Chapter 58: Bidding Farewell to the Old and Welcoming the New Part 1

The next morning, Yan Muyu saw Xuan Zhelu off down the mountain.

In truth, guests could leave whenever they wanted—the production team had plenty of vehicles, not to mention Xuan Zhelu’s own staff trailing behind.

But Qiu Siyuan was the type who insisted on bookending everything neatly during a shoot. She wanted every story to have a proper beginning and end.

Yan Muyu suspected it stemmed from the trauma of her own relationship that had fizzled out without fanfare. Qiu Siyuan was projecting that longing onto the show.

It had Yan Muyu up at the crack of dawn, riding her motorcycle and nearly colliding with an old man’s tricycle loaded with ducks.

The bike grazed the tricycle at the turn, sending the ducks into a frenzy of quacks.

Early-rising live stream viewers were jolted wide awake in an instant.

Xuan Zhelu instinctively clutched Yan Muyu’s clothes.

Yan Muyu gripped the handlebars with a serious expression. Seated behind her, Xuan Zhelu glanced at her face and asked, “You got morning grumpies or what?”

【Whoa, our Lulu’s sobered up?】

【Leaving this early?】

【Yan Muyu’s driving skills are… Can the crew back off a bit? It’s making me nervous.】

【The ducks got the real scare!!】

Dawn was just breaking, the mountain road still dim, with streetlights still glowing.

The morning breeze brushed their faces, carrying a chill.

Yan Muyu’s hair was a tangled mess from the wind. She kept her eyes fixed ahead and let out a hum.

Then she asked Xuan Zhelu, “Do you even know what you’re like when you’re drunk?”

Xuan Zhelu chuckled. “Gotta be drop-dead gorgeous, right?”

Yan Muyu: …

【She really went there.】

【Hahaha, such confidence!】

Yan Muyu said, “Go watch the replay yourself.”

She sighed, then shrank her neck against the cold.

At another turn, Xuan Zhelu called out, “Can I hug you?”

She had to shout over the wind, which whipped her long hair around. Her words made the manager in the trailing car furrow his brow—pure agony first thing in the morning.

Yan Muyu replied, “Just don’t get thrown off.”

Xuan Zhelu happily wrapped her arms around Yan Muyu, emboldened by the rushing mountain wind and the rumble of an oncoming tractor crossing paths with the motorcycle.

In the midst of the noise, she asked, “You really won’t consider getting back together?”

Yan Muyu: “No.”

Her voice fragmented in the wind, but Xuan Zhelu wasn’t surprised. She’d known Yan Muyu’s mind was made up. It was just regrettable—the four-month curse wasn’t something she could break.

That old rumor that everyone falls for Yan Muyu held a spark of competitiveness, in a way.

Like Xuan Zhelu’s desire to tame her.

But she hadn’t succeeded.

Instead, she’d been briefly tamed by Yan Muyu herself and had fallen deep into it.

It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime memory, one that only grew more vivid with time, impossible to let go.

By this hour, plenty of folks were heading out to work.

E-bikes, motorcycles, bicycles—every kind, all tea pickers of various sorts.

The older aunties chatted at top volume, overwhelming the production team’s mics.

But it made for good cover while Xuan Zhelu talked with Yan Muyu on the bike.

Xuan Zhelu asked, “Are you with Qiu Chao now?”

Her voice wasn’t loud, and just then, a tea picker with a dog ran into another, unleashing a chorus of barks.

In the midst of the barking, Yan Muyu’s faint “Mm” sounded heartbreaking to Xuan Zhelu.

She asked why, but Yan Muyu didn’t answer. She just followed the curving road downward, seeing her ex-girlfriend off in the pale light of dawn.

【This shot is gorgeous.】

【Can’t Xuan Zhelu stick around longer?】

【Still savoring Yan Muyu parting that beaded curtain this morning. She’s just…】

【Xuan Zhelu, stop lingering! Get off already!!】

Yan Muyu took her to the original station.

Other people waited there too, laden with bags big and small.

Xuan Zhelu gazed at Yan Muyu, words hovering on the tip of her tongue, so much left unsaid.

Yan Muyu asked, “Hungry? There’s breakfast stalls over there. My treat?”

Xuan Zhelu replied, “I’m not a guest anymore. I can pay. Let me treat you.”

Yan Muyu said, “No need.”

She headed that way, and Xuan Zhelu followed. The roadside breakfast stalls bustled with activity, a cacophony of noise that still evoked those familiar street eats from everyday life.

【Damn, the background noise is so loud! I can barely hear them!】

【Feels like the crew does this on purpose sometimes.】

【Xuan Zhelu looks so reluctant to leave, boo hoo.】

【Reluctant? I’d cut my losses for good!!】

【Come to think of it, Yan Muyu isn’t even that much of a player!! Who’s calling her one?】

【Proper dating, proper breakup. Seems pretty dignified.】

Xuan Zhelu stood beside Yan Muyu. The stalls were slammed in the morning—steamer lids flipping open to billow white steam, the boss darting back and forth.

Locals sat at tables in small groups, eating. No other variety show could match this gritty realism.

Yan Muyu glanced down, firing off a message tagging the whole group: What do you all want for breakfast?

Xuan Zhelu asked, “Why her? Why Qiu Chao?”

The trailing crew stood far off; from the live stream, viewers only caught side and back profiles of Yan Muyu and Xuan Zhelu.

There was always a wall between celebs and civilians, but this place was so remote—locals’ impressions of stars were either outdated or limited to Spring Festival Gala faces.

Even if they clocked Xuan Zhelu and Yan Muyu as outsiders, no one got excited.

