Chu Yuanqing took out the smart hair dryer and adjusted the airflow and temperature. With one hand, she gently parted the hair, and with the other, she moved the dryer along the direction of its growth.
Her technique had been built from years of experience. She followed the principle of drying the roots first and the hair tips afterward, occasionally switching the dryer's temperature to alternate between warm and cool air to prevent damage. Even the distance between the dryer and the hair was perfectly maintained.
Xie Qingxuan watched the dance video for only a short while before simply lying facedown on the desk, glancing at the vanity mirror on it from the corner of her eye.
In the mirror,
Chu Yuanqing wore a serious expression on her youthful face. Her movements were earnest, and beneath her lowered brows and eyes, there was a faint glimpse of gentleness. This maturity, so at odds with her age, blended into an almost young-wife-like warmth.
The cool touch of fingertips gently brushing between her hair and scalp, and the warmth that occasionally touched her neck when the back of her hair was gathered up, somehow made her feel relaxed and at ease.
Xie Qingxuan was a little puzzled.
Was she putting on an act for the camera? Or did she simply enjoy drying hair?
Chu Yuanqing did not think that much about it. Having mostly dried the hair at the back, she began working on the bangs in front. Her soft fingertips touched Xie Qingxuan's smooth forehead as she lowered the airflow and said seriously,
"If you keep leaving your hair wet, you'll be more likely to get migraines. It can lower your immunity too, and even affect your sleep."
"Even if you don't blow-dry it, you should at least towel it off better next time. Don't just rub it a few times and go watch your iPad. Idols should take better care of their health than ordinary people, right?"
Chu Yuanqing kept nagging.
The more Xie Qingxuan listened, the sleepier she became. She simply closed her eyes and let Chu Yuanqing continue fussing with her.
Her eyelashes drooped like butterfly wings, and her profile looked rather "obedient."
Warm air swept past her ears, while the quiet lecture grew fragmented as her consciousness drifted away.
In the shallow dream of her nap, familiar faces flickered past.
Xie Qingxuan's delicate brows furrowed slightly, as though shadows had enveloped her, only to be smoothed away by slender fingers like an iron.
"Did she fall asleep? She still has dark circles under her eyes. This child looks really tired..."
Chu Yuanqing murmured, withdrawing her fingertips and gently setting down the hair dryer.
After thinking for a moment, she took a thin blanket from her suitcase and covered Xie Qingxuan with it. Then she raised the air conditioner's temperature, turned off the lights, casually covered the camera with something, and finally tiptoed out of the room.
Not long after the door closed, a whisper-soft murmur echoed through the room:
"Sister..."
A Game That Tested Human Nature
Xie Qingxuan came from a very well-off family.
Her mother was a renowned singing diva in the film and television industry. Her father was a major director who had won international awards. Her older Sister, five years her senior, was the leader of a girl group that had gone global and could be considered to have come from Star Gate.
Yet unlike her Sister, who had been doted on by their parents since childhood, grown up carefree, debuted in the Center position with abundant support and resources, and become famous throughout the World,
Xie Qingxuan learned piano at four, dance at five, received posture training at six, studied international etiquette at seven, formally began learning vocal music from a famous singer in the industry at eight, and at nine, she carved out one day from weeks that had never contained weekends to learn acting and study on film sets.
From middle school onward, she had to struggle to balance her studies as well, required to hand in perfect scores in every aspect of life.
No childhood, no holidays, no rest. No one had ever asked whether she liked any of it.
Xie Qingxuan was like a machine programmed with instructions, able only to keep operating toward a predetermined goal.
Family represented nothing but a bleak backdrop.
Her parents lived apart year-round, indulging themselves all over the world, yet remotely controlled her life, setting goals for every stage as though crafting a work of art.
Xie Qingxuan had never received normal parental love.
Or rather, all of that love had been poured onto her Sister—Xie Qingyu.
Yu meant beautiful jade.
Xuan meant a beautiful stone like jade.
Their fates seemed to have been decided the moment their names were chosen.
