Chapter 72 The real reason behind Shengjing Entertainment is something you won't want to hear. ...
Shi Yu and Shen Su returned to their residence in silence, neither of them feeling relaxed.
Shi Yu had already made a splash on his initial stage performance, and now he's once again in the spotlight with a collaborative performance. However, being in the spotlight isn't necessarily a good thing. Everyone could see from this performance that if Shi Yu wanted to, he could easily get first place. What would those who fought tooth and nail for votes think?
Even without Shi Yu, they could still compete.
With Shi Yu involved, there was no suspense left for them.
So how do we restore the ecosystem?
The only solution is to get rid of Shi Yu, that guy who's got connections.
There are three days left until the end of the instance. After that, there will be three-person and five-person stages, both with random matchmaking. Killing on these stages is illegal and will earn you a high number of votes. But what if you get matched with someone with ulterior motives...?
“A mentor can provide assistance.”
Shen Su came downstairs with three black cards in his hand. He walked to the sofa and handed the cards to Shi Yu, saying, "These are the Mentor Help Cards I found in Xiao Jue's study drawer. Trainees can use these cards during their performances, and the mentor can enter to assist them. If you encounter someone with ill intentions, use this card, and I will come in."
Whether intentionally or unintentionally, Chen Su sat down on the sofa, keeping a distance from Shi Yu. When he handed the card to Shi Yu, their fingers did not touch.
Shi Yu accepted the card and said, "Okay."
But I wasn't really sure.
It's not that I don't trust Shen Su, but rather that the system is unpredictable.
The system enjoys watching bloodshed and killing, and it likes to see players slaughter each other. Now, the system has pushed Shi Yu into the limelight, making him the target of everyone's anger. The system wants to see him attacked by everyone.
Will the system allow him to use the help sign?
Even if he can use this help card, when he really encounters someone with ill intentions and who is difficult to deal with, will he use the help card to invite Shen Su to come and die with him?
Shi Yu accepted the mentor's plea for help.
In reality, I had no intention of using it at all.
"You must use it when you encounter danger." Shen Su looked straight at him, as if she knew what he was thinking, and emphasized.
Shi Yu paused for a moment, then nodded: "Okay."
It's late at night, time to go to sleep.
During this period, they had been sleeping in the same room and on the same bed, partly to facilitate communication and partly to increase their partner's affection. Today, after taking a shower, Chen Su picked up his pillow and walked outside, leaving behind the words, "I'm going to sleep on my side."
"Sinking into the night."
Shi Yu called out to Chen Su, asking, "Aren't we going to work on building up our favorability?"
Shen Su didn't turn around. His tall figure stood at the door and said, "It's too slow. I don't know when we'll be able to reach 10,000 favorability this way. And I took a look. Apart from the resurrection item unlocked at 10,000 favorability, the other items are actually not very useful. They're not as good as the items from high-level blind boxes."
Shi Yu nodded: "Okay, I understand."
After Shen Su left, Shi Yu looked at the empty bedroom and, for some reason, felt a sense of emptiness in her heart.
Shi Yu wasn't a particularly sensitive person, but she understood some things.
Ever since Lu Chengjing drugged him, Shen Su has been deliberately keeping his distance from him, avoiding physical contact, not even sleeping in the same room with him, and not even trying to increase his affection level with him.
Although he had lost his mind at that time, his memory was still intact. After running back from Lu Chengjing, he was too weak to do anything because of the effects of the drug, so he asked Shen Su to carry him to the bathroom. After that, he asked Shen Su to get him a bathrobe. Apart from that, he felt that he had not done anything too outrageous to Shen Su.
Even if Shen Su was angry, a day has passed and her anger should have subsided, but now Shen Su doesn't even want to share a room with him.
Therefore, there is only one explanation for Shen Su's various behaviors—Shen Su is straight and he is avoiding suspicion.
Shi Yu is also straight.
There was absolutely no need for Chen Su to do this.
I wouldn't say I was disappointed, but I still felt a little uneasy.
Although Shi Yu couldn't explain why he felt bad,
.
I slept fitfully that night.
Half-asleep, Shi Yu heard the broadcast: "Next stage, trainee Shi Yu VS trainee Feng Hai."
