Only taking useless notes

Even the haters were ready to start mocking her.

Shen Yunzhi answered without hesitation:

"You. I think you're pretty. There are so many good-looking people in showbiz. Why would I fixate on that piece of shit Ji Nanxian?"

An Zhizhi: "..."

It wasn't Xiao Yao or Chi Zong.

The comments had just been calling Shen Yunzhi hopelessly straight.

Who knew Shen Yunzhi would suddenly pull this?

An Zhizhi's face instantly turned bright red. She stammered, "Y-you, you, you," for ages without managing to get anything else out.

[Awesomeeeee.]

[Even more awesomeeeee.]

[Get together! Get together!]

[Teacher Shen either stays quiet or blows everyone away!!]

[Our young lady's an honest girl! When has she ever encountered tactics like these!!]

An Zhizhi stammered, "W-well... that's true, but..."

Shen Yunzhi said, "Are you saying you think you're not as good-looking as Ji Nanxian?"

An Zhizhi immediately objected. "Of course not!"

"There you go. I think you're more likable than Ji Nanxian too. Anyone who doesn't like you has no taste." Shen Yunzhi yawned and climbed onto the heated brick bed. "Go to sleep. I'm exhausted."

Shen Yunzhi's casual teasing left An Zhizhi's heart in turmoil.

She lay on the hard brick bed, her heart pounding as though she had a rabbit tucked inside her chest.

She wanted to be friends with Shen Yunzhi.

Being considered a friend by someone like Shen Yunzhi would surely be fun.

But she had never taken the initiative with anything like this in her life.

Still, the mood was just right.

All she had to do was go with the flow and say something like, "I want to be friends with you."

But An Zhizhi simply couldn't get the words out. She was so embarrassed that even her ears felt hot.

Both frustrated and shy, An Zhizhi buried her entire head under the covers.

A little while later.

She poked half her head back out, revealing one eye to study Shen Yunzhi.

Shen Yunzhi's eyes were already closed.

The countryside moonlight was clear and bright. It filtered through the old glass window, casting little patches of light across Shen Yunzhi's pretty, makeup-free face.

Shen Yunzhi was very pretty too.

Even in the entertainment industry, with its abundance of handsome men and beautiful women.

Shen Yunzhi's looks were top-tier.

Long ago, when she first met Shen Yunzhi and first heard the gossip about their melodramatic love triangle, she had thought it was a shame.

With such a beautiful face, she just had to fawn over an asshole like Ji Nanxian.

Shen Yunzhi was normal now.

She no longer seemed as though someone had put a spell on her.

A few minutes passed.

An Zhizhi finally worked up her courage.

"Um... Shen Yunzhi... I brought some self-heating hot pot. Want to have some with me tomorrow?"

An Zhizhi waited anxiously for quite a while, but Shen Yunzhi never spoke.

She couldn't help sneaking another look at Shen Yunzhi.

She was sleeping peacefully.

An Zhizhi: "..."

It had taken her so much courage to get that sentence out!!

Was Shen Yunzhi a pig?!

How could she fall asleep just like that!

[Hahahahahahaha!]

[Just confess to Zhizhi directly and she'll be devoted to you. (Taking notes.JPG)]

[Only taking useless notes.]

[Looks are a requirement here, okay.]

[If you look like a kappa, go ahead and try.]

[But I think I look pretty decent.]

[?]

[?]

An Zhizhi's fans were dying with laughter. They clicked through to see which mediocre but overconfident man had spoken up this time.

It turned out to be an incredibly handsome, six-foot-two mixed-race guy with blond hair and blue eyes.

[...]

[???]

[You know what? Sometimes not messing with me is a way of messing with me!!]

[Never mind. You can learn this trick.]

Citing her poor health, Jiang Yunli went off to sleep alone in the production team's only RV.

The male guests, meanwhile, had three grown men sleeping together on one large communal bed.

Ji Nanxian returned to the men's dorm.

The three grown men were sleeping on a communal bed too.

Ji Nanxian held himself back again and again, but finally couldn't take it anymore.

He rolled up his bedding, ready to sleep outside.

Chi Zong remarked quietly, "The temperature in the mountains drops below freezing at night."

Ji Nanxian: "..."

Though he was seething, he still came back.

But the moment he sat on the heated brick bed, the hard surface hurt his butt.

Ji Nanxian couldn't stand it anymore.

He reached out and punched the spot beside him.

Just as he was about to lose his temper, he heard a rumbling crash.

The old, poorly maintained brick bed collapsed under Ji Nanxian's punch.

Fortunately, no fire had been lit in it that day. Only years' worth of coal ash billowed out, coating his entire face.

Chi Zong, who had just enjoyed a shower and lain down for a good night's sleep, was caught completely off guard. He and his bedding dropped straight into the cavity beneath the bed.

