CH 13

Liu Ziyu’s smile instantly froze.

The cameraman facing her covered his mouth as his shoulders shook, seeming to hold back his laughter excruciatingly.

In actual fact, no one could blame the cameraman. Liu Ziyu getting the wrong idea and then putting on an air of pretension just now was way too obvious, anyone would have been able to see it.

Only the standing owner could not see Liu Ziyu’s facial expression; he still could not stop the praises of how Qi Xingchen was so good-looking, and how much he liked him sprouting from his mouth.

Qi Xingchen was still able to listen at the start, but afterwards, he could not even hold onto his face1 and faked a smile: “I’m very flattered, thank you2 for your hospitality.”

“You’re too modest my boy3, I hope to see you again next time!!!”

Naturally, you’ll want to see me again, since seeing me once would earn you a ton of money, Qi Xingchen thought in his heart.

He could guess that this was done by the manager because if the owner really wanted to gift dishes to a male, there was obviously a better looking one beside him, the choice would never be him.4

He stole a covert glance at the “better looking” Bo Ye: the corners of that person’s lips were curved up slightly, though he was unsure if it was happy or mocking.

“Full?”

Seeming to have felt someone looking at him, Bo Ye raised his left eyebrow, which brought the outer corner of his eye up the tail of his eye as well, “Be more focused when eating, best-looking person.”

Qi Xingchen: “……”

His face burnt completely into ashes.5

The afternoon mainly consisted of sightseeing. Since Copenhagen was not large, the 6 of them quickly finished their stroll as they chatted while walking.

After heading back to the hotel to pick up their luggage, they decided to rent a cottage in the countryside as Liu Qiuman suggested. The price was cheap, and most importantly, the living conditions were good.

On the way to the Aunslev6 Village, Qi Xingchen twisted his body to hug the back of his seat and blinked his eyes non-stop at Director Zhao.

The blinking raised goosebumps on Director Zhao: “What’s wrong, Xingxing?”

“I just wanted to ask, our requirement is to travel to a different place every day, right?”

Director Zhao: “……Right.”

“There’s no requirement that the places of interest have to be at different places, correct?”

“……Correct,” Director Zhao heightened his vigilance, “But if it’s at the same location — let’s say Aunslev Village, walking from the tree at the beginning of the village to the tree at the end of the village definitely doesn’t count as two places of interest.”

Bo Ye who was sitting beside him was resting his eyes. Afraid of disturbing him, Qi Xingchen waved his hands in mock-seriousness and whispered: “We won’t, we have to be responsible for the audience and certainly won’t use the same village twice.”

As he said this, he opened up Google Maps and pointed at the screen: “There are two other villages around Aunslev Village7 with stunning sceneries that are unique from one another. Does that count as two different places of interest?”

Director Zhao: “……Did all the d*mn brains8 grow in you???”

.

Director Zhao did not want to agree, but since the words have already been said, he had no choice but to agree.

Arriving at Aunslev Village, they quickly rented a villa from a local farmer. There were two floors, with a total of four rooms.

To prevent the same awkward incident as the last time from happening, the crowd decided to let the oldest amongst them, Luo Qiuman, stay in a room by herself, while Tao Tao and Liu Ziyu would stay together in another room.

When it came to the males, Qi Xingchen learnt to race to be the first to answer: “Senior Bo Ye has poor sleep, let him have a room to himself. Yunfei-ge, we’ll just have to squeeze for a bit, is that alright?”

Zhang Yunfei agreed laughingly, and everyone returned to their respective rooms. After arranging all of his personal items, Qi Xingchen flopped onto his bed and looked through WeChat.

The friend request he had sent to Bo Ye yesterday was still not approved.

Bo Ye’s display image9 was a photo of in-ear monitors. The lighting was dim, and among the disorder of light and shadows, a hand reached out towards the in-ear monitors.

Qi Xingchen could recognise that the hand was Bo Ye’s hand. And that pair of in-ear monitors was actually the gift he gave Bo Ye through the official fan club on the fifth anniversary of his debut.

It was a custom model, which cost him almost a year’s worth of savings.

The inside of the casing was engraved with a line: I look up to10 you from the abyss.

Qi Xingchen specially urged customer service to conceal the engraving a little, so Bo Ye should not be able to see it.

Only that for some unknown reason, even though Bo Ye had so many in-ear monitors that could go with various looks, he just had to use the one he gifted as his display picture.

He quickly tapped on the Weibo post that was being forwarded, it was a small clip released by the official Weibo of《Budget Travel》.

— Let’s Budget Travel Together! Season 4 Official Weibo: #Let’s Budget Travel Together! Season 4# We never fathomed that the programme that ran safely for 3 seasons would actually start off on the wrong foot in the fourth season. In the first episode, we have already sacrificed an excellent cameraman @Qi Xingchen.

