Chapter 120: Midnight Promise

With a do-or-die attitude, Li Sishi leaned her head almost against the shoulder blade of the person next to her, the two of them forming a triangle, just waiting for the toast to be launched into the air.

"Okay, one, two, three!" Huang Yang counted the numbers and pressed the toaster button hard.

Because his microphone was right next to him, he inevitably recorded Li Sishi's forceful slam. The "smack" sound was recorded into the microphone and broadcast, making it clear to everyone that she had truly "gone all out."

Look at that piece of toast that flew out; it landed right between Li Sishi's face and Shang Hanyou's chest—because Li Sishi bumped into it so hard, the position inevitably shifted forward a little, moving from the right side of her chest all the way to the center.

If Shang Hanyou hadn't been sitting on the table with a stable stance, he probably would have been knocked back a step or two by her forceful bump...

"Alright, could you two please come out a little so everyone can see your success!" Huang Yang said happily as he saw Li Sishi pick up a whole toast, feeling that another 100,000 yuan had been safely pocketed.

"It's not very convenient for me to move around right now..." Li Sishi said to the microphone that the female host had reached out to her, looking a little aggrieved, while holding the toast that was worth 100,000 yuan in donations.

She loosened her grip slightly, preparing to support the toast and slowly move it out, when Shang Hanyou exerted force with his hand on her right shoulder, and his other hand also reached through the edge of the table, easily lifting her out.

Although it wasn't a romantic princess carry but more like carrying a big child, Li Sishi's bewildered expression when she felt her feet dangling in the air made the audience laugh out loud again.

"Come on, be careful..." After confirming that the photographer had captured the necessary shot, Shang Hanyou finally let go of Li Sishi's hand and helped her stand up straight.

Upon closer inspection of the faint oil stain and crumbs on his shirt, Li Sishi instinctively reached out to wipe them off for him—startling him so much that he immediately grabbed her hand, saying, "Do it yourself, I can do it myself."

With only a thin shirt between them, and one side of her hand slightly damp from the oil on the bread, if she reached out and groped around haphazardly... she might embarrass herself.

Reminded by his pushing gesture, Li Sishi forced a smile and withdrew her hand, then quickly picked up the captain's microphone she had placed on the table: "I'm sorry, I got your clothes dirty."

"Doing good deeds is no big deal," Shang Hanyou said, subtly covering his face with his tie.

A heavy touch on one side of the chest indicates that one is going to change clothes.

"Here, a towel." Ling Chen stepped forward and handed him a clean, dry towel.

Thank you.

Shang Hanyou took the towel and quickly went backstage.

The next segment is a Q&A session, where the captains of the three teams will each lead two influential figures responsible for donations to take on the challenge.

The format of this Q&A session is quite common, consisting of a mandatory question with a random donation amount for each team and a subsequent buzzer-round question with the same random donation amount. However, the scoring method differs from typical Q&A sessions: in this session, if a team answers incorrectly, the leader of their team pays the corresponding donation amount; if they answer correctly, they can designate any other team to add the donation amount corresponding to that question to that team's account.

Simply put, if you answer correctly, the leader of another team will donate money; if you answer incorrectly, the leader of your own team will donate money.

This part actually gives Li Sishi a slight advantage.

Putting aside the fact that she frequently participated in various knowledge quiz competitions during her school days, her resume alone—from Miss Hong Kong to Miss World, and then from Miss Chinese International to Miss Universe—makes her a complete daunting opponent in these quiz sessions, especially those with a buzzer-beater format, a level of dominance that would be overwhelming for most people in the entertainment industry who didn't do particularly well academically.

Therefore, she was rarely scheduled to compete in the Q&A or buzzer-pressing events, because it was just too unfair.

But the two people next to her today were acquaintances, and the practice of taking advantage of acquaintances has existed since ancient times—so Li Sishi suddenly felt that she could openly relive her old dreams and carve out a niche for herself among acquaintances…

Seeing that Shang Hanyou from Group A and Ling Chen from Group B had each added tens of thousands more to their respective big shots on top of the guaranteed 150,000, Li Sishi narrowed her eyes, wondering if the two were genuinely unable to answer or were deliberately "tricking their big shots into donating money," and listened intently to the next question.

"Okay, the next question is a mandatory question for Group C. This question is worth 50,000 yuan—What is the smartest river in the world?" Huang Yang took the question card drawn by the female host and asked Li Sishi.

"Danube River! It has to be said that these kinds of brain teasers are really advantageous to Li Sishi, whose breadth of knowledge has been impacted by the Internet age."

