“What did you do to him?!” Zhou Xingyu’s hand was already clenched into a fist. If the person before him failed to give a satisfactory response, he wouldn’t mind adding a few other colors to that face.
Before Shi Jingchi could say anything, Mo Yunyu reacted first, hurriedly wiping his tears and rushing over to block him. “He didn’t do anything. Don’t be impulsive.”
Hearing Mo Yunyu say this, Zhou Xingyu reluctantly withdrew his hand, though his hostile attitude didn’t wane in the slightest.
Meanwhile, Shi Jingchi nonchalantly tossed his phone to Zhou Xingyu. “See for yourself.”
With that, he gently and tenderly wiped the remaining tears from Mo Yunyu’s face.
“Don’t cry. Once you pack your things, I’ll send you home. I will definitely find out who these people are.”
After flying through the contents of the phone, the gloom in Zhou Xingyu’s eyes was replaced by a chilling murderous intent. “Are these people out of their minds?”
Hearing Zhou Xingyu speak, Mo Yunyu distanced himself slightly from Shi Jingchi, though his eyes remained filled with panic and uncertainty.
Knowing that the other had been frightened today, Zhou Xingyu suppressed his jealousy. The most important thing right now was to let Mo Yunyu go home to a safe place, and then dig those disgusting parasites out one by one.
Shi Jingchi exchanged a tacit understanding glance with Zhou Xingyu, then gently patted Mo Yunyu’s shoulder, telling him to go pack his things first, while he needed to have a private conversation with Zhou Xingyu.
Mo Yunyu hesitated for a split second before heading to the bathroom to sort his things.
Host, aren’t you scared? 609 felt quite worried. Even though it had realized over this period that its host wasn’t quite as innocent as it had originally thought, something that had caused it to shut down in an existential crisis for quite a while, it still couldn’t bear to see Yunyu face this kind of situation.
Yunyu’s expression remained nonchalant, entirely devoid of panic. What’s there to be afraid of? I’ve seen plenty of situations like this.
After all, this stemmed entirely from his unique constitution, meaning anyone who crossed paths with him and became captivated by him would have their love, hate, obsession, and infatuation amplified infinitely.
He possessed a constitution that forced him to walk only within the darkest, greyest zones.
Watching Mo Yunyu walk into the bathroom, Shi Jingchi finally turned his gaze to Zhou Xingyu.
“It’s not just what you saw on the phone just now; this is already from earlier. This chat history was even sent to me anonymously by someone else. In the chat logs I received today, they aren’t just limited to peeping anymore, as they’ve started messing with his belongings and secretly pouring things into his drinking water.” It was simply too sickening to speak of, and fueled by rage, Shi Jingchi wished he could tear those people limb from limb and scatter their ashes a thousand times over.
How could Zhou Xingyu not be furious? He also wished he had the ability to protect and possess Mo Yunyu, but right now he could only stand by helplessly, listening to Shi Jingchi’s arrangements.
Estimating that the two of them had talked enough, Mo Yunyu walked out.
Shi Jingchi stepped close and reached out to ruffle that fluffy head of hair. “You don’t have to worry. Withdrawing from the show means you’re already safe. Leave the rest of the matter to me and Zhou Xingyu.”
Though he deeply loathed uttering his rival’s name, he genuinely wanted to give Mo Yunyu a greater sense of security.
To his surprise, Mo Yunyu didn’t show the single-minded eagerness to leave that he’d had moments ago.
As a young master who had been pampered for many years, running into such sordid filth entirely outside his realm of comprehension was deeply difficult for him to accept.
Yet once he shook off the negative emotions, the proud side of his nature burst forth.
“I’m not leaving.” Facing their disapproving gazes, Mo Yunyu grew even more determined not to leave. “Only if I stay can you guys catch them better, right?”
“Besides…” Mo Yunyu looked at Zhou Xingyu. “What about the performance if I leave? Don’t forget, we’re still teammates.”
Shi Jingchi wanted to try persuading Mo Yunyu further, but meeting those eyes, still carrying traces of having cried, yet shining brightly once more, he silently swallowed the words stuck in his throat.
He could only think that this was truly what it meant to be a member of the Mo family; no matter how pampered they were, they carried an innate courage flowing in their blood to shatter all obstacles and refuse compromise.
“Sigh. Then you must be careful.” Shi Jingchi sighed helplessly, then turned back to Zhou Xingyu. “Protect him well.”
Zhou Xingyu nodded solemnly. The hair-trigger hostility between them had vanished, leaving only a shared, unwavering determination to protect Mo Yunyu.
Unexpectedly, after experiencing such a terrifying ordeal, Mo Yunyu was still able to fall asleep.
He had a night of dreamless slumber.
The next evening at eight o’clock, Shining Stars kicked off its livestream right on schedule. Because the show had reached the semi-finals, the viewership count on the streaming platform hit a record high.
It’s finally starting!
Ahhhhh so hyped!
Look at our Yanyan, such a hardworking and aspiring college student, everyone vote for him.
Yun-bao! Mommy loves you!
Teacher Shi is as handsome as ever.
Wait, who’s backing that person anyway, how did they manage to stay until now, speechless.
Xingxing and Yun-bao are paired up this time, time to start shipping!
“Welcome everyone to the semi-finals live broadcast of Shining Stars!” Orange stepped onto the stage radiant with a smile, greeted by a thunderous roar of applause from the audience.
“Right now, only eighteen people remain on stage out of the original one hundred. I’m sure everyone is just as excited as Orange to see their even better performances.”