Crash-

Another cloud of coal ash rose.

Spitting coal cinders out of his mouth, Chi Zong cried, "H-help, help, help-"

The moment Xiao Yao returned from outside.

He saw black clouds filling the room.

He thought there was a fire.

The domineering CEO shuddered in fright and immediately grabbed the water he had just heated for his bath, flinging it over them.

"Don't be afraid, brothers! I'm here to save you!"

[I'm laughing my head off.]

[Hahahahahahaha, a whole room full of lunatics, hahahahahaha!]

[Sometimes I think they're truly hateful, and sometimes I think they don't deserve all this.]

[I laughed so hard a couple drops of pee came out.]

On the male guests' side, Ji Nanxian had punched the brick bed into collapse.

They spent the entire night dealing with the mess.

Shen Yunzhi and An Zhizhi slept blissfully until broad daylight.

The sun rose, spilling light and shadows across the yard outside.

In November in the northeast, the morning frost thawed into tiny droplets clinging to the tips of the grass, while the birch grove in the distance had nearly shed its last remaining leaves.

Wisps of cooking smoke from distant chimneys drifted through the gray-blue sky.

Neither An Zhizhi nor Shen Yunzhi particularly wanted to leave her warm bedding.

Shen Yunzhi stayed wrapped in her quilt, unwilling to get up either.

An Zhizhi said, "The director hasn't called us, so I'll stay in bed a little longer."

The director hadn't called because the production staff hadn't woken up yet.

After the bed collapsed last night, they had spent ages sorting things out for the three male guests. The local who had rented them the house also heard the terrible news and rushed over to demand an explanation.

The dispute dragged on until the latter half of the night and only ended once enough compensation had been paid.

After a night's sleep, An Zhizhi wasn't upset anymore.

She had completely forgotten how angry she had been last night when Shen Yunzhi slept like a dead pig and failed to hear the invitation to share self-heating hot pot that she had worked up so much courage to offer.

Since they had decided to stay in bed, she rolled over and flopped back down, wrapped in her quilt, then asked Shen Yunzhi excitedly:

"Did you come on this show because you want to enter the entertainment industry?"

If Shen Yunzhi wanted to work in showbiz in the future.

Then she would graciously take her along for the ride.

Shen Yunzhi was purely there for the eight hundred thousand the director had promised her.

She yawned and said, "I'll take it one step at a time. Who knows what'll happen in the future?"

An Zhizhi asked, "What if you can't break off your engagement?"

Shen Yunzhi didn't think it mattered. "What else can I do? If I refuse to get married, there's nothing they can do to me. We don't live our lives for other people."

Shen Yunzhi meant every word.

And they struck a chord with An Zhizhi.

There was a reason she had decided to join this show.

While attending an event, she had passed a certain entertainer's dressing room and heard a group of people discussing her.

"This is hilarious. Netizens voted An Zhizhi onto the must-invite guest list for All Villains."

"With An Zhizhi's personality, won't she be furious?"

"Of course. She might even get her daddy to shut the show down."

"Doubt he could. I heard it's Xiao Yao's show."

"Hmph. An Zhizhi only knows how to throw her weight around in front of people like us."

"I worked on the same production as her once. She had a five-star hotel send over a food cart to feed us, acting all high and mighty like she was Almsgiving. As if none of us had ever eaten that stuff before."

"It's only because her family's rich that everyone kisses her ass. She doesn't even bother finding out what people outside say about her."

"Haha, once she sees the guest voting rankings for this show, she'll know just how unpopular she is."

An Zhizhi had stood outside the door listening, bewildered and hurt.

Back then, she had paid for the five-star hotel to deliver food because it was her first time on a production, and she wanted to grow closer to everyone.

She didn't know how to win people over. All she knew was that the "friends" around her grew closer to her whenever they received something from her.

She had genuinely meant well.

But she hadn't known that was how everyone thought of her.

She often gave her fans gifts too, holding free raffles for all kinds of nice things.

Because, as she saw it, her fans liked her, so she treated them the way she treated friends.

Did her fans think the same way as those people?

Did they think she was Almsgiving from on high?

But that really wasn't what she meant...

An Zhizhi also wished she could be like Shen Yunzhi, ignoring other people's opinions even when the entire internet hated her.

Doing whatever she wanted.

But honestly.

It was hard to do.

She always found herself thinking about the haters' malice and how other entertainers mocked her behind her back.

Though she acted completely unconcerned on the surface, she still cried over those things in the dead of night.

Thinking about the past, An Zhizhi grew gloomy again.

She sniffled softly and burrowed deeper beneath the covers.

It looked as though she was cold.

In reality, she was hiding the redness at the corners of her eyes.

An Zhizhi started envying Shen Yunzhi's excellent mindset again and said a little sadly, "You're right. We should live more freely. Life's too short..."

