Before the teams depart to their level areas, the livestream officially began.
The ‘Yu Yu’s flooded in. Not only did Shao Yuye rush back overnight, the screen was filled with jokes.
[I’m dying, Brother Ye is too dedicated, rushing back overnight just to sleep in the big bed (not that)!]
[Hahaha, he spent 1000 tokens after all. Of course he’d come sleep or else it’d be a loss!]
At the same time, the director team announced new rules.
Starting today, there would be no more extra room-grabbing games. From now on, room selection would be based entirely on each day’s challenge count, from highest to lowest.
This was extremely advantageous for Shen Wanwan’s team.
With Shao Yuye around, they didn’t need to worry about their progress in the challenge at all.
He was ferociously strong all by himself.
Next came everyone’s favorite moment, the pre-game declarations.
Having learned from previous mistakes, Zhang Yiran’s team had already decided to keep a low-profile and behave. In short, they could offend anyone except Shen Wanwan.
He was much more low-key this time.
“Everyone, please go easy on us. Let’s compete peacefully!”
Su Tingxuan’s team, on the other hand, was begging for survival. “Please let us live… we’re already in last place…”
Meanwhile, as yesterday’s first-place team, Qi Luozhou’s group stood proud. He fixed his eyes on Shao Yuye as if he wanted to say something, but in the end said nothing at all, just gave a slight shake of his head.
Even though he didn’t say a word, it somehow came across as even more sarcastic than actually saying something!
[Help, is God Zhou provoking him??]
[Hahahahaha no, I feel like he wants to provoke but remembered Shao Yuye’s temper and backed off…]
[It’s over, Shao Yuye is visibly bristling!]
On screen, the competitive streak Shao Yuye had finally calmed down after a nap instantly reignited—
Damn it!
He made a hand gesture at Qi Luozhou.
“You. Just. Wait.”
The barrage burst into laughter.
[It’s time for the beloved arch-nemesis segment again!]
[Director team, have you really not considered putting Brother Ye and God Zhou on the same team?? Hahaha!]
[No no, don’t put them together. Keep them as two teams competing everywhere they go. It would be so entertaining!]
Shao Yuye was very angry.
And the consequences were very serious.
Since he couldn’t beat Qi Luozhou at cards, he still had a chance during the competition.
As soon as the contest started, he launched the first attack and threw several debuff cards at Qi Luozhou’s team.
Jiang Yuan had noticed earlier that Shao Yuye seemed unusually irritable today.
After taking so many debuffs at once, he was a little stunned and turned to Qi Luozhou.
“Did you piss him off yesterday?”
Jiang Rong looked proud.
“God Zhou won five card rounds in a row against Brother Ye and flicked him on the forehead five times!”
Jiang Yuan : ???
Barrage :
[???]
[What did we miss last night?!]
[Director team, be kind! Hurry up and show us last night’s footage!!!]
On the other side, Su Tingxuan was whispering to Jin Xiaoyu and Ye Tian, “How about… we don’t play today.”
Jin Xiaoyu blinked. “What do you mean?”
Su Tingxuan said, “Since Shen Wanwan’s little vegetable garden makes money, and we can’t beat them anyway, we might as well lie flat. At least we won’t have to pay for meals, and we won’t need to borrow money from Bai Ling.”
Jin Xiaoyu was unhappy.
“I originally didn’t have to borrow at all.”
It was all because of Su Tingxuan’s stupid idea last time, to let Bai Ling replace her, that caused her so much misery.
Su Tingxuan gave an awkward smile, “It’s just a variety show, don’t take it to heart, Xiaoyu.”
Then he explained his plan again.
“We can just copy Shen Wanwan’s setup. Not only will we save on meals, but we can sell to others too.
“Can anyone cook?”
Ye Tian raised his hand, “I can. But it won’t taste as good as Lin Kexin’s.”
“That’s fine. We’ll just set a cheaper price.” Su Tingxuan rubbed his chin and grinned. “We need to counterattack!”
Jin Xiaoyu originally didn’t want to entertain his idea at all, but now she was wavering.
Yesterday’s Shen Wanwan…
Was just too impressive.
They didn’t need that level of spotlight, they just wanted to earn a little money.
“…Alright.”
With the new guest around, she happily played with Ye Tian all day.
By evening’s tally, Shao Yuye’s group naturally took first place, Qi Luozhou’s team came second, and Bai Ling’s team third.
Su Tingxuan’s group got exactly what they wanted, the vegetable garden courtyard.
Just as they were excitedly preparing to imitate Shen Wanwan and get to work, the director team collected a fee from them.
“You can use all the ingredients freely. Just pay 200 Speed Tokens per day.”
Su Tingxuan froze, “Didn’t we not need to pay yesterday?”
That was the original plan.
They were the last-place group and probably wouldn’t earn many tokens anyway. At least they could be self-sufficient and not have to buy meals.
But the problem was…
Once the garden fell into Shen Wanwan’s hands, it got completely broken by her genius exploitation!!!
To prevent anyone from mimicking her too crazily, the director had no choice but to painfully remove the self-sufficient function of the garden.
