Chapter 18: The instant she peeks out is a secret crush, a gaze that feigns indifference...
"That's about it. Could you please deliver this to room 1245 at the Rica Hotel?" Shi Yao checked the bill and nodded to the smiling saleswoman beside her.
The first wife has a very consistent taste, and the clothes she wears are always from a few fixed brands. So Shi Yao found a boutique and selected some unisex items from them, buying them all at once to avoid having to run around.
Shi Yao spent the whole afternoon in the store, spending very generously. The sales associate readily agreed, and when she saw the address the other party left, her smile became even more genuine. She often had to deliver goods for customers in this line of work, and had been to most of the high-end hotels in Shanghai. She recognized the price range of Shi Yao's accommodation at a glance.
Looks like some rich young lady is here on vacation; no wonder she looks so elegant.
The shop assistant thought to herself, while secretly pleased with her own good taste.
Shi Yao wasn't wearing any designer clothes today; they were just simple and elegant. When she first entered the store, the staff didn't really want to talk to her. It was only because they thought Shi Yao had a good overall presence that they took the initiative to greet her, and she ended up making a big sale.
Feeling the envious yet jealous looks from her colleagues, the shop assistant straightened her back even more.
"No problem, Miss Shi. I will definitely deliver it on time before 8 p.m. tonight."
"Thank you for your hard work." Shi Yao nodded, politely declined the friend request, but accepted the business card, and then turned and left the shop.
As she boarded the subway back to the hotel, Shi Yao sighed inwardly. Pretending to be cool isn't easy. She really wanted the shop assistant to send her and her clothes back together.
Back at the hotel, they went straight to the seventh floor to eat. Rika's chef was very skilled, and Shi Yao ate until she was nine-tenths full.
Feeling a bit full, I decided to take a walk in the rooftop garden. Unexpectedly, I ran into Jian Mingzhou and his companion again. There was no one else in the garden except them. The two of them clearly didn't notice Shi Yao and were still taking pictures by themselves.
Shi Yao stood at a distance and observed that Sister-in-law No. 1 seemed to be taking business photos for Jian Mingzhou, with a fill light standing next to her. When the two finished taking the photos and were about to leave, Shi Yao stood in the bushes for a while, waited for them to leave, and then came out again. She then quickly walked to the spot where the two had just taken the photos and took a few pictures as well.
Back in her room, Shi Yao turned on her computer and, as she had hoped, saw Jian Mingzhou's newly posted business photo on the homepage. He was wearing a white shirt, and his smile looked even more gentle in the moonlight.
The fans in the comments section were clamoring for her husband, but Shi Yao couldn't help but shake her head. What husband? Your husbands are on their honeymoon with their wives. Even the promotional photos were taken by his wife.
She opened the photos she had just taken from the same angle, adjusted the filters slightly, logged into the small account she had registered on Sweet Potato last night, and posted a message without any text, only including a moon emoji.
Then she started organizing the results of the afternoon's shopping spree, matching the outfits with the content of Sister-in-law No. 1's Weibo posts, and finally chose one of the outfits to wear. She took a selfie with only her profile in the side by the French windows.
She took several photos in a row, but after picking one out, she felt something was off. So she woke up the lazy and sleepy system: "System, do me a favor."
"What's wrong, host?" The system's mechanical voice sounded a little tired, but it still responded to Shi Yao's call immediately.
"Take a picture for me. I don't have a phone stand, and my selfies don't look good. Could you take some pictures of my back and side profile?" Shi Yao didn't even ask if the system could do it; she had already assumed that the system had this function.
"..." The system was silent for five seconds, then began to work for Shi Yao without complaint.
Five minutes later, Shi Yao nodded in satisfaction at the finished product submitted by the system. Sure enough, the system's products were of high quality.
"Thanks, System. I didn't expect you to be such a good photographer. If I had known, I wouldn't have bought a camera and would have just had you take the photos for me." Shi Yao was starting to consider the possibility of having the system take her place as the site administrator.
However, the system stopped her from having this wishful thinking in time, reminding her: "Host, I can only take photos with you as the main subject, not just photos of other people."
As expected, it's still that host who loves to take advantage and fleece people.
Shi Yao felt very sorry about this.
She organized the business photos she had just taken, and then took a few more casual photos, arranging them into a simple six-grid layout. She then posted another update on Xiaohongshu with only two simple words in the caption: "Looking forward to it."
