Seeing this, Lin Weiluo raised her brows too and met his gaze head-on, her meaning perfectly clear:
Believe it or don't.
Yu Sheng: ...
Although it was outrageous, it wasn't worth believing either.
Lin Weiluo's words were like an offhand joke made over after-dinner chatter. Everyone heard them, gave them a moment's thought, then promptly forgot about them.
Unsurprisingly, the soup Shen Shuangjian had personally simmered became the most popular dish on the table. Whether it tasted good or not, the fact that Shen Shuangjian had made it was enough to make everyone eager for a taste.
By the end of the meal, everyone had filled up on liquid before eating more than a few bites of food.
Yu Sheng, in particular, had downed three large bowls of soup. Even his iron stomach was temporarily forced into a round bulge.
He leaned back lazily against the sofa and bestowed the highest praise of his life upon a pot of perfectly ordinary soup.
"Wow, Shuangjian, this soup is absolutely amazing. I've never had soup this good in my life. I wish I could have it every day."
Directly across from him, Gu Xuanlin had just set down his spoon. His expression remained impassive as he retorted, "If we really catered to your appetite, Shuangjian wouldn't need to do anything else anymore. He could just stay home making soup for you every day."
Yu Sheng: "..."
Seriously, how had I never noticed what an asshole Gu Xuanlin was?
Yu Sheng raised his brows, his expression suddenly turning a little aggrieved. He slowly folded his tall frame down onto the rug and inched closer to Shen Shuangjian beside him.
"Shuangjian, do you think I eat too much too?"
The young man's hands weren't behaving either. While he made a show of loosely wrapping one around Shen Shuangjian's forearm, he rested his other hand on the sofa behind Shen Shuangjian, as though staking a claim to territory.
And so, in Shen Shuangjian's eyes, Yu Sheng had suddenly drawn close to look up at him with a pitiful, innocent expression as he asked his question, as though a single nod would make his face fall and bring him to tears.
But to everyone else, Yu Sheng was speaking with his arm half around Shen Shuangjian, acting as though no one else were there, his intentions plain.
If the sprawled-out Lin Weiluo looked shocked when Yu Sheng sidled over, and Gu Xuanlin's face instantly went cold, then Xie Jinghui, on Shen Shuangjian's other side, had a gaze like a blade.
In truth, none of the people present, Shen Shuangjian included, knew in any detail what Xie Jinghui was normally like.
But from yesterday until now, Xie Jinghui had carried himself with refinement and reserved elegance. He seemed perpetually composed, possessing the calm of someone accustomed to holding everything in his grasp.
Yet now, all of Xie Jinghui's composure and calm had shattered. A sharp chill slowly and silently froze into ice within his gaze, leaving nothing but a cutting edge in his pitch-black eyes.
"No."
The next moment, Shen Shuangjian's even voice rang out. He turned his head slightly, the cool ends of his hair brushing lightly over Xie Jinghui's wrist.
And so the frost and snow in his eyes were swept away again. His barely perceptible hostility gradually melted, revealing gentleness once more.
Whether Yu Sheng ate a lot, or how much he ate, had nothing to do with Shen Shuangjian in the first place.
So when Shen Shuangjian said this, he hadn't meant to comfort him. It was simply his honest answer.
He gently and slowly withdrew his hand from Yu Sheng's hold. Seeing this, Yu Sheng responded appropriately and quit while he was ahead.
"Really? Then that's a relief. Thanks, Shuangjian!"
The young man pretended to be as easily comforted as a little child, even though he hadn't been upset in the slightest.
[Yu Sheng, a top-tier male green tea who can attack when advancing and cry when retreating.]
[Sure enough, men who act cute have the best lives.]
[Seriously, give me a few hundred years and I still couldn't learn to pull the shit Yu Sheng does.]
[I vaguely remember Yu Sheng being the next-level guy who said, "Other people's opinions are bullshit," on some previous show.]
[What do you know? It's just a little scheming to win over his wife.]
[Lin Weiluo's expression is literally me in another body. I really feel like she doesn't belong on this show. A clearheaded woman with an absolutely career-focused brain simply can't understand how a love brain works.]
[Lin Weiluo: Have you lost your mind?!]
[Stop, I'm about to lose my mind too. Our cool, stunning wife tied up his hair and washed his hands to cook us soup. If that were me, I'd eat the pot too.]
[Thanks for your hard work, wifey. Slurp, slurp.]
[Then go eat it. He only made one soup, and you're practically praising him to the heavens, as though your wife is the only precious person in the whole world.]
[...]
[Where did this moron come from? Drag them out to the Meridian Gate and behead them.]
Just a bit of after-dinner chatter.
Seeing that everyone had more or less finished eating, the production team naturally knew it was time to introduce something entertaining.
After all, if they really only livestreamed these mundane domestic trivialities, viewers who weren't watching for anyone in particular and simply wanted to enjoy the show would get bored too.
And so, with the director and guests working together, two people carried away the low table covered in leftovers, while the remaining seven gathered around the fireplace.
Li Yi, who was closest to the staff, took the card from the production team. He opened it and read the words line by line:
"A surprise challenge from the production team: call your friends or family, tell them you've encountered a bear in the forest, and shout three times, 'Help! Help! Someone help me!'"
As his words fell, the room went silent.
Even Li Yi, who had read it aloud himself, scratched his head with a complicated expression.
Telling your family or your buddies that you'd encountered a bear-what kind of lunatic had come up with such an absurd dare?
It wouldn't even take five seconds for the lie to fall apart.
Or, to put it another way, just how crazy would someone have to be to believe something so absurd?
"Director, are you serious?"
Song Shi couldn't hold back and burst out laughing. "Pfft, I reckon my friends would think I'd lost my mind."
Yu Sheng was a man of action, and he genuinely thought the dare sounded pretty fun. So while everyone else was still laughing, he had already called a close buddy outside his industry.
The room was quiet enough to hear a pin drop. Several people were holding back their laughter, waiting for the response on the other end of Yu Sheng's call.
The phone rang for a full half minute before the person on the other end finally picked up at a leisurely pace.
Yu Sheng wasted no words either, getting straight to the point. "Bro, I'm in the forest, and I've run into a bear. Save me."
"..."
The person on the other end clearly fell silent for several seconds, though whether he was processing it or was too speechless to know how to answer was unclear.
"Bro, save me!"
Only when Yu Sheng had begun urging him impatiently did the man's equally impatient voice ring out from the other end:
"Are you out of your mind?!"
With that curse, the call was instantly disconnected, leaving only a bewildered Yu Sheng and Lin Weiluo's utterly unrestrained laughter.
"Hahahahahahaha!!!!"