Which unfortunately made Jin Xiaoyu’s team the tragic next-in-line.
The director said tactfully, “Yesterday was the first day, just test-running. Today we officially start charging.”
The announcement struck like thunder. Jin Xiaoyu looked at the mosquitoes filling the air, the livestock penned up making miserable noises, and when the wind blew, even a faint smell of chicken droppings drifted over…
She tried to endure it, but failed—collapsing completely.
Teaming up with someone like Su Tingxuan… she might as well have been eliminated instead!
The barrage also started scolding Su Tingxuan.
[Su Tingxuan is so annoying!]
[Honestly, I don’t know why someone like him is even kept on the show.]
[He’s useless and causes trouble! One-man petition: Su Tingxuan get out of the program!]
[+10086!]
…
Shen Wanwan checked into the luxurious scenic villa again. Leaning against the railing on the third floor, she enjoyed the scenery in absolute comfort.
At this moment, 001 suddenly said, {Eh, did you notice! The light on the female lead seems to have dimmed a little.}
Reminded by the little light orb, her gaze finally fell on Bai Ling, who was walking through the field ridge not far away.
Compared to the dazzling glow when they first met, the light around Bai Ling had dimmed quite a lot.
001 analyzed reasonably, {The show has already aired three episodes, but the male lead still hasn’t gotten into any ambiguous phase with the female lead, your brother hasn’t suffered any cyber-bullying, Bai Ling has had no chance to approach… as for the third male lead, Su Tingxuan…}
001 paused, then suddenly cried out in shock:
{It seems Su Tingxuan has already lost his third male lead halo!
{Right now the whole internet is cursing him. A man like that is not worthy of being an important figure around the heroine!}
Shen Wanwan lazily let out a sound in response and listlessly averted her eyes.
“I haven’t even started targeting her yet.”
So much for the so-called female lead’s aura, nothing special after all.
001 wanted to refute that.
But after thinking about it, it really wasn’t wrong.
Ever since discovering that all the female lead’s goodness and purity came from people willingly sacrificing for her, 001 didn’t like the heroine as much anymore.
It gently nuzzled Shen Wanwan’s neck.
{As long as you’re fine, I’m relieved!}
The smile at Shen Wanwan’s lips instantly vanished; she straightened seriously in a second.
She stood up straight, and as the sunset faded, she softly answered, “Okay.”
Not only did she need to be fine.
Her brother needed to be fine as well.
Shao Yuye finally managed to win back one round in the afternoon.
But unfortunately, no matter how many level he cleared, he still couldn’t go around flicking the foreheads of the losers one by one. His brute force had nowhere to be used properly.
So much so that when Brother Li called to tell him he passed the first round of last time’s audition, he didn’t feel even a hint of excitement.
He collapsed onto the soft, large bed, his mind full of thoughts on how to get revenge on Qi Luozhou.
His phone was on speaker, tossed to the side. Brother Li was buzzing on the other end, excited:
“I knew Zhang Zhifeng wanted to use you!
“Looks like my judgment last time was right, Zhang Zhifeng has his eye on you!
“After this variety show ends, I’ll sign you up for an acting class, okay? Go polish yourself for a few days, I guarantee you’ll stand out in the second round!”
Shao Yuye stared at the ceiling. After listening to Brother Li’s babbling, his thoughts were finally pulled away from Qi Luozhou and back to the phone call.
On the other side, Brother Li was full of fighting spirit:
“Great! We’ll soon be taking our first step toward your transformation!”
Shao Yuye actually had little interest in this ‘transformation.’ If he could…
He wanted to be an idol for life.
“Why are you so anxious? I’m not planning on dating anyone anyway. Being the fans’ forever baby sounds pretty good…”
Brother Li only treated this as him being ‘too young, too naive’.
“Ah Ye, fans are very realistic.”
He didn’t say the rest.
Did fans really like his performances and skills?
Well, that was part of it, but the most important thing was…
This face!
When youth fades, when no collagen is left, when time takes everything… how many of the ‘Yu Yu’s who now claim they’ll support him forever will truly still be around?
Brother Li had been in the industry for many years.
He had seen far too many examples of this.
After hanging up, he happily started planning the future.
If Shao Yuye could use <Last Shot> to successfully transform, that would be best. With his current fanbase and box-office pull, who knew? He might even snag some kind of newcomer award…
The more Brother Li imagined, the more excited he became. Happiness felt right within reach!
Before bed, he habitually searched Shao Yuye’s name across major platforms to monitor online trends.
He also checked that Little Red Book account named Jiajia, which belongs to Shao Yuye’s stepsister. Fortunately, she hadn’t shown any signs of jumping out to cause trouble recently.
Brother Li let out a long breath.
He was just about to turn off the lights.
A sudden push notification popped into his view—
[Shocking! No father or mother?! All these years everyone has been fooled by Shao Yuye! Top idol Shao Yuye’s background exposed: Son of Hongyuan Group’s CEO, suspected of faking his audition resume to gain sympathy!!]