“The semi-finals adopt a pairing format, continuing with the audience voting method. Among the nine groups, the top three groups, totaling six individuals, will advance directly to the finals, while the remaining six groups, twelve people, will enter the second half of the semi-finals.”
“As for the rules of the second half, we’ll keep that as a suspense.”
The director naturally understood that this maneuver would invite complaints from the viewers, but luckily he had prepared in advance, having the nine teams draw their performance order ahead of time so they could jump straight into the performances.
Originally, Mo Yunyu’s group had drawn the first performance slot, but after a unanimous objection from the group, it was adjusted to the very end.
After all, not everyone possessed the sheer fortitude to face them head-on; if anyone had to perform right after them, it would be no different than putting a baby in a diaper in the ring against a heavyweight boxing champion.
Serving as the grand finale once again, and barred from letting their styling and costumes leak in advance, Mo Yunyu and Zhou Xingyu could only wait in the dressing room. A tablet sat on the nearby table, broadcasting the live event to help them keep track of the progress.
For some reason, Mo Yunyu kept feeling a faint, lingering sense of being watched, tailing him as if it could seep through any pore.
Mo Yunyu vigilantly scanned his surroundings, but besides Zhou Xingyu, there were only busy staff members everywhere. He failed to catch the pair of eyes watching him.
“What’s wrong?” Zhou Xingyu leaned in slightly, his tone laced with concern.
Mo Yunyu almost shook his head, thinking it might just be an illusion born from excessive nervousness. But anyone passing by him could potentially be a member of that chat group, so he quietly leaned close to Zhou Xingyu’s ear and whispered his suspicion.
“I feel like a gaze has been watching me the whole time.” After finishing, Mo Yunyu looked around the room once more, but aside from staff members coming and going, he saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Zhou Xingyu followed Mo Yunyu’s movements and scanned the room as well. Perhaps due to the environment he grew up in since childhood, he was inherently far more sensitive to such things.
When his eyes brushed across a concealed corner, he decisively stood up, reached out to probe around slightly, and pulled a tiny black box out from behind.
Seeing the wire trailing from it, Zhou Xingyu didn’t hesitate to snap it clean off.
At that exact second, the livestream feed, which had over ten million viewers, instantly went pitch black.
“What is that?” Mo Yunyu stared at the small box in Zhou Xingyu’s hand, utterly unable to tell what it was.
Zhou Xingyu’s tone was ice-cold. “A camera. They must have installed it.”
The atmosphere froze instantly.
Their strange behavior prompted a nearby makeup artist to cautiously step closer and ask, “Is something wrong?”
Mo Yunyu was the first to snap back to reality, offering a faint, slight smile. “It’s nothing.”
The makeup artist was a young woman, and feeling starstruck by Mo Yunyu’s response, her cheeks turned a bright shade of pink, after all, the other was notoriously aloof and rarely bothered interacting with people.
“That’s good. If you need anything, just let us know.”
Mo Yunyu nodded. Once the makeup artist walked away, he tapped Zhou Xingyu on the shoulder to snap him out of a trance.
It was just a camera installed in a public area, no different from surveillance; he just couldn’t understand why Zhou Xingyu was reacting even more intensely than he was.
“What’s the matter?” Mo Yunyu asked aloud, pulling Zhou Xingyu back from his memories.
Perhaps his nerves had been stretched far too taut lately, or perhaps out of fear that Mo Yunyu would care too much, Zhou Xingyu harbored a rare urge to lay bare everything locked away in his mind.
As the movement of people in the dressing room gradually thinned out, Zhou Xingyu picked up the camera and sat back down with Mo Yunyu in their original spot.
“Want to hear a story?”
Though he didn’t quite understand why Zhou Xingyu chose to recount this right now, Mo Yunyu nodded anyway, as it served as an effective way to distract his mind.
The story began in an old alley, an alley reeking of squalor and filth, populated by all sorts of people.
There were petty thugs, prostitutes, and ordinary impoverished families.
Clearly, this was Zhou Xingyu’s past.
The story wasn’t particularly long, with massive spans of it glossed over by the narrator, leaving only the plot points connected to hidden cameras.
Logically speaking, an alley like that shouldn’t have had cameras, let alone several years ago when perhaps only a few decorative surveillance tools existed.
Yet the words spoken by Zhou Xingyu were saturated with the sensation of being spied upon, frame by frame, straight from the lens of a camera.
No matter how one tried to beautify the descriptions, footage of prostitution and exploitation remained filthy, but Zhou Xingyu narrated it sentence by sentence, telling how his mother was one of those women, and how the moments of his birth were captured on video and auctioned off at high prices to voyeuristic freaks.
He was recounting a completely pitch-black underside of the world that the young master had never laid eyes upon.
And he had fought his way out of that dark underside, expending every ounce of his strength just to reach the young master’s side.
An uncontrollable urge to embrace the other welled up within Mo Yunyu.
Thinking this, he acted upon it.
Zhou Xingyu’s frame was much broader than Mo Yunyu’s. As Mo Yunyu tried his best to stretch out his arms to hug him, he ended up entirely enveloped within the other’s embrace.
At that moment, only a few people remained in the dressing room, and since they were sitting in a corner, no one paid attention to their intimacy, meaning no one caught the triumphant, fulfilled smile blooming across Zhou Xingyu’s face.
What he told was real; the pain brought by tearing open the deepest, most deeply buried secrets and scars in his heart was also real.
Yet that didn’t stop him from utilizing them to achieve his own ends, even if all he gained in return was a tiny sliver of the young master’s pity.