Cheng Zhi took the phone away from his ear and checked the note again. It was indeed the original owner's father.
A man's rough voice kept coming from the other end of the phone. It was very noisy and gave Cheng Zhi a headache.
"Aren't you the first in that show now? You must be getting a lot of advertising money. It's only 300,000, which should be easy for you!"
Cheng Zhi rubbed his temples that were swollen from the noise, "You have to pay back what you owe. I have no money. How can I get advertising money when I haven't even made my debut yet?"
After hearing what Cheng Zhi said, the person on the other side was silent for a while, then sneered.
"Haven't you heard that a son should pay for his father's debts? I raised you for so many years, and now that I'm rich, you're turning your back on me? Haha, you ungrateful bastard!"
"Those with bare feet are not afraid of those with shoes. If you don't pay, you will be ruined!"
Cheng Zhi's mouth twitched, "I'm penniless now, there's no point in you talking to me so much."
The man on the other end burst out laughing.
"Would I believe your lies? I just saw it on TV. The instructor's name was...Song Baiyi, right? Didn't he just give you a pair of shoes?"
"I checked online, and the shoes are just enough to pay half of my loan sharking debt. If you can't come up with the money, you can give me the shoes as collateral first. When you have money, you can redeem them!"
Cheng Zhi was stunned after hearing this. He never expected that he would suddenly mention the fact that Song Baiyi gave him shoes.
"Why aren't you talking? That instructor should have a very good relationship with you, right? After he exposes you, he won't end up well, right? Hahahaha!"
Hearing the man mention Song Baiyi again, Cheng Zhi slowly tightened his grip on the phone until his knuckles turned white.
After a long silence, Cheng Zhicai slowly spoke.
"Got it. I'll find a way to solve it."
The man snorted coldly, "You're quite sensible. I'll give you three days. If you can't give me a satisfactory answer within three days, you'll be ruined."
After saying that, the person on the other end hung up the phone.
Cheng Zhi held the phone, and after a moment of distraction, he began to check all the information in the phone.
Fortunately, the original owner did not have the habit of clearing the memory. Twenty minutes later, Cheng Zhi went through all the apps in the phone, and then pieced together a few things related to the original owner's father based on the memories that remained in his mind.
First, the original owner’s father was named Cheng Li, who was fond of gambling and owed a lot of money in his early years. Now he has to borrow usury and is hiding from his debts everywhere.
Second, Cheng Zhi’s mother Qin Yuan divorced Cheng Li shortly after Cheng Zhi became an adult. A year later, Qin Yuan died of illness.
After Qin Yuan passed away, the only blood relative Cheng Zhi had in this world, besides Cheng Li, was a sister who ran away from home early in her life and whose whereabouts are still unknown.
Judging from previous message records, this was not the first time Cheng Li came to the original owner to ask for money. A few months ago, he asked for a few thousand dollars in scattered amounts. Sometimes the original owner gave him the money, and sometimes he didn't.
Cheng Zhi looked at the little information in his hand and began to feel troubled.
Although Cheng Li has divorced Qin Yuan, he can still be considered Cheng Zhi's father in name. However, from a legal perspective, Cheng Zhi has no obligation to help Cheng Li pay back the debt.
Cheng Zhi didn't really care about what Cheng Li had just said about exposing him on the Internet and ruining his reputation.
But Cheng Li just mentioned Song Baiyi...
Cheng Zhigang and Song Baiyi are a hot couple, and now is the time when the momentum is at its peak. If Cheng Li reveals this matter, Song Baiyi's reputation will definitely be affected...
After thinking for a moment, Cheng Zhi found Le Zhu who was leisurely browsing his phone next door.
Le Zhu mentioned the noise, looked up and met Cheng Zhi's eyes as he walked in. "Huh? Why are you here? It's such a rare time now, don't you want to talk to your parents?"
"No, there's no need." After saying that, Cheng Zhi strode to Le Zhu and asked, "Can you lend me a cell phone?"
Le Zhu raised his head from the game and looked at Cheng Zhi in confusion, "Don't you have it in your hand now? Why do you want to lend it to me?"
