The fourth bottle of baijiu had just been opened when the investor crashed face-first onto the table with a heavy thud, passing out cold on the spot.
Qiu Mian let out a lazy yawn, belatedly feeling the alcohol kick in.
He glanced at the time and said, “I’m heading out then.”
“Where do you think you’re going? You drank this much and still want to drive? Sit down! I’ll have someone send you home in a bit!”
Director Mai looked at him as if he were a monster, while the others didn’t even dare to come over and strike up a conversation, terrified of getting drunk under the table as well.
“Fine, whatever.” Qiu Mian finally felt a vague sense of sluggish reflexes. “I’m going outside to get some fresh air.”
He walked out of the private dining room. Rivers and mountains filled his vision; the club’s interior was decorated like a classical garden. It took sheer luck for him to finally locate the restroom. Just as he started washing his hands, he suddenly heard someone crying softly inside a stall.
The weeping was intermittent, interspersed with low whispers: “Qiu Mian… I hate you! I curse you!”
Though Qiu Mian was face-blind, he could still distinguish voices, not to mention this particular fellow had been hovering around him constantly quite recently.
He knocked on the door and asked sincerely for clarification: “Why?”
The crying stopped instantly.
After a long while, the stall door was pushed open tremblingly. Mi Chun first glanced behind Qiu Mian, then asked with a sob, “Where is President Shao?”
“Passed out cold probably,” Qiu Mian replied casually.
He asked again, “Why are you cursing me?”
With a tearful voice, Mi Chun let out a heavy huff: “You know very well in your heart!”
Qiu Mian pondered for a moment, recalling what Wei Pu had once suggested to him: “Because I didn’t break character and laugh when you flubbed your lines?”
“No! How long ago was that!”
Well… Could it be that his act of passing through Mi Chun’s dream had been discovered?
Because of Mi Chun’s high-profile self-recommendation, on the night they filmed the major palace-storming scene for Yinian, Qiu Mian had casually passed by his dreamscape.
Qiu Mian had no hobby of prying into other people’s dream contents; he had merely copied elements from makeup assistant Xiao Yang’s dream on the fly, intercepted Mi Chun as he ran around screaming while clutching his head, and invited him to enjoy the battle royale between spiders and cockroaches together.
Ever since that night, Mi Chun would instinctively take a detour whenever he encountered him, refraining from picking fights for a long time.
Yet right now, seeing Qiu Mian fall silent, Mi Chun immediately completed his own self-spun logical deduction, angry and vexed: “You have a guilty conscience! You’re obviously planning to take advantage of his vulnerability to seduce President Shao!”
“We only had a tiny disagreement, and you’re already preparing to muscle in?” Weeping, Mi Chun tapped open his phone. The screen displayed a photo of Shao Zhonghui leering greedily at Qiu Mian while trying to ply him with drinks. Who knew which onlooker with too much time on their hands had snapped it and sent it to him. “I won’t let you succeed!”
Yet Qiu Mian looked at the photo without understanding a single word of what the other was ranting about. Simply seeing him so agitated that tears and mucus streamed down his face, he handed over a few tissues, his focus remaining stubbornly off-target: “What disagreement?”
“None of your business!”
After stubbornly shouting that out, Mi Chun finally couldn’t hold it back anymore, weeping even more bitterly. Once he intermittently managed to rein in his emotions and saw Qiu Mian still calmly pulling out tissues to hand him, he suddenly felt like Qiu Mian wasn’t all that hateful after all.
“Thanks… I’m just having a hard time accepting the drop in status… Actually, I knew long ago that President Shao is fickle and loves the new while discarding the old, but I never expected that day would come so fast…”
He continued: “I come from a humble background without any talent, possessing only a face that could barely be called slightly handsome. Being appreciated by President Shao in the first place was already a stroke of immense luck, but all of that got thoroughly crushed by you in every aspect… Sob, I suppose it’s about time for me to go back and return to my old trade…”
Qiu Mian had no interest in listening to his psychological autopsy. Seeing that his emotions had stabilized, he prepared to leave, merely asking out of casual habit, “What old trade?”
Mi Chun laughed at himself: “A nightclub host, pretty low-class right? Actually, thinking carefully, I was never going to make it far anyway. The moment someone digs up my dark history, I’d be forced to leave the circle sooner or later.”
“Isn’t being a host pretty great though?” Qiu Mian asked, puzzled. “Worshipped and ardently chased by tons of people, just like that young master of the Pingying Group who made it to the hot searches a while ago.”
“Is that the same thing as me!”
If Qiu Mian’s expression hadn’t been so earnest and devoid of mockery, Mi Chun would have gone completely crazy. He muttered in deflation: “The young master of a top-tier family, handsome, wealthy, articulate… Is that something I can compare to! Besides, even if the guy swings that way, there’s no way he’d ever look at someone like me.”
“That’s true.”