Shi Yu sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating. Then the announcement came over the loudspeaker again: "Trainee Shi Yu and trainee Feng Hai, please go backstage immediately to prepare!"
It wasn't a hallucination.
I matched with him again.
Shi Yu thought that once she had been matched with a duo stage, she would not be matched again, but it seems that this was not the case.
Before leaving, Shi Yu glanced at the light in the side bedroom and found it was off. The radio was quite loud, and Shen Su, being a light sleeper, couldn't possibly have escaped being woken up. Could it be that the radio was controlled by some mechanism so that only he could hear it?
On the way backstage, passing through the lobby, the trainees' popularity rankings on the public screen had changed again. Yun Yi had dropped to third place, and Zhao Fu, I don't know what he did in the past few hours, had actually jumped to second place, but Shi Yu was still in first place.
Shi Yu saw his opponent Feng Hai backstage. Feng Hai was a tall, thin, pale man with black-rimmed glasses, bangs covering his eyes, an ordinary appearance, and a gloomy look. He was one of Zhao Fu's underlings.
Soon it was their turn to go on stage. After they stepped onto the stage, iron cages rose up around them, and a countdown in red letters lit up on the large screen behind them.
Ten minutes later, the iron cage slowly descended.
Shi Yu stood in the center of the stage, his pale face flushed with the color of exercise. His hair was disheveled, and his forehead, damp with sweat, clung to his skin, yet he did not look disheveled at all; he was still very handsome.
A few drops of blood were stained on the hem of the white shirt, one side of the shirt sleeve was torn, and the right hand hanging at the side was dripping blood. There was a deep wound on the back of the hand that exposed the bone, and blood was between the fingers. Crimson blood droplets dripped from the fingertips onto the polished floor of the stage.
The surroundings were completely quiet.
Feng Hai lay motionless at Shi Yu's feet. If it weren't for the fact that his eyes would occasionally blink, the system would have judged him as dead.
After the performance, the big screen displayed the vote counts for the two contestants:
Feng Hai: 290
Shi Yu: 126589
The vote count was fiercely contested, but the discussion in the live stream wasn't about the vote numbers—
[What?! Yu Yu is such a beautiful girl, how can she be such a good fighter? Is that even possible?]
[My wife, who looks so skinny and weak, punched someone so hard they couldn't get up! I hereby declare my wife my husband! Husband, please face me directly!!!]
[That scumbag Feng Hai actually tricked us! Everyone else was unarmed, but he brought a dagger. He almost ruined my wife's beauty! Damn it, that piece of trash deserved to die. My wife didn't just kill him outright; she spared his life.]
[Zhao Fu and his group secretly discussed that there was no need to kill Shi Yu; simply disfiguring his face would suffice. Shi Yu and Xiao Jue had a special relationship, and killing Shi Yu might cause trouble for them if Xiao Jue came after them. Besides, Shi Yu's high vote count was solely due to his face; if his face was disfigured, he would be rendered powerless.]
However, they overlooked one thing—Shi Yu is a formidable fighter! Haha, didn't expect that, did you? Surprised? Unexpected? Exciting?!
...
Shi Yu glanced at the vote count, his dark eyes showing no emotion. He tore a piece of cloth from his shirt, simply wrapped it around the wound on his right hand, and then left the stage to go to Xiao Jue's residence.
Shi Yu could tell that Feng Hai wasn't after his life; Feng Hai had been attacking his face, aiming to disfigure him, or rather, Zhao Fu and his group wanted to disfigure him. Feng Hai's knife was aimed at his eye; if he had been a little slower in blocking, he wouldn't have been injured on the back of his hand.
After Shi Yu left, Feng Hai struggled to his feet and staggered off the stage. He wasn't actually seriously injured; they were all superficial wounds. Shi Yu hadn't killed him, but the last punch must have hit a pressure point, which is why he couldn't get up for a while and was still a little dizzy.
As soon as Feng Hai stepped off the stage, he was kicked away by the furious Zhao Fu, who yelled, "You can't even finish this little task, how dare you live!"
One kick wasn't enough, so Zhao Fu went up and kicked him a few more times. After venting his anger, he led a group of his underlings away in a grand procession.
