The production team couldn’t find Wen Zhenghan for half a day, and they also discovered a Jeep missing from outside the inn. They were so frightened they nearly called the police on the spot.
If this were in China, it wouldn’t matter, but this was overseas. If something happened to the Film Emperor, the entire show team couldn’t afford the consequences!
Fortunately, before long, the sound of a car returning finally came from outside.
The director hurried out to greet him.
Wen Zhenghan pointed at the plastic bag in his hand and said, “Went to buy something.”
The director thought he had irritated the Film Emperor by not withdrawing the cameraman earlier. He didn’t dare ask anything and quickly smiled: “It’s fine, it’s fine.”
Wen Zhenghan went straight upstairs.
Although he said he was buying something, who in the production team couldn’t see that his mood was extremely dark?
It didn’t look like he went out shopping at all, but rather like he went out to blow in the cold wind just to calm down.
Fortunately, the livestream had already ended long ago. Otherwise, if the audience saw Wen Zhenghan’s expression, his fans would be shocked out of their minds.
The Film Emperor’s brows and eyes were gloomy and cold, not even half related to his usual gentle and refined demeanor.
Wen Zhenghan returned to the inn by taking the outside stairs, deliberately avoiding the other guests.
His mood was terrible, and it was best if he didn’t see Chu Wei’s punchable curly-haired puppy face.
Otherwise, he couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t do something that would break his public persona.
Chu Wei, holding a can of beer, still hadn’t gone upstairs. He was purely waiting to gloat and wanted to block Wen Zhenghan on his way back.
Who knew that after waiting forever, a door-closing sound came directly from upstairs.
Chu Wei turned his head in shock.
D*mn! He actually took another route to go back to his room?!
Coward!
The production team had long gotten used to the undercurrents between the guests.
After all, it was a dating show. If there were no undercurrents, it would flop.
Originally, tonight they had prepared a bonfire chat event, with topics like “Talk about your first love,” “Which opposite-sex guest here do you think is interested in you,” and other bamboo-shoot-stealing questions.
But seeing how the Film Emperor and Chu Wei were already openly and secretly fighting during dinner, continuing would probably lead to actual physical conflict.
So they temporarily canceled tonight’s activity.
A staff member held the unfinished program outline and sighed: “It’s such a pity none of these will go on.”
Director: “Who said they won’t? They have to. Once the atmosphere improves in a couple of days, we’ll hurry and do them.”
Staff: “?? Didn’t you say you were afraid the fans of these guests would beat us up in the middle of the night with sacks?”
Limited-Time Heartbeat had only been airing for seven days, and the director and planners had already been cursed onto the hot search no fewer than five times! This definitely broke past variety show history!
“Let them beat me!” The director wiped his tears. “Let me suffer alone, happiness belongs to the ratings.”
……
The production team was used to the strange silence once the cameras were off, but the foreign guests at the inn had no idea what was going on.
The weather here was cold, and the inn had prepared local ginger tea, wanting to send it to the group.
But looking left and right, they didn’t know who to serve first.
The foreign server wearing a felt hat thought for a moment, then jogged over to Shen Fu and poured her a cup first, even saying “Please enjoy” in his dialect.
Earlier, he had seen two men fighting to serve food to this girl.
She must be the highest-ranking one among them.
Unexpectedly, so young, yet her real person didn’t match her appearance at all. He muttered and gave Shen Fu a thumbs-up.
The others: “……”
Xu Tiaotiao, seeing the awkward atmosphere, smiled and tried to help: “Do they serve tea based on looks here?”
Gu Qingshuang: “……”
The atmosphere instantly became even weirder.
Fortunately, a translator whispered to the foreign server, and he quickly went around pouring tea for everyone.
But Zuo Mei’s face was already as bad as it could get.
Shen Fu finished her ginger tea, stood up, and said to the director: “I’m going to rest first.”
“Okay.” The director said, “Today’s livestream ended early, there’s nothing else going on. Everyone can rest.”
“Did you check?” Jiang Shu also stood up, face full of displeasure. “Still no room for me?”
The director jumped in fright. How could he nearly forget this Buddha?
Since they came here, of course accommodations had been arranged in advance. They booked exactly as many rooms as needed.
Guests had single rooms; all staff were in doubles.
After booking, the inn was fully occupied.
This place is vast and sparsely populated. To drive out again to find another place to stay would be another difficult task.
