I’m Scared

“Who did this?” the crew’s furious shout came from outside the tent. “Where is he? Has Qi Yao been found yet?! ”

Chaos was breaking loose outside. Zhu Qing looked around uneasily, a little frightened.

The trending topic was full of concern for Qi Yao’s safety, with everyone accusing the production team of failing to protect the guests.

Qian Cancan called, sounding frantic. “Are you okay? What’s going on with the trending search? Is Africa really safe over there? If it isn’t, you can come back.”

Zhu Qing hurriedly said, “I’m fine. It’s very safe here.”

Qian Cancan asked suspiciously, “Then why is Qi Yao missing? Is he really missing? Where are you?”

Zhu Qing had no choice but to explain today’s schedule, and she also mentioned Li Lan’s speculation.

“Qi Yao has a whole crowd of people around him, all from his company. He shouldn’t just disappear like that,” Zhu Qing said, though she was also a little uncertain. “Right?”

Qian Cancan let out a breath. “Then he just wandered off on his own. As long as you’re okay. Remember to stay with the production team and absolutely don’t go out alone.”

Zhu Qing promised at once, “Don’t worry about me. This place is famous; people from all over the world come here, and there are tons of staff. I won’t be in any danger. Besides, what have you been doing these past few days? You haven’t even posted on Moments.”

Before she left, Qian Cancan had been in a bad mood, and Zhu Qing had asked and asked without getting an answer. While filming the variety show, she’d been tired too, and they hadn’t been in much contact. Now she finally caught her: “Did you pick up Xiao Bao? When she video-called me, she looked a little thinner. Take her out for something good to eat.”

“You’re so naggy, asking so much,” Qian Cancan’s mood still wasn’t great. “Xiao Bao didn’t get thinner; she even put on two jin. I didn’t get fat either. We’ll talk when you get back.”

Zhu Qing gave an “ah” and was about to ask more, but Qian Cancan had already hung up.

Li Lan glanced at her phone; Qian Chu was also asking about the situation, so she replied casually.

Qian Chu: 【It’s good that you’re safe. I’ll go ask around about Qi Yao’s matter again. Keep an eye out, and don’t let it affect you】

Li Lan: 【How’s my traffic index?】

Qian Chu: 【The first few episodes were fine. The last two were overtaken by Yu Ling and Qi Yao. Your passerby popularity is decent, but not enough to pull in fans】

Li Lan was quiet for a long time before replying: 【I understand. Keep your phone on at all times, and contact me if anything comes up】

Bad publicity was still publicity; a variety show only had so much attention to go around. Qi Yao was being mocked across the internet, but he’d taken all the heat.

Yu Ling had also gained a wave of fans; her popularity was on par with Qi Yao’s. Under every comment bashing Qi Yao, someone was sympathizing with Yu Ling’s ordeal.

After thinking for a while, Li Lan suddenly said, “Xiao Qing, I’m going to look for Qi Yao. Do you want to come with me?”

Zhu Qing was baffled. “Just us two? Do you know where he is? Should we bring the staff with us?”

Li Lan stood up. “Of course.”

When Hu Xu and Liu Yini, as well as Xu Yuzhi and Sun Qi, who had rushed back after hearing the news, learned that Li Lan and Zhu Qing were going to look for Qi Yao, they were all extremely surprised.

Xu Yuzhi and Sun Qi weren’t familiar enough with them to say much beyond advising them not to go, but Hu Xu exploded right away. “What are you rushing to get involved for? If someone’s missing, people will go look for them. What if you go and run into danger? And you’re even bringing Zhu Qing. What can she do? You’re really getting older without getting any wiser.”

When Li Lan heard the words “getting older,” her expression nearly cracked, but she still insisted, “We won’t go far. We’ll just look around nearby, and we’ll have the program staff with us. Nothing will happen.”

Hu Xu was still plainly disapproving. After thinking it over, Li Lan lowered her voice and reminded her, “I have a feeling Qi Yao may not really be missing. Teachers… you can also look around nearby.”

After saying that, Li Lan didn’t explain further. She took Zhu Qing with her, called over a few staff members, and brought along the people from her own studio that Qian Chu had placed in the production team to go look for Qi Yao together.

Xu Yuzhi and Sun Qi exchanged a look; the smart ones immediately caught on. “How about we go look too?”

Hu Xu and Liu Yini didn’t follow them. Whatever the reason, there was no need for two people of their age to join the mess, though Hu Xu was still somewhat angry.

