Chapter 72
Late at night. Early morning.
In the control room of What Kind of Person Are You, the lights that had been on all night finally went out.
Even at this hour, more than thirty million viewers were still online watching the livestream.
Who knew how these people had managed to stare at an empty camera and watch the night scenery for several hours?
Oh no, maybe all their energy had gone into sending bullet comments.
Fortunately, by now, one wave of people had finally been unable to hold on and gone to sleep first.
Another wave had shifted battlefields and rushed to Weibo and other social platforms to start fighting.
Goat let out a soft breath, feeling that the timing was finally right. Amid the screen still full of indignant bullet comments, he typed an ending notice.
[This meteor shower ends here. Wishing all viewers’ dreams come true. Good night and sweet dreams~]
He let the notice float across the public screen for three seconds.
Then he decisively shut down the livestream.
The view before him instantly became peaceful. Whew. It was finally over.
On the other side, Sun Xinping and the production team’s brainstorming session had also just ended. Based on the discussion results, they had drafted two printed proposals, intending to meet the guests tomorrow—oh no, today—to discuss them.
“All right, wrap up! Everyone off work!” After reading the final proposals with satisfaction, he announced.
Cheers instantly rang out through the control room.
“Finally off work!”
“Go, go, go! Back to sleep!”
In the blink of an eye, the staff who had already secretly packed their things ran off in a flash.
Goat slipped away too without even saying goodbye.
Sun Xinping yawned. He was the last one left.
He looked around, found nothing wrong, turned off the lights, and left.
But just as he walked out of the control room, his phone dinged softly.
He looked at the screen. It was a WeChat friend request.
Request note: Shen Jinfeng!
In the darkness, only the light from the phone flickered, illuminating Sun Xinping’s obviously startled brows and eyes.
In the silent corridor, all he could hear was the sound of himself swallowing.
Then, before his brain could react, his finger had already subconsciously tapped “accept.”
Shen Dalao still wasn’t asleep this late?
After accepting the friend request, he tapped into the chat box, just about to send a greeting.
Then he saw the chat box already displaying: The other party is typing.
Sun Xinping: [Good evening, Dalao!]
He quickly sent the greeting.
The other party’s message arrived almost at the exact same time as his.
Shen Jinfeng: [When I was on the deserted island and thought Qin Ye liked me, was that a subconscious suggestion you implanted in me?]
!
Sun Xinping’s pupils widened. Almost instantly, beads of cold sweat the size of beans appeared on his forehead.
It finally came.
In fact, if he had not stopped him earlier, Shen Jinfeng might have asked this directly in front of everyone.
But sure enough, there was no escaping it.
Sun Xinping’s fingers trembled slightly as he held his phone. His heart and mind fought fiercely, not knowing how he should answer this question.
Now that Shen Jinfeng had left the island, how could he not have reacted?
How could he not understand what their situation was in real life?
By the time Shen Jinfeng entered the industry, Qin Ye had already withdrawn from it.
Two people who had never had any interaction had both been tricked by their personas when they joined What Kind of Person Are You.
Of course, Shen Jinfeng had been tricked far worse.
After all, if one thought about it even a little, it was obvious. If Shen Jinfeng had not turned the tables against the wind, shown a superhuman boss-like presence on the island, exploded in popularity, and reversed his reputation—
If he had still carried his black-red reputation in real life and then pestered a national god who had already left the entertainment industry but whose status was practically legendary,
he would probably have attracted at least eighty percent of the firepower for this season.
And if he had already annoyed Qin Ye on the show, one could imagine what would have happened to him after leaving.
With Qin Ye’s ability, if he personally dealt with him, Shen Jinfeng would probably never have been able to turn things around again.
As for the Shen family behind Shen Jinfeng, they could naturally have been “unable” to step in and help.
That was also the fundamental reason the Shen family had dared to do this.
As for a notorious little celebrity claiming he had been harmed by others, who would believe him?
Especially since Shen Jinfeng had previously expressed his fondness for Qin Ye in public within the entertainment industry.
Of course, all of that was only the hypothetical scenario they had once imagined.
The reality was that Shen Jinfeng’s performance on the show was unprecedented and so astonishing that no one dared imagine anyone surpassing him in the future.
He had also not unilaterally pestered Qin Ye on the island.
