An explosive opening!

The female host's smile froze on her face.

The already cramped room instantly fell silent.

The woman in black-rimmed glasses beside the cameraman was the first to recover.

As expected of a veteran director with eleven seasons under her belt, her reaction was astonishingly fast.

She grabbed the cameraman's shoulder and urgently whispered, "Did you get that? Did you get that?!"

The cameraman nodded like a chicken pecking at grain.

The director clenched her fist hard, a feverish light blazing in her eyes.

This opening was going to blow up!

Last season, they had filmed eight whole episodes before landing a trending topic that broke beyond their usual audience. This time, they had struck gold in the very first minute of recording!

She immediately shot the female host a look.

The host cleared her throat and was just about to bite the bullet and steer the conversation back when a commotion broke out at the doorway first.

A man in a white shirt with slicked-back hair squeezed through the crew.

He held a tablet displaying a prerecorded video.

On the screen, Liu Wanying sat on the leather sofa in the Jiang family villa, wearing an understated pale mauve cheongsam. Her eyes were slightly red and brimming with tears, and she held an embroidered handkerchief, occasionally dabbing at the corners of her eyes.

Jiang Yu sat beside her. His missing front teeth had been replaced with two temporary dentures, but his face was still sallow, and he looked weak, as though he had barely survived a disaster.

"I really didn't want it to come to this," Liu Wanying told the camera, her voice choked with tears.

"But this child is just too rebellious. He lashes out and hits people at home at the slightest provocation. He even knocked out his older brother's teeth. We only turned to the production team because we truly had no other choice."

Tears fell as she spoke. Jiang Yu leaned his head against her shoulder at just the right moment, and mother and son embraced and wept together in a deeply moving scene.

"I only hope that some hardship in the countryside will teach him that life isn't easy and help him correct those bad habits. No matter how much he hates me, I'm only doing this for his own good."

The video ended.

Every crew member present turned to look at Jiang Xun, their gazes deeply conflicted.

"Jiang Xun, um..." The host struggled to recover her professionalism.

"Why don't we go out into the courtyard and meet your new family first? The younger boy your age should have arrived at the Jiang family home by now. His grandfather and eldest brother are here at home."

Jiang Xun ignored her.

He hopped off the plank bed, which was hard enough to sharpen a knife on, slipped his feet into the canvas army shoes the production team had prepared for him, and sauntered out of the room.

The cameraman hurried after him with the camera on his shoulder, keeping the lens trained on the back of his head.

He pushed open the creaking wooden door, and sunlight poured down over him.

Jiang Xun narrowed his eyes.

The courtyard was small, its packed yellow-earth ground swept spotless, with a pile of split firewood stacked in one corner.

A yellow dog lay at the foot of the wall, so thin that every rib protruded. It did not bark at the strangers, merely lifting its eyelids lazily and giving the ground two perfunctory thumps with its tail.

A low table stood in the middle of the courtyard, with three sets of bowls and chopsticks laid out on it.

An old man dozed in a wheelchair, an old blanket washed pale draped over his knees.

Someone stood beside him.

With his back to the courtyard gate, the man was bending over to set a plate of stir-fried greens on the table.

He wore a faded black short-sleeved shirt. His forearms were firm and smoothly muscled, his skin a wheat-brown shade earned from years in the sun.

Hearing footsteps, the man turned around.

The mountain sunlight was so dazzling that Jiang Xun had to narrow his eyes before he could make out the figure standing against the light.

To be fair, Jiang Xun had seen plenty of beautiful faces in his life. After all, he had grown up looking at himself in the mirror.

The Jiang family's two older brothers each looked more polished and respectable than the other, and Jiang Huaixiao in particular had a cold, aristocratic air. In the entertainment industry, he could have fought his way to the top on his looks alone.

But the face before him clearly belonged to someone so favored by heaven that it would chase after him to spoon-feed him, then worry he might choke and practically chew the food before putting it in his mouth.

Deep-set eyes and brows, a straight nose, thin lips pressed lightly together-every feature looked as though it had been painstakingly sculpted with a blade.

Yet his gaze was dark, carrying the indifference and distance that only came from being weighed down by life for too long, like a pool of still, lifeless water deep in the mountains.

The production crew had already scattered across the courtyard, some setting up cameras and others testing the sound.

Shen Wangjing swept an indifferent gaze over the mass of crew members inside the room. His deep-set eyes lingered on Jiang Xun's face for less than a second before moving away.

Clearly, he had little warmth to spare for this pampered little troublemaker from the city.

"Time to eat." That was all he said, his voice low and deep, before turning and going into the kitchen.

The so-called meal consisted of just three bowls of watery rice porridge and a plate of greens.

The leaves were limp, with pitifully little oil on them. Rather than stir-fried greens, they looked more like boiled leaves that had accidentally picked up a little oil while being scooped out of the water.

The three bowls of porridge beside them were so clear that the bottoms were visible, with a countable handful of rice grains forming a thin layer at the bottom of each bowl.

The corner of Jiang Xun's mouth twitched involuntarily.

To be fair, he really had not enjoyed many good days in his life.

The orphanage was hardly a place of comfort. Every meal was cabbage stewed with glass noodles, and on the rare occasions when some processed meat slices were added, every child there would fight tooth and nail over them.

But this household's circumstances were more than ten times worse than those of the orphanage where he had lived.

No meat, no fat, and even the porridge was thin enough to use as a mirror.

All three bowls put together amounted to less than the slop the Jiang family's young masters and young ladies threw away after their meals.

Behind the monitor, the director was already rubbing her hands together in excitement.

According to the production team's script, this was when the rebellious city boy was supposed to fly into a rage-

Throw down his chopsticks, overturn the table, and point in someone's face while shouting, "Is this fit for human consumption?"

Then she could edit together a spectacular trailer with the headline "Wealthy young master erupts in fury over farmhouse food."

A tough character like Jiang Xun, who dared to kick out his stepbrother's front teeth in a wealthy household, would surely go berserk at a breakfast worse than pig feed.

The director had already come up with the trending hashtag in her head.

The next second, Jiang Xun plopped down on the wooden stool at the low table, picked up a bowl, swept his chopsticks through it, tipped his head back, and poured it into his mouth.

The porridge was so watery that there was no need to chew. He simply poured it straight down his throat.

Once the bowl was empty, he set it back on the table, wiped his mouth with his hand, and picked up his chopsticks to start eating the greens, crunching noisily.

The production crew: "..."

Wait, what happened to the rebellious persona? What happened to throwing punches at the slightest disagreement?

Come on, flip the table! Swear at someone! What the fuck were you doing enjoying that porridge so much?!