Video and "Fat Shadow"
A crisp exclamation suddenly rang out, but it failed to make the other person in the dormitory turn around.
"SuSu, come and look at this!"
Upon hearing this, Fang Yishu, who was biting a pen and staring blankly at the "notebook" filled with strange writing in front of her, was completely interrupted from her train of thought. She had no choice but to throw the things away in annoyance and stand up.
"What's the matter?"
This is because the dormitory is a four-person mixed-grade dormitory, with a graduate student who actually spends most of her time in the university's laboratory building, and a female student of the same grade who is probably influenced by that graduate student and is determined to pursue a master's degree. She also frequently goes to the library during the day, and most of the time you can only see her at night.
At this moment, only Fang Yishu and her friend are still in the dormitory.
"I found a weird video. You've seemed quite interested in these kinds of things lately, haven't you? Come take a look!"
Seeing her best friend come over after hearing the news and lean lazily on her shoulder, Ning Yu thoughtfully tied up her hair, which might be blocking the other person's view, and then directly pulled the progress bar of the video on her laptop back to the beginning.
I glanced at it casually, and the video's title was "Soaring Through the Sky, a Peerless Master Appears in the Night!"
The buffer rotated twice more, and a somewhat blurry video started playing again from the beginning.
The footage was slightly shaky at first, but quickly stabilized, probably because the photographer was setting up the tripod. The camera angle was clearly from a high-rise balcony, with the dark silhouette of the railing in the foreground, framing a large portion of the scene.
In the distance, there are rows of residential buildings. In the twilight, the traffic on the streets and the lights of thousands of homes twinkle like stars in the deepening night.
The photographer appeared to have originally been simply filming a cityscape at night, with the camera slowly panning across the view.
--Until a barely noticeable "black dot" suddenly flashed across the upper right corner of the screen!
The camera abruptly paused, then hastily panned back. Screams could be heard from the screen, and more than one person was shouting, "What?!" "Follow the camera!" They were clearly trying to recapture that fleeting moment.
With the camera shaking violently, people anxiously urged the camera to be raised, and the remote focus seemed to be hastily adjusted, resulting in large areas of blur and distortion in the image before it finally stabilized and managed to lock onto the moving figure between the rooftops in the distance.
That's clearly a person!
A somewhat short and stout figure was running up the edge of the rooftop platform, his pace so fast that he almost left a few afterimages in the shot.
The figure suddenly leaped into the air, stretching out in mid-air and tracing a near-perfect parabola, soaring over the tens of meters of empty space below.
The wind between the buildings billowed the loose hem of her clothes, leaving a trail like a cape behind the figure.
At one point, the landscape lighting of the building opposite happened to sweep across the scene, briefly and vaguely illuminating a few glimpses of the figure soaring through the air.
The light changed too quickly to make out the more specific shape and face; all that could be discerned were the somewhat bloated limbs and the unusually coordinated movements of the body.
Upon landing, the "Fat Shadow" rolled on the spot with movements as fluid as a ball or a raccoon. Almost without pausing for a moment, it bounced up from the ground again and began to accelerate once more, running like the wind on the narrow rooftop platform. In the blink of an eye, it leaped towards a rooftop further away.
With a few leaps and bounds, the figure gradually disappeared into the distance, merging into the night until it was completely gone.
All that remained were the flickering lights and shadows on the screen, the camera lens clearly trembling slightly in the photographer's hand, and the intense, almost dreamlike arguments of the people nearby. "How is that possible? There's at least a 10 or 20 meter gap between those buildings. How did he jump over there?"
"---- Brother Yuan, was he suspended by wires, or was he wearing a paraglider?"
"----Does your wire harness go up to the roof? Where does it come down from, from the sky?"
"What stunt performer would dare to go to such lengths these days? Do you think he's the main character in Jackie Chan Adventures?!"
The incessant chatter and arguments abruptly ceased as the video went completely dark.
The progress bar has reached the end.
"So, isn't it interesting?"
Ignoring Ning Yu's beaming "self-praise" beside her, Fang Yishu simply exhaled slowly, swiped her thumb, and the comments section immediately popped up.
"Holy crap! Whose superhero has wandered out like this?!"
"Wife, come out and see God!!!"
"Location: Changlin! I lost at cards last night, and I think I caught a glimpse of it while I was smoking on the balcony! At first, I thought I was just seeing things!"
"Lord Niu must be turning in his grave! Where's the physics teacher? Don't try to steal the gym teacher's job! Save him first!"
"Regular AI probably can't achieve this level of smooth, distortion-free rendering. This CG rendering is amazing! Which company's demo is it from? Are they publicly listed?"
"Don't jump to conclusions about CG right away. I've analyzed this video, and I can't see any signs of post-production."
"I bet five cents this is hype for a new movie; waiting for the official announcement----"
The comments section below the video was packed with messages.
Most of the comments were skeptical, prioritizing entertainment, and included a wide variety of opinions, a mix of doubt and amazement, occasionally interspersed with a few serious remarks—and many more irrelevant advertisements.
The person who uploaded the video simply added an extra sentence to the title, "[Shot personally, witnessed with my own eyes. I've asked a million times, it's true! Believe it or not!]"
That was all the response they gave.
Frankly speaking, aside from a "minority," in this modern internet age where a single image is enough to start a video and the rest is entirely fabricated, most people probably just habitually treat this video as yet another carefully crafted gimmick, right?
"Indeed, this video is quite good."
After casually adding a reply to the comment asking "Are there any listed stocks?", Fang Yishu then clicked on Ning Yu's Tencent account, which was displayed in the corner, and forwarded the copied URL to her own number.
Based on her recent experience, if these videos don't attract much attention, their "survival time" will be longer.
However, once a certain level of popularity is achieved, or even if it's placed in a randomly pushed corner position like it is now, it will soon attract some kind of unseen attention and manipulation.
Sure enough, not long after she downloaded the video, she heard Ning Yu's voice again, "Where did this video go?"
Clicking back to the URL, sure enough, the news had disappeared. Even a moment later, a brief statement appeared on the video provider's account.
The account that posted the video sincerely apologized, stating that they shouldn't have uploaded it online out of a desire to show off, and expressed deep regret for misleading everyone.
The website even followed up with a message apologizing for the lax oversight of the video editing, and offering a few standard phrases such as "we will be more careful and strict in the future."
That was fast!
Fang Yishu sighed imperceptibly, not saying much more. She simply reminded her "A-Yu" to download any interesting related content if it came up, and then returned to her seat.
Everyone's very busy these days.