“Too rash. Way too rash,” Hu Xu said sharply. “What if it isn’t safe?”

Liu Yini comforted her, “She went on the show for what? For her career, for heat, for traffic. You know where all the traffic has gone in these past few episodes without me saying it. If she doesn’t do anything, then didn’t she go on the show for nothing?”

“That still doesn’t mean she should risk herself,” Hu Xu said, though her temper had already cooled a little. She sighed. “She… ah, it hasn’t been easy for her getting here.”

On the other side, Li Lan held Zhu Qing’s hand and walked one deep, one shallow across the uneven ground toward another area said to have marshland.

Zhu Qing worriedly asked, “Would he come this way?”

Li Lan shook her head. “I don’t know. The route planned by the production team is very clear, and there are cameras along the way. Unless he took a wrong turn, how could they not find him?”

Zhu Qing kept looking around, calling out loudly from time to time. The two of them searched every fork they could find, their stamina stretched thin, looking miserable and pitiful.

During a break, they ran into Yu Ling.

Yu Ling looked somewhat anxious. She grabbed them both and asked, “Are you looking for someone too? Have you heard anything about him?”

Li Lan looked grave as she shook her head, then glanced toward a path deeper on the other side. “There are still some places we haven’t searched. We’re planning to go take a look there.”

That was the most dangerous part of the area, with a large marshland; one careless step could land you right in it.

Yu Ling was startled. Li Lan asked, “Do you want to come with us?”

She looked at Yu Ling, her expression very calm, but if one looked closely, there was a faint warning in her eyes.

Yu Ling lowered her head, bit her lip, and thought for a few seconds before still refusing. “I feel like he probably isn’t over there. I’d better go search somewhere else.”

After she left, Li Lan and Zhu Qing headed that way. Zhu Qing herself wasn’t sure whether they’d be able to find anyone, and she’d even started to wonder whether Qi Yao had really gone missing, or whether some animal had dragged him off.

Fortunately, after the two of them detoured around a large difficult stretch and walked for another ten or so minutes, they finally found Qi Yao resting beside a big rock.

“Qi Yao!” Zhu Qing called, hurrying over. “It’s you!”

Qi Yao was holding up a camera and filming himself. Hearing the voice, obvious shock flashed across his face.

By then, Li Lan and Zhu Qing had already reached him.

Zhu Qing looked at him, unharmed, and frowned. “Are you okay? We’ve all been looking for you.”

Li Lan took out her phone to notify the production team, and the staff following behind her also arrived one after another to help Qi Yao up.

The director rushed over at lightning speed. “Qi Yao, what exactly happened?”

Qi Yao glanced at the camera still filming and panicked a little, but he still followed the plan and said, “When I was walking back, I fell from above. My clothes and backpack are with my assistant. My assistant went to find a bathroom, and I only had a small camera with me.”

The director swallowed his temper. “Then why didn’t you walk out? Do you know we all thought you were missing?”

And this trending topic, which had shot to number one as soon as it appeared, was clearly prepared in advance. Qi Yao was definitely involved in this.

Qi Yao said innocently, “I wanted to walk out, but I saw marshland everywhere outside. I don’t know the way, so I didn’t dare wander around. Didn’t the guide also say that if you get lost, you shouldn’t move around randomly, and the best thing is to stay put and wait for people to come find you?”

The director’s face went from green to red and back again; it was obvious he didn’t believe a single word, but he couldn’t blow up on the spot, so he forced down all his emotions. “...Let’s go back first.”

The follow camera recorded everything.

When they got back, Zhu Qing felt strange, not understanding what Qi Yao was really trying to do.

Was he using a disappearance stunt to hype himself up? But that would drag the production team into it, and they definitely wouldn’t be happy. Maybe they wouldn’t even show his footage in the next episode.

Then why pull this move?

Zhu Qing asked Li Lan, but Li Lan only told her to wait for tomorrow’s edit.

“Stop flipping around,” Li Lan poked her head out from under the quilt and looked at Zhu Qing, who was a meter away. “Or I’ll go sleep on the floor.”

Zhu Qing rolled over and stretched out a leg to pin Li Lan down. “You’re not allowed to leave. It wasn’t easy getting you onto my bed.”

Li Lan was helpless. “...Then go to sleep.”

“But I can’t figure it out.” Zhu Qing’s brain felt like it was about to burn through.

