[I could just about put up with Ye Qingzhou doing this, but Chu Ci, why are you jumping on the bandwagon? Do you really think you have a photographic memory too...]
[A poor imitation [sweat][sweat][sweat]]
The production team had a limited budget and no professional filming equipment, so the cameraman filmed the guests directly with a phone. The image quality might not have been great, but the upside was that he could see the live comments right away.
Seeing viewers frantically spamming the name "Chu Ci," the cameraman obligingly turned the camera on him.
After receiving the question bank book prepared by the production team, Chu Ci had begun rapidly flipping through it from the first page. By the time the camera turned to him, he had already read a third of it.
Chu Ci flipped through the book even faster than Ye Qingzhou.
His eyes had never left the book since he received it.
[What is Chu Ci putting on an act for? I don't believe he's taking any of it in.]
[Not just anyone can pull off the "genius" persona. The entertainment industry has only produced one Ye Qingzhou in all these years.]
[Chu Ci is such a drama queen. Can they replace him with a female guest? This is a dating show! The production team now has four male guests and two female guests. What are they going to do when it's time to choose partners? Surely they can't pair two male guests together?]
[...That's not out of the question.]
The director looked at Chu Ci and shook his head helplessly.
He knew that many newcomers to the entertainment industry were overeager for success and desperate to show off on camera. But they forgot that without the ability to back it up, they would only make viewers dislike them more.
Just like now...
Ye Qingzhou genuinely had a photographic memory, so when viewers saw how fast he read, they could only admire him from the bottom of their hearts. But Chu Ci was notorious in the entertainment industry for coasting along. He could not even memorize the simplest lines. Imitating Ye Qingzhou by rapidly flipping through a book now was nothing but self-deception and a poor imitation.
The director lowered his eyes to check the timer. Five minutes remained.
He could not help looking up to observe the six guests present. Ye Qingzhou was still flipping through the question bank book the production team had prepared, but judging by the thin stack of pages left, the director guessed he was nearly finished.
The remaining guests had already thrown in the towel. They knew perfectly well that they could never finish such a thick question bank in so little time, so they had simply turned to a few pages at random to read carefully and memorize. They were pinning their hopes on "luck." If the director happened to pick questions from the pages they had read, they would have hit the jackpot.
Only then did the director turn his gaze to Chu Ci.
To the director's surprise, Chu Ci was neither rapidly flipping through the question bank like Ye Qingzhou nor picking random lucky pages to memorize and recite like the other guests. Instead, he was... staring into space?
Had Chu Ci given up on himself?
The director did not take Chu Ci's reaction to heart. After all, in his view, Chu Ci had only been invited at the last minute to make up the numbers because the production team was short on funds. Today's star was Ye Qingzhou.
"Only three minutes left."
"Two minutes left."
"One minute."
"Ten, nine, eight, seven..."
"Three, two, one."
"Time's up."
As soon as the director finished saying "Time's up," the production staff quickly collected the books in front of the guests.
[Ye Qingzhou is definitely going to win this quiz round. I just wonder who he'll choose as his partner...]
[I'll be upset no matter which girl Ye Qingzhou picks. Can they let him pair up with a guy?]
[I don't think Ye Qingzhou has any chemistry with anyone. His gaze is too cold. I just can't ship him.]
[...I'd rather Ye Qingzhou pair up with Chu Ci than choose one of the two female guests here as his "dating partner for a day."]
[Same!!! I've been both a girlfriend fan and a mom fan of Ye Qingzhou for three years. I really can't just sit here and watch him date someone else.]
"Let's ask the questions in order."
After the production staff collected the books, the director tentatively asked, "Let's start with Zhou Jin. Is that okay?"
Zhou Jin stood on the far right.
From right to left were Zhou Jin, Bai Zihan, Zhou Ze, Li Muting, Ye Qingzhou, and Chu Ci.
"Sure."
Zhou Jin nodded.
A hit TV drama of his had aired recently. In it, Zhou Jin played an unhinged villain, gaining a large number of fans with his handsome looks, superb acting, and the villain's mercurial personality.
Before Ye Qingzhou joined Let's Fall in Love, Zhou Jin had been the biggest star among the guests present.
According to the rules of the game, the director would ask five questions.
"First question: who were the Four Paragons of the Early Tang?"
This question tested general literary knowledge.
Zhou Jin had scored 560 on his college entrance exam. This question was no challenge for him.
"Wang Bo, Yang Jiong, Lu Zhaolin, and Luo Binwang."
"Correct. One point for Zhou Jin."
The director nodded in satisfaction and continued asking questions.
"Second question: what are the Four Great Folk Legends?"
Zhou Jin vaguely remembered this one, so he answered tentatively, "The Butterfly Lovers, Meng Jiangnü Weeps at the Great Wall, The Legend of the White Snake..."
Unable to think of the last one, Zhou Jin could only give up helplessly.
"The last one is The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl."
The director also felt it was a pity. He asked Zhou Jin three more questions at random, and Zhou Jin answered two correctly. Including the first question, Zhou Jin had answered three questions correctly in total.
[Wow, is Zhou Jin that good?]
[I remember Zhou Jin ranked first among the arts candidates in his year, right? He already had a pretty solid grounding in general knowledge, and the director's questions were all common knowledge. It's perfectly normal for him to get three right.]
[If Ye Qingzhou hadn't dropped in, Zhou Jin would definitely take first place.]
[Zhou Jin looks so handsome answering questions.]
Zhou Jin had well-proportioned features, with a dignified, rugged look. Viewers described his appearance as "a face made for serious dramas."
When he debuted two years earlier, most of the roles he took had been in serious dramas. Only in the past two years had he gradually started branching out into xianxia, fantasy, and crime investigation dramas.
The second guest to be questioned was Bai Zihan.
Bai Zihan had a relatively weak grounding in general knowledge, and she had not taken much in while reading earlier. She failed to answer any of the first four questions.
So the director deliberately went a little easy on her with the last question.
"Fifth question: what are the Four Great Classical Novels?"
Bai Zihan's eyes instantly lit up. "Dream of the Red Chamber, Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Journey to the West."
Bai Zihan earned one point.
The viewers all turned a blind eye to the director deliberately going easy on her. They did not take it to heart.