The Jiang Shu–Shen Fu CP fans felt like it was New Year’s Day:
【AHHHHHH Shen Fu is a little biased toward D, isn’t she?! There’s something going on, right?!】
【Even if people criticize her, she’s still protecting you! Sister Shen is amazing!】
But another group held the opposite opinion:
【Don’t jump to conclusions yet. Why does it feel like there’s actually something suspicious between Shen Fu and Gu Zhidao instead? The Film Empress’s interest in the Film Emperor is pretty obvious, but she still considered the bigger picture and split the punishments evenly between the two male guests. Shen Fu has always been the type who protects herself and never gives people anything to criticize. Why is she being so obvious this time?】
【Could she have some grudge against Gu Zhidao? Does anyone know any industry gossip?】
A famous forum user named “No One Ships Better Than Me” analyzed:
【One’s in the film industry and the other’s in the music industry. Where would a grudge even come from? It could just as easily be interest. Back in our school days, when we liked someone, didn’t we constantly bring them up just to get their attention? Haven’t you noticed? Since Gu Zhidao joined the show, Shen Fu has brought him up several times already.】
Once it was pointed out, the viewers realized it was true.
Previously, Shen Fu had seemed completely uninterested in romance and practically avoided all the male guests.
But ever since Male Guest Number Five arrived, in just a single afternoon, the number of scenes she shared with him had already exceeded the combined total of her scenes with the other three male guests, excluding Jiang Shu, over an entire episode.
The Jiang Shu–Shen Fu CP fans had been overjoyed moments earlier, busy changing their fan-community profile pictures to the iconic sun-and-slippers image, practically ready to declare:
“We are the ultimate CP!”
But after reading “No One Ships Better Than Me’s” analysis, although they didn’t agree with it, it still felt as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over them.
They couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed.
Meanwhile…
The staff hurried over carrying towels to dry off the three soaked male guests.
Standing behind the glass doors, Chu Wei watched everyone bustling around.
Earlier, he had been embarrassed that he was the one left out of this round again.
But now, seeing how miserable the three participants looked, he suddenly felt fortunate that he hadn’t joined!
If he’d participated, then whether he ended up on Shen Fu’s team or Zuo Mei’s team, chances were he’d have been the one getting drenched anyway!
Gu Zhidao gave Shen Fu a helpless look and accepted the towel handed to him by a staff member.
He draped one over his shoulders, took another one, and walked to a corner beneath the sunshade to dry his hair.
No wonder Yin Susu had said in The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber that one should never offend a woman.
He was finally witnessing firsthand just how terrifying a woman’s love turning into hatred could be.
Wen Zhenghan was also sitting nearby, wiping water from his face with a towel.
He hadn’t expected Zuo Mei to choose him without hesitation, so when the water came down, he hadn’t even closed his eyes.
As a result, despite only being drenched three times, he looked even worse than Xiang Lingyun, who had prepared himself and managed to dodge some of the water.
When Gu Zhidao walked over, Wen Zhenghan looked up.
The two drowned rats exchanged a glance.
Gu Zhidao felt they were comrades in suffering.
Wen Zhenghan felt they were worlds apart.
This newcomer was hated by Shen Fu to such an extent that he was clearly at the very bottom of the food chain.
Because the sight of the male guests getting soaked was far too stimulating, the filming crew didn’t spend much time focusing on them and quickly moved the cameras elsewhere.
Gu Qingshuang was also dumbfounded.
It took her quite a while to recover before she hurried over with a towel to help Gu Zhidao dry himself.
“Shen Fu really hates you,” she whispered.
Even when Chu Wei had relentlessly pursued Shen Fu on previous episodes, she had never been this ruthless.
Gu Zhidao’s hand paused mid-motion as he dried his hair.
He glanced toward Shen Fu, who wasn’t even looking in his direction, and gave a bleak smile.
Chu Wei also brought over a hair dryer, offering some warmth and sympathy. “Gu Ge, if you can’t get dry, maybe you should head back to your room and change clothes?”
Originally, he had been a little worried that the new guest would shake up the situation.
But seeing how Shen Fu treated Gu Zhidao, he was completely reassured.
It seemed his number-one rival was still Jiang Shu.
Although the cameras weren’t directly filming the soaked male guests, viewers could still tell where Chu Wei was heading with the hair dryer.
The livestream comments said:
【Sigh, Chu Wei, please be a little smarter.】
【I’m dying laughing. Every guy Chu Wei calls ‘Ge’ eventually becomes his rival. You never see it coming.】
…
After the mini-game segment ended, the director hurried back.
