Page 14

"Exactly, exactly! Immortal Pretty Boy, if you want us to help you pick up trash, you have to give us something in return, right? One huge bag of trash for one photo—aren't you getting a massive bargain? I'm a popular blogger with millions of followers, after all. I'm so cute that even if there really were a River God, he'd like me."

As He Qinglan watched the people speaking surround him again, a glimmer of icy blue flashed through his deep-blue, nearly black eyes, followed by undisguised disgust and loathing.

"Speak as if you don't depend on this world to survive."

The Immortal Pretty Boy stood there straight-backed, without a trace of expression on his excessively beautiful face. For no reason, he gave off a lofty, distant air.

"The sky, the earth, the mountains, and the rivers are everything you rely on to survive. You are the ones who destroyed and polluted them, yet now that you're picking up some trash, you still call it helping someone else."

"Shameless."

He Qinglan's cold eyes swept over every one of them, including those watching the livestream. "Stay away. Don't dirty my eyes."

The River God hated all ugly things, especially ugly souls.

From the moment He Qinglan uttered the word "shameless," the streamers holding their phones and the fans watching the livestream had changed expressions.

And the sentence, "Stay away. Don't dirty my eyes," directly stabbed countless people in the lungs.

Not only did the two female streamers present turn as black-faced as the bottom of a pot, but the livestream chats of every streamer also began madly flooding with curses.

[Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit! I've never seen someone so pretentious and foul-mouthed. Who the hell does he think he is?!]

[Can't this guy speak like a normal person?! Not helping him pick up trash makes us shameless?! And we're dirtying his eyes? How clean does he think he is?!]

[He's just a clown grandstanding for attention! Maybe everything he's done was scripted and planned just to make him go viral! I'll bet my damn head that he's putting on a show! Maybe in a few days, he'll make a high-profile debut!]

[And he even brought up the River God—this is killing me. The Qinglan River has fucking run dry. If there really were a River God, he'd be dead too, wouldn't he?]

[Idiot! ＆％￥￥＃＠!]

After He Qinglan finished speaking, he turned and moved a little farther away from those streamers who had no sense of personal space. But his actions and words only stirred up the rebellious resentment of those streamers, who were used to getting their way.

They were internet celebrities earning tens of thousands, even over a hundred thousand, every month! Their incomes were more than what graduates from countless top universities could earn! Among the people around them, who did not envy and flatter them over their income and huge fanbases? How long had it been since they had encountered someone so blunt, someone who refused to give them any face?!

Thus, while the streamers on the outskirts who were more thin-skinned and still had a little bottom line silently took a few steps back, unwilling to get involved any further, the two women and one man closest to He Qinglan darkened their faces and crowded toward him again.

The female streamer with heavy makeup and long curly hair even deliberately said,

"Little brother, how can you talk like that? Aren't you being way too disrespectful? We didn't create this trash. Whether we pick it up or not, you shouldn't blame us for it, right?"

"Besides, there's so much trash here. If it's only us picking it up, who knows how long it'll take. You can't force other people just because you like picking up trash, can you?"

"I can let the rest go, but you need to apologize to me for what you just said, uh—!"

She rushed at the front. Just as she was about to reach He Qinglan's side, she inexplicably felt her foot slip, as though she had stepped on something soft and slick. Her expression instantly changed.

She instinctively tightened her grip on the phone in her hand, but in the end she still crashed solidly to the ground, banging her elbow.

Since the place where He Qinglan had been picking up trash was close to the river, the mud smeared across her face after her fall was even worse than that of the burly dark-skinned streamer from before. Her entire face was practically plastered with it. The phone she had been clutching tightly also struck the muddy ground hard twice before falling into the Qinglan River.

However, the curly-haired streamer's phone had it even worse than the burly male streamer's—its pretty pink screen shattered outright, and when it fell into the river, it even emitted crackling electrical noises. It looked completely beyond saving.

For a moment, the scene fell silent.

The other man and woman following He Qinglan vaguely sensed that something was wrong. They instinctively stopped walking, but it was already too late.

The yellow-haired male streamer and the sweet-looking short-haired female streamer stepped onto the excessively slippery mud almost at the same time. Each cried out as they fell in different directions. The male streamer used every ounce of strength in his body to keep his face from hitting the ground, but both hands had already sunk deep into the muck.

He had not thrown his phone away, but when he braced his body with his hands, the phone clenched tightly in one of them was directly... crushed beneath his own falling weight.

The sweet short-haired streamer was probably the luckiest of the four people who fell?

Though her phone also fell straight into the river and was ruined, compared to the other three who had landed face-first, she at least hit the back of her head and preserved her last shred of dignity.

The four consecutive falls among the onlooking streamers silenced the entire riverside trash-strewn area.

Even the more distant streamers and passersby stiffened because of the bizarre chain of four falls, their steps forcibly halted.

One streamer had a raised foot hovering slightly off the ground and did not dare put it down, terrified that the moment he did, he would inexplicably slip and join the army of fallen people with ruined phones.

At this moment, the livestream chats of the other streamers and passersby also went eerily blank for two seconds.

Two seconds later, they were filled with [Holy shit].

[If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I'd definitely think they were putting on a terrible fake fall.]

[This is freaky, isn't it?! One person falling could be blamed on slippery footing, but four people falling in a row? Was the ground covered in lubricant or carpeted with watermelon rinds?!]

[...Maybe it was neither. Or maybe it was... the River God's curse? Didn't that Immortal Pretty Boy say the River God would get angry if they didn't pick up trash properly?]