“Hey!… Whatever…”
Having finished a round of crying to vent his emotions, Mi Chun’s mindset had stabilized considerably. Looking at Qiu Mian more favorably now, he couldn’t help offering some advice in the capacity of a senior: “That person President Shao, he’s pretty moody. You need to be careful if you’re following him…”
“Why would I follow him?” Qiu Mian asked strangely. “He’s annoying.”
If he hadn’t discovered that drinking baijiu was rather exhilarating, he probably would have turned around and left immediately. Besides, a person like Shao Zhonghui clearly had zero real-life troubles, lacking even the basic necessity of having one’s emotions tended to.
“T-then why were you so… to me…” Mi Chun finally realized he had misunderstood something. “Actually pretty nice?”
Qiu Mian answered truthfully: “If you keep being sad, it’ll give me a headache.”
Bad mood, increased negative emotions, higher probability of nightmares, potential surges in tricky dream appearances, which in turn prolongs dream-travel duration, ultimately leading to shortened sleep time. Very annoying.
Though one or two people couldn’t dictate the overall trend and the probability wouldn’t spike noticeably, keeping a passing eye on other people’s emotional states was simply one of Qiu Mian’s habits.
Yet Mi Chun seemed to have misunderstood something else entirely. His face instantly flushed crimson, and with a stammered “Oh,” he bolted away at lightning speed.
Full of vigor and vitality, so it turned out paying attention was entirely redundant.
Just as Qiu Mian was about to leave, his nagging assistant Wei Pu sent a succession of WeChat messages asking about his status, whether it had ended, and how he planned to get back.
Unfazed, Qiu Mian omitted the part about guzzling several large bottles of baijiu, offering only a few perfunctory replies while thinking to himself that he wasn’t going to get himself lost anyway, before stepping out of the restroom.
Ten minutes later.
When Qiu Mian passed by the stairwell for the third time, he had to admit one fact.
He was lost.
“Not a single signpost. What a ghost town.”
Qiu Mian shut down the utterly useless map navigation app, murmuring a complaint at the luxurious and exquisite decor.
He leaned against the stair railing, preparing to stay put in this conspicuous spot and wait for Director Mai to come rescue him.
He had barely typed out two characters of his rescue request when footsteps suddenly echoed from the stairs above. Qiu Mian raised his head to see a tall figure slowly descending the steps. A black shirt hung loosely open at the collar, a thin long trench coat draped casually over his forearm, and glossy Chelsea boots caught the eye with dazzling brilliance. The brand of his outfit was indistinguishable, yet it looked entirely bespoke, fitting the newcomer’s physique to absolute perfection.
A model, or perhaps a peer in the industry?
Qiu Mian didn’t look away, causing the person to pause his steps as well, lowering his gaze to look down at him.
“Excuse me,” Qiu Mian began, “Do you know where—”
“Qiu, Qiu Mian…!”
A weight suddenly hit his back, and Qiu Mian nearly lost his footing. A dense reek of alcohol washed over him. Turning sideways, he saw a completely slzzled Shao Zhonghui, who had somehow tracked him down, eagerly slinging an arm around his shoulders while letting out a dissolute laugh: “Don’t, don’t leave! L-let’s! Head to a room… and keep going!”
Qiu Mian gripped Shao Zhonghui’s wrist, yanked it off his shoulder, and asked softly, “Are you sure you want to keep drinking?”
Shao Zhonghui wore the expression of someone on the verge of vomiting, yet bravely declared: “Of course… Not just drinking! We can also do some… physical and mental wellness activities!”
Qiu Mian glanced at him, smiled silently, and decided to use his own method to help him promote physical and mental wellness. Shao Zhonghui, however, was dazzled with delight, entirely assuming Qiu Mian had agreed to his invitation.
“President Shao.”
The person standing on the steps suddenly spoke, his voice low and melodious, carrying an obvious undercurrent of irritation: “Don’t mess around in Guyi Building.”
Shao Zhonghui’s drunkenness sobered up by more than half, or rather, he had been faking drunkenness all along. “Ah… President Chi! You’re here too, what a coincidence!”
Though polite, he had no intention of giving up the fish he had finally hooked. Gazing at Qiu Mian’s profile, his palms itched with lingering desire.
“I definitely won’t mess around. I’ll just have my assistant open a room, won’t disturb you haha!”
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Chi Jianying said coldly. “Guyi Building is property under my name. Get lost, I don’t care what you do elsewhere.”
Shao Zhonghui wasn’t a man of mild temper; swapped for anyone else, he would have definitely argued back. But his drunkenness hadn’t fried his brain yet; he still remembered that Chi Jianying was a genuine loose cannon with unstable emotions, and arguing with him would only leave himself on the losing end.
“Fine fine fine, I’ll change venues. Xiao Qiu, let’s go…”
Just as he tried to wrap an arm around Qiu Mian’s waist, his voice cut off abruptly. The last image he saw before passing out was the staircase spinning upside down.