Qin Ye, meanwhile, even more so! Not only did he not dislike him, he actually treated him with special favor. Anyone with eyes could see the surging feelings quietly growing between them.
Thinking of this, Sun Xinping’s eyes lit up.
His fingers flew over his phone keyboard. After carefully weighing and checking his wording, he finally sent the message.
[Yes, Dalao. I’m sorry. Actually, when our production team designs personas, we also base them on the guest’s own positioning in the entertainment industry, public image, past words, and behavior.]
[Our publicity team noticed that Shen Dalao had publicly said on multiple occasions that Qin Ye was your idol, so we made that design.]
[Shen Dalao, this is also a form of fate. Just accept it naturally.]
[The facts prove that Shen Dalao and Ye Shen have intense chemistry! You two look perfectly matched, truly a heavenly pair! Even we bystanders can clearly feel that both of you have mutual affection. If good news comes soon in the future, I, Old Sun, will have to shamelessly come ask for a cup of matchmaker’s wine. (snickering jpg.)]
With a flash of inspiration, he opened a short-video platform, selected the most popular CP video of the two that he had saved over the past few days, and forwarded it directly to Shen Jinfeng.
[The netizens are going crazy shipping you two, hahaha!]
After he sent that, two minutes passed.
Only then did Shen Jinfeng reply coldly.
He replied with a single period.
[.]
Sun Xinping: “…”
Looking up through the chat history, the whole screen was full of his green message bubbles.
It made him look like some kind of bootlicker.
Sun Xinping stood at the control room entrance in total darkness. He had even forgotten to turn the lights back on. Only a faint glow from the elevator at the end of the corridor shone over.
He waited nervously for ten or twenty minutes.
When he realized Shen Jinfeng really was not going to reply again,
had he… muddled through?
Sun Xinping let out a breath. The moment his tense nerves loosened, his legs went weak. If he had not been leaning against the control room door, he almost would have slid to the floor.
Whew.
Who knew why he was so afraid of Shen Dalao?
But after years in the entertainment industry and climbing to his current position, he had always trusted his instincts.
Therefore, he continued and sent Shen Jinfeng one more message.
[It’s very late. See you tomorrow, Dalao. Good night.]
Only then did he leave with lingering fear and head toward the parking lot.
On the other side, Shen Jinfeng, who had received Sun Xinping’s long string of messages, was lying in bed.
Staring at the ceiling.
All right. The last question—one that had already become obvious after searching through all the real-world information in this world, but which he still had not gotten an answer to and had been waiting to verify—
was finally settled.
When he was on the deserted island, the answer his mind had given him at first sight of Qin Ye—Qin Ye had a crush on him—was false.
It was only a false hint and memory implanted by the production team.
And in reality, things were not only different, they could even be said to be the complete opposite.
Shen Jinfeng dug up the videos where the original owner had publicly expressed his fondness for Qin Ye.
Mm.
But from the original owner’s eyes, there did not seem to be much fondness either. It looked more like, when asked which person in the entertainment industry was his idol, he could not think of anyone for a moment and casually gave an answer many celebrities might give.
After all, naming Qin Ye, a person publicly recognized as worthy of admiration, a star among stars, should have been an answer no one could fault.
But obviously, as long as someone wanted to smear you, even taking a sip of water could be twisted into eight hundred kinds of slander from head to toe.
Therefore, anyone with a clear eye could see that the so-called “public confession” had simply been led in a certain direction.
But no matter what, in reality, Qin Ye did not know “him.”
Whether intentionally or unintentionally, the original owner bringing him up—even if only as a shield—was still borrowing his light to some extent.
How did it turn out like this…
Shen Jinfeng’s mind went blank, and he tossed the phone he had been holding up for too long to the side.
He recalled all the mental activity he had had on the island.
Ashamed, he covered his face.
All along, it had actually been him being self-important!
So, on the island, Qin Ye had really only treated him as an ordinary teammate, or perhaps a trustworthy team leader?
At least, when they had just woken up.
He thought back to their first meeting.
He had assumed Qin Ye refused to eat because he had a crush on him.
At the time, he had even thought that Qin Ye insisting on giving him half of the last remaining food meant he was a responsible, decent secret admirer.
Shen Jinfeng let go of his hand and stared blankly at the ceiling.
He then thought of every time Qin Ye had said something, and he had assumed the other party was secretly confessing.