[Video]

Opening the video, one would see the Qi Xingchen on the streets of Denmark pedalling with wheels on fire1, while the cameraman carried the video camera on his shoulder, doing his very best to ride the small electric “donkey”. His entire being seemed to have transcended; he looked small, weak, pitiful, and helpless.

It was as if he was asking God: Who the f*ck am I? Where the f*ck am I? Why the f*ck do I have to suffer like this?

Below were more than 30,000 replies, as well as more than 20,000 forwards. As far as the eye could see, the entire screen2 was filled with【HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA】.

Furthermore, under the heat generated by this video, the topic #Let’s Budget Travel Together! Season 4# also soared to second place in the new topic ranking list.

Opening hot search, “The guest who tired the cameraman to death Qi Xingchen” had already reached the upper half rungs of the hot search list and even maintained the trend of rising continuously under the non-stop forwarding and comments.

With the extra support by the double rankings on the topic list and the hot search list, the follower count of his main account had climbed directly to 500,000.

Without question, this was a topic that the programme team had hyped themselves. Qi Xingchen did not expect such a good thing to fall into his lap3. He switched back to WeChat, intending to thank the director verbally first, and wait till they reach the city before buying the director a gift.

The rest of the night had been quiet. However, on the second day, Qi Xingchen was awoken by Zhang Yunfei’s excited voice.

“Xingxing, get up quickly, you got onto the hot search list!”

“Ge, didn’t you see Weibo yesterday?” Qi Xingchen rubbed his eyes vigorously, his single eyelids almost turning into double eyelids from his rubbing, “I got onto it yesterday.”

Zhang Yunfei swiftly snatched away his pillow, “How is that the same thing? Get up quickly.”

Qi Xingchen pondered, how could it be any different? At most, it would have fallen down the list.

After all, other than big events that were in the midst of brewing, there were very few hot searches that remained on the list overnight.

He sat up and unhurriedly went to change and wash up — this time not forgetting to cover the camera, then opened up Weibo.

Thud4, the towel in his hand fell to the ground.

H-h-he…… actually climbed to the fourth place on the hot search list!!!

Other than stars with a small bit of fame, few small fries5 could get to this position. And if there was no forwarding by the netizens, it would certainly not be rooted to the fourth place like a nail hammered in.

He had confidence in his obscurity, hence he hid in the bathroom, immediately calling Qi Yuji.

“Ying ying ying6, Xingxing,” Qi Yuji accepted the call within a second, “Did you finally remember your jiejie?”

Qi Xingchen was distracted for a bit by this: “Didn’t I just leave for two days?”

“But I always feel like I haven’t seen you in a long, long time!”

Qi Xingchen had no brothers or sisters, only briefly having parents, and thus could not understand such feelings. He said perfunctorily: “……Then I’ll call you every day from now on.”

Qi Yuji gave a cheerful cry, only then changing her tone from miserable to normal.

Qi Xingchen tried, but still felt he was unable to call out “jiejie”, and vaguely bypassed it: “Oh, by the way, were you the one who bought the hot search and water troops?”

“It wasn’t me, it was da ge7! Don’t blame me this time around!”

It was indeed was done by the original owner’s family, isn’t it the same no matter who bought it? Qi Xingchen had no words for a moment, “It’s too expensive to buy a hot search in its early stages, also there were too many water troops purchased for forwarding. Tell da ge to not buy them in the future.”

“Tell him yourself, I can’t convince8 him,” Qi Yuji paused, “Besides, it’s not as if it was useless. See it for yourself, your follower count is already going to exceed a million.”

Qi Xingchen went to take a look; yesterday night, the follower count had increased again by almost twofold, currently standing at 920,000.

“Just a bit more and you would instantly pass the one million milestone,” Qi Yuji encouraged, “Xingxing, your followers are about to be more than jiejie‘s!”

Ever since graduating from university, Qi Yuji had no job, occasionally accepting private freelance design jobs. Whenever she was bored, she liked to go to Weibo to upload photos and updates about her life. Because her looks were beautiful, plus the fact that many people found the socialite life fascinating, she accumulated a lot of fans.

Qi Xingchen perfunctorily replied Qi Yuji a few more times, though before hanging up, Qi Yuji said in a small voice: “Xingxing, Dad and da ge miss you a lot, could you take a photo of your surrounding environment for them to see?”

Listening to Qi Yuji’s extremely cautious tone, some sadness bubbled up in Qi Xingchen’s heart. The original owner was really blessed with a fortunate life but failed to appreciate it9, if this family had been given to him……

Forget about it, don’t think about it anymore. All of this was not his anyways. Qi Xingchen hung up the phone and took a picture of the villa.

"

Qi Xingchen was stupified for a long time, then shook his head and opened the Weibo app11. The ensuing @s that blasted directly in his face startled him!

Up to more than 20,000 entries!!!!

What was going on here??? He didn’t get slandered by someone, did he???