Let the idiots go

Jiang Xun lay on the bed with one leg crossed over the other. The foxtail grass between his lips had already been chewed into a broom head.

A production assistant had peeked through the doorway several times. On his last visit, he stammered that the director was about to crush her walkie-talkie in front of the monitor.

"Let her," Jiang Xun scoffed. "Not like I'm paying for it."

He certainly wasn't going to volunteer to work in the fields.

Let the idiots go.

Back when Jiang Xun was at the orphanage, the heartless director had used the children as free labor to save money.

Weeding, hauling bricks, painting walls-seven- and eight-year-olds had been driven onto construction sites to carry bags of cement, the straps cutting bloody marks into their shoulders. When they returned, they hadn't even been given a Band-Aid.

He had been the one to lead the uprising.

Little Jiang Xun had led every child in the orphanage to surround the director's office. Brandishing rolling pins and mop handles swiped from the kitchen, they had spent an entire afternoon shouting, "We want food, not work!"

Only then, afraid things would get out of hand and reach the higher-ups, had the director reluctantly scrapped his child-labor policy.

And now the production team wanted him to work in the fields? In their dreams.

They should have been grateful he hadn't taken the tires off that box truck.

After lying there for about fifteen minutes, Jiang Xun grew unbearably bored. The spider on the ceiling beam had finished its web, and there wasn't much point in watching it any longer.

He rolled over, sat up, and ambled out of the courtyard.

The director's eyes lit up. "Follow him, quick!"

The cameraman hoisted his camera onto his shoulder and hurried after him.

Jiang Xun stretched as he walked, the foxtail grass between his lips bobbing with every step.

The production assistant jogged alongside him and asked tentatively, "Jiang Xun, didn't you say you weren't going?"

"If I can't do the work, I can sit there and watch him do it." Jiang Xun shot him a sidelong glance. "I've got nothing else to do anyway. Might as well sunbathe on the field ridge and get some calcium."

The production assistant: "..."

The director: "..."

The Shen family's field lay halfway up the mountain, a patch of poor farmland painstakingly scraped out between the rocks, planted with drooping corn.

By the time Jiang Xun arrived, he was a little out of breath. He braced his hands on his knees to catch his breath, then picked the flattest spot on the field ridge and plopped down.

The sun was fierce, scorching the back of his neck. Jiang Xun narrowed his eyes at Shen Wangjing, who stood in the middle of the field.

Shen Wangjing hoed with brisk, deft movements. One swing of the hoe split the hardened clods of soil.

Then, with a hook and a pull, he turned out the weeds by their roots and casually tossed them beside the field ridge.

The entire sequence flowed effortlessly. Sunlight fell across his sweat-damp forearms, the lines of his muscles shifting with every movement.

"You're just going to sit there?" the cameraman asked quietly, crouching two paces from Jiang Xun with the camera on his shoulder.

"What else?" Jiang Xun said earnestly. "Look at how he handles it. If I swung a hoe, I'd dig into the top of my foot before I hit a weed. Then your production team would have to carry me down the mountain. What a hassle."

The cameraman actually had no answer. He could only watch as Jiang Xun propped himself up on his hands and tilted his face up to bask in the sun.

The mountain breeze carried the warm scent of grass mingled with the smell of sunbaked earth. It smelled far better than all those imported home fragrances in the Jiang family's villa.

The director had sat behind the monitor for nearly an hour. The footage showed nothing but Shen Wangjing hoeing and Jiang Xun doing arts and crafts on the field ridge-

He plucked foxtail grass and wove a ring to wear on his ring finger, then made a grass grasshopper and stuck it on the ridge as a trail marker. Finally, he braided a grass whip and amused himself by lashing the air.

At last, the director could sit still no longer.

"Jiang Xun." She personally walked over to the field ridge, holding a laminated card. "Our show has a points system. Let me explain it to you."

"Working in the fields earns you five points each time. Feeding the chickens or pigs earns three points each time. Helping your family cook earns three points each time."

The director enunciated every word clearly, then turned the card over to reveal the reward list printed on the back, her tone growing increasingly animated. "You can redeem points for rewards-ten points for a white-flour steamed bun, twenty points for a trip to the market, thirty points..."

She paused deliberately, emphasizing her next words, her eyes gleaming with certainty of victory. "Thirty points earns you a phone call with your family."

This points system was Metamorphosis's trump card. Over eleven seasons, it had worked every time.

Those pampered boys and girls from the city might act outrageously defiant for the first couple of days, but within three days, they would be crying and begging to call home.

To save up enough points, even the most spoiled among them could be pushed into working in the fields.

Brimming with confidence, the director looked at Jiang Xun, waiting for his eyes to light up.

Jiang Xun finally raised his head.

His beautiful eyes narrowed slightly in the sunlight, and the corners of his lips curled up, revealing his two signature dimples.

"Director."

"Yes?"

"Why would I work myself to death in the fields just to make a phone call to those assholes?"

The smile froze on the director's face.

"Do you think there's something wrong with my brain?" Jiang Xun tilted his head, his tone sincere.

The director's hand froze in midair around the laminated card. At last, she could no longer maintain that professional fake smile.

"But they're your family-"

"Family?" Jiang Xun gave a soft laugh. "An old hag who drugged me while I was asleep, a useless loser whose two front teeth I kicked out, and a second older brother who sides with outsiders so hard he's practically dislocated his elbow."

"Who do you want me to call? Should I tell them, 'Hey, I'm doing pretty well in the mountains. You're still not dead?'"

The director: "..."

Jiang Xun lay back on the field ridge, pillowed his head on his hands, and crossed one leg over the other. "Give me thirty points to call those assholes, and then we'll talk."