Wen Qiang fell into a strange silence for a moment, the camera focused intently on her face, trying to capture her next reaction.
Finally, she said belatedly, “Good thing I didn’t knock any off while I was riding.”
So all that silence was just her confirming that.
The others didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Yu Jiaojiao, however, stopped dwelling on the matter. After all, she had sponsored the bicycle and didn’t plan on taking it back, so the diamonds falling off wasn’t her problem.
She now focused on only one thing. “Is the mission complete?”
“Not yet!” The stagehand quickly directed them to the next step. “See those hills over there? At the top of the furthest hill, there are four little red flags. You need to climb up there, choose one, and bring it back.”
Yu Jiaojiao looked up. The hills didn’t seem too high, but there were quite a few of them, linked together in a winding, undulating stretch. A narrow path extended from where they stood, leading to the ridge of the hills.
Wen Qiang, far more experienced than her, said, “That’s at least a two-hour climb just to get there, isn’t it?”
A round trip would take at least four or five hours.
The production crew members just smiled and said nothing.
“Let’s go.” Yu Jiaojiao seemed to have no concept of the distance and started walking toward the hills. Wen Qiang quickly followed.
“Let’s go.” Yu Jiaojiao, seemingly without any concept of the difficulty, started walking toward the hills.
Wen Qiang quickly followed.
The director and his crew watched them off with smiles. Only Sister Wang and the others looked a bit worried. “There’s no danger, is there?”
“Don’t worry. People hike here often. There are dedicated park rangers patrolling the area, and we’ve used drones to spread snake repellent. Nothing will go wrong.”
No sooner had he finished speaking than the cameraman’s assistant radioed in. “Director, Yu Jiaojiao refuses to take the path we set up. She’s walking along the base of the hill instead.”
“WHAT?!” The production team’s jaws dropped in unison.
…
Wen Qiang followed Yu Jiaojiao. Before they even reached the path at the base of the hill, Yu Jiaojiao suddenly veered off and started walking onto the grass beside it.
“Jiaojiao, where are you going?” Wen Qiang asked, confused.
“Taking a shortcut,” Yu Jiaojiao replied without looking back.
The cameraman’s assistant tried to persuade her. “The stagehand meant for you to take this path up.”
Yu Jiaojiao finally stopped, turned around to look at him, and puffed up her cheeks. “He didn’t say that. You did.”
She remembered very clearly. The stagehand had only said that they needed to climb up to the top and choose a red flag to bring back.
The cameraman’s assistant was left speechless. After thinking back, he almost teared up. The stagehand really hadn’t emphasized that they had to take the path. But wasn’t it common sense for normal people to follow the designated route?
Yu Jiaojiao finished speaking, ignored him, and continued on her way.
Behind her, Wen Qiang glanced at the cameraman’s assistant outside the frame, her eyes filled with amusement, and followed along.
The cameraman’s assistant had no choice but to report the situation truthfully to the director.
At the base of the hill, it seemed few people ever came. Fortunately, after crossing a stretch of low grass, the terrain became bare—a sparse woodland of fallen leaves, yellow soil, and rocky outcrops.
Footsteps left faint impressions in the dirt.
Occasional bird calls echoed around them, chirping and chattering, adding a touch of pleasant charm.
If it weren’t for the cameraman and assistant following along, Wen Qiang would have thought they were out on a spring outing.
Yu Jiaojiao, walking ahead, carefully kept her distance from the trees. Although her pace wasn’t fast, cutting across the flat ground at the base of the hills to reach the last one greatly sped up their progress.
The VJ carrying the camera was already used to hauling over ten pounds of equipment across long distances, but this time, he found it surprisingly easy—except for the final climb up the last hill.
By the time the other groups of guests had finally struggled their way to the director and his crew, Yu Jiaojiao and Wen Qiang were already climbing that last hill.
The hill wasn’t very steep. They could go up without needing to grab onto anything, which was exactly why Yu Jiaojiao had chosen to take the shortcut.
Wen Qiang had initially thought that the petite and delicate Yu Jiaojiao might need her help. To her surprise, Yu Jiaojiao turned out to be unexpectedly resilient. This only improved Wen Qiang’s opinion of her.
