What does it mean to throw money around like dirt? What does it mean to treat wealth lightly while valuing…
Jiang Wei’s phone suddenly rang, giving both her and Shen Yang a start as thoughts of “ghost calls” and “The Ring” instantly flashed through their minds.
Pulling out her phone, she saw the caller ID read “Zhou Fuzhen,” and she immediately let out a sigh of relief. As soon as Jiang Wei answered, she heard Zhou Fuzhen’s concerned voice: “Weiwei, are you okay?!”
“I’m fine,” Jiang Wei felt a warmth in her heart. “You weren’t watching the live stream the whole time, were you?!”
“As long as you’re fine, as long as you’re fine!” Zhou Fuzhen let out her breath, then asked curiously, “That paper doll just now—did it actually move, or was that for real? Don’t tell me you pulled off some special effects! Even though you ended the stream, the bullet comments are still arguing about it!”
“I have no idea what happened either!”
“So it really was real?!” Zhou Fuzhen’s voice grew excited. “Wow, so thrilling! If I’d known, I should’ve gone. Ahhhhh, I regret it so much! Why don’t I ever get that kind of luck? If you go on another spirit exploration next time, you have to take me with you! Hurry back and tell me all about it—this is amazing, you’re about to blow up in popularity!”
Jiang Wei looked up at the sky speechlessly. Is there something wrong with the people at this school? Besides, even if you wanted to come, I’d definitely refuse. How could I bear to harvest your fear value?
“I’m treating the cameraman to hot pot right now, do you want to…”
Before Jiang Wei could finish, Zhou Fuzhen interrupted, “I’m coming! I’m heading down right now. Which restaurant—never mind, I’ll book it!”
After settling on a hot pot restaurant near the campus, Jiang Wei hung up and said to Shen Yang, “A friend is coming, you don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not,” Shen Yang nodded. “A very close friend?”
“Mmh, why do you ask?”
“You don’t know how gentle your expression was just now.”
Jiang Wei felt a little embarrassed and teased, “You ran pretty fast back there yourself!”
Shen Yang’s face flushed: “If I hadn’t been looking out for you, I would’ve run even faster. Uh, I mean, when you encounter that kind of situation, who wouldn’t run?”
Jiang Wei burst out laughing. She waved her hand, and a taxi pulled out of the flow of traffic, coming to a gentle halt by the roadside.
Shen Yang gentlemanly pulled the car door open for Jiang Wei, while taking the front passenger seat himself.
Click! The taxi’s “Vacant” red light flipped to the “Occupied” green light, and it slowly pulled away, heading toward their destination.
The plane trees on the roadside clawed at the dark sky. Through the car window, Jiang Wei watched “Taoyuan New Village” gradually recede into the distance. The fear in her heart slowly dissipated, replaced by a surge of strange excitement.
Actually, she could understand Zhou Fuzhen—who doesn’t yearn for a little magic to happen in their life?
Jiang Wei pulled out her phone again and checked her [Fear Value], her eyes suddenly widening: the [Fear Value] had gone up by another 33 points! Oh wait, make that 34 points—right as she looked, it ticked up by one more.
Jiang Wei glanced briefly at the front seat. It seemed Shen Yang wasn’t quite as calm as he pretended to be. Treating him to hot pot was definitely the right call; she might even squeeze another point or two out of him yet.
Combined with the 19 points from earlier, in a single night—no, in just two hours—she had earned 53 points of [Fear Value], nearly twenty thousand RMB. Gold prices had gone up a bit recently, too.
If she were all by herself, she probably would have started cheering out loud, but she resolved to appear “profound” and kept a poker face.
Shen Yang was staring absentmindedly at the night scenery along the road when his phone suddenly chimed with a notification. Opening it, he found a red envelope for eight hundred RMB—sent by Jiang Wei.
Shen Yang turned back in surprise, “Isn’t this too much? Wasn’t it supposed to be two hundred?”
Jiang Wei smiled faintly, “There were a bit too many unexpected situations today—consider it a bonus.”
Hmph, what does it mean to throw money around like dirt? What does it mean to treat wealth lightly while valuing righteousness?
Shen Yang hesitated for a moment, “Did you suddenly find your conscience?”
“?”
“You shouldn’t have played with fire just for traffic and scared an innocent, kind-hearted male classmate like that.”
“Ha!” Jiang Wei laughed out of sheer exasperation, “My conscience found me, sure.”
Shen Yang clung to a sliver of final hope: “It really wasn’t something you arranged beforehand?”
Jiang Wei shook her head, “Really wasn’t.”
