"I am not a cat lady." Alix replied.
A cat lady was someone who had very many cats, according to her understanding. All she had was the one cat.
"You brought your cat to work, ergo, cat lady." he spread one hand out when he started explaining and another when he finished.
"You own two dogs. Does it mean you are a dog man?" she retorted.
Pang Jin De scoffed.
"You don't even make sense at all cat lady."
She scoffed as well and answered, "You are annoying dog man."
The director peeped his head out from behind the camera. Did those two even remember that they had microphones attached.
But, this footage might come in handy if their team didn't get along well and was eliminated in the early episodes.
"Now that you have found your partners it's time to start your first task. Without any delay let's get into it." Bi Meng announced.
Qi Jian pointed out to the field and all eyes followed. "You are all probably wondering what the stacks of tires is doing on the field.
At the bottom of one stack is a hammer. One person must unstack the tires, locate the hammer and bring it to their partner. Their partner will race one hundred meters on the track field and locate the ball of concrete with the teams number.
The concrete ball must be smashed to pieces so that you get a small box inside with a key which you will use to uncuff your partner that will be chained close to the edge of a swimming pool which has been filled with some garbage. The longer you take to rescue them, the closer they will get to the water and when the timer runs out, those who have not been rescued will fall inside."
As he explained, a screen depicted an image of a male and female executing this very task.
"There are forty minutes for each team to accomplish their task. When the time is up the teams which have not accomplished the goal will be up for elimination automatically." Bi Meng reminded them.
"You have five minutes to strategize and then the games begin."
In her mind, Alix had the system saying, "This is easy, I was expecting him to ask you all to do something much more challenging. Huh!, so much for raising my hopes up."
She ignored the obviously ignorant system. To her, this sounded like a big challenge and if she didn't have extraordinary strength from the system, she would have given up immediately.
"Hey cat lady, I am strong, I will unstack the tires." Jin De told her.
"Did you see the ball of concrete? It's not exactly small. It requires strength too." she answered.
It was the size of those exercise balls in the gym not a soccer ball or a tennis ball.
"Right." he answered.
"And running one hundred meters requires speed and endurance. You are right, you do the tires, I will take care of the the rest." she said confidently.
"Huh!" his mouth fell open.
"Don't bother unstacking the tires, there are ten piles of stacks. It will take too much time to do all that. Just climb the stack if possible and peep inside. Then move to the next one if you don't see the hammer."
"It's time." Qi Jian told them.
Alix pushed Pang Jin De out even though he was unprepared.
"You, cat lady, maybe we should switch." he whispered loudly.
Alix shook her head, clapped her hands and applauded.
"It's in the middle stack, your teams hammer." the system told her.
Hallelujah! she thought. Having the system was really the best thing in the world.
"Woo," Alix cheered and she took quick steps to grab Pang Jin De before he could go further.
"Start from the middle stack and work backwards." she shouted.
He was confused, and others did not think much of what she had said to me.
The director and the hosts on the other hand shared a questioning look.
How did she accurately guess where the hammer was? Had someone leaked information to her?
"The rest of you should stand here at the starting line and cheer your partners on while waiting."
Alix took the cheering your partner on words as an instruction, shouting over the others.
It seemed like most men had opted for the tire stacking challenge.
"Pang Jin De, fighting!!! remember to start from the middle and work backwards. I have a great feeling about it. Do you hear me?"
"Bi Meng, ask her a question and distract her." The director quickly said into his radio.
Bi Meng quickly stepped in front of Alix and blocked her view of Pang Jin De.
"How confident are you in your partner?" she asked and thrust a microphone in Alix's face.
"Eeeh..." she blinked a few times for a few seconds. "He is strong. I think he will come through for us."
"How do you know if he is strong or not?" Bi Meng asked her.
Alix slapped her biceps. "He has firm biceps."
Bi Meng laughed and Alix shook her head. Maybe she should have given a different answer. When the show aired, people might think she was staring at his biceps inappropriately.
But that wasn't the case. All the men had their biceps exposed. It's not as if she could close her eyes and not look or act blind.
She bent tilted her head to the left to see if he had progressed. To her greatest outrage, Pang Jin De had started with the first tire stack.
"Really, this dog man!!" she blurted out.
She shoved Bi Meng out of the way lightly and screamed, "Start from the middle, Pang Jin De, we are team number ten, you should start with the fifth stack."
In her mind, the blue elf chuckled at her plight, finding it highly entertaining.
"You know that your explanation does not make sense, right?" it asked her.
"So what should I say?" she asked it.
"I don't know, I am enjoying your frustration greatly." It told her.
In the gaming world, she controlled almost everything, leaving no allowance for a mistake. It was funny to see her out of her element and at the mercy of fate.
One team managed to find their hammer and they cheered loudly.
Pang Jin De meanwhile was on the third stack, pushing the tires down one at a time.
"Oh, fruit, fruit, fruit, why is he acting deaf?"
Alix put her hands on her head and she groaned. Looking at her, one would think that they had already lost game which was not the case.
"Capture her frustrated face vividly." The producer told the director.
The timer was counting down, and ten minutes had somehow already gone by quickly.