The event had been heavily promoted, with even celebrities sharing it, so the buzz was well and truly built up. The livestream started promptly at four thirty, and fans flooded into the broadcast room, all cheering for their idols.
The stream had actually begun even before the radio broadcast. This time, the show was shot with full wide-angle coverage, cameras following every location, with lavalier mics hidden throughout. Fans could watch the variety show from any angle they liked. Even with a script in place, there were always things that couldn’t be planned for, and plenty of viewers were looking forward to exactly that.
Once all the guests had been introduced, the draw for non-celebrity participants began. Since every position had a corresponding number, the cameras had long since zoomed in on Lin Yiren and Jiang Ning’s faces. Thanks to what had happened before, viewers had some degree of recognition for the two of them, and the moment they appeared on screen, the audience gasped, then immediately started flooding the chat.
At first, the pretty-face fanatics simply gawked. But when they saw how close Lin Yiren and Jiang Ning were, the comment section turned oddly strange, and then the questions started rolling in.
Dried Radish with Vermicelli: Is the relationship between this boss and her artist really this good?
Diamond Bachelor: Same. Something feels off to me.
Muzi and Flowers: What’s off about it? Obviously Jiangtian Entertainment arranged it on purpose to drum up publicity for Lin Yiren.
Twinkling Five-Pointed Star: But Lin Yiren’s shocked expression just now didn’t look staged at all…
Some people expressed doubt while others started throwing shade. Wherever there were people, there would never be a shortage of conflict. Xiao Yisheng had anticipated troublemakers from the start and came prepared. The moment he saw Lin Yiren come under attack, he had the Internet Water Army flood the chat with gushing praise for the idols from other fans.
The sudden glitch in the stream dropped the air pressure around Xiao Yisheng several degrees. When his eyes swept over to Jiang Ning, the sense that something was wrong only grew stronger. The look in Jiang Ning’s eyes just now had been very strange. Xiao Yisheng keenly sensed hostility, but couldn’t figure out what he’d done to offend her. Could she have found out that Lin Xiao was his biological younger brother?
Lin Yiren knew Xiao Yisheng, and she had seen Jiang Ning smile at him. After that, Xiao Yisheng kept staring at Jiang Ning, which made her suspect he had some scheme against Jiang Ning. In an instant, the man upstairs was blacklisted.
“Why did you smile at Xiao Yisheng just now?” She held it in as long as she could, but couldn’t bear it anymore, and finally voiced the question, her tone unconsciously laced with jealousy and a buried undercurrent of fear.
Xiao Yisheng was handsome, and the Xiao Family was in no way inferior to the Lin Family. On top of that, it was her older brother who held power in the Lin Family, so her own backing could never match a whole family’s support like Xiao’s. If Jiang Ning grew tired of her and wanted to break up… then…
It was time for each team to change clothes. Lin Yiren and Jiang Ning shared a dressing room, but with her mind a tangled mess, Lin Yiren wasn’t even tempted by the view in front of her. She changed quickly and then stared straight at Jiang Ning.
“That was me declaring war,” she said. Lin Yiren’s dress came off easily, but Jiang Ning’s shirt had far too many buttons, leaving her a step behind. As she pulled off her trousers, Jiang Ning explained, “I suspect he has designs on you. Better to nip it in the bud early.”
Lin Yiren had no idea where Jiang Ning had gotten the notion that Xiao Yisheng had designs on her. She was certain the two of them had never met; she barely knew the man existed. But when she learned that Jiang Ning’s smile hadn’t meant what she’d imagined, she breathed a sigh of relief.
Then she realized Jiang Ning had already finished changing. Biting her lip, Lin Yiren felt a flicker of regret, as if she’d missed out on some scenery on account of an irrelevant person.
She was regretful at that moment. Deeply, deeply regretful. And she charged the whole thing to Xiao Yisheng’s account.
Scumbag. Staring at someone’s girl for no reason. One guess and you knew he wasn’t a good person.