"Okay, congratulations, Meili, you got it right. Which group do you want to give the extra 50,000 to?" Huang Yang clapped his hands.

"Uh, let's add it to Group A, they don't have enough money." Li Sishi peeked at the donation figures on the tables of the two groups next to her and decisively added the 50,000.

The donation was given to Shang Hanyou's Group A.

The next segment was a buzzer-beater round. Li Sishi quickly answered three questions and then added another 100,000 or so to each of the two teams next to her. Finally, the two team captains decided to join forces and decide to answer the questions and add all the money to the 150,000 guaranteed minimum amount that had remained unchanged in front of Li Sishi.

Li Sishi: I'll just quietly watch your performance.

Under Li Sishi's leisurely gaze, the two sworn brothers quickly managed to answer another question incorrectly, each adding tens of thousands of yuan to their team's donation quota, hand in hand breaking through the 500,000 yuan mark...

Seeing how pitiful the two of them looked, Li Sishi sighed. After speaking with the two big shots sitting on either side of her, she planned to answer the last question worth 100,000 yuan incorrectly to prevent the two groups next to her from losing too badly.

Unexpectedly, none of them knew that Li Sishi intended to lose this time. And coincidentally, the question was about the registration and payment situation of Renshi Hospital. So, Shang Hanyou, who was sitting next to the chairman and vice chairman of Renshi Hospital, was reminded by the two "insiders" and used his fastest hand speed in his life to press the buzzer before Li Sishi could answer.

"35 yuan!" Shang Hanyou answered confidently into the microphone.

"Wrong, the price has just increased, it's 38 yuan!" Huang Yang cruelly rejected his answer. In an instant, the image of Shang Hanyou pointing to the somewhat bewildered Chairman Ye beside him, both amused and exasperated, became a source of amusement for the audience at the scene and viewers in front of their televisions.

"Oh, it doesn't matter. We just didn't think of that for a moment. Let's add another 100,000." The two chairmen took the initiative to flip through the event brochure on the table, turning 520,000 into 620,000.

Once this segment ended, Huang Yang, who had collected over a million yuan in donations from the bigwigs, was so happy he could hardly stop smiling. However, thinking that Li Sishi hadn't managed to collect more money, he specifically reminded her to "try harder" during the next round of fundraising through singing.

"Don't worry!" Li Sishi carried the transparent acrylic box containing the donations. This was the team captains of Shang Hanyou and Lingchen who went straight to the stage to sell candy to the bigwigs and audience to raise funds.

The teammates remaining on stage, watching the scene below, began their playful and mischievous descriptions—Huo Gucheng took the microphone first, raised it, and immediately began: "Okay, now we've seen our team captain Leo, who went straight to the table with the most rich women as soon as he stepped off the stage..."

"As everyone knows, our captain L..."

eo is usually a very well-behaved boy and rarely uses his good looks to his advantage, so please cherish and support him...

Ling Chen, who had just been preparing to sing at a banquet table to raise funds, was nearly stunned when he heard this: He had gone straight to this table simply because it had several bigwigs he knew from previous charity events, as well as the wealthy woman in red who had just been very supportive of him, so he wanted to make a good start...

But when Huo Gucheng said that, it made it seem like he had ulterior motives and deliberately chose tables with many rich women to use his good looks to "scam money".

But now that everyone had arrived, he couldn't back down just because of Huo Gucheng's nonsense. So he took a deep breath and, while singing, shook hands with each of the wealthy men, rich women, and powerful couples at the table, handing them candy: "Is that you? Could you donate more money...?"

He ruthlessly changed the lyrics of his own classic hit song "Summer Promise" just to raise more money for charity. As he walked along, the people at the table couldn't stop laughing.

Next, Li Dewen from Shang Hanyou's team took the microphone. He put his hand on his forehead, pretended to look at the audience with wide eyes, and immediately started to ramble: "Okay, we can now see that our captain Hanyou has caught Mr. Cen Yinjian. Wow, look at how desperately he's shaking Cen Yinjian, it seems like he won't leave until he shakes him to a satisfactory number..."

Speaking of which, Cen Yinjian, a former police superintendent turned top-notch emcee, had just hosted and judged the song-guessing competition between Shang Hanyou and Le Yun on "Happy in Kwong Wah" last month. So, Shang Hanyou, who was quite familiar with him, took advantage of his relationship with him, grabbing him and shaking him while singing, until he pulled out a stack of five hundred dollars and then another stack of one thousand dollars...