But thinking back now, if the same words had been said by someone relatively older and steadier, like Mo Fan, he would not have misunderstood.
As for Gu Shengsheng, Qi Xiu, and He Erwang, the three younger ones had clearly said even bolder and more sentimental things.
He had not misunderstood those.
Shen Jinfeng secretly gritted his teeth and silently clenched his fists.
Could this be blamed on him?
It was all the damned production team’s fault!
They had implanted such a false persona and memory full of malice in him, causing him, who had just arrived and received the memories, to have no idea anything was wrong.
Sun Xinping couldn’t possibly think that a few light, evasive words would make this pass, right?
That he could cover up the fact that from the very beginning, the production team had treated the original owner with complete malice—as a villain cannon fodder to absorb fire and get scolded—using the implanted persona and memories to push the wave and even trying to destroy the original owner with their own hands?
Judging by the outcome, everyone was happy now.
But if one traced the result backward, it was only because he had come.
If it had been the original owner, who had already been bullied badly enough, he absolutely would not have survived this wave.
Right, 888 was also to blame!
If not for 888 pretending to be mysterious before leaving and telling him, “There’s a surprise waiting for you!”
888 knew that he had been single for 999 small worlds, and he had often talked about wanting to stop being single.
After he received the memories, he naturally thought Qin Ye, whose appearance landed perfectly on his aesthetic point, was the surprise 888 had mentioned.
A series of coincidences. The right time, place, and people had all come together.
It had created such an earth-shattering misunderstanding.
All sorts of memories and scenes that had not felt out of place at the time but now felt unbearably embarrassing surged into his mind all at once.
He hated that his memory was so good.
In Shen Jinfeng’s mind, scenes of him being self-important played on loop eight hundred times.
Numb.
He turned over and bumped into his phone. The screen lit up.
The links Sun Xinping had sent over, just from the covers, were full of tension and beauty.
One look and he knew they were artificially sweetened CP videos.
Shen Jinfeng hesitated for a moment, thinking of how Sun Xinping had said, in order to cover up his crimes, that he and Qin Ye were very well matched, and that the viewers all thought they had fallen in love.
The side of his face warmed slightly.
His finger moved, tapping open the top link.
Damn it.
The very beginning was actually the video he had found earlier of the original owner “confessing” to Qin Ye in public.
Then the scene changed to him waking up on the deserted island and meeting Qin Ye’s eyes for the first time.
The background music there was full of a sense of destiny.
The on-screen text read: One glance, ten thousand years.
He, Qin Ye, was destined to fall in love at first sight.
He, Shen Jinfeng, lost his memory yet was still moved at a glance.
A shudder ran through Shen Jinfeng’s whole body, and he immediately tapped the X in the upper right corner.
What the hell was this?
What kind of divine nonsense was “he lost his memory yet was still moved at a glance”?
But the edit did make it look like that.
Although Qin Ye did fit his aesthetic very well, back then, he had clearly been feeling awkward that he had gained a secret admirer the moment he crossed over.
Sure enough, videos edited by CP fans made it seem like as long as two people knew each other, there was attraction; as long as their eyes met once, they were about to get married.
Tui. Fake!
He was not watching anymore.
Shen Jinfeng tossed the phone aside. In that instant, he felt so embarrassed that he wanted to flee this retirement world.
He did not want to think about it anymore. Sleep.
Ahhh.
If he had known that after breaking through the virtual world and returning from the deserted island, what greeted him would not be a beautiful, wealthy, leisurely, happy, carefree retirement life,
but this…
If he had known, he really might as well have stayed on the deserted island.
He now agreed deeply with what Mo Fan had said before.
Compared with the outside world, the deserted island truly was like a paradise beyond the world.
Sigh.
Shen Jinfeng experienced a rare bout of insomnia.
He fell asleep while thinking random thoughts.
And slept until he woke naturally… no, not at all. Early in the morning, he was woken up!
The next morning.
When he heard knocking at the door early in the morning, Shen Jinfeng was still a little dazed.
Had the production team come to wake him up?
He reached for the phone on the bedside table, lit up the screen, glanced at the time, and his eyes shook.
5:18 a.m.?
Was this production team insane?
Coming this early to wake him up?
For a moment, Shen Jinfeng even suspected he might still be in the virtual world.
A virtual layer outside a virtual layer?
All right. Judging from Director Sun’s behavior yesterday, he was not someone that tactless.