After about half an hour of climbing, they finally reached the path not far from the hilltop.
Yu Jiaojiao was out of breath and desperately wanted to find a place to sit. She hadn’t exerted herself this much in a very long time.
But looking around, she found that there was nowhere suitable to sit.
Wen Qiang, however, didn’t care about such things and simply sat down on the ground.
Seeing this, Yu Jiaojiao looked incredulous. “How can you sit on the ground? The ground is so dirty!”
“Huh? Then I won’t sit.” Wen Qiang got back up.
Seeing how particular Yu Jiaojiao was about such details, Wen Qiang understood her need. “Let’s walk a bit further. Places like this usually have benches for tourists to rest on.”
Yu Jiaojiao wasn’t in a great mood. She followed Wen Qiang in silence.
As expected, not far ahead, they found a rest pavilion. And to their surprise, the place where the flags were set up was right there too!
“Oh? We’ve made it to the destination!” Wen Qiang said happily.
Even the cameraman couldn’t help but admire their good fortune—they hadn’t missed the destination at all.
Hearing this, Yu Jiaojiao finally felt a little happier. But when she got into the pavilion and looked at the benches, she couldn’t bring herself to sit down again—there was a layer of dust on them.
Wen Qiang glanced at her and immediately understood. She reached into her pocket and was relieved to find a few leftover wet wipes that Yu Jiaojiao’s assistant had given her.
She took out a wipe, carefully cleaned the nearby bench twice, and let it air dry.
“Jiaojiao, sit here.”
Yu Jiaojiao had seen what she did and felt a warmth in her heart. She said “thank you” to Wen Qiang and sat down.
The two sat in silence under the camera’s gaze for a while. Wen Qiang thought long and hard about what topic to bring up, eventually deciding to start with their backgrounds.
“We debuted around the same time, didn’t we? Jiaojiao, do you have any future goals?”
Goals?
Yu Jiaojiao was stumped. Entering the entertainment industry hadn’t even been her own idea—what goals could she possibly have?
“Like acting in films or something,” Wen Qiang prompted.
Yu Jiaojiao was quiet for a long time. “…I don’t know.”
Seeing the conversation heading toward another awkward silence, Wen Qiang decided to talk about herself instead. “I started out as a background extra on sets. Later, Director Yu Wenguan saw that I had some talent and recommended me to Siyuan. I really enjoy acting. I feel like through acting, I can experience so many different kinds of lives. It’s an amazing feeling.”
When she spoke about acting, Wen Qiang’s eyes sparkled.
Yu Jiaojiao had never seen such a light in anyone’s eyes before. She stared at Wen Qiang for a long time. “Is it fun?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it fun. It’s more like… participating in it makes my life feel meaningful. Acting can be really exhausting too.” She said the word “exhausting,” but her expression was full of contentment.
Yu Jiaojiao suddenly felt a little envious of her.
101, seizing the opportunity, chimed in, “Host, you have to believe in yourself! Your talent is definitely no worse than the female lead’s! You have to surpass her, overtake her!!”
Yu Jiaojiao shot it a disdainful look. “I don’t need to surpass anyone.”
The system: “555~(Wahhh~)”
The two rested a while longer, then, prompted by the cameraman’s assistant, went to the center of the pavilion to pick their little red flag.
Looking left and right, they finally noticed a small difference—under the poles of the little red flags, there were markings in different colors.
Just as the cameraman’s assistant thought the two of them would pick one flag and continue down the mountain, he saw Yu Jiaojiao grab all of them at once.
“Miss Yu, what are you doing?!”
“I don’t know which one is the best, so of course I have to take all of them back and pick the best one,” Yu Jiaojiao replied matter-of-factly.
“You can’t do that…” the assistant started to explain.
“I don’t care. I got here first, so I get the best one.” Yu Jiaojiao bundled the little red flags together and stuffed them into her pants pocket.
She grabbed Wen Qiang and ran. The way they came up wasn’t good for going down, so she decided to take the main path.
The cameraman hurried after them.
The cameraman’s assistant, on the verge of tears, glanced back and forth between the now-empty flag stand and the retreating figures of the two women, then quickly radioed the director.