Cheng Zhi turned his head away and coughed twice, "I want to borrow one and hand it over as my own phone later."
Le Zhu looked Cheng Zhi up and down, and after confirming that it was him, there was a hint of surprise in his tone.
"Aren't you a top student who practices hard and ranks first? Why do you suddenly want to leave your phone behind?"
Cheng Zhi remained calm and said, "I have some personal matters to take care of."
“I see…”
Hearing Cheng Zhi's tone, Le Zhu didn't seem to want to tell him the details, so he didn't ask. He nodded, then quickly pulled out two cell phones from his pocket.
"These two are almost the same. They are real machines with cards inserted. They can pass inspection even if they are needed. Just pick the one you like..."
Cheng Zhi was also surprised by Le Zhu's quick and decisive action of taking out his phone. He asked, "Are you here for training or to wholesale phones?"
Le Zhu laughed twice, "I feel sad when I mention this. I met Teacher Tina on the road yesterday, but I forgot to turn off the message notification sound, and she took away my phone again..."
Cheng Zhi smiled, patted Le Zhu's shoulder symbolically and comforted him with a few words, then picked up a phone from the two phones, said thank you and left.
It was almost time to collect the phones, so Cheng Zhi stuffed his original phone into his pocket and handed over the one that Le Zhu had just given him.
The staff did not check carefully and took away the mobile phones after seeing that the number was almost the same as before.
After making sure he wouldn't be caught, Cheng Zhi breathed a sigh of relief and followed the other contestants to the large practice room, ready to start the next stage of filming.
Song Baiyi was ready and waiting for them in the practice room early in the morning.
It is still the same place as the rules for announcing the first public stage, but this time, the contestants' positions have been reduced from 98 to 61, which is obviously a big reduction.
Cheng Zhi looked at the large empty space and felt a sigh in his heart.
The stage is a place infinitely close to hope, but also infinitely close to despair.
Here, some people can continue to attract everyone's attention with their outstanding personal abilities, while others will lose the opportunity to get closer to hope forever because of a mistake on the stage.
But in the voting of talent shows, the stage is not absolute.
Whether you can make your debut depends entirely on the audience's support. Some people can use their outstanding personalities to market themselves and finally make their debut successfully, while others lose the audience's support because of their previous scandals and finally are eliminated.
These cases were all witnessed by Cheng Zhi himself as he had been in the entertainment industry for so many years.
There was once a contestant in the same period as Cheng Zhi who was outstanding in both appearance and ability. Everyone, including Cheng Zhi, thought he would make his debut successfully.
As a result, on the night before his debut, it was revealed that he had bullied his classmates in junior high school, causing him to plummet to the last place in the rankings.
Thinking of this, Cheng Zhi quickly thought of the call that Cheng Li had just made to him.
Cheng Zhi was actually not sure about how to solve this problem, but if he couldn't find a solution within three days, he would be exposed on the Internet by Cheng Li.
Based on similar experiences he had seen of others before, Cheng Zhi anticipated the worst possible outcome of this incident. The process would probably be ridiculed by the Internet, and the ranking would drop significantly.
Maybe the production team will ask him to withdraw from the competition on his own initiative, arguing that he is damaging the reputation of the show...
Cheng Zhi didn't know whether he would be eliminated first or asked to withdraw from the competition by the program team.
But he and Song Baiyi had just been involved in a somewhat shady relationship in public...
Before Cheng Zhili could understand, the storm in his head was immediately interrupted by a familiar voice.
"Hello to all the students who have successfully advanced. It's great to see you all again."
Song Baiyi glanced at the 61 students present and said calmly, "It must feel great to be promoted, right? But you will soon enter the next training session."
"By the second vote, only the top thirty-five contestants will be able to advance."
Song Baiyi paused, looked down at the list, and called out the name of the contestant currently ranked 36th.
"If you are still standing in the same position as in the first round of voting, you will be eliminated next time. Do you understand?"
After he finished speaking, the whole audience was in an uproar.
"Does that mean you can just cut it in half?"
"It's over... I barely made it in the first vote, but this time it's in jeopardy."