The moment he saw the planning team and the production crew, he exploded in anger.
“I step out to make one phone call, and you people create this kind of mess! What’s worse, getting torn apart by fans online, or offending the investors?!”
The decision to bring Male Guest Number Five onto the show early hadn’t even gone through him.
The head planner looked utterly confused. “What does this have to do with the investors? Aren’t the investors surnamed Wang?”
Director: “…”
He absolutely couldn’t tell the planners and producers about the connection between the Jiang family and the investors.
If everyone rushed over to flatter them, what opportunities would be left for him?
Trying to calm himself down, the director asked: “So… who got drenched?”
“Teacher Gu Zhidao all three times,” a staff member replied awkwardly.
…Did the director also think that was way too awkward?
The director’s eyes lit up. “Oh. Then it’s fine.”
The production crew members all went silent.
Crisis averted.
The director went back to his phone call.
The male guests, unable to dry themselves off, all returned to their rooms to change clothes.
Amid the chaos, Zuo Mei’s expression didn’t look very good as she pulled Gu Qingshuang into her room.
When everyone had first joined the show, they had all cared about appearances and avoided private conversations in their rooms, afraid viewers would notice something suspicious.
But by now, whatever dignity they had left had long since flown out the window. Who could still worry about that?
“Weren’t you the one who said your Ge would help us?”
Just now, Gu Zhidao had been on Shen Fu’s team and clearly hadn’t created any interference at all.
Gu Qingshuang felt incredibly guilty and stared at the tips of her shoes. “There were people everywhere just now. The livestream cameras were practically shoved into our faces. He couldn’t exactly interfere with Shen Fu in front of everyone and deliberately make her lose, could he? Viewers hate incompetent teammates the most. If my Ge got roasted online, who’s taking responsibility for that? You?”
At that moment, Zuo Mei only regretted trusting Gu Qingshuang.
Given her company’s executives’ connections with the head planner, if she’d known things would turn out this way, she would have arranged for a more reliable Male Guest Number Five.
But it was too late for regrets now.
She couldn’t afford to lose Gu Qingshuang, her only ally.
Zuo Mei sat down on the bed and tried to calm herself.
It was only a mini-game. Losing to Shen Fu again wasn’t that big a deal.
Thinking carefully about what had happened during the game, she suddenly felt that something was off. “But do you think Shen Fu figured out that your Ge was brought in to target her? Otherwise, why would she dump all three buckets of water on him?”
Gu Qingshuang: “…”
“At first I thought Shen Fu really didn’t fight for anything and avoided conflicts. Turns out she’s full of schemes. She counterattacked before we even made a move. Before we could target her, she seized the initiative and started targeting your Ge instead. She’s really a difficult opponent.”
Gu Qingshuang: “…”
Sis, your analysis is excellent.
But please stop analyzing.
…
The male guests went off to change clothes.
The female guests went to their rooms for private discussions.
Another female guest, Xu Tiaotiao, changed into sportswear and went out to livestream herself walking her corgi at night.
Only Jiang Shu and Shen Fu remained in the living room.
The production team brought over some late-night snacks.
Jiang Shu sat at the bar counter, fiddling with a glass. Out of the corner of his eye, he secretly glanced at Shen Fu, who was sitting on a high stool at the other end of the counter opening her takeout container.
Though he tried hard to appear calm and unaffected, the corners of his mouth couldn’t help but lift slightly.
Shen Fu hadn’t drenched him.
Shen Fu hadn’t drenched him!
As for the other exes, who knew?
But at least compared to Gu Zhidao, he had won by a landslide.
“What are you looking at?” Shen Fu glanced at him.
Jiang Shu withdrew his gaze. “Just looking around.”
Shen Fu said, “Just looking around? Then why has your head been turned toward me the whole time?”
Jiang Shu flew into embarrassed irritation. “I’m stretching my neck muscles, okay?”
The livestream comments exploded:
【Crown Prince, keep this up and you’ll never get a wife, okay?】
An awkward silence followed.
“Want to go ride bicycles?” Jiang Shu suddenly asked.
His gaze had landed on a green wedding advertisement on the television showing a man and woman cycling around an island together.
“In the middle of the night? We’re about to go to bed, and you want to go cycling?”
Shen Fu couldn’t be bothered with him and continued eating.
Another awkward silence.
What Jiang Shu really wanted to ask wasn’t any of this.