Maybe the hotel staff had some matter, or perhaps the manager he had never met or someone from the Shen family had come, or maybe someone needed help.
Under low pressure, Shen Jinfeng got out of bed and slowly walked to the door.
He looked through the peephole and was stunned.
It was actually He Erwang?
He pulled the door open. “What happened? Did something happen?”
His first reaction was that He Erwang had encountered some problem he could not solve.
But when the door opened, besides He Erwang,
his head of purple hair moved aside, revealing Qi Xiu, Qin Ye, Mo Fan, and Gu Shengsheng standing beside and behind him.
Everyone was there.
“Boss/Captain!” they shouted together, then walked into Shen Jinfeng’s room without the slightest sense of being outsiders.
Shen Jinfeng was still a little confused.
He walked to the table, poured himself a glass of water, and finally woke up fully. He looked over the group.
He discovered that they had all clearly washed up before coming.
“Why are you all here so early?” he asked.
He Erwang answered with great enthusiasm, “We’re here to exercise with you, Boss!”
???
What?
Qi Xiu looked full of righteous indignation.
“This is too much. I finally followed Boss and exercised every day on the island. I had just started seeing results. I felt like I was about to be able to fight a tiger! And then the moment I came out, it was all gone! All gone! My training progress was reset overnight…”
Shen Jinfeng took a moment to recover.
Previously, on the deserted island, he had been the one waking this group up.
Now, fine, it had reversed?
“Aren’t you all tired?” After suddenly returning to the real world from the deserted island, weren’t their emotions complicated at all?
Mo Fan shook his head, then nodded again.
He smiled and said, “When I woke up this morning, I felt like my old waist was about to snap.”
“I’m getting older, and my constitution has worsened too. Only after having something to compare it to did I realize how painstaking Boss’s efforts were when you trained us before. The results were extraordinary. I kind of miss that comfortable feeling in my body, hahaha.”
Qin Ye only said, “Captain, I wanted to exercise with you.”
His emotional expression was direct and straightforward.
But Shen Jinfeng glanced at him, then restrained himself and withdrew his gaze.
Yes, he could tell.
One by one, they all wanted to exercise with him.
Gu Shengsheng raised his hand excitedly. “Boss, I was the one who thought of it!”
“Before I went to sleep last night, I specially set an alarm and confirmed the time with Brother Ye and the others!”
His face was full of an expression that begged to be praised.
Shen Jinfeng smiled with complicated feelings and patted his head. “Wait a few minutes.”
He… had no way to refuse.
This damned habit had been personally cultivated by him!
Besides, he had been even worse on the deserted island. There had been one time when he woke everyone up for training just after four o’clock. Cough.
Sure enough, it was not that retribution would not come, only that the time had not arrived.
“Okay!”
Fortunately, the group was not so tactless as to ask, “Boss, why have you turned into a lazybones today? Why did we have to come wake you up?”
Five minutes later, Shen Jinfeng brushed his teeth, wiped his face simply with water, opened the curtains in the room, and returned.
It was scorching summer. The sun was already hanging high in the sky. It was not dazzling or burning yet, but already bright.
“Let’s start.” He had everyone take their positions.
“Eh, wait, Boss.” He Erwang suddenly remembered something.
Last night, when he logged onto Weibo, he secretly enjoyed his skyrocketing follower count for a long time.
Then he started reading his fans’ comments.
Thanks to his fans’ tireless publicity during the livestream,
many passersby now knew that Little Purple Hair was a top idol who responded to everything and was super obedient to his fans.
Therefore, aside from He Erwang’s own fans,
last night, because the guests were too amazing and the livestream had been interrupted, the heartbroken What Kind of Person Are You viewers had nowhere to vent their complicated feelings. A rather large portion of the traffic rushed to He Erwang’s Weibo.
They wished to see the six of them gathered again.
My goodness, similar wish comments under his latest Weibo had over three million likes.
He Erwang had never seen such a scene—no, that was not it. He just felt sorry for his fans.
Therefore, he personally came down into the comments and patted his chest, promising that they would definitely gather again.
Heh, wasn’t this a gathering right now?
“Boss, can we take a group photo?” He scratched his purple hair, which had not been styled after waking up early, but because he had dampened it with water, it lay soft and flat.
“We can report safety to the fans, hehe.”