Shen Yunzhi wriggled around, wrapping her quilt tighter. "Exactly! It won't even cover my feet!"

An Zhizhi: "..."

The comments: [Hahahahahahaha!]

[I laughed so hard I took a massive dump in bed.]

[I'm dying laughing.]

[She's talking about one thing, and you're off on a completely different tangent.]

The melancholy An Zhizhi had worked so hard to summon up.

Was completely dispelled by Shen Yunzhi's unhinged answer.

An Zhizhi's sadness instantly turned to embarrassed anger. She threw off the covers and huffed, "I'm not sleeping anymore! Sleep by yourself!"

Just looking at Shen Yunzhi made her flustered and annoyed. She got up, washed up, and wrapped herself in a down jacket before going to ask the production crew for food.

The warm winter sun shone through the birch forest. A layer of water droplets on the ground refracted golden light, while the morning mist blended with the sky in the distance.

An Zhizhi stopped, looking at the sky illuminated by the rising sun and breathing in the cold yet clear air.

There were no oppressive city high-rises anywhere in sight.

That was true.

The world was so vast. Why fret over people and things that didn't matter?

An Zhizhi suddenly felt that this mountain backwater wasn't so awful after all and decided to forgive her dad for not letting her leave.

With scenery this beautiful, what was there to mope about?

An Zhizhi's mood lifted at once. Humming, she went to find the production crew, planning to get breakfast for Shen Yunzhi too.

Shen Yunzhi clung to the window and watched An Zhizhi walk away cheerfully again, then sighed.

"Phew, that scared me. If she'd cried, I really wouldn't have known how to comfort her."

Yesterday, taking pity on the pampered young men and women after their exhausting journey, the director hadn't subjected them to any more inhumane antics for the show's entertainment.

Today, once they woke up.

The director had the six guests split into teams to work at the villagers' homes.

They drew lots to decide the teams.

Ji Nanxian drew Jiang Yunli, and his face lit up with delight.

An Zhizhi drew Chi Zong, and the two rolled their eyes at each other.

Shen Yunzhi drew Xiao Yao and sighed.

Xiao Yao was very displeased. "What's that sigh supposed to mean? You don't want to be on my team?"

Shen Yunzhi said, "If you insist on putting it that way, there's nothing I can do."

Shen Yunzhi was already picking out tools. In a little while, she would join the villagers in uncovering the greenhouses to let the crops get some sun.

Xiao Yao stood off to the side, running his damn mouth.

"What are we doing in a bit?"

Shen Yunzhi said, "No idea."

Xiao Yao said, "I helped clear up those rumors about you and took all that online abuse, and this is how you treat me?"

Shen Yunzhi was speechless.

Xiao Yao had clearly posted the lights-off clip because he'd wanted to make money. Why was he making it sound like he'd done it for her?

Without even lifting her eyelids, Shen Yunzhi said, "Well, thank you so much. Could you talk less and save some energy to do more work later?"

"Underestimating me? I feel full of energy. Just walking in front of you now, it's like I can hear the bugle calling me to action."

Shen Yunzhi said, "..."

Shen Yunzhi said, "That's sound leaking from my Bluetooth earbuds."

Xiao Yao said, "..."

[...]

[Has seriously no one noticed how funny these two are whenever they get together?]

[Hahahahaha, they really are.]

[These two have so many funny bits together. They're such a joy.]

[Yes, yes, yes! Whenever they're on-screen together, I can't help getting that doting grin.]

[Me too, me too! I don't even know how to describe this feeling!]

Tang Jianing quietly posted a live comment.

[I usually call that feeling chemistry.]

[...]

[...]

The Shen Fans, who had been laughing along with the casual viewers, instantly wiped the grins off their faces.

[This must never be mentioned again. Girls, what's everyone having for breakfast?]

[Fried dough sticks, steamed buns, and soy milk.]

[Leftover chicken soup from last night.]

[Nothing. I'm lying in bed digesting the overnight shit in my stomach.]

[Ewww.]

Once the Shen Fans caught on, they changed the subject at lightning speed, refusing to pair her with an idiot like Xiao Yao.

Shen Yunzhi and Xiao Yao were helping Yunya's parents with their work today.

Yunya had the day off. When she heard Shen Yunzhi was there, she eagerly got out of bed to help.

The cameraman followed Xiao Yao with his camera on his shoulder. The viewers all wanted to see how an imposing, domineering CEO did manual labor.

Yunya said to Shen Yunzhi, "Yunzhi, you really don't need to keep sending money to the village. Our lives are already so much better than before."

The original owner of her body had actually given the village chief a bank card and regularly transferred money to it.

It was meant to improve life in the village.

She had also told the village chief not to tell Shen Yonggui and Wang Dezhen.

If those two found out, they would never stop making a fuss.

After Shen Yunzhi arrived, she continued sending money too.

She had never stopped.