But the more he wanted to ask something, the harder it was to get the words out.
Because it was too embarrassing.
He sat there for a while, feeling as if he were sitting on needles.
Just when the viewers thought the two of them were about to become motionless JPEG images, Jiang Shu suddenly stood up, put on his sunglasses, muttered to himself, “Why does this stool feel a little unstable?” and then abruptly moved two seats to the right.
With all the coolness of a passing wind, he sat down so that only a single stool separated him from Shen Fu.
The livestream comments were dying of laughter:
【HAHAHAHA HELP ME. What’s unstable about it?!】
Shen Fu glanced at him again.
“…?”
Jiang Shu stared straight ahead coolly, refusing to look at her.
Pretending it was just a casual question, he asked: “Why didn’t you drench me earlier?”
At last, he had asked it.
He had completely prepared himself for the cold water.
Yet not a single bucket had fallen on him.
The feeling was like believing you had been walking alone through the night, only for the person you wanted most to suddenly hand you a lamp you’d long wished for.
Shen Fu paused with her chopsticks.
Why else?
If ten people stood on one side of a cliff and Jiang Shu stood alone on the other, she would choose him.
Likewise, she had never doubted that if their positions were reversed, Jiang Shu would choose her too.
Setting aside that old embarrassing matter of whether she had secretly liked him or not, they were friends.
They had once been family as well.
But what was the meaning of this question now?
Five years ago, he had already known how she felt.
And now he was standing here pretending not to understand?
Shen Fu found Jiang Shu more and more impossible to understand.
Five years ago, when they ate hotpot, he would always place the seafood dishes in front of her.
No matter where he went, he brought her along.
When he discovered she was being bullied at school, he immediately flew into a rage and taught the culprits a lesson.
He was always doing things that gave people the wrong idea.
If he hadn’t constantly sent such misleading signals, would she have dared to lose all rationality and kiss him while drunk that day?
He had been like that back then.
And he was like that now.
If anything, it was even worse.
Sometimes it felt as though he wanted to keep her enclosed within his circle.
Someone observing from an omniscient perspective might even conclude that he liked her.
But if there truly had been feelings beyond familial affection, then why hadn’t he tried to stop her when she left the Jiang family?
Shen Fu felt like a small boat adrift in muddy waters, caught in a whirlpool stirred up by Jiang Shu’s forceful presence.
Her mind was in complete chaos.
She wanted to know the answer.
Yet she was afraid of knowing it.
The system possessed a machine capable of measuring romantic affection levels.
Back when she was completing missions, it had been used to determine whether her targets’ affection levels had reached the required threshold.
A score of 100 meant the mission was complete.
Yesterday, after returning to the company and seeing the internet flooded with fan-edited videos pairing her with the four male guests, the system had asked her:
Did she want to test Jiang Shu’s affection level?
But Shen Fu was conflicted.
If she really used it, it would mean she was truly treating him as a fourth target to conquer.
For the past several years, Shen Fu had always been acting in front of other people.
Whether inside a script or in real life.
She also hoped that one day she could have a relationship completely unrelated to missions or conquest strategies, a pure and genuine love.
She hadn’t done anything wrong.
So why, from the age of fifteen until now, did misfortune insist on clinging to her?
Besides, these days she kept remembering the day she first met the person in front of her when she was fifteen.
She had been crying on a bridge.
His family’s car had driven past, circled back around, and finally stopped in front of her.
He had asked whether she was lost and whether she wanted a ride to her destination.
The teenager’s gaze had been sharp, arrogant, and full of youthful spirit.
Yet it had also been clean and sincere.
She didn’t want to use a cold machine like that to measure Jiang Shu’s feelings.
Seeing Shen Fu remain silent for so long, Jiang Shu couldn’t help becoming nervous.
At that point, he couldn’t care less about saving face.
He turned his head and stared at her intently, his gaze settling on her lowered eyelashes, where the lighting cast a faint shadow.
His heart pounded wildly.
Other people might not know, but he knew.
His eardrums felt as if they were about to burst from the sound.
Then he heard Shen Fu speak. “What else could it be? You’re too weak.”
Jiang Shu: “…”
Shen Fu twirled some noodles around her chopsticks, bit them off, and finished chewing before leisurely adding: “Just take it as me being kind. I was worried you’d catch a cold.”
Jiang Shu: “…”
She called him weak?!
There were some things a man simply could not tolerate.