I really want to see Jian Mingzhou's expression when he sees all this.
After finally finishing all the preparations, Shi Yao suddenly remembered that today was the day the fourth episode of "Shining Idol" would air, all the first performance stages would be released today, and the first round of voting would also end at midnight tonight.
She quickly turned on her computer and accurately located "Shining Idol". Since she didn't know which group Yingxu's group was in, she could only skip through the segments one by one. Finally, she found Yingxu's group among the two royal groups with extremely long storylines.
Shi Yao scrolled through the progress bar to check the total duration of this group and almost burst into tears. The storylines of the two groups were both as long as 25 minutes, with complete plot lines of introduction, development, climax and conclusion. However, the total duration of Yingxu's group, including the stage performance, was less than eight minutes, which means that the pre-show storyline was only about four minutes long.
What's the point of talking about this?
That's not the most outrageous part. The most outrageous part is that there were only four minutes left in the runtime, and in those four minutes, not a single decent plot was told. It was just a few people practicing this and that, which looked inexplicable. It was as if these people were just slacking off.
Shi Yao stared wide-eyed at every second of those four minutes, finally finding a frame showing a half-profile of Yingxu's face; the rest of the time it was either a back view or a background border.
Good job, good job, Shining Idol! You guys are really great.
So you'll be gone in a second if you just show your face, right?
Shi Yao gave up on finding non-existent shots in the plot and looked directly at the stage, only to find that the stage was also poorly edited.
After watching the performances of five groups in a row, she discovered the show's blatant double standards. The "royal" group had normal stage lighting, gorgeous set design, and very smooth camera work. They could even cut close-ups when the dance was out of sync and wide shots when it was in sync, perfectly highlighting their strengths and avoiding their weaknesses. But when it came to the non-royal group, the cameraman seemed to be drunk, making people dizzy, and the editor also coordinated perfectly, cutting close-ups and wide shots terribly, even shooting directly at the stage set.
It's true that even among the same editor, there can be differences in skill level.
Shi Yao gave up watching the full performance, as trying to extract the promise from it would be incredibly difficult. She switched directly to watching individual fancams, but unexpectedly, even the fancams were blatantly different.
Putting aside the differences in lighting and filters, the camera angles allowed for direct shooting were mostly obscured by the camera's jib arm, making it impossible to even see faces.
Shi Yao was getting a headache watching this, and she was almost laughing in anger. She just wanted to make a promotional video for Ying Xu, but she couldn't even gather enough material. The production team was really vicious. If she didn't know that Ying Xu could safely advance to the next round, she would really be worried.
Finding material from the show was impossible, so she had to create it herself from outside the show. Shi Yao opened the document called "The Road to Center Position" again and wrote a few new lines of plans in it.
Once we've dealt with Jian Mingzhou, we'll go back and rescue Ying Xiaoxu!
It was almost midnight when Shi Yao finished watching "Shining Idol". She rushed to cast two more votes for Ying Xu at the last minute, but she couldn't fall asleep no matter how hard she lay down in bed.
Her original plan was to first use the footage from the show to edit a promotional video for Ying Xu. It didn't matter if it was short, as long as he could get some exposure and become known on the forum. Once she had that sorted out, she would go to the big factory to get off work and help Ying Xu get more exposure through photos. Then she would collect a ticket for the second public performance and go in to take some beautiful photos for him.
Who knew I'd get stuck on the first step and couldn't gather any materials at all!
Feeling increasingly unwilling, Shi Yao got out of bed again, turned on her computer, and started watching "Shining Idol".
There were no shots, huh? She meticulously edited them frame by frame, counting every single frame. She didn't believe it. Did the editor of "Shining Idol" have so much free time that they were fixated on Ying Xu?
Shi Yao took her laptop and went into the acting classroom. She started watching from the first episode and watched until the fourth episode, until her eyes were dry.
But hard work pays off, and she did manage to uncover some shots that the editor had overlooked, even if it was only a few frames.
As a seasoned fan, Shi Yao has extensive experience in following talent shows. Looking at the few dozen or so shots she had compiled, a sudden inspiration struck her.
The video is too short to be used to promote the product, and the camera rarely focuses on the subject's face; it seems to be looking to the left or right.
To be fair, Yingxu is indeed handsome. As the saying goes, even a dog looks affectionate with peach blossom eyes, and Yingxu is no exception. In particular, he has a small beauty mark at the corner of his right eye. Sometimes when he sits for a long time and gets sleepy, he yawns and his eyes well up with tears, making him look even more affectionate.