Yun Yi left a step later. Before leaving, he handed a bottle of medicine to Feng Hai, but Feng Hai did not take it. Yun Yi put the medicine bottle on the ground and left as well.
Feng Hai stared at Zhao Fu's figure until Zhao Fu disappeared from sight, then he withdrew his gaze and picked up the bottle of medicine in front of him.
.
When Shi Yu returned to Xiao Jue's residence, the sky was already beginning to lighten in the east.
It's the fifth day.
As the morning fog descended, a tall, familiar figure stood in the courtyard amidst the hazy light of dawn.
Shen Su didn't seem to be in a good mood. When he saw that Shi Yu's hand was injured, his expression darkened even more. He grabbed Shi Yu's wrist, lifted her right hand to examine it, and asked with a stern face, "Why didn't you call me?"
"It was too late. The announcement was made very suddenly, and it was late at night..." This excuse was barely plausible. Shi Yu tried to pull his hand back, but the grip on his wrist was too strong, and he couldn't pull it out at all. His wrist was also in pain from being squeezed.
"Why not use the help sign?" Shen Su asked again.
Shi Yu tried again but still couldn't break free. He simply stopped moving and let Shen Su hold his hand. He explained, "It hasn't come to that yet. I can handle Feng Hai. It was just an accident; he suffered some minor injuries..."
Shen Su's gaze fell back on Shi Yu's hand. The white cloth covering the wound had stained dark red. Shen Su loosened his grip slightly, but not completely. He still held Shi Yu's wrist and pulled him into the house to treat his wound.
Shen Su brought out the first-aid kit, his face expressionless the whole time. It was always Shen Su who started the conversation between them, but now that he was no longer doing so, his sudden silence made Shi Yu very uncomfortable.
Realizing that Shen Su's bad mood might be due to his injury, Shi Yu explained, "Actually, the injuries we get in the game aren't real injuries. I just used some healing items, and the wound is slowly healing."
As they spoke, Chen Su removed the last layer of cloth. The deep wound on Shi Yu's hand, which had originally exposed bone, had healed to the point where only a shallow red wound five centimeters long remained. It was still healing slowly at a visible rate and should be completely healed in less than half an hour.
Shi Yu secretly breathed a sigh of relief. The prop was effective; it wasn't a waste of his five bottles. But despite this, the dried bloodstains on the back of his hand and fingers clearly told Shen Su how deep the wound had originally been.
Actually, with the wound medicine and other supplies available, there was no need for iodine or gauze. However, Shen Su still carefully used a cotton swab dipped in hydrogen peroxide to remove the blood from Shi Yu's hands, avoiding the wound.
After a moment of silence, once everything was finished, Chen Su said while packing up his things, "Actually, you weren't planning on using the help sign at all, were you?"
Shi Yu opened his mouth, but swallowed the excuse that was on the tip of his tongue. He told the truth: "Yes."
"Why?"
Shen Su put the first-aid kit back in its original place without changing his expression, then turned back and sat down on the single sofa next to him. He seemed unsurprised by Shi Yu's answer, and asked "why" very casually.
"I don't want to use the help sign because I don't want you to get hurt, that's all," Shi Yu said truthfully once again.
Shen Su tapped his fingers on the sofa armrest, staring into the empty space ahead, his face expressionless, his tone calm and even, "Why don't you want me to get hurt?"
“Because we are friends,” Shi Yu said.
Shen Su paused for a moment as he tapped the sofa armrest. He remained staring blankly into the void, offering no response to Shi Yu's words.
After a while, Shi Yu asked in return, "Then why did you insist that I use the help sign?"
Shi Yu could imagine Shen Su's answer, whether it was something like "After all, we've worked together a few times, I can't just watch you die," "Your parents know each other, it would be hard to explain to the elders if you died," or "Although we didn't get along before, we grew up together."
However, the answer Shen Su gave was not one that Shi Yu could have imagined.
"I don't want to give you excuses, but you don't want to hear the real reason."
After saying this, Chen Su got up and went upstairs.
As they reached the corner, Shen Su paused for a moment, then said, "Go take a shower and get ready. The three-person stage matching should be starting soon."
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