On the other end, a fair-skinned woman was holding her phone, reading sentence by sentence.
The skin above her neck was pale with a hint of pink, her small face delicate, and her eyes somewhat cold.
Her black hair draped over her shoulders, and she wore a white long-sleeved shirt, as cool as a Song dynasty poem.
"What are you looking at?" her agent Wen Yun walked over.
"Pei Muchan... what has she been up to lately?" Lin Wanzhou turned off her screen, her expression somewhat cold as she countered.
"You're asking about Pei Muchan?" Wen Yun, an ordinary-faced woman with a natural aura around her, about forty, covered her mouth as she yawned, puzzled.
"After her album unexpectedly tanked last year, she hasn't shown her face much, what about it?"
"Nothing." Lin Wanzhou pulled out another frequently used phone, her slender white fingers flying over it, quickly bringing up a preview, and biting her lip as she clicked in.
"The event is almost over, just show your face later and it should be fine—the next endorsement is pretty much in the bag."
"Hmm."
"After these next few busy days, you'll have more time to rest, at least you won't be sleep deprived."
"Hmm."
"What are you doing?"
"Hmm."
"Stop with the 'hmm.'" Wen Yun leaned in for a closer look, taken aback, "Pei Muchan suddenly on a romance reality show? Hasn't she always been quite mysterious?"
Lin Wanzhou was silent, her gaze fixated on the beautiful face on the screen, her eyebrows slowly furrowing.
"She's targeting me."
"What?" Wen Yun seemed surprised, "Pei Muchan is quite alright, isn't she? She doesn't use so many fan circle tactics, it's just that her state these past two years hasn't been great, and the quality of her albums is average."
"Sister Yun," Lin Wanzhou exhaled, deadly serious, "I want to go to Haicheng tomorrow."
"Oh my! My dear lady, don't joke around," Wen Yun was startled, "You have a ton of work tomorrow, and besides, what would you do in that place?"
"Beat her up." Her earlobes reddened, but her gaze was extremely serious.
"Stop talking nonsense, Zhouzhou, are you under too much stress lately?" Wen Yun touched Lin Wanzhou's forehead, her voice filled with concern.
"Then don't go show your face later, just go back and rest. I'll communicate with the organizers."
"No need."
"I really want to go to Haicheng."
"There has to be a reason, right? Did Pei Muchan contact you?" Wen Yun asked, puzzled.
"No."
"Then why go to Haicheng?"
"To beat her up."
Wen Yun: "...Auntie is tired, just destroy it."
In the end, Lin Wanzhou was not able to act willfully, and could only keep replaying the preview in a daze.
The next day.
The seven o'clock alarm rang on time, waking Xu Qingyan, who yawned, rolled out of bed, and shuffled in disposable slippers to the bathroom. To his delight, the toilet was smart.
After freshening up, he snatched the hotel's complimentary expensive tea leaves, grabbed two bottles of beverage, and set off.
He had coordinated with Zhou Mian from the props team, who would bring his luggage to ensure he could travel light. In Zhou Mian's words, "Bro, the only person I'd follow to the ends of the earth is you."
Arriving at the underground parking garage, he took the keys from an unnoticed girl on the props team.
Beep beep, amidst a sea of luxury cars, the electric car chirped meekly, like a little lamb among a pack of wolves and tigers.
Haicheng is a historic second-tier seaside city, and Lanling Island is one of its most famous attractions, known as a niche tourist spot in the country.
Here, it's legal to ride electric bikes on the road, and the back seat can carry a passenger.
At eight o'clock, the show "Love Hunters" officially began broadcasting, with a total of ten live camera feeds available in the live broadcast room. Viewers could click freely, choosing to enter the live rooms of either the nine guests or the Celebrity Observers.
Each live broadcast displayed the level of popularity, allowing viewers to like, vote for, and reward the live rooms.
With the previous day's warm-up and the draw from several unique female guests, the first day live viewership of "Love Hunters" directly broke 500,000.
This number was already very high for a new-generation romantic reality show, especially since the entertainment laws in Xiaguo do not allow for inflated online numbers, and the competition within romantic reality shows was fierce.
The production team of "Love Hunters" was also the first to brave new waters, boldly adopting a live broadcast followed by an edited showing, and their slogan was "No editing, absolute reality."
Most people, eager to try something new, woke up early waiting outside the live broadcast room, and as soon as it began, a deluge of bullet comments exploded onto the screen.
"First, pop the champagne!"
"Front-row bench here!"
"Selling peanuts, sunflower seeds, beer....."
"Where is my Sister Pei's live room? I want to lick the screen, I'll take over a whole live room by myself!"
"User XXX rewarded Pei Muchan with ten universe spacecrafts."
"Wow, impressive, donating without even changing the username?"
"Speaking as a passerby, isn't this just hiring shills? Trying to attract attention when you have no popularity, right? I'm outta here!"
"Moon Fairy is awake!!!"
"What's she doing? Putting on makeup? That's a bit too abstract, isn't it?"
"Charge, charge, charge! Song Enya is mine!"
"Taking over Big Sister's screen, I, Zhang Mingtao from Qingshan University's Business Administration class one, proudly fire away. Please call me Happy Superman!"
"Sister Year's beautiful legs, hehe, I love white stockings the most!"
"White stockings are heresy, black stockings belong to the emperor!"
The director's face changed, and with a phone call, the technical team immediately shut down the tipping and arranged the refund process, taking urgent evasive action.
All sorts of bullet comments surged into the various live rooms, with the most online viewers tuning into the female guests' live rooms, followed by the Celebrity Observer studio.
The male guests' live rooms had merely a few hundred people, with most just stopping by for a quick look before leaving.
"Wow, that car belongs to Jie Bao, right? Brother Rich is loaded!"
"If this were reality, I'd call you Brother Rich, but this is online—I'll just say the car doesn't cut it."
You Zijun glanced at his phone's live room while waiting for the traffic light, looking at those floating bullet comments, and the corners of his mouth lifted in a smile, but he said nothing.
"The host's put in a big investment, eh? Lamborghini!!!"
"Is that for real?"
Bai Jinze saw the bullet comments in his own live room on his phone and lifted his head at about a forty-five-degree angle, revealing his most confident and clean smile, and said,
"Picking up a female guest for the first time, naturally, I need to show some sincerity. Just like how we guys pursue girls in real life, only if you're willing to spend can you reap love."
Liu Renzhi and Chen Feiyu's live rooms had mediocre responses; neither was driving a sports car, but they were both driving luxury cars worth several hundred thousand yuan.
At this moment, the bullet comments in Xu Qingyan's live room uniformly displayed neat white question marks, filling up the entire live room.
"Wait, where's the host?"
"What's going on, did the male guest disappear?"
"Hold on, buddy, where's your car door? Such a big car door, could it be you're driving a convertible?"
The camera zoomed out to reveal a handsome man steadily riding an electric bike on the road.