"I have two in my room, what's up?"
"I want to shoot a cooking video, but if I put the phone too far away, the sound won't be picked up. I'd like to borrow your microphone."
"No problem, it's in the second drawer of my bedside table. Just go ahead and take it... Oh, thanks to the fans for the gift. The doctor is going to shoot his own video, let me tell you more about this irrigation system..."
After Shiller left, Ultron continued live streaming to the fans from the field, making Shiller somewhat marvel at how the internet changes every day.
However, it still wasn't the age where everyone was endorsing products online, and the current form of live streams was still pretty simple, just starting a stream and chatting with everyone...
Wait a minute, what did Ultron just say? What was he going to introduce to the live stream audience?
Shiller always felt something was off. Weren't they supposed to be watching the daily lives of superheroes? What was this guy doing in the fields introducing an irrigation system?
Could he actually be selling products?
As Shiller entered Ultron's room, he indeed found the earphones in the drawer of the bedside table along with many other items used for streaming, including a smartphone.
Shiller sneakily turned on the phone screen. Of course, Ultron's phone was locked, and he couldn't unlock it, but a very familiar-looking message appeared on the standby screen of the phone.
Wasn't that WeChat?
Shiller had almost forgotten about this app. They don't use WeChat in America, but there are similar apps used here by different demographics.
What surprised him more was that the message sent via WeChat was in Chinese, and the sender's name was "Xu Shang-Chi."
The message read, "Stick to the 5-day plan we discussed. The money has been transferred to you. Don't forget to showcase the brand!"
Wow, Ultron was indeed selling products, even internationally.
If Shiller wasn't wrong, what Ultron was promoting was the "multi-functional field manager" previously mentioned, which was an all-in-one irrigation system that could also handle pest control and prevent other plant diseases.
Shiller thought carefully and felt that this device was more suitable for American farmers than Chinese ones.
America has large farms, and the farmers are wealthier. To improve productivity, they are willing to spend money, and the American land is quite flat, ideal for large-scale installation of such equipment.
Conversely, Chinese farmers have smaller plots, and most southern areas have complex terrains with fields on mountains, lacking conditions for large-scale farming. A single farmer might not need this, and they might be reluctant to purchase it.
Of course, some large farms in the north might find it useful, but if it were a national purchase, it might not earn much. Exporting and earning foreign money, however, was a different story.
Unlike S.H.I.E.L.D., SWORD is strictly a Chinese organization, handling various aspects in China, including business.
Yet, SWORD's approach was flexible, considering using a robot for product endorsement. A machine selling machine-related products did seem fitting, as who said products couldn't speak for themselves?
Having obtained the microphone, Shiller tested it briefly and found its sound capturing quality to be excellent. He set up his phone and started murmuring into the microphone.
The cooking process itself wasn't that interesting—just washing and chopping vegetables, then heating oil in a pan. Nonetheless, Shiller diligently commented on every step of the recipe he could think of.
While shooting the video, Shiller heard some background noise but was focused on cooking and didn't turn around to look.
Only after finishing the shooting and editing, and uploading the video, did he notice Peter, Gwen, Wanda, Jarvis, Harry, and Mary had gathered together.
"Hey, doc, is the food ready? Need any help?" Peter seemed slightly apologetic, saying, "It's always you who cooks, it really must be tough. Let me do it next time."
"No need, I've been shooting review videos of recipes. What have you guys been talking about?"
"We're planning to host a couples' night!"
"Seems like I'll be left out then."
"Not at all, Doctor! We'd love to have you if you want to come!"
"I'd rather not, tonight I promised Nick I'd go night fishing in the sea. You guys have fun, but what made you suddenly decide to do this?"
"Wanda wants to shoot a video." Peter grinned and said, "Harry brought a new board game that's been really popular in New York lately. A lot of people are playing it, so we thought we'd give it a try too."
"What is this?" Shiller curiously leaned over to look at the box placed on the table.
"Superhero Killer!"
"What?" Shiller seemed to faintly hear a Chinese phrase. He hadn't misheard, had he?
"Superhero Killer!" Peter said, "'Sha' seems to mean death."
It wasn't just him mishearing; the last syllable Peter said was in Chinese, pronounced like the Chinese character for "kill."
This brought back some unpleasant memories for Shiller.
"It's not like that at all," Harry objected. "The word 'kill' here is in Chinese, meaning to kill the opponent, which is about us killing each other."
"But how can superheroes kill each other?"
"It's not really killing," Wanda said. "Do you think Captain America dies if you kill him in a game?"
"That's not a very good message," Gwen said helplessly. "It's bad enough with Captain America, but if you were to kill Iron Man, wouldn't Tony be furious?"
"Then just don't play with him," Pikachu grumbled. "He's too stingy, always wanting to take back his moves. I refuse to play board games with him."
"So where did this come from?" Shiller asked curiously.
"I bought it in Hong Kong; it wasn't on Amazon yet at the time, but it seems to be available now," Harry said.