Yan Muyu told the Boss Lady, “Five buns… two beef and vermicelli, one tofu bun, two pickled bean curd. Uh, two shaomai? And what’s this green tea cake?”

The Boss Lady was too swamped to reply right away. It took her a bit to mumble an answer.

Yan Muyu didn’t mind. While waiting for the buns, she said, “I left something behind with her.”

The words hung abstractly, and Xuan Zhelu let out an “Ah?”

She stared at Yan Muyu with a dopey look, nothing like her usual image.

Even Xuan Zhelu’s fans had no idea she acted this way around Yan Muyu.

Yan Muyu nodded casually, then muttered about all the carbs—Xi Xi might be the first to chew her out for it.

That one would rather munch raw cukes from the garden for breakfast than eat noodles.

Suddenly, Yan Muyu remembered Qiu Chao making noodles for Liu Song and let out a chuckle.

Xuan Zhelu asked, “What thing?”

Yan Muyu said, “Once I get it back, I can reclaim my spot as chief.”

Yan Muyu hadn’t completely abandoned her craft over the years. It was just a long bottleneck. Some people broke through with relentless practice, quantity birthing quality anew.

Yan Muyu was different.

Qiu Chao had planted a puzzle in one of her shots years ago—one Yan Muyu had tried and failed to solve ever since.

A decade-plus stall would cripple most careers. But not hers. She had plenty of other paths.

It started at the mahjong parlor, bumping into Yao Xilou and his passive-aggressive snark about her slacking off.

Her old rival was more pissed about her wasted potential than even Yan Kai, always probing why.

Why else? She’d lost her spark of curiosity.

Yan Muyu could still admire beauty but no longer unearth it.

Even her half-hearted edits got hyped to the heavens, but she hated that.

In the misty morning haze, amid the breakfast stall’s steam, Yan Muyu’s face took on a wholly unfamiliar cast.

At least, to Xuan Zhelu, she seemed a stranger.

Yan Muyu looked unwilling.

Unwilling.

The word felt off for her.

In all the time Xuan Zhelu had known her, Yan Muyu was like a wave, like a spring breeze—like something you could brush against but never hold.

Even in bed, she never fully surrendered. Nothing could tame her completely.

Friends had asked Xuan Zhelu what Yan Muyu was really like.

The industry whispered of her as a flirtatious heartbreaker with women falling at her feet. But Xuan Zhelu saw her as utterly passionless, cold as ice.

The playboy act? Just a front. Deep down, Yan Muyu embodied her name.

Dusk rain, even if she denied being Xiaoxiao’s evening drizzle.

Solitary. No need for saving.

Like an ancient temple shrouded in mountain rains—or the well within it, rain feeding the spring.

Cold in winter, cold in summer. Not just anyone could bring her to a boil.

Yan Muyu handed over a plastic bag of breakfast: a green tea cake, half an ear of corn, and a shaomai.

She packed the soy milk too, thrusting it into Xuan Zhelu’s other hand. The heat snapped Xuan Zhelu back to reality.

Yan Muyu said, “Pretty color. I remember you like corn—this is the sweet kind.”

Her voice stayed clear and gentle. As she passed the items, Xuan Zhelu spotted the faint scars where brow piercings had once been.

Even after her own days in a spicy, trendy girl group, Xuan Zhelu had to admit Yan Muyu was effortlessly versatile with style.

Her old photo sets screamed diverse taste: classical one day, edgy the next—bold and fiery, yet capable of tender subtlety.

She was magnetic. Too bad.

Xuan Zhelu thought: I’m just a passerby.

“Not a passerby.”

Yan Muyu suddenly remarked, eyeing Xuan Zhelu with amusement at how the girl was so adorably clueless, blurting out her inner thoughts aloud. She let out a chuckle.

She hooked the plastic bag onto Xuan Zhelu’s pinky finger. “It’s just that we’re not fated to become each other’s home.”

She flashed Xuan Zhelu a smile. “Don’t zone out like that all the time. Imagine if you accidentally blurt out on the show who you hate—that’d be so awkward.”

Xuan Zhelu finally snapped back to reality. She sniffed. “You’re so annoying! You’re making it sound like I’m the one who let you down!”

【The audio sounds weird—one second it’s crystal clear, the next it’s muffled.】

【They film so well, turning a rundown street stall into magazine-cover quality. Other teams should take notes.】

【What filter is this? My brain’s turning it into a full-on romance movie.】

【Xuan Zhelu is way too smitten!!!】

【I’d break too if it were me—knowing her favorite food and using that tone! It pisses me off!】

【I think I’ve heard that passerby line before. How does she make casual talk sound so… I get Xuan Zhelu now.】

Yan Muyu said, “What else? Aren’t you all about your career right now?”

She picked up her own bag of breakfast, then worried the wind from riding the motorcycle up the mountain would cool it off. Her eyes landed on the white foam cooler the boss used for milk, and she started shamelessly begging for it.

Xuan Zhelu watched her ex with twitching lips as the woman wheedled like a pro with a fifty-something auntie.

It ended in inevitable failure, of course. Then she shelled out two bucks for a small foam cooler, utterly satisfied as she tucked her breakfast inside.

【Yan Muyu, so embarrassing!!】

【Take back my earlier feels!!】

【Xuan Zhelu, you must be cringing too.】

【Speechless. Yan Muyu’s the comic relief on this variety show, right? No script needed.】

Xuan Zhelu replied, “Yeah, career first, love later—that seems more reliable!”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she felt something off about it.

Yan Muyu tsked. “That sounds familiar.”

【Qiu Chao’s iconic line!!】