The Livestream Begins!

Yi Wan stood there, a little hesitant.

He glanced at the second- and third-most-concealed spots in the area. One was beside the restroom; next to the other sat a heavily made-up girl taking selfies at the camera.

Just then, the young man holding a thermos actually shifted over.

"Have a seat," he said.

When Yi Wan heard that voice, his first thought was—what a nice voice.

In this cold world full of sparks, this fellow who, like him, seemed to be a passerby watching from the sidelines gave Yi Wan a rare bit of warmth. Clutching his thermos, Yi Wan sat in the vacant spot the young man had made for him. Each held a steaming cup as they sat shoulder to shoulder, watching the people in the venue show off or tear into one another.

It was almost peaceful.

The conflict between Jiang Manly and Qu Ascendant was nearing its peak. Jiang Manly had started mocking Qu Ascendant, using his status as an elder brother: after becoming famous overnight, he had gotten so carried away that he had forgotten even his own dirty past. The two women had also begun attacking each other's weight through gritted teeth.

"Do you think they'll come to blows?" asked the man with the thermos beside him, in an exceedingly serene tone.

Yi Wan looked at him, then at his agency's van, and took a sip of milk. "...Probably not."

"Because Teacher Jiang cares a great deal about saving face? Getting into a brawl with a minor celebrity on set would hurt his standing?" the man said.

"No," Yi Wan said. "My teammate is out."

At the other end of the venue, the made-up Ding Biehan stepped into the crowd. The instant he appeared, the chill radiating from him cowed everyone there.

Qu Ascendant froze, Jiang Manly shut up, and the female variety-show regular covered her face and began shrieking at the sight of Ding Biehan.

"My teammate is as impressive as ever," Yi Wan said with complete sincerity.

Yu Rongshi, sitting beside him with his own thermos, calmly nodded.

He said nothing special, nor did he probe Yi Wan. It was as though he had not seen Yi Wan's resume a few days earlier.

Holding their cups, the two peacefully watched the show, admiring the way Qu Ascendant, who had wanted to shoot his mouth off on the strength of his ascension, instantly shrank back under Ding Biehan's cold glance.

Not far away, a staffer who had searched the entire venue, panting for breath, finally arrived. Seeing the two sitting together in harmony, she wore the expression of someone whose world had utterly collapsed.

She knew one of the people holding a thermos. Wasn't that Yu Rongshi, the person she had been looking for, known as the "Demon King"?!

But who was the other person holding a thermos?

She watched helplessly as Yu Rongshi unobtrusively turned to look at her, the corners of his lips lifting slightly as he waved and made a shushing gesture.

Staffer: ...

Had she not seen it with her own eyes, she would never have imagined that her idol, a man only in his twenties who had become famous for his razor-sharp style, would privately... possess such a serene, "nothing is lovelier than one's golden years" demeanor.

The person beside him was still lost in thought, apparently completely unaware of who that man was.

...

Once the show began, Yi Wan was led back by his manager. He looked back at the person who had also been holding a thermos, only to find that he had already left as well.

...Maybe the production crew had gotten busy, so he had gone off to work too. That was Yi Wan's guess.

He had a favorable impression of that fellow worker, who seemed so much like himself.

As Yi Wan followed his manager into the crowd, he saw the last van pull over as well. The young man inside got out with perfect timing.

He jogged over, tap-tap-tapping up to the group, looking fresh-faced with genuine apology in his eyes. "Sorry, everyone. Traffic was a little bad. Am I the last one here?"

The last person to arrive naturally received the most attention. The cameras turned toward him. To everyone's surprise, both the actress Yao Yue and Qu Ascendant treated him very well, as though they were already acquainted. "It's fine. We got stuck in traffic too."

"Just barely not late, Little Bei," the director said with mock solemnity. "One more minute and you would have had to treat the entire crew to a meal."

"Huh? I'm so lucky." The fresh-faced young man looked at the camera with a shy smile.

At the same time, waves of comments were scrolling through the livestream.

"Ahhh, Beibei is way too cute!"

"Waaah, those puppy eyes could melt anyone's heart."

"Beibei is so sweet. He wasn't even late, and he still apologized. An angel on earth."

Green Wilderness Trail had opened a dedicated livestream channel on the country's largest video portal. Unexpectedly, it was divided into Parts A and B, each with its own livestream window. Part A's window opened right on time, and the eagerly waiting fans flooded into the stream.

Most were fans of Qu Pingqiu, Ding Biehan, or Jiang Bei; others were passersby interested in the show's survival gimmick and its vaguely teased mystery guests. When the livestream started at nine in the morning, the first thing they saw was Jiang Bei's carefully calculated entrance right on the dot.