But why? Why could her Sister have a childhood, friends, freedom, the love she craved, and the right to rebel as she pleased, while she had to be like a predetermined NPC, constantly moving toward the future her parents expected of her?
Xie Qingxuan chose to resist.
And to parents who wanted her to become an artist, her decision to join Shining Stage was the greatest rebellion of all.
"Xie Qingxuan, there's no emotion in your dancing. It's like something dead."
"How disgusting. Don't you have dreams of your own?"
"This half-hearted resolve is utterly ugly."
"You can't beat me. You don't love the stage, and you don't want to be an idol. You'll never enter Flow State. Flash Dance would never nurture an inferior product like you."
That familiar voice echoed from within her dream.
This was her Sister's conclusion after learning that she had signed up for Flash Dance.
Xie Qingxuan's consciousness was like bubbles rising from an ancient well, slowly dragged back into her body. Her lashes trembled, and her eyes opened.
The room was dim and silent, with only the cold wind from the air conditioner blowing.
Her expression was calm, but her gaze was obsessive and deep, sharp and cold like blades. In her heart, she whispered,
"Sister, my dream is to destroy your dream."
Xie Qingxuan sat up, and the thin blanket draped over her slipped down. She caught it reflexively, her long hand rubbing its soft texture. Lowering her eyes, she pressed her lips together and murmured,
"No wonder... I wasn't cold at all."
Elsewhere,
Chu Yuanqing had already become meal buddies with another roommate and entered the enormous cafeteria inside the base.
The cafeteria was lavishly decorated and could easily accommodate a hundred people.
Aside from trainees, there were no other staff members here. Only robots were responsible for delivering meals.
Chu Yuanqing carried her tray to a secluded corner and sat down.
Sitting across from her was one of her assigned roommates, Liang Xiaoxiao.
Unlike Tang Liuli and Xie Qingxuan, upper-tier contestants who had entered the industry and possessed impressive resumes, this girl came from a small company and had been a trainee for less than a year.
Liang Xiaoxiao's abilities were average, and even her looks could only be considered pretty among ordinary people. She had little presence on a big screen, and her previous evaluation stage had been lackluster, earning her only a D-Class rating.
Well, Chu Yuanqing's only impression of this girl was that, in the Waiting Room, she had danced while spinning a flying pancake on her hand. She had some rather absurd comedic talent.
Perhaps because of that, she had not invited Tang Liuli, nor had she dared disturb a certain sleeping Great Demon King. Instead, she had invited Chu Yuanqing, whose rating was not much higher than hers.
Only noobs could find common ground with other noobs.
Liang Xiaoxiao poked at the vegetable salad in her bowl with her chopsticks and complained gloomily,
"Why did the Program Group make this place like an open-world game? Everywhere you go, it's just, 'Come back later to explore this area.'"
Chu Yuanqing glanced at the extra fruit on her tray. She did not understand this meme among young people and merely answered earnestly,
"This is the difference in access permissions that Dream Weaver Rabbit mentioned."
"A-Class contestants can unlock every dish in the cafeteria, and the areas they can access are much larger too. The Virtual Reality System in the practice rooms is the same. Most of its features are only available to A-Class and B-Class contestants."
Liang Xiaoxiao looked discouraged and said,
"Isn't this rule just the classic case of the strong getting stronger and the weak getting weaker?"
"I feel like I'm going to get eliminated in the first round. There was already a gap in skill, and now there's a gap in facilities too. How am I supposed to outwork them no matter how hard I try?"
"By the way, how did you know all that?"
Chu Yuanqing hesitated for a moment before saying softly,
"Yayoi told me."
The fork in Liang Xiaoxiao's hand paused. Looking surprised, she asked,
"Yayoi? That Sakura Girl with insanely powerful stage presence?"
"Well, no wonder. She's an A-Class contestant."
Chu Yuanqing nodded and said nothing more.
Kiriwake Yayoi had indeed told her a great deal, including the most enticing technology in virtual reality.