The heart hanging in Shen Yang’s chest finally gave up the ghost. With a bitter laugh, “Then I can’t take this money. We agreed on a set amount beforehand. Sigh, guess I just have bad luck.”
Seeing him self-pitying and wounded like a wronged young bride, Jiang Wei didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. In the end, she hired Shen Yang to help edit her video assignment, and only then did he agree to accept the money.
Arriving at the hot pot restaurant, Zhou Fuzhen had already arrived ahead of them, and all the dishes were ordered.
To Jiang Wei’s surprise, Zhou Fuzhen and Shen Yang actually knew each other, having crossed paths at some school event.
Shen Yang hadn’t expected Jiang Wei’s good friend to be Zhou Fuzhen either, which made him feel even more bewildered—how come he had never heard the name “Jiang Wei” before this?
The Jianghai Film Academy seemed to have an elite leaderboard that Jiang Wei knew nothing about, where students with prominent family backgrounds and striking appearances were all listed. Even if people didn’t know each other personally, everyone knew each other’s illustrious names.
What Jiang Wei didn’t know yet was that within the Jianghai Film Academy, her own reputation was quietly beginning to rise as well.
…
With the inclusion of Zhou Fuzhen, a wealthy young heiress, the three of them enjoyed an exceptionally lavish hot pot meal.
Because Jiang Wei was footing the bill, Zhou Fuzhen didn’t go completely overboard ordering, but since she was accustomed to fine dining, she knew how to order much better than Jiang Wei. The exact ratios of meats, offal, vegetables, and handmade meat pastes required to make a meal both satisfying and rich were rattled off by Zhou Fuzhen with effortless expertise.
However, the conversation during this meal didn’t revolve around the bubbling, steaming hot pot. Shen Yang earnestly recounted his genuine visceral feelings to Zhou Fuzhen, and Zhou Fuzhen, who had already watched the live stream, listened with rapt attention, wringing her hands in envy from time to time.
“Ah, your firsthand experience was just too awesome, you’re making me green with envy.” Jealousy made the fatty beef rolls in Zhou Fuzhen’s mouth lose their flavor.
“If you’re jealous, eat more,” Jiang Wei said, dropping a chopstick full of sliced lamb straight into Zhou Fuzhen’s bowl. For the sake of this lamb, Jiang Wei had purposely added a generous dollop of leek flower paste to her dipping sauce.
Zhou Fuzhen and Shen Yang chatting happily suited Jiang Wei’s plans perfectly.
You guys talk more and eat less, leave all the sliced lamb for me.
The thinly hand-cut meat slices, heavily loaded with a dipping sauce containing a dash of sugar, a dash of sesame paste, a dash of sesame oil, a dash of vinegar, minced garlic, and a lethal dose of leek flower paste, went down in massive mouthfuls. From time to time she glanced at her phone—though Shen Yang was contributing fear points at a much slower rate now, every ten minutes or so another stray point would trickle in. Blissful.
Jiang Wei let Zhou Fuzhen and Shen Yang’s chatter go in one ear and out the other, quietly calculating in her mind how much revenue and traffic bonus she could pull from this live stream.
Earlier when looking at the menu, she saw they even served snow crab legs and things like that; just thinking about it made her mouth water. But even though she was slightly better off than before, she was still ultimately a poor student and couldn’t bear to splurge on expensive seafood.
Fear value could be converted into money, but running into so many bizarre, demonic things meant Jiang Wei had to keep some cards up her sleeve. In case she genuinely ran into a ghost one day, she’d need fear value to buy talismans or items from the [Offerings] catalog for self-defense.
After the meal, the three of them were still in high spirits. Zhou Fuzhen asked Jiang Wei if she had any plans for a next spirit-exploration video, hoping Jiang Wei would keep this genre going indefinitely.
“It was genuinely amazing. As long as you make them, I’ll keep watching,” Zhou Fuzhen clasped her hands together with an expectant look.
“Who knows how much traffic a video like this will get once edited anyway? Making one is no walk in the park,” Jiang Wei clicked her tongue, rubbing her chin. Spirit exploration wasn’t like food blogging where the source material was endless.
“I’ll help you edit it properly later,” Shen Yang said, completely satisfied from the meal, and immediately made a promise to Jiang Wei.
“Then you better step up your game,” Jiang Wei patted Shen Yang on the shoulder.
Standing beneath the roadside trees, she akimbo-waist gazed up at the moon, chin lifted, lower lip puckered, breathing out through her nose in a posture full of profound care for the nation and its people.
Here’s hoping I can rack up more followers, pull in more traffic, and maybe squeeze a few extra points out of the professor when I turn this in for class credit.