Now that Jiang Shu suddenly showed up out of nowhere and didn’t play by the rules, where would there be any extra rooms?
“Or… I can squeeze in with a few staff members and free up a single room for you?” the director asked cautiously.
Where Jiang Shu slept didn’t matter. What he cared about was why Shen Fu didn’t even ask whether he had a room.
If there were no rooms, with the temperature below zero outside, he could only sleep in the car?
Under his sunglasses, Jiang Shu’s gaze flicked quickly toward Shen Fu. He waved a hand with an extremely kind and generous look: “No! Prob! Lem! The car has heating. Sleeping in the car is the same……”
Before he finished speaking, Shen Fu acted as if she hadn’t heard him at all. She didn’t lift her eyelids even once and just went upstairs.
Jiang Shu: “……”
The director exclaimed in surprise: “Really, Young Master Jiang? Then I won’t free one for you?”
Who doesn’t have a bit of old cold-leg pain?
Jiang Shu was young and tall. What was wrong with giving the room to someone like him, who had a wife and children?
“……”
Jiang Shu pushed down his sunglasses to rest on the high bridge of his nose and gave the director a chilly glance.
……
The next day, the production team left exactly the way they came.
On the plane, the crew first announced the upcoming third and fourth segments to the guests.
“The first two rounds involved date selections. The audience might be getting tired of that, so in the third segment we’ll relax and do a game episode. At that time, several special guests will join to play a round of ‘Hide-and-Seek’. The specific rules will be announced then. As usual, the winners will receive points.”
“The fourth segment is ‘Spring Limited Pictorial Shooting’. We will have the female guests blindfolded to touch the male guests’ hands or other innocent body parts to choose a male guest. The two who form a CP will shoot a pictorial with themes such as ‘pool’, ‘gym’, ‘kitchen’, and ‘on the bed’. After completion, the pictorial will be voted on by the audience, and the pair with the most votes will win……”
Except for Shen Fu, almost no one had slept well last night.
Everyone had been half-asleep the whole time, but when they heard about the fourth segment, they suddenly woke up.
Choosing the male guest by touching his hand?
Aren’t men’s hands all more or less the same? What differences could there be?
……What are those other body parts?
Could it be touching the face?
But everyone has two eyes and one mouth. Blindfolded, how would they tell?
Of course the key must be the hair, right?
The production team was announcing this early to give them time to prepare?
Chu Wei instinctively touched his own chestnut-colored curls. He felt he could be easily recognized just by his hair.
Wait, the problem was….
If Shen Fu recognized it was him, she definitely wouldn’t choose him!
So now he should think the opposite way, like when he gave her the race car model. He should just style his hair like Jiang Shu’s.
Or like Xiang Lingyun’s!
These two had nothing to do with Shen Fu. They had a better chance of being picked by her.
After all, based on what he saw last night, the possibility of Shen Fu choosing Wen Zhenghan was practically zero.
Chu Wei took out his phone and started texting his assistant to book a stylist.
Halfway through typing, he couldn’t resist glancing at Jiang Shu.
Jiang Shu sat with arms folded, resting with his eyes shut. The moment he opened them, he caught Chu Wei sneakily staring while holding his phone as if trying to secretly take a photo of him.
Him: “……”
After the race car model incident, Jiang Shu instantly figured out what Chu Wei was trying to do.
D*mn it, addicted to impersonating others now, aren’t you?
Jiang Shu glared back in fury, violent irritation rising. He lifted a hand and mussed his sharp, jet-black short hair into a shape even a ghost wouldn’t recognize, then raised a middle finger at Chu Wei.
Chu Wei: “……”
Xiang Lingyun sat in the very back, half-opening his eyes from a fake nap and glancing at the two people in front.
“……”
Xiang Lingyun now deeply questioned Chu Wei’s intelligence. To have climbed to where he was today must have been pure luck.
First he mistakened Wen Zhenghan. Now he mistakened this Mr. Jiang?
Three options and one correct answer; he insisted on choosing the two wrong ones.
Shen Fu was sitting beside Jiang Shu, half asleep with an eye mask. When she took it off, she saw everything.
Her: “……”
Jiang Shu had messed up his short hair. Seeing Shen Fu awake, and recalling what the director said about possibly identifying by hands, he stretched his hand out in front of her. His movements were slow, wanting her to memorize his hand. Then he held up one finger: “How many is this?”