"I hope I'll have good luck this time! Let me stay alive for a while..."
Before, when Cheng Zhi heard Song Baiyi's rule of eliminating the contestants down to 36, he probably wouldn't have felt any waves in his heart. But now it seems... a little ripples.
Cheng Zhi was a little panicked. If the worst result came as expected, he could not guarantee that he would be one of the 35.
Just when he was panicking, Cheng Zhi subconsciously looked in the direction of Song Baiyi.
Coincidentally, Song Baiyi's eyes were also on him.
Cheng Zhi felt that Song Baiyi seemed to have a magic that could make people feel at ease. Although there were countless noises between the two of them, after just looking at each other for a second, Cheng Zhi felt that the uneasiness in his heart just now disappeared without a trace.
The next second, both of them tacitly shifted their gazes away from each other.
After a while, when everyone was almost quiet, Song Baiyi spoke.
“Now we will announce the specific rules for the next topic.”
Hearing this, all the trainees fell silent, waiting for Song Baiyi's next words.
“The next topic is position evaluation.”
"We will arrange four songs for each of the three parts: rap, singing, and dancing. Each contestant can choose the song they want based on the position they want to develop in the group later."
"For example, if the song you choose has a singing part, then your task is to practice the song with your teammates and then perform it on stage. The same goes for songs with rap and dance parts."
"The voting method adopts the intra-team duel mode. The audience will compare the performance of each contestant with other contestants in the team, and thus determine the contestant who performed the best in their own mind."
"The player with the highest number of votes on each team will receive an additional 500,000 votes as a reward during the second full vote."
As soon as Song Baiyi finished speaking, most of the contestants began to discuss below.
"500,000 tickets... With so many tickets, you won't be eliminated, right?"
"Is this time I'm competing with my teammates? It's so cruel when I think about it..."
The discussion didn't last long before it was interrupted by the staff's actions.
The staff walked to the wall behind Song Baiyi and pulled off the red cloth that had been covering it, revealing the song that had been hidden under the red cloth.
There are four songs each for rap, singing and dancing.
Cheng Zhi had sharp eyes and immediately saw SYI's song "Spark" playing in the dance column, and instantly decided on his choice in his mind.
Suddenly, Song Baiyi spoke up and interrupted his thoughts.
"Cheng Zhi."
Cheng Zhi looked up in response and looked at Song Baiyi, "I'm here."
"As the first place winner of the first round of voting, you have the privilege to be the center of all the stages you participate in before the second round of voting."
After explaining all the rules and matters, it was time for everyone to choose songs in turn.
This time, Cheng Zhi, as the first contestant to choose a song, walked to the "spark" sign without any hesitation.
Huo Shuhang followed closely behind and also stood under the "spark" sign.
The next second, Ning Meng also stood under the "spark" sign.
The remaining 58 trainees: ???
"Holy crap, what kind of fight is this between the Spark group?"
"Watch the fun.jpg"
"This... is correct? This is an intra-team competition."
Because Cheng Zhi, Huo Shuhang and Ning Meng were pressing in front.
So much so that in the "Spark" group, when the last three contestants were the only ones who had not chosen a song, there were only three of them in the "Spark" group.
The 59th contestant ran for his life to another group that was not yet full except "Spark".
The remaining 60th and 61st places were automatically classified as the "spark" group.
Because no one came after standing for too long, Cheng Zhi was getting a little annoyed.
It was not until he saw the 61st person walking towards him that Cheng Zhi suddenly felt a darkness in front of his eyes.
Fang Qiao was standing in front of Cheng Zhi at this time, smiling and extending her hand to him.
"What a coincidence, I get to work on stage with you again."
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The author has something to say:
Spark means spark.
The Level 4 vocabulary says, “s + park → a young couple dating in the park creates sparks of love.” (laugh)
Regarding the names of the other contestants, I was guilty of not thinking seriously.
Because Cheng Zhi is called Cheng Zhi, I wanted to debut the entire fruit group at first, and I thought of many names that were not very serious, such as Xi Gua, Pu Tao, Xiang Jiao, etc. (I apologize to everyone for sliding down my knees)
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