Divorce Is An Absolute Must! - Chapter 44

Chapter 44: I’m Scared

◎Li Lan, I’m scared.◎

“Who released this?” the enraged voice of a crew member came from outside the tent. “Where’s Qi Yao? Has anyone found him!?”

The scene outside was in chaos. Zhu Qing looked around, feeling a little scared. The trending searches were all about concern for Qi Yao’s safety, with people blaming the production crew for not ensuring their guests’ well-being.

Qian Cancan called, her voice anxious. “Are you okay? What’s going on with the trending topic? Is it unsafe in Africa? If it’s bad, just come back.”

Zhu Qing quickly replied, “I’m fine. It’s very safe here.”

Qian Cancan sounded doubtful. “Then why is Qi Yao missing? Is he really gone? Where are you?”

Zhu Qing had to describe their day’s activities and mentioned Li Lan’s theory. “A lot of people are with Qi Yao, all from his company. He shouldn’t just go missing like that… right?” Zhu Qing finished, sounding a bit uncertain herself.

Qian Cancan sighed in relief. “So he just got separated. As long as you’re okay, that’s what matters. Remember to stay with the crew and never go out alone.”

Zhu Qing readily agreed. “Don’t worry about me. This place is famous; people from all over the world come here, and there’s a whole crew. I’ll be fine. What about you, though? What have you been up to? You haven’t posted anything on your Moments.” Before she left, Qian Cancan had been in a bad mood, and Zhu Qing hadn’t been able to find out why. Since filming the show was tiring, she hadn’t contacted Qian Cancan much. Now she finally had a chance. “Did you pick up Xiao Bao? She looked a little thin when we video-chatted. You should take her out for a good meal.”

“You’re so talkative, asking so many questions,” Qian Cancan’s mood was still low. “Xiao Bao isn’t thinner; she gained two pounds. I’m the one who hasn’t gained any. We’ll talk more when you get back.”

Zhu Qing let out a soft “oh” and wanted to ask more, but Qian Cancan had already hung up.

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

Qian Chu: “It’s good that you’re safe. I’ll go find out more about this Qi Yao situation. Stay aware and don’t let it affect you.”

Li Lan: “How are my popularity metrics?”

Qian Chu: “They were good in the first few episodes, but you’ve been surpassed by Yu Ling and Qi Yao in the last two. Your public reputation is good, but it’s not enough to draw a large following.”

Li Lan was lost in thought for a moment. [I understand. Keep your phone on at all times, and contact me if anything happens.”

Negative attention is still attention. A reality show only has so much of it, and although Qi Yao was being mocked across the internet, he had seized all the attention. Yu Ling also gained a wave of fans. Her popularity was on par with Qi Yao’s, and under every comment criticizing him, there were people who sympathized with her.

Li Lan thought for a moment and then suddenly said, “Xiao Qing, I’m going to look for Qi Yao. Do you want to come with me?”

Zhu Qing was confused. “Just the two of us? Do you know where he is? Should we bring the crew along?”

Li Lan got up. “Of course we will.”

Hu Xu and Liu Yini, as well as Xu Yuzhi and Sun Qi, who had rushed back after hearing the news, were all very surprised when they learned Li Lan and Zhu Qing were going to look for Qi Yao. Xu Yuzhi and Sun Qi were not very familiar with them, so they only advised them not to go. Hu Xu immediately started cursing. “Why are you so eager