The restaurant was on the cruise ship's seventh deck. It was the largest restaurant aboard and served a buffet of Chinese and Western dishes.
The three of them found a table by the window and sat down. Outside stretched the boundless sea, the last rays of the setting sun shimmering across it like scattered gold.
At a nearby table sat a young woman and a round-faced girl: Du Ling, one of the hottest actresses of the moment, and Lin Jiaxing, her best friend and manager.
Du Ling was making a special trip to Pengcheng to shoot an advertisement for a well-known brand.
She had thought taking a cruise would let her travel while unwinding, enjoying the ocean views and easing the exhaustion of days of work. Never had she imagined she would run into Chen Hao here.
Chen Hao. God Chen. Ever since their last encounter at the Oriental Pearl Revolving Restaurant, Lin Jiaxing had talked about him in her ear every day and sent her countless videos of him.
At first, she had paid little attention. Then, one day when she was bored, she casually opened Chen Siyao's livestream—the one at Jingwei Grotto.
She watched the entire stream, then went through the earlier recordings: the Queen Mother of the West's Secret Realm, Qin Shi Huang's Silk Manuscript, Treasure Sky City's Ghost Domain... The more she watched, the more curious she became, and the more incredible it all seemed.
She was a rational person. She did not believe in ghosts or gods, or in so-called "supernatural phenomena."
But the scenes in Chen Hao's livestreams, the details, the things even the best special-effects teams could not produce, had made her begin to question her own rationality.
She had recognized his distinctive figure the moment he came in. Her gaze kept drifting