"Give me more, doing good deeds will bring blessings!" If Ling Chen was targeting the big shots he knew and the rich women who liked him to "scam money," then Shang Hanyou specifically targeted acquaintances he had a good relationship with first.

"I'm not a money tree, no matter how much you shake me, I'll never have any cash left!" A top-notch MC is a top-notch MC; even his responses seem to be full of witty remarks.

Seeing Cen Yinjian brazenly shrug and indicate that he really had no cash on him, Shang Hanyou glanced at him and reached into his own bag.

Thinking that his friend was going to donate a piece of candy in return and then leave, Cen Yinjian looked at him expectantly... and pulled out a checkbook from his bag.

"Here you go, fill in any number you like." Shang Hanyou handed over the checkbook with a broad smile.

Coincidentally, the face

When one of the big shots at the table shrugged, saying he had no cash and no checkbook, Li Sishi turned to Xiao Xie and asked him to bring down a pre-prepared card reader: "Don't worry, I've prepared a card reader for you. Please feel free to use it."

Xiao Xie obediently handed the card reader to the speechless big boss, introducing it with an innocent and lively demeanor: "This machine can swipe credit cards from all banks, isn't that amazing?"

"Yeah, you two are pretty sharp too." The big boss, both amused and exasperated, swiped his credit card at the card reader under the barrage of two pairs of bright eyes.

They ran back to the stage to count the donations. In this round, 255,000 yuan was raised in the early morning. Shang Hanyou won 256,000 yuan, while Li Sishi walked over with a "buy big, get small free" approach and tricked and swiped 258,000 yuan!

Those two from Ren Shi Hospital who were "scammed" tonight

The two chairpersons, who had given her a rather unfortunate award, presented her with a large trophy. Li Sishi hugged Xiao Xie, who was helping to hold the trophy, and smiled brightly. With this trophy and the photo of her receiving the award as proof, she was sure to get a good grade on her final exam this semester!

Of course, doing good is truly the greatest joy: seeing the donations totaling over ten million yuan allocated to the Ren Shi Hospital's charitable fund to provide free medical care for the underprivileged, the satisfaction of receiving timely help is incomparable to any other feeling.

The event concluded with a celebratory cake-cutting party. As Huang Yang once again reminded everyone that the donation hotline remained open until 11 p.m., Li Sishi ate the sweet cream cake and smiled, her eyes crinkling like crescent moons.

After the cake-cutting event, Li Sishi dragged her tired body step by step through the busy crowd toward the changing room.

For celebrities, cream cakes are indeed a sweet burden...

After eating a small piece of cream cake, Li Sishi felt a tightness around her waist and abdomen from the tight-fitting dress. She couldn't help but quicken her pace and hurried back to the dressing room to change out of the fitted dress and into a loose sweater dress and cardigan.

"Oh, are you leaving already?" Li Sishi asked casually as she went outside and saw Ling Chen, who had also just changed out of his fitted suit.

"Yes, there's still a performance, two plays, and three songs to catch up on later..." Ling Chen sighed helplessly.

"Are you sure you can handle this rush?" Li Sishi frowned.

"There's no other way, I have to finish quickly now so I can have more time to rehearse later when I have my concert..." Ling Chen shook his head and smiled.

I've been preparing for this year's concert for a long time, and my fans are really looking forward to it. I also want to give them an unforgettable memory.

"Ah, if I had known you were so busy lately, I would have..." She thought about whether she could ask him to make a cameo appearance like she did last time when filming a movie, but now that she saw the faint dark circles under his eyes after he removed his makeup, she was reluctant to take advantage of the poor boy again.

"You want me to do a cameo?" Ling Chen shook his head regretfully. "At this hour, Brother Jun probably won't agree..."

"I see……

Before Li Sishi could finish her sentence, Ling Chen's finger, which was placed near her lips, silenced her completely.

"Shh." He shushed her, then winked at Li Sishi with his eyes, which, though tired, remained bright as the morning star. "But if you're the one inviting me—it's not like it's the first time I've snuck off, right?"

After showing off his trophy and banner to his father at the neighboring factory, Xiao Xie, on his way back down the corridor, vaguely saw Li Sishi talking to a tall, slender male figure through the thin, sheer fabric of the banner fluttering in the wind.

As the figure quickly finished speaking with Li Sishi, he dashed past the corner of the corridor ahead.

"Sister May, who are you talking to?" Xiao Xie walked over, thought about the figure's approximate appearance and height, and then added, "Is it Brother Leo?"

"No, it's not that." Li Sishi turned to look at him, giving him a meaningful smile. "It's 'Romeo'."