Jiang Shu practically exploded. With a dark expression on his handsome face, he abruptly stood up, took off his sunglasses, and slammed them onto the table.
Shen Fu: “?”
What was he doing?
Looking for a fight?
The next second, Jiang Shu dropped to the floor and furiously started doing push-ups.
“Weak?” Jiang Shu shouted angrily while performing flawless, rapid-fire push-ups. “You call this weak? Three of your Teacher Gu Zhidaos couldn’t beat me!”
Shen Fu: “…”
What did he mean by your Teacher Gu Zhidao?
Black lines practically appeared across Shen Fu’s forehead.
She nudged him with the toe of her slipper. “Get up already. The livestream is still on.”
The comments exploded:
【AHHHH Don’t worry about us, we can pretend we’re dead!】
“I’m not getting up.”
Jiang Shu continued doing push-ups as he spoke.
The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.
So the reason she’d chosen to drench Gu Zhidao was because she thought Jiang Shu was physically weak?
No.
This wouldn’t do.
Maybe they really should fight.
His fists were itching.
He wanted to punch someone.
Climbing up from the carpet, he stormed over to wash his hands, then took off his jacket and headed toward the bedrooms.
“…”
Shen Fu quickly stopped him.
“Jiang Shu. Didn’t you say you wanted to go cycling tonight? Let’s go ride bicycles.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
Jiang Shu instantly calmed down.
He even became a little shy. “Oh… alright then.”
His face reddened as he answered, pretending to be reluctant.
Outside the villa there were shared bicycles available.
Each of them picked one up.
Seeing Shen Fu choose a white bicycle, Jiang Shu glanced at her and immediately chose a black one.
The comments screamed:
【Black and white together? Help. Crown Prince, your intentions couldn’t be more obvious.】
Since it wasn’t yet time for the livestream to end, the production crew hurriedly arranged for staff to follow them.
Jiang Shu rode behind Shen Fu.
The night wind billowed his shirt.
Because he was tall with extremely long legs, the ordinary bicycle looked like a toy underneath him.
Normally, he always wore sunglasses, concealing his straight nose and beautiful deep-set eyes.
He also dressed in black most of the time, giving people the impression of cold nobility.
But now he was wearing a white shirt.
His bangs were slightly damp.
The water from the game earlier hadn’t completely dried yet.
The night breeze swept through his hair, revealing his handsome forehead and making him seem more youthful.
Shen Fu couldn’t help glancing back at him.
D*mn it.
Why was she looking at him again?
Had something changed about her recently?
She looked at him more often now than she had altogether before.
Even though there was nothing different about him.
He was just as handsome as he had always been for years.
Jiang Shu didn’t know whether it was merely his imagination.
All he knew was that his heartbeat had started speeding up on its own again.
Without his sunglasses, he boldly accelerated a little, caught up to ride beside Shen Fu, and only then gradually slowed down. “You used to be terrible at riding bicycles. Now you’re actually pretty good.”
Jiang Shu suddenly spoke.
His tone was difficult to read.
In the darkness, Shen Fu turned her head to look at him.
She couldn’t make out his expression either. “I learned while filming.”
“When shooting dramas, I’d stay in hotels near the set. Usually the hotel was some distance from the main road, too far for the nanny van to drive in. My assistant and I would get out and ride bicycles the rest of the way.”
“Aren’t you picky about where you sleep? Why didn’t you go home instead?”
The topic changed so suddenly that Shen Fu took a moment to react. “If I went home, it would be too far. It would be too much trouble for the driver.”
No wonder she often didn’t come home until late at night.
There was a hint of grievance in Jiang Shu’s voice. “It wasn’t that far. Only about thirteen kilometers. At night, if you took the Third Ring Road and drove a little faster, it’d only take fifteen minutes. I could, “
Before he finished speaking, Shen Fu froze.
The livestream comments froze too.
Seeing Shen Fu freeze, Jiang Shu froze as well.
Had he just exposed something?
Shen Fu braked her bicycle and stared at him. “Wait a second.”
“How do you know my house is only a little over ten kilometers from the filming locations I usually work at?”
Jiang Shu looked like someone caught red-handed on the spot.
He became so nervous that his brain started buzzing.
One moment of distraction later,
Both he and his bicycle crashed straight into a patch of bushes.
Because of his long frame, he actually left a human-shaped crater in the shrubbery.
Shen Fu: “…”
The comments:
【AHHHHHHH HOLY SH*T.】
The production crew immediately felt another trending headline coming.
They hurriedly shut off the filming cameras.
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