To verify her guess, Jiang Ning picked up her phone and immediately typed in the search for Le Zhengling.
The mobile page flipped, and instantly, many messages about Le Zhengling and her personal homepage sprang up.
As soon as Jiang Ning saw the profile picture on the other party’s account, her guess instantly became a certainty.
No wonder one of the photos provided by the System looked so familiar to her, because that full-body shot was Le Zhengling’s account profile picture!
Le Zhengling had been all over the trending list a few days ago, and Jiang Ning had a good memory. Although she had never followed any online celebrities in the scene before, she somewhat remembered her because she had come across several trending searches about her.
Now, knowing that she was very likely the sister Qiu Yongfei had been looking for, Jiang Ning earnestly started to sift through the messages about Le Zhengling.
Le Zhengling grew up in one of the poorest villages in the western part of the country.
When she was eight years old, her father passed away due to illness, her mother packed her bags and left home, abandoning her, two younger brothers, and sisters to depend on their grandparents, along with the burden of debt accumulated for their father’s medical treatment.
The grandparents were old and could not do much farm work, and at only eight years of age, Le Zhengling not only knew how to cook by standing on stools but also had to cut pig grass on the hillside after school every day, feed pigs and cows, chickens and ducks. During the holidays, she would carry firewood on the mountains or work in the fields with her grandparents, suffering hardship at such a young age.
When she was ten, her grandfather passed away due to illness.
At the age of thirteen, the only grandmother she had also passed away, leaving only her and her still-young siblings.
In order to survive, Le Zhengling voluntarily dropped out of school, taking on the world for her siblings with her frail shoulders.
Becoming a Douyin celebrity was an accident for Le Zhengling.
She was lonely and toiled daily with farm work at home; almost everyone her age in the village was in school, and she did not have a single friend. Le Zhengling’s hardworking life went on day after day, year after year.
It wasn’t until last year that she learned about Douyin’s existence.
Le Zhengling started making Douyin videos.
At first, she didn’t make videos to become an internet celebrity but to have a place to express herself.
Le Zhengling made and posted Douyin videos every day, nearly all about her daily farming activities in the countryside.
Initially, her videos did not catch on until six months ago when an editing blogger noticed them.
This blogger was known for creating secondary content on Douyin and had some fame. After learning about Le Zhengling’s life story, the blogger felt both compassion and pity, editing some of her works overnight and posting them on their own Douyin account, pushing this little girl, who had almost grown up soaked in the bitterness, to the broader public.
Online, apart from a small handful of trigger-happy pea shooters, netizens actually have hearts softer than cotton candy. Even though they had never met her, they felt too much sympathy for Le Zhengling upon learning about her entire life story, and they flocked to her Douyin page, following her, cheering her on, and planning the future trajectory of her life.
Just like that, Le Zhengling went from a nobody with only single-digit followers to an internet sensation with tens of thousands of followers overnight.
The name Le Zhengling was the Douyin nickname she had chosen for herself, and the netizens affectionately called her Sister Lingling.
Le Zhengling continued to make videos daily, sharing her life and her two younger siblings who were still in school.