So during the interaction segment that followed, while all the other celebrities flocked to Xiao Yisheng’s side to get their faces known and raise their Favorability, Lin Yiren dragged Jiang Ning off in the opposite direction, putting as much distance between them as possible. That was why there’d barely been any footage of Lin Yiren and Jiang Ning earlier.
For this livestream, ordinary netizens were stuck with a commoner’s perspective. One wealthy viewer, dissatisfied with how little screen time his idol was getting, threw down a fortune and unlocked a God’s Perspective pass just to watch his own idol. Finding it lonely to watch alone, he tossed the link onto Weibo, and everyone rushed toward their favorite idol’s feed.
Jiang Ning and Lin Yiren naturally had their Visual Fans and devoted followers too. But Lin Yiren had no real works to her name, and Jiang Ning rarely appeared in public, keeping her Weibo posts perfectly conventional. Compared to the others, their follower counts looked pitifully small, and no one dropped a hundred grand just to watch the two of them.
The System noticed this situation and had an idea. In Jiang Ning’s voice, it instructed everyone at Jiangtian Entertainment to follow the stream, then quickly bought a God’s Perspective pass and flung it at Lin Zhiyuan and the Lin Parents. Next, it switched its own God’s Perspective feed to paid viewing. Cheap, too, just one yuan, with the first thousand viewers getting in free.
Seeing their daughter take part in a variety show for the first time, Lin Zhiyuan and the Lin Parents were bound to support her enthusiastically and share the link far and wide. Their connections were already extensive, and with Jiangtian Entertainment adding its muscle, the trickle of viewers instantly became a flood.
The variety show’s script wasn’t particularly original: split into teams and compete to snatch up clues. The team that collected the most clues would have the highest odds in the draw for Daphne gifts, and at the same time, one percent of the show’s total earnings would be donated to mountain regions in that winning team’s name.
The formula was old hat, but the clue hunt still had its challenges and its fun. One clue required interacting with people inside the mall. By rights, this interaction shouldn’t have caused much conflict, but Bai Keke couldn’t stand Lin Yiren, and Lin Xiao was deliberately trying to draw Jiang Ning’s attention, so the two of them kept interrupting the pair’s progress, whether on purpose or by “accident.”
Jiang Ning and Lin Yiren noticed but said nothing, choosing to give way. The rules didn’t forbid this behavior, but to some viewers it still felt like going too far.
Compared with the underhanded scheming going on among the other teams, Jiang Ning’s side looked positively harmonious, yet without giving the impression that they didn’t care about winning. During the quiz games, Jiang Ning and Lin Yiren worked together with such uncanny chemistry that many viewers concluded either they had colluded beforehand, or their relationship was off-the-charts good. The latter theory, naturally, sent the shipper fans rocketing out of the ground.
Soon came the final scramble, preceded by a twenty-minute break to regroup. During those twenty minutes, viewers could join a lucky draw, so no one got bored.
The chase phase began with everyone split into pairs, four teams in total. The first team was Lin Xiao and Bai Keke, the second was the two other Chengxing Entertainment artists, and the third was the Jiangtian Entertainment artists. The Chengxing artists had already formed an alliance, and if the non-celebrities hadn’t been Jiang Ning and Lin Yiren, the Jiangtian team would have been bullied mercilessly.
Even so, the current situation had a subtle edge to it, almost like a proxy war between Jiangtian Entertainment and Chengxing Entertainment. Some trouble-lovers seized on this as a selling point, drawing in even more viewers.
The other teams were all mixed-gender pairings. Bai Keke’s team had their eyes locked on Jiang Ning and Lin Yiren from the start, chasing them up to the second floor. During the mid-round break, they’d already received their manager’s subtle hint, so when they saw Jiang Ning and Lin Yiren split up, both boys went after Jiang Ning. Not before a pre-arranged round of rock-paper-scissors to assign targets, of course, which added to the fun while keeping the footage from looking genuinely soaked in gunpowder smoke.
A variety show wasn’t about actually coming to blows, so everyone carried a Water Gun. Get hit, and you had to surrender a clue to save yourself. The two boys chased Jiang Ning in a pincer, and the moment she entered firing range, one took aim at her back while the other targeted her thigh, fingers squeezing the triggers.