Back at the director’s end, after Yu Jiaojiao’s unexpected move, the stagehand had explicitly instructed each subsequent group to take the main path.
Once things got back on track, the other three groups had no further issues, and they showed strong variety show instincts, creating plenty of entertaining moments. For example, Gu Mi and Wei Luting fell off their skateboard into the roadside bushes; the rope securing Sun Yu and Wang Jiajia’s scooter snapped midway, leaving them wobbling awkwardly; and Fei Xiang and Peng Xiyuan, pedaling the tricycle, were so exhausted that they ended up crying and comforting each other.
They also performed well during the climb. The two closer groups, Gu Mi’s and Sun Yu’s, chased each other in a lively back-and-forth, full of interaction.
The director and his crew had barely breathed a sigh of relief when they received this “bad news” from the cameraman’s assistant assigned to Yu Jiaojiao’s group.
The director and his crew: “…” I knew it! I just knew it!
They turned to look at Sister Wang and the others beside them, only to receive several innocent looks in return.
“Fine, fine…” The director resignedly instructed the cameraman’s assistant to remind Yu Jiaojiao not to let the other three groups see her little red flags.
The assistant agreed and ran after Yu Jiaojiao and Wen Qiang.
He wanted to remind her, but then thought about how she had stuffed the flags into her sweatpants pocket and how competitive she seemed. It probably wasn’t necessary to say anything.
Sure enough, as Yu Jiaojiao and Wen Qiang descended the mountain, they ran into the three other groups along the way. Without mentioning the fact that she had taken all four little red flags, they simply passed them by.
The cameraman’s assistant gestured with his phone to his colleagues covering the other groups. Those assistants, after checking their phones, saw the message the director had sent them—and their faces stiffened.
Gu Mi, Wei Luting, and the others were still marveling at how fast Yu Jiaojiao and Wen Qiang had been. But when they finally made it to the destination and found no little red flags at all, the cameraman’s assistant explained that Yu Jiaojiao had taken all of them. The director told them to head back to where the flags had been and choose again.
Yu Jiaojiao had screwed over three groups at once. The others were completely dumbfounded on the spot.
Although choosing the flags up on the mountain versus down at the base didn’t make much difference, Gu Mi, Sun Yu, and the others—who weren’t exactly broad-minded to begin with—were extremely displeased. Still, with cameras rolling, they had no choice but to put on expressions as if nothing major had happened.
Meanwhile, Yu Jiaojiao and Wen Qiang had already returned to the lakeside.
As she handed the four little red flags to the stagehand, Yu Jiaojiao said with complete confidence, “We’re picking the best one.”
The stagehand was left speechless.
“The four little red flags correspond to four tasks: run three laps around the lake, row a boat to the other side of the lake and back, weed a designated area, or catch twenty fish. Choose one.”
Yu Jiaojiao sized up the lake. It looked pretty big. Running three laps or rowing a boat didn’t seem worth the effort. Weeding was even more out of the question. So she chose the fourth option.
But the fishing rod provided by the production team was just as shabby as the earlier modes of transportation. Yu Jiaojiao took Wen Qiang to the lake. Wen Qiang was in charge of baiting the hook, while Yu Jiaojiao cast the line.
The moment she cast it, the rod snapped with a crack.
Yu Jiaojiao was dumbfounded.
Sister Wang took one look and thought, Here we go again. Time to bring out the premium fishing rod.
She made a call to Butler Li. In less than twenty minutes, a truck loaded with fishing gear pulled up and parked nearby.
The same team that had delivered the bicycle earlier now appeared carrying fishing rods, fishing lines, tackle boxes, fishing chairs, and more.
This time, it was the director—who loved fishing—who couldn’t take his eyes off the equipment.
“Ramis… Ovis… Swan Lake King… Rollsdaner commemorative rod…”
“How much does one cost?” the stagehand asked cautiously.
“The cheapest is just over ten thousand yuan…”
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
“The most expensive is probably a few hundred thousand yuan…”
Everyone thought: A few hundred thousand doesn’t sound too bad.
“In US dollars.”
Everyone: “WHAT?!”