After leaving the island, Gu Shengsheng’s idol baggage suddenly returned.
“Take one now? This is the first photo for fans after coming out. Should we change clothes and do hair and makeup?”
Because he had come to exercise, he had directly worn pajamas.
On the front of his pajamas was a giant Ultraman.
Qi Xiu found it baffling. “But weren’t you uglier on the deserted island before?”
Shen Jinfeng glanced at the Ultraman Gu Shengsheng was covering and had a hard time holding back laughter.
He comforted him in a serious, wanting-to-watch-the-fun way. “It’s very cute. This makes you seem approachable. Being a little closer to your fans will make them like you more.”
Gu Shengsheng blinked.
“Oh, is that so?”
“Boss makes sense!”
Qin Ye, standing at the side, also could not help the corners of his lips from curving.
He stood beside Shen Jinfeng, lowered his head slightly, and whispered with a smile, “You’re teasing him again.”
His eyes were full of amusement. Under the sunlight, they looked unusually gentle.
Shen Jinfeng glanced at him, then slowly withdrew his gaze.
“I’m not teasing him. I’m making everyone laugh.”
See? Everyone was laughing now.
He Erwang held up his phone, trying all sorts of angles.
After Qi Xiu had his photo-taking posture criticized several times, he finally stood up impatiently.
“Stop taking photos, stop taking photos.”
He Erwang froze. “What are you doing? Qi Xiu, why did your temper get worse after leaving? Looks like the cowardly persona the production team implanted in you was still useful.”
Qi Xiu: “…”
“No, I just think taking photos is exhausting. Didn’t you say fans under your Weibo were asking you to livestream?”
“You might as well start one now. We’ll do our own training, and your livestream task will also be completed. Two birds with one stone.”
Just now, He Erwang had said that he needed to find time today, maybe on the way to the production team later, to start a livestream and chat with fans.
Hearing this idea, He Erwang’s eyes lit up.
“Good idea!”
The others thought that for all those days, their morning exercise had also been livestreamed anyway, so they did not mind.
Thus, on the first day after leaving the deserted island,
under circumstances that netizens across the whole internet never expected, He Erwang actually started a livestream at a little past five in the morning.
He Erwang fixed his phone in place, making sure the camera could fit everyone, then stopped paying attention to it and began exercising.
Going back to square one overnight was not just an exaggeration.
Ever since Shen Jinfeng had crossed over, he had exercised every day. Even while sleeping at night, he had naturally circulated his breathing technique.
His body could not be called particularly strong yet, but he had at least finally expanded his meridians and cleared his internal flow. He had even been planning to pick a day to open his acupoints and see whether he could cultivate a faint trace of internal energy to regulate his body.
Fortunately, he had not yet put it on the agenda. Otherwise, that too would have been wasted effort.
Sure enough, when he had first crossed over and felt that this body was a little weak, it had not been an illusion, nor was it only because he had been starving at sea for three days.
It was because it was genuinely weak.
Now he had to start training all over again. Fortunately, it had only been a few days’ work.
If even he was like this, then there was no need to mention the others.
Training the body required daily persistence.
Three days without practice, and the effort would be wasted.
He Erwang and the others had basically returned to the beginning, as if they had never trained at all.
Therefore, they started again from the most basic movements.
As for the livestream that no one paid attention to, waves of viewers unknowingly poured in one after another.
Obviously, at this hour, even though He Erwang was a top idol, not many of his fans were awake.
Only a small number of night owls—fans who had stayed up until this hour and still had not slept—noticed something unusual.
[Holy crap, what’s going on with my Wang-ge? Starting a livestream at this hour! Let me see!]
[Oh my god, what is this? He’s actually with Shen Dalao and the others!!!]
Then, the fans began discussing in twos and threes.
They attracted the massive crowd of netizens who had already developed the biological clock of getting up at this hour every morning to train with Shen Jinfeng, only to wake up today with nothing to do except surf the internet.
[Oh my god, I didn’t wake up for nothing today!]
[Wuwuwu, even though they’re not on the deserted island, I can still follow along! This feels amazing! My mood instantly became beautiful first thing in the morning!]
[Little Purple Hair is really reliable! Sensible! (thumbs up)]
[Eh, wait, no. Why are they starting from the beginning? Oh… I get it! I’m dying laughing. Great. Now all of their progress is behind mine!]