That was, a surreal technology that could create a phantom beside the user to faithfully replicate dance moves, correct mistaken movements, and, by attaching wireless electrodes to the body, rapidly form muscle memory.
Depending on the individual's physical condition, this technology could be used for one to three hours.
A-Class contestants, however, had eight hours of access per day, leaving them with roughly five extra hours.
And this information, combined with a secret that the Sakura Girl had told her, created an extraordinarily delicate ecosystem.
That was, A-Class permissions could be shared with others unconditionally.
Chu Yuanqing did not want to tell Liang Xiaoxiao this information, not out of selfishness.
It was because once this news spread, Flash Dance would quickly become a game that tested human nature.
Kiriwake Yayoi and her daughter had both told her the ratings of their roommates.
The former's dorm had A-Class, B-Class, C-Class, and D-Class contestants.
The latter's dorm had B-Class, C-Class, D-Class, and F-Class contestants.
Chu Yuanqing had also asked some of the remaining contestants. Every dorm had a clear rating hierarchy, without a single exception.
In other words, when the Program Group assigned dormitories before the competition, it had most likely calculated the initial evaluation results based on each contestant's abilities, then used each dorm as a unit to fabricate one small ecosystem after another with an obvious food chain.
It sounded ridiculous, but after hearing Dream Weaver Rabbit's introduction, it became clear that accomplishing this would not be difficult.
And when combined with the outrageous arrangement where only the initial 101 contestants to enter could receive camera time, it became obvious what kind of stunt the Program Group was trying to pull.
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Book Recommendation
Synopsis: [Juzi]
The World's last guardian—Haga Mayumi—had finally escaped the trap of immortality after her own world was destroyed, welcoming eternal sleep as she had wished.
Yet when she opened her eyes again, she had been reincarnated into another world.
This world was strange.
The guardians here did not get hurt or bleed. When they fought, they did not end up disheveled and filthy like she did. Sparkling magic always kept their clothes clean, and even when fighting or flying in light skirts, they never exposed themselves.
Those guardians with colorful hair and clothes were called "Magical Girls," and supposedly, no one knew their identities.
Clearly, Haga Mayumi's childhood friend, classmates, transfer student, school nurse... even the idol girl she saw on television all had rare, vibrant hair colors that matched the hair colors of the Magical Girls one by one, yet not a single person noticed anything strange.
It was ridiculous.
Yet she did not know that, in this child-oriented world, the most ridiculous thing by common consensus was someone who could bleed, sew a severed arm back on and move it freely three minutes later, blow herself up into orange juice and splash someone in the face, then revive from a state of minced flesh—
—herself.
Title: <Giving a Child-Oriented Worldview a Little Self-Destruction Shock>
A Dying Person, Winds Rising and Clouds Surging
Chu Yuanqing understood human nature very well.
Because the Calamity Beasts that had once caused the apocalypse were precisely the evil fruits that had successfully formed by drawing nourishment from it.
So after Kiriwake Yayoi revealed some information, she immediately noticed the distortion in the mechanism behind it.
By making every dorm form a rating hierarchy, the Program Group wanted everyone to realize as quickly and directly as possible that, within this underground base that resembled a prison, evaluation ratings represented everything.
Whether it was their range of movement, practice room level, the song-and-dance library in the AI database, massage pod usage time, access to professional nutritionists, or even the range of food choices, all of it clearly divided everyone into different classes and tiers.
It would not take long. At most, three days—perhaps even just one day would be enough.
That was enough time for most people to understand what it meant and begin to feel intense anxiety.
A-Class contestants stood at the pinnacle above everyone else. They were already the best of the best, and with the finest resources at their disposal, the possibility of dropping down in the second evaluation was very low.
B-Class contestants occupied the upper tier. Aside from having no surplus to share, the core resources they possessed were not much different from those of A-Class contestants. The two were almost on the same starting line, and it was not impossible for them to claw their way up.
C-Class contestants were stuck in the middle. This group had a relatively low chance of being eliminated in the first round if they held their rank steady, but they would most likely have no chance at a Debut Spot and were bound to fall into anxiety.
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