Thus Jiang Bei smoothly secured the first trending topic he had planned.

Besides Jiang Bei's actual fans, there were even more paid commenters he had hired. In addition to heating up the discussion and building momentum for his popularity, they would deftly steer the conversation at key moments to stomp on the people he wanted stomped on.

In a household in City S, a girl named Chen Ke was also squatting on her bed at the appointed time, watching the livestream on her tablet.

Because she had a fanatical Polestar roommate, Chen Ke could barely be considered a fairly casual fan of Jiang Bei herself after her roommate's tireless "evangelizing." After being bombarded with calls by her roommate for an hour the night before, she had enthusiastically gotten up early to watch the livestream while reading the chat in a viewer group she had joined.

The viewer group was a genuine one. Normally, its members chatted about anything and everything, especially entertainment-industry gossip. Since everyone was free today, they were all watching the livestream.

"They're really going to stay in the mountains for seven days?"

"A bunch of delicate celebrities—can they manage it?"

Seeing those comments, Chen Ke felt some genuine concern too.

Before long, the director's voice came from the tablet. "All right, since everyone is here, let's introduce ourselves. Ladies first."

"Hello, everyone. I'm Yao Yue. You may have seen me recently in the idol drama XXX. I played the third female lead, Chu Yaoyue. I enjoy traveling, cooking, and pondering the meaning of life..."

"Is this the woman who came with her own screenwriter and gave herself extra romance scenes with the male lead?" a comment floated by.

"I'm Xie Tiantian. Those of you familiar with variety shows have probably seen me a lot. Hahahahaha—Director, do I still need to introduce myself?"

"Hahahaha, there's a hilarious idiot here," a comment floated by.

Next came Jiang Zefang, the athlete Wang Zhen, Qu Pingqiu, and Ding Biehan. When Qu Pingqiu introduced himself, the comment count reached a peak as his fans went wild over his looks. Once Ding Biehan's icy voice came on, the entire comment feed fell silent for a moment, as though it had been wiped clean.

Then came unending screams.

"Ahhhhh—"

"Gege!! I love you—!!"

"Little Ding!! Mommy hasn't seen you in so long!!"

Real popularity was something paid commenters could not manipulate. They could only stop and watch the stern-featured young man hold the microphone and say, "I'm Ding Biehan, a trainee at A.T. Entertainment."

He paused, and the comments erupted again with cries of "Gege is so cool." Then Ding Biehan said, "The person beside me is my... peer at A.T."

Ding Biehan recalled Brother Liu saying that revealing their teammate status at the end of the show could draw more attention.

He handed the microphone to the next person.

At that moment, the next person's face appeared on screen. The instant he showed up, many viewers sucked in a breath.

—This person was really beautiful!

Although Yi Wan's air was utterly unremarkable, his face was exceptionally camera-friendly. After the flamboyantly gorgeous Qu Pingqiu and the aggressively handsome Ding Biehan, his features were like a breeze blowing away the summer heat, a wash-ink landscape unfolding before the eye.

"So handsome, ahhh—"

"Another handsome guy from A.T.!"

The viewers began flooding the comments again, catching Jiang Bei's paid commenters, who had been ready for this, a little off guard. Finally, Yi Wan spoke. "I'm Yi Wan, a trainee from A.T. Entertainment and Ding Biehan's peer. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to be on this show."

Compared to the distinctive self-introductions of the others, Yi Wan's sounded as if it had been pulled from a template on a document-sharing site. After a brief silence, a comment floated across the top of the stream: "Why does the name Yi Wan sound familiar?"

The paid commenters saw their chance and immediately pivoted with the wind.

"Yi Wan from A.T.? Is he Jiang Bei's former teammate?"

"Why do I feel like this guy has some dirt on him?"

"Big companies really are something. They can even stuff their own trainees in. This newbie won't drag everyone down, right?"

The paid commenters wanted to steer things vaguely, but that last broadside caught Ding Biehan, who had just been mentioned, in its blast radius. His girlfriend fans and mom fans went into a towering rage and immediately began to fight back.

"What's wrong with A.T. being a top company in the industry? A.T. trainees being more capable than debuted artists is hardly a one-off."

"Pfft. When trainees have more fans than debuted idols, instead of reflecting on yourselves, you sour grapes start whining."

"Drag everyone down, my ass. When Hanhan was speed skating, you were still eating boxed lunches by construction sites."

Paid commenters: ...

"Don't be scared!" their ringleader cried, raising an arm. "Go! Drop the dirt! Expose Yi Wan!"