Jiang Ning leaped agilely to the side, rolled once to steady herself, immediately raised her Water Gun and tagged one of them, then broke off the engagement without lingering and bolted for the other side. The movements flowed like water, leaving Lin Xiao frozen on the spot.
In the final stage, the other spectators watched from a designated area, and for safety reasons, all the escalators had been shut off, so the space left open was quite generous. By this point, Lin Yiren had been chased downstairs, paint splattered across her trousers and now forced to surrender her clue. Jiang Ning glanced below and spotted an inflatable playground for children. Bracing one hand on the escalator railing, she vaulted straight over.
When the System’s link turned out to be paywalled, some viewers instantly started cursing up a storm. But most had never experienced a God’s Perspective before, and only one or two big spenders had theirs open, so they were all willing to part with one yuan for the view. The crowd pouring in at this point were mostly passersby fans, some of whom converted into Visual Fans on the spot. Then they saw Jiang Ning’s string of slick moves and collectively lost their minds.
That inflatable playground was pretty tall, and there was still some distance between it and the escalator. No ordinary person would dare attempt such a stunt.
At first they thought she’d lost her mind. But Jiang Ning’s landing was executed flawlessly, and the air cushion held up beautifully. The noise it made did make Bai Keke and another girl turn around, but by then Jiang Ning had already ducked behind an inflatable duck.
Asia Number One: Am I remembering right? President Jiang trained in dance before, right???
Banana Doesn’t Want to Shout: I used to be able to do that move too. I’m in the hospital now, doing just fine.
6666: If there were a jungler position in real life, President Jiang would absolutely rank first! That leap when she got surrounded just now? You’d need serious training to dare try that.
Peppa in the Group: Congratulations to President Jiang on claiming first place in the Special Ops Long Jump President division!
The System had been monitoring Jiang Ning’s feed in real time the whole while, so none of this came as a surprise. From the moment she agreed to join the show, it knew she’d never take the beaten path. It immediately uploaded this scene, along with the earlier clip of her being hunted and turning the tables on her hunter, to Weibo. The clip spread like wildfire. Watching its money climb past the break-even point, the System felt deliciously smug.
Bai Keke’s team had their backs to the inflatable playground, but Lin Yiren had seen Jiang Ning’s every move with perfect clarity. Though she’d started at the jump, once she saw the person was safe and sound, she recovered quickly, blinking twice to signal that she’d received the message, then handed her clue over to Bai Keke’s team.
Jiang Ning raised her Water Gun and took aim, then deliberately made a noise. The instant Bai Keke turned her head, Jiang Ning nailed her with a headshot. The livestream watched Bai Keke’s original black hair turn a vivid, glowing green, and “hahahahahahaha” flooded the chat as everyone laughed themselves helpless.
At the same time, Lin Yiren fired a shot at Bai Keke’s teammate. She hadn’t handed over all her clues earlier, so she technically still had the right to fight, and by exploiting a loophole in the rules, her move didn’t count as a violation.
Lin Yiren stepped forward and collected the clues from both of them. One of them tried to sneakily hide a clue, but Jiang Ning saw straight through it. Once Bai Keke and her partner were escorted off by the staff, the two of them high-fived, then counted their clues and exchanged a smile.
Dalang Drink Your Medicine: Bro, am I the only one who thinks these two have crazy good chemistry?
My Wife Is So Fragrant: Don’t leave, upstairs. It’s just that President Jiang rescuing her damsel in distress was SO cool, okay?
Remote Needs Batteries: Ah, President Jiang just gained a fan! I love her, I LOVE her!!!
Fruit Salad Dressing: I thought Yiren, all soft and delicate, would be the first one out. I never expected her to be this badass too! Sis, I’m in! SO in!
The chat was on fire, and meanwhile the trending topics started popping up one after another. The brightest spot of all, oddly enough, wasn’t Jiang Ning’s team but Bai Keke. Everyone frantically screenshot the moment she got hit and turned it into memes. Her expression had been so sour it practically qualified as the textbook face of someone getting cheated on.