Shen Fu stared at the familiar, long, strong, cold-pale hand before her. After two seconds of silence: “Two.”
Jiang Shu: “……”
……
Not only the guests abroad failed to sleep well. Last night, Wen Zhenghan’s fans had spent the entire night fighting back against haters.
In the domestic entertainment circle’s fandom world, nothing was more feared than CP fans. Someone once cursed that CP fans were all a pack of mad dogs. Once a CP collapses, they might turn around and bite their own idol.
Among Wen Zhenghan and Zuo Mei’s CP fans, many were genuinely emotionally invested. When Zuo Mei got married, some even opened forum posts fantasizing about Wen Zhenghan crashing the wedding.
This was no ordinary casual CP from a variety show.
Ever since the “holding hands” punishment, Wen Zhenghan had stopped appearing with Zuo Mei and even avoided her multiple times, which already confused and dissatisfied many “Emperor-Empress CP” fans.
Yesterday he even publicly fought Chu Wei over Shen Fu! This directly enraged that group of CP fans he shared with Zuo Mei.
All night, the variety show forums, major entertainment boards, and even Weibo and certain forums were full of vicious comments. Many directly announced they were dropping the CP and switching to support Zuo Mei alone.
“Scumbag behavior!”
“Mei Jie was really so wronged. Nobody even talked to her at the dinner table.”
“I’m so f*cking heartbroken. Trusting men is worse than believing a sow can climb a tree!”
Wen Zhenghan’s fans were furious, so they simply took this chance to tear into that group of CP fans.
Wen Zhenghan’s Weibo followers exceed a hundred million. His fans may not be as aggressive as top-tier fandoms, but because he has years of awards and status behind him, his fans are extremely loyal. At this moment many long-time fans all gathered, so how could a niche CP fandom beat them?
If it were a male celebrity of lower status, he might be trampled by something like this to the point of never recovering.
But Wen Zhenghan’s fans managed to calm this entire fight in just one night.
There are many “Emperor–Empress” CP fans. Their super-topic ranks top 10, and they also have several groups.
Mixed among them are quite a lot of Zuo Mei’s fans.
So many people, yet they still couldn’t win against Wen Zhenghan’s fans, and their pent-up resentment had nowhere to go.
What else could they do?
Of course they picked the softest persimmon, and started causing trouble for Shen Fu’s fans.
Things like “joining the show with money,” “old grudges with Chu Wei,” “flower vase,” “acts in terrible dramas,” were all things Shen Fu had already been attacked with once when the variety show first aired.
Yet Shen Fu’s Weibo followers kept rising rapidly, which showed that the public was tired of these old black materials and simply didn’t care.
“We have to bring up something the audience didn’t know before, and something enough to make people angry. And best if our Mei Jie stays out of sight.”
The professional fan leader in the group asked: “Does anyone have saved posts from a few years ago?”
Shen Fu signed with the company at eighteen, officially debuted in dramas at twenty. Anything before eighteen couldn’t be dug up.
But from eighteen to twenty, she briefly joined a girl group, and that had material to dig.
“Chunqiu Entertainment planned to promote a four-member girl group. It seemed the original C-position was Kuang Yueyi, but somehow Shen Fu squeezed her out, and Shen Fu became the one with the best resources in the group.”
“And Kuang Yueyi now?”
“Now she’s in another girl group with others, but they’re neither popular nor unknown, just occasionally appear on band variety shows. She’s also filming, but Chunqiu Entertainment doesn’t value her. She’s always stuck with small supporting roles like palace maids.”
The professional fan compared Shen Fu’s and Kuang Yueyi’s Weibo follower counts.
Since Shen Fu joined Limited-Time Heartbeat, her fans rose from a few million to thirteen million in just one week.
Meanwhile Kuang Yueyi still only has a few hundred thousand, with each Weibo post getting barely a dozen comments, completely invisible.
“So Kuang Yueyi must hold a huge grudge against Shen Fu.”
***
Kuang Yueyi had just been shut out by Liang Xiaochun.
Today the Limited-Time Heartbeat team called Liang Xiaochun, saying the third segment was a “hide-and-seek” game, and each guest could invite one good friend.
When this news reached the company, every trainee and already-debuted artist scrambled madly, wanting to be the “friend” invited by Shen Fu.
Everyone knew the show’s ratings and heat were explosively high, trending eight hundred times a day without repeats.
