... we're going now!?" Even Bear Grylls had moments of panic. He stared at Mavi with wide eyes, feeling that the young Russian man wasn't joking.
"That's right, now. If you feel it's too rushed, you can finish your lunch and then go. Your clothes and equipment are ready. The live stream will begin as soon as you get on the helicopter. Mr. Bell, I believe you can do it." Mavi then turned and left.
He left a table full of food as a last supper for the man at the top of the food chain.
Watching Mavi's departing back, Bear felt like crying. Compared to brown bears and leopards he'd met in the wild, his new boss was the real tough guy who "eats people without spitting out the bones."
After finishing his "last supper," Bear Grylls, with the assistance (and coercion) of Mavi's team, got on the helicopter on the hotel roof. He was headed to the Florida Everglades to meet the alligators there.
Fortunately, this shoot was just for a live stream promo and wouldn't take long. All he needed to do was create a couple of eye-catching survival scenes.
For example, to survive, Bear livestreamed himself eating maggots. The terrifying scene shocked more than 3,000 viewers.
Mavi, the mastermind behind it all, was comfortably lying in his hotel room, watching Bear "show off in his unique way." He even cheered him on with a "666."
Besides eating maggots, Bear also encountered a small alligator in the swamp, which he killed with his bare hands. The sight made viewers bow down in worship. Tips and comments poured in, making Mavi's V-ke Live even more marketable.
As a world-class tycoon, Mavi really knew how to play the game. He spent money to have Bear Grylls live stream his survival skills, and he could even earn that money back with a profit. It was a new level of spending that most people couldn't pull off.
After watching Bear's live promo, many viewers were begging for more, wanting to see the rest of Man vs. Wild. This intense live stream was also uploaded to the V-ke homepage and was watched by over 120,000 people in just three days. Of those, 45,000 gave Bear a like.
Such a high like ratio proved that survival shows were very popular with internet users. After all, everyone lived in cities surrounded by concrete and steel, lacking the opportunity to get close to nature and wild animals. Simple travel shows weren't as captivating. It was the thrilling and dangerous survival shows that kept viewers glued to their screens and entertained.
"Chairman Mavi, our daily traffic for V-ke Live is almost as high as V-ke Video's! At this rate, we should be able to surpass it in less than a month!" John, the president of V-ke, reported excitedly to Mavi.
John was extremely impressed with his boss, Mavi. The decision not to get into a price war and instead to invest in a new trend-setting live video streaming was a brilliant move.
In contrast, the video streamers who were poached by Brook and Scout companies for high prices hadn't made much of a name for themselves at their new homes. They were still using the same old tricks and hadn't brought much value to their companies.
Meanwhile, Mavi's V-ke Live was seeing not only a surge in daily traffic and ad revenue, but also a significant profit from the 50% cut of the cruise missiles tipped by tycoons. If it continued to grow like this, V-ke Live's valuation could easily exceed $1 billion.
And the influencer and entertainment effects it brought would be incalculable. Combined with Mavi's entertainment company, it would make his business complete.
While the live streaming site was thriving, the Chinese navy that Mavi had contacted also replied, saying they were very willing to visit Russia.
The purpose of the visit was, of course, the Russian nuclear submarine that Mavi had mentioned on the phone.
The Chinese navy began designing and building the Type 091 nuclear attack submarine, codenamed "Long March 1," in 1966. The submarine was launched in 1970 and entered service four years later, making China the fifth country in the world to possess a nuclear submarine.
However, since the entire process was self-developed, it was like "crossing a river by feeling for stones." The technical data of the nuclear submarine still lagged behind that of militarily advanced countries. For example, the displacement of the Type 091 attack submarine was 5,500 tons, nearly 4,000 tons less than Russia's Akula-class nuclear submarine.
By 2002, China had a total of five such attack submarines.
But eight years ago, a Chinese nuclear submarine had a standoff with a U.S. nuclear submarine in international waters. Because of its poor reconnaissance system, the Chinese submarine was outmaneuvered by the Americans.
This incident showed that the advantage of nuclear submarines lies not in their numbers, but in their core technology. China's existing "Han" class nuclear submarines and "Xia" class ballistic missile submarines were roughly equivalent to improved versions of the first-generation Soviet-Russian nuclear submarines.
So, when Mavi extended the invitation to the Chinese navy to visit and inspect a nuclear submarine in Russia, they immediately accepted. The two parties agreed to meet at the Russian Pacific Fleet base.
In his past life, Russia would rather lease nuclear submarines to India than sell them to China. This was because Russia knew that China had the ability to learn and develop related technology from their nuclear submarines, so they were always on guard.
However, Mavi, as a "Russian" who understood the situation in China very well, knew that such precautions were unnecessary. Rather than using each other, it was better to sincerely build international friendship. After all, Confucianism was the main tradition in China.
Foreigners might not understand what Confucianism is, but Mavi, who had studied the classics, understood this philosophy very well.