Shiller picked up the box and examined it closely, then finally noticed the Disney logo on the back. No wonder the image rights of these superheroes were mostly held by Disney, thanks to Nick's good work.
But he noticed that under the Disney logo there was a line of small print that read "Disney China."
"Is this imported from China?"
"Yes, it seems to be a board game product developed by Disney's Chinese division. It's not very popular in China, but it became famous in the States after a New York blogger reviewed it," Harry explained. "However, it hasn't been officially exported yet, and it could only be bought in Hong Kong. It was very hard to get, I had to pull some strings."
Shiller saw that the box had been opened, so he simply opened it himself, discovering many props and cards inside, all in simplified Chinese characters.
"Do you guys understand this?" Shiller asked.
It was no wonder he asked, as it wouldn't be strange for these people to know some Chinese due to the abundance of Mandarin bloggers on short-video apps and major streaming platforms, who attracted many foreign fans.
But speaking and reading Chinese are completely different challenges. It's normal to speak a few phrases, but recognizing characters is difficult because the pronunciation and script are not linked; one must memorize them thoroughly, taking a long time even to learn pinyin. Besides him and two robots in the room, it was unlikely anyone else could read Chinese.
"We can't understand it like this," Harry said. "But with these on, it's different."
Harry pulled out several pairs of glasses from seemingly nowhere and excitedly suggested everyone try them on.
Shiller also took a pair and put them on to try; to his astonishment, the Chinese characters were replaced by English in an instant.
Wow, translation glasses that modify and embed text?
Translation glasses had been around for some time, but the marvel of these glasses lay in their ability to 'photoshop' reality, removing the original text and replacing it with the translated language directly in its place, reacting very sensitively without any flaws.
Shiller picked up a card and vigorously shook it in front of his eyes, then turned his head around; the text didn't budge, looking as if it was actually printed on the card surface. Truly amazing.
"This is the latest product from the Osborn Group," Harry said. "I was completely in charge of it. What do you guys think?"
"Absolutely perfect," Shiller commented. "But this doesn't really seem like an Osborn Group product; it's more like something from Stark Industries."
"My Dad said the same thing; he doesn't really approve of this, but I believe it's definitely the future," Harry said. "Right now, it can only translate Earth's languages, but who knows, maybe it'll be able to translate alien languages later? And perhaps it could even be made into contact lenses?"
"There are so many different languages among aliens; if humans wanted to learn them all, it would take decades. But if we could connect to the aliens' network and wanted to watch their short videos, we'd still need to understand their languages. This would make it much simpler."
Shiller nodded in agreement, acknowledging what Harry had said. While there's a universal language in the cosmos, much like English, not everyone uses the universal language; most people still rely on translation apps.
Moreover, the Three Great Empires primarily use their own race's language, only using the universal language during formal diplomatic occasions. To truly understand their culture, one must speak their languages.
The languages of the three empires are uniquely complex; both the Skrull Empire and the Kree Empire use alphabetic systems, while the language of the Shi'ar Empire resembles Chinese, consisting of pictographic languages where each symbol holds meaning.
Furthermore, their characters have three sides that must be read in a fixed order, making reading and writing them extremely complex. Humans would need years just to learn them, posing a significant learning cost.
Previously, the mutants had even held a language course for the Shi'ar Empire language, but it ultimately fizzled out, and even a genius like Beast couldn't continue halfway through, not to mention other mutants.
What's scarier is that, similar to Chinese, the Shi'ar script also has several variants, and court etiquette is written in their ancient language. Shiller once glanced at it while visiting Professor X, and if Professor X hadn't explained, he would have thought the mutants were learning to draw symbols.
Returning to Harry's invention, while promoting interstellar diplomacy is a future consideration, it indeed makes playing games and reading comics more convenient now. However, there's not without drawbacks; different languages vary in length.
Shiller casually picked up a card featuring a Fungi Man from the New Warriors Team. Its ability was to plant spores on two random enemy heroes per turn, deducting health before each attack action (but not during defense). After three turns, the spores would turn into pathogens and begin to infect, infecting two individuals per turn, affecting both allies and enemies. Once everyone on the field was infected, the pathogens would turn into hallucinogens, causing each turn's action to involve randomly drawing a card. After one turn, a corruption card would be added to the deck, and characters drawing a corruption card would accrue a corruption value; three points of corruption would turn them into white bones.
This description was already lengthy in Chinese, meaning the font size on the card was smaller than that of other cards. But translated into English, it literally exploded. The original frame of the card couldn't contain it; the little comic of the Fungi Man included at the top was removed, replaced entirely by text.
Fungi Man, a minor character in the superhero team, had such an array of skills. Shiller was just thinking it might be a bit complicated when he noticed another card next to it.
He then realized that these cards' abilities were interconnected; not only Fungi Man could spread pathogens—any character with 'Chemist' tag could. For example, Doctor Connors, the Lizard, could transmit Lizard pathogens through biting.
Moreover, not only could he cause hallucinations, but Doctor Strange and many other characters with the 'Mage' tag could too. Characters labeled with 'Death' could even revive the 'white bones.'