The paid commenters surged forward, but their comments were swiftly swallowed by the ocean of battle between Ding Biehan's fans and antis. Amid the dazzling steel torrent, only a lone "Isn't Yi Wan the former teammate who bullied Jiang Bei?" floated silently through the rainbow-colored barrage of combat comments like a passerby...

"Fuck, which idiot provoked Ding's fans?! Don't they know those fans are famous for their 'fuck everyone up' fighting power?!" the paid-commenter ringleader finally raged.

In all his years in the business, he had never encountered anything this absurd! They were supposed to be smearing Yi Wan, yet Yi Wan had magically dodged the topic and even pushed Ding Biehan's fans out as shields!

Meanwhile, the members of a small Ding Biehan fan group were watching the livestream in silence.

The night before, they had covered for the posts and photos while spending all night digging up the red-string hand photo from the previous trending topic and the red-string hand photo taken at the airport yesterday. The resulting similarity score had been inconclusive. Worse still, they had found A.T.'s current practice-room footage. For some unknown reason, every trainee in it had begun wearing a cheap red string around their wrist, as though praying for blessings.

It was like they had caught the red-string virus.

"Is this person the one from the airport yesterday?"

"I don't know. He doesn't have a red string on his hand..."

"Fuck, why are you looking at his hand? Look at the person! Look at his profile! I'm about to get red-string-hand PTSD."

"Ding Biehan introduced him himself. They must be pretty close, right?"

"Someone in the comments is coming for Brother," someone said.

"Holy shit, did they just make eye contact?"

The little group's members watched the screen nervously. From the beginning, they had paid Yi Wan an extraordinary amount of attention, keeping guard over the interactions between the two.

So much so that they forgot to fight in the comments.

"Hello, viewers, and hello to the Polestars too. I'm Jiang Bei. You can call me Little Bei." Jiang Bei came on camera at that moment.

His fresh smile and cute gestures were all drowned in the ocean of battle between Ding Biehan's fans and antis. The steel torrent was a merciless chariot, rolling over every battlefield.

The Polestars, unable to bear it any longer, raised the call to arms, and comments came flooding in. The paid commenters perked up and scrambled right up the pole. Amid a flood of "Beibei is cute" and "Beibei, fly bravely; the stars will always follow," the director finally began introducing the rules of the show to the audience.

The paid commenters finally wiped the sweat from their brows, feeling that the world had returned to normal.

Seven days, eight people: trek through the jungle to reach the finish line. Whoever arrived won.

"Before the show began, we spent two months inspecting this place. Professional logistics staff accompanied us throughout the process for protection as well. Should an emergency arise, all of you will receive prompt medical care. Of course—during the process, there will be no other assistance. You will need to cross this jungle by your own strength!"

The contestants all looked nervous. Only Jiang Bei was a little distracted. He could sense Yi Wan's presence so close by, and he could not help feeling excited.

Was the livestream proceeding according to his arrangement? Were those people insulting Yi Wan?

At the thought, he could not help wanting to happily scratch at his neck.

Jiang Bei kept smiling and glanced at Yi Wan. Yi Wan was merely listening intently to the director and paid him no attention at all.

That dark emotion surged up again.

"Additionally, we have invited five mystery guests. During the show, they will watch your livestream live in the viewing room, give their assessments, and livestream as well. Now, let us reveal who they are—"

At that moment, the blacked-out Part B livestream window lit up. The moment viewers saw the five judges present, they all screamed.

"Holy shit!! My eyes!!"

"Is this lineup even real??"

This long-kept secret guest lineup drove the viewers wild as they shared screenshots and the livestream on Weibo and in group chats. On the same screen, A and B each occupied one half, and the viewing numbers began skyrocketing almost instantly!

One million... two million... three million...

Five million!

And still climbing!

Eight million... nine million!

"All right, first, let's see whether everyone's luggage is ready. Each person may carry only five kilograms of personal items. Electronic communication devices are not allowed either. Please take them out and place them in the baskets held by the staff." Smiling pleasantly, the director addressed the eight people. "We will keep them for you."

The others cooperatively took out their phones, but Jiang Bei, who had been maintaining a sweet smile, went pale at that moment!

Because he had been plotting his timed entrance in such a rush, he had forgotten to leave his other phone in the van!

—The purple phone he used to log into his alt account.

And that phone, the one he used to log into his alt account and go wild in Yi Wan hate groups, now lay in his bag alongside his other phone.

Author's Note:

The variety-show segments were inspired by real variety shows: diving and rappelling.

Participant list:

Ding Biehan

Yi Wan

Jiang Bei

Jiang Zefang: Jiang Manly

Qu Pingqiu: Qu Ascendant

Actress Yao Yue: Yao Extra-Scenes

Female variety-show regular Xie Tiantian

Athlete Wang Zhen