Shi Yao suddenly had a burst of inspiration, opened Green Petal, logged into her Show Group account, and started writing the copy. Twenty minutes later, a cunning CP post was freshly produced.
[Yingxu x Lin Chengxing | Unrequited love is a gaze that pretends to be indifferent, a hand that wants to reach out but then withdraws [Multiple Images]]
Lin Chengxing is one of the most popular contestants on "Shining Idol," consistently ranking in the top three since the show's premiere, a stark contrast to Ying Xu. Quite coincidentally, when Shi Yao was organizing the footage, she noticed that most of the shots of Ying Xu as a background character were actually of Lin Chengxing in the background, and he habitually looked towards the center, in Lin Chengxing's direction. When Shi Yao pieced these shots together, they appeared quite affectionate.
Whether these two are close or not doesn't matter. When it comes to shipping a couple, as long as there's a certain atmosphere, that's enough.
She left the space, and more than two hours had passed outside. It took her so long to organize such a small amount of footage. "Shining Idol" should really give her compensation for her emotional distress.
Before going to bed, Shi Yao glanced at the replies to the post again. Lin Chengxing was indeed a popular contestant. Even though the other protagonist of the post was an unknown figure in NBCS, there were still more than 30 replies at this moment, and it was already past 2 a.m.
After hesitating for a moment, Shi Yao redeemed a three-hour basic exposure coupon from the system shop, used it on that CP post, and then fell into a deep sleep.
When I woke up the next day, my WeChat was full of unread messages from Yingxu.
Wow, this is unusual for someone with social anxiety.
A note from the author:
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The news that the Ning family's youngest daughter had been found shook Jade Stone Lane. Every household sent their younger relatives to the Ning family's shops to inquire about the situation, but they all returned dejectedly.
He was sent back by the eldest son of the Ning family.
Some people say, "I heard that the Ning family's youngest daughter has become mentally challenged and can only smile foolishly at people. The Ning family was already barely surviving, and if this news gets out, all their old customers will probably leave!"
Everyone felt sorry for them.
"That little girl from the Ning family is a genius at gambling on stones. When she was just a tiny little girl, she was even more accurate than her father."
"Back then, everyone said that the Ning family had produced such a genius, and they were destined for great things. Who could have imagined..."
"It seems the Ning family is really doomed. What a pity!"
The crowd dispersed, leaving behind a scene of schadenfreude.
To everyone's surprise, Ning Fengkai, the eldest son of the Ning family, made an unprecedented appearance at the public auction three days later, accompanied by a fair-skinned and pretty young girl!
Just as everyone was wondering who this little girl was, they saw Ning Fengkai take her advice and spend all his savings to bid on a pile of waste rock that had been piling up on the plate for three years, weighing a full eighty tons!
The Ning family has truly gone mad. It seems that their youngest daughter becoming mentally challenged has been a huge blow to them, and they've all started to give up on themselves.
After the stone was opened, it turned out to be completely filled with green, with a burst of spring purple on the side. The cut surface was smooth without a single crack, and the starting price instantly increased a thousandfold, making everyone green with envy.
Young Master Ning just smiled mysteriously, ignoring everyone's orders, and went home with the young girl, carrying the stones.
Wait a minute, who is that little girl?
Yesterday, Ah Rong, who had squeezed into the Ning family's shop, suddenly stammered, "She...she's the Ning family's youngest daughter!"
*
Ning Xu was different from others from birth; she could sense the state of jadeite rough and know what it looked like inside without cutting it open.
When she was three years old, she met an old Taoist priest who insisted that she had extraordinary talent and took her to travel to various worlds. She followed the old Taoist priest through various worlds for eighteen years, seeing countless stones, until the old Taoist priest passed away and sent her back.
When she returned home, her parents and brothers were initially overjoyed, but then deeply saddened, saying that before she left, her family was a traditionally wealthy family in the jade gambling industry, but now that she had returned, they were just a dilapidated household.
Ning Xu smiled nonchalantly and said, "So what? I'll help our family revive. Who cares about the Hou or Song families? From now on, the Ning family will be the only leader in the jade gambling industry."
Her brother smiled and patted her head without saying a word.
Ning Xu didn't care what he thought, and simply said: "How about this, brother, you come with me to the public auction, and we'll gamble on stones again, how about it?"
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