Even appearing for one episode, showing their face, could be equal to a whole year of exposure.
Not to mention, if they played it smart on the show and attracted some fans, they might even turn their career around.
Many small artists were dying of envy. Passing Liang Xiaochun’s office, they couldn’t help glancing twice at the photos of Shen Fu outside.
Thinking, if only they had become friends with Shen Fu earlier.
But before, Shen Fu was either on set or in a nanny van, busy to death.
How could they ever meet her?
Don’t look at how Shen Fu used to be an 18th-tier nobody.
But Chunqiu Entertainment itself is a small workshop, and someone like Shen Fu counted as a senior there.
Most small supporting actors in the company had never met Shen Fu, and only felt envy.
After all, the gap was too wide. No one gets jealous of someone that far out of reach.
But Kuang Yueyi was different.
Shen Fu used to be on the same level as her, so how did she rise to a place out of sight?
She remembered Liang Xiaochun’s cold expression just now: “This time I won’t let you be the flying guest. You know very well why.”
She almost lost control and asked: “Then who will you send?”
Liang Xiaochun said: “You don’t need to worry about that.”
Kuang Yueyi’s nails almost dug into her palm.
She knew who Liang Xiaochun would send. Most likely Wang Ge.
Wang Ge was closest to Shen Fu, and once she went on the show, she would definitely help Shen Fu and make her shine as much as possible.
In the end, it was still all for Shen Fu.
Liang Xiaochun was always this biased.
Did she truly have no way to grab this one opportunity?
……
The guests knew nothing about the fan-circle chaos.
Around three in the afternoon, everyone finally returned to the familiar villa.
Dragging their suitcases and not yet entering the elevator, a corgi darted out, circling around them on the lawn and sniffing everywhere.
The program team introduced: “This is our variety show’s new member. You can all give it a name.”
After not sleeping well abroad last night, and catching a flight early this morning, even Gu Qingshuang, who normally keeps dogs, had little enthusiasm and only wanted to hurry back to her room to rest.
The program team saw Wen Zhenghan walking in front, remembered his sour expression yesterday, and tried to soften the stiff atmosphere by saying: “Zheng Ge, it looks like you have a dog too on your Instagram? Help us name it.”
Wen Zhenghan glanced at the corgi on the lawn and said lazily: “It seems pretty noisy, so call it Little Noisy.”
Chu Wei let out a laugh and said: “Why not call it Little Fake, or Little Actor?”
“……”
Wen Zhenghan’s face instantly darkened.
Shen Fu, walking second to last: “……”
These two again. Will they ever stop.
The program team didn’t understand.
The live-chat comments didn’t understand either, slowly posting a question mark.
【What are they talking about?】
Although they couldn’t understand, they still felt the atmosphere was very subtle.
“You can call it whatever you want.” Wen Zhenghan said coldly, and after speaking, he subconsciously cast a glance toward Shen Fu at the back.
But his line of sight didn’t land on Shen Fu. It was completely blocked by Jiang Shu’s tall figure.
Jiang Shu lazily held a stack of newspapers, shading the sunlight from his forehead. He shot him a look like he was looking at an idiot: “Are you going or not? If you’re not going, can you get lost first?”
The barrage was already too lazy to care why the Crown Prince was cursing people.
At first, when Chu Wei’s fans saw their Gege getting cursed by Jiang Shu, they would be furious. At first, when Wen Zhenghan’s fans saw their Film Emperor getting cursed by Jiang Shu, they would also be furious.
Later they realized his provocation seemed to be 1v3, indiscriminate attacks, and suddenly they didn’t feel angry anymore.
Anyway, everyone’s Gege was a dumb*ss in his eyes, including Xiang Lingyun.
… Somehow they subtly felt comforted.
Wen Zhenghan coldly dragged his suitcase into the elevator. Gu Qingshuang was afraid of the sun and followed right after him.
For some reason, Zuo Mei didn’t follow them in.
Next was Chu Wei, but to show his hostility, he deliberately stood still and let several staff members go up first.
At the very back of the line, Xiang Lingyun’s gaze fell on the smooth back of Shen Fu’s neck.
Sunlight fell there, making it look especially white, like it would turn red with one touch.
His gaze suddenly paused.
To force himself to look away, he crouched down and petted the dog flapping around on the ground.
In the barrage, Xiang Lingyun’s fans were deeply relieved: 【Feels like only Ling Ge is a little normal.】