Qiu Mian clapped his hands, dusting off invisible dirt, and glanced down at Shao Zhonghui collapsed on the floor, how was sleeping right on the spot not a wellness activity?
He raised his head once again, looking toward President Chi with the decent physique, and picked up the previous topic: “Excuse me—”
“Get lost.”
President Chi intensified his tone, sounding even more hostile than when he had spoken to Shao Zhonghui.
Qiu Mian surveyed his surroundings, instantly catching the drift. He kicked Shao Zhonghui aside to clear him off President Chi’s path.
Yet this time, before he could even speak, Chi Jianying looked down at him from a condescending height, issuing a preemptive threat on his own accord: “Get lost! I have no interest in people like you, stop putting on a show in front of me!”
With that, he strode rapidly down the stairs in his leather boots, looking as though he couldn’t wait to flee the scene instantly.
However, as he brushed past Qiu Mian, Qiu Mian reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his trench coat.
Chi Jianying whipped his head around instantly, adopting an air of mortal combat readiness. But before he could fly into a rage, Qiu Mian had already spoken his mind: “I just wanted to ask, how do I get to Tianjingsha.”
Chi Jianying sneered: “Spare me the routine. What kind of whimsical pickup method is this this time?”
Qiu Mian frowned slightly: “Aren’t you the owner of this club? Is asking for directions forbidden too?”
Chi Jianying paused slightly, though he still refused to believe his motive was that pure: “Stop playing hard to get. Who told you my itinerary?”
Qiu Mian processed this for a moment. Seeing the other answer a question with another question, he finally reached a conclusion: “So you don’t know the way either? You should’ve just said so earlier. As expected, there’s a problem with the interior design here; remodeling is advised.”
Of course, if they didn’t remodel it, that was fine too, since he wouldn’t be coming back anyway.
Finishing his piece, Qiu Mian released his grip and went back to editing his rescue message. Chi Jianying, conversely, was momentarily stunned. He stared at Qiu Mian for a few more seconds before blurting out, “Are you one of Shao Zhonghui’s people?”
“Nope.” Qiu Mian didn’t even lift his head, calmly dropping a bombshell: “I’m your person.”
Qiu Mian’s management and commercial contracts were signed with Dayi Media, but his film and television contracts belonged to Sansheng Entertainment. Now that Sansheng Entertainment had been acquired by Pingying, and the person in charge of Pingying’s entertainment division was universally known to be this very President Chi, calling himself that wasn’t even technically incorrect.
Chi Jianying looked as though he had been struck by a bolt of lightning: “…Nonsense!”
Yet before he could issue a triple denial, three people hurried down the stairs, coincidentally catching Qiu Mian’s reply and wearing subtle expressions all around.
One of them panted as he reported: “President Chi, there’s an emergency over at Mr. Zhuang’s place. We need your immediate support.”
“Tsk… Understood,” Chi Jianying spat out a breath of irritation. “Chen Xing, let my family know.”
Executive Assistant Chen nodded: “Understood.”
Chi Jianying headed back upstairs, the other two following closely behind. As he reached the corner, he glanced back at Qiu Mian once more, seeming to want to say something, but ultimately only instructing his assistant: “Clean up the one lying on the floor. Don’t make a scene when he wakes up.”
“Understood.”
As the footsteps faded into the distance, Qiu Mian finally sent out his rescue message. While waiting boredly for Director Mai’s reply, the assistant who had stayed behind proactively struck up a conversation: “Hello, may I ask how to address you? I’m President Chi’s assistant, last name Chen.”
“Qiu Mian.”
“It’s very late, Mr. Qiu. Why not stay over for the night? I’ll have the front desk book a business suite for you.”
“Unnecessary,” Qiu Mian refused flatly. “Someone’s coming to pick me up.”
The moment the words left his mouth, his phone suddenly rang. Assuming it was a message from Director Mai, he tapped it open only to hear Liang Rui’s urgent voice: “Qiu Mian, are you free? A B-grade dream is expanding at terrifying speed, its scale approaching A-grade. If it keeps expanding, it’s projected to collide with fusion point 22, directly impacting reality.”
“I saw the authorities dispatch three teams into the dream, but none of them could stop its growth rate. Word is they’re contacting other traveling dreamers right now, though who knows if they’ll pull it off. Just in case, I figured I’d notify you first.”
Qiu Mian replied: “Got it, on my way.”
He looked toward Assistant Chen, who was waiting for security to carry away Shao Zhonghui, thought for a moment, and said: “Help me open a room.”
Displaying top-tier professionalism, Assistant Chen offered a smile: “No problem.”
“And then carry me over there.”
“Mhm…?”
Without another word after finishing his sentence, Qiu Mian sat down, leaning his back against the wall, closed his eyes, and plunged into deep slumber in less than two seconds.