Li Lan said, “You’ll understand tomorrow.”

Zhu Qing, annoyed, rolled over again and nearly fell off. She fell asleep with a belly full of questions, and surprisingly, she slept quite well.

But just as Li Lan had said, all their doubts were answered once the new episode aired the next day.

The broadcast time hadn’t changed, and Zhu Qing and Li Lan watched on time.

It began with the group waking up and driving over to the reserve. Perhaps to satisfy the audience’s impatience, this segment only lasted a few minutes before quickly moving on to the part where the cast split up to look for animal tracks.

This section didn’t keep the audience hanging either. It first showed Qi Yao and Yu Ling’s footage. The two of them walked forward, and the camera even panned around once to include the staff behind them.

It was clear that the shot wasn’t deliberately set up; they probably had to dig through all sorts of camera footage before finding this one, which managed to include more than ten accompanying staff members in frame.

The camera clearly captured the doctor, the guide, local people, and so on, showing that the production team did take the guests’ safety very seriously.

Yu Ling quickly found several traces, and Qi Yao was also searching, but found nothing. After a while, his face went pale.

Qi Yao frowned at the camera and said, “I’m feeling a little unwell. I want to go back for a bit.”

After Qi Yao walked back, Yu Ling started searching on her own. She enthusiastically introduced the things she’d found to the camera, her tone light and cheerful, not letting Qi Yao’s abandonment affect her mood at all, showing off her sunny, Little Sun side in front of the lens.

Meanwhile, Yu Ling had taken away most of the staff, and only one person remained beside Qi Yao. After that person went to use the bathroom, Qi Yao was left alone, and the camera angle changed to the view from the camera in his hand.

From that perspective, Qi Yao accidentally stepped on loose stones, and the image shook hard.

He slid down a hidden slope, and it took quite a while before he came back into frame.

Qi Yao recovered for a while. He didn’t complain, though; he just smiled helplessly at the camera and said, “That fall really dazed me. But the leaves here are thick, so I wasn’t hurt… Ah, where is this?”

Qi Yao wandered around with the camera. He chatted endlessly to the lens by himself, very talkative, but combined with the background of “feeling unwell,” “being left alone,” and “falling into an unknown place,” the more he talked, the more sympathy he drew.

At this point, the screen cut to the production team mobilizing everyone to look for Qi Yao. Every trace of panic, anxiety, and worry on their faces was recorded by the camera. Xu Yuzhi and Sun Qi also got up to help, and Li Lan and Zhu Qing directly took people out to search.

Li Lan and Zhu Qing searched seven or eight places. Their stamina was poor to begin with, and they fell several times, only able to pull each other up as they went on searching without ever giving up.

On the way, the two ran into Yu Ling. By then, more than two hours had passed since Qi Yao had “gone missing.” Yu Ling definitely hadn’t just received the news; she had merely insisted on finishing the animal-tracking segment before coming out. When she saw Li Lan and Zhu Qing wanting to go search for Qi Yao in the marshland, she hesitated for a long time, then shook her head and refused.

【Damn, watching this makes me furious. She really is so fake and so pretentious. Your CP says he feels unwell, and you don’t worry at all; you just keep filming and playing. Then after filming, when they ask you to go look, you’re still all reluctant】

【I thought Yu Ling was really a sweet girl, but now… she’s a total green tea bitch】

【How can she even keep filming? A living person is missing, and it’s because she took all the staff away】

【Looking at it this way, the same was true in the earlier episodes. She was deliberately showing off how capable and spotless she was, while making Qi Yao look useless, and this is the kind of person she is】

The bullet comments were packed with concern and sympathy for Qi Yao, and disgust and abuse toward Yu Ling.

Following Li Lan and Zhu Qing, the audience finally saw Qi Yao.

Qi Yao was resting against a rock, and his mental state looked much better. He wasn’t injured; the “disappearance” was just a false alarm.

At this point, the rumor of Qi Yao’s “disappearance” collapsed on its own, and his footage came to an abrupt end. After that, the program dutifully added the other people’s scenes, along with footage of Li Lan and Zhu Qing encountering lizards and spiders.

【This is a flashback, right? They deliberately moved Qi Yao’s part up front】

【So Li Lan and Zhu Qing finished the production team’s task and then went to help search for him】

【These two have been quietly working the whole time; didn’t expect them to be the kindest ones】

【Watching this season until now, I finally see a few people I actually like. Li Lan and Zhu Qing don’t fight for the spotlight, but they do everything】

【Qi Yao was rude to them before, and they still put aside old grievances and came out first to look for him. Sigh】

【Don’t you think their interactions are really shippable? Li Lan, scared by the lizard, burrows into Zhu Qing’s arms; Zhu Qing, scared by the spider, burrows into Li Lan’s arms... Okay, okay, it’s all your little couple’s fun】

【Li Lan and Zhu Qing are locked in forever in my book, one hundred points】

【Anyway, I’ve killed Yu Ling in my heart. There’s no way she can turn this around】

【Yu Ling is the biggest scheming green tea woman of the year】

【If I were Qi Yao, I’d be disgusted too, doing tasks with this fake thing】

【Yu Ling disgusting Yu Ling disgusting Yu Ling disgusting Yu Ling disgusting】

Zhu Qing barely dared breathe. She carefully watched the entire episode, then opened Weibo and counted the trending topics from top to bottom.

“One, two, three, four… there aren’t any posts scolding us!” Zhu Qing exclaimed. “There’s even a trending topic praising us!”

Li Lan’s grave expression eased. “Mm.”

“The audience was still cursing Qi Yao and sympathizing with Yu Ling a few days ago,” Zhu Qing marveled, a little shaken. “In just one episode, the whole direction changed.”

Zhu Qing roughly understood it now. Qi Yao’s disappearance had forced the production team into a position where they had no choice but to respond. They couldn’t hide too much, so they could only do their best to shift responsibility onto someone else.

Why was there no one around Qi Yao? Not because the production team refused to assign people, but because Yu Ling had taken them all away.

Qi Yao had been cursed at across the internet because of his behavior on the show, while Yu Ling had been cast as the perfect victim. Public opinion had leaned entirely in her favor, praising her and condemning Qi Yao.

But likes and dislikes spring from the same root. Some people would like Yu Ling because of how capable she was; others would hate her because she stood out too much. In just one night, the one everyone had wanted to beat up became the one everyone sympathized with, and the one everyone had praised turned filthy and rotten. That kind of overnight reversal left Zhu Qing astonished, but also with a faint, indescribable feeling.

She stared at the surging repost count on the screen. Yesterday, the comments section under Qi Yao had been flooded with the most vicious memes; today, the spearhead had turned on Yu Ling. The people who had been cursing Qi Yao were now “Protecting the world’s best Yao Yao,” and public opinion changed faces faster than turning a page, so fast it sent a chill down the spine.

Li Lan touched Zhu Qing’s cheek, as if she didn’t need to say anything to understand her mood.

Zhu Qing said softly, “So we… are liked by the audience?”

Li Lan replied gently, “For now, yes.”

Zhu Qing stared blankly. “Will the audience keep liking us?”

Li Lan shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Zhu Qing looked up at Li Lan. She knew that after going on the show this time, she would definitely face a lot of discussion. She had always worried about being cursed at by the audience, but she hadn’t expected that at this moment, being liked by the audience and being praised and chased by everyone alongside Li Lan would still frighten her.

Zhu Qing didn’t know what she was afraid of. “Li Lan, I’m a little scared.”

Li Lan lowered her head and held her, letting Zhu Qing rest her head against her stomach. Her voice was very gentle, but also very firm. “Don’t be afraid. In matters of public opinion, if you believe it exists, then it’s a meat grinder. The wind changes too fast; maybe the person pushed into it today was the one who held the knife yesterday. But if you aren’t afraid, then public opinion can’t do anything.”

“How could anyone not be afraid?” Zhu Qing’s one eye was visible outside; she could already hear Yu Ling arguing. That voice was completely different from her usual pleasant tone, full of collapse and accusation, questioning why the production team had edited things so maliciously. Her voice was hysterical, making one’s heart go cold. “I’m scared.”

Li Lan knew this day would come sooner or later. Zhu Qing would witness the cruelty of public opinion and slowly, bit by bit, glimpse the true face of the entertainment industry.

Before this, she didn’t compete or fight; without heat, there were no praises or attacks.

But once you stood under the spotlight, what awaited you was endless discussion and judgment.

Seeing Zhu Qing like this, Li Lan’s heart ached with countless tiny stabs of pain.

————————

Zhu Qing: I’m so scared.

Li Lan: If you’re scared, hug me; I’ll handle everything.

[Bear cat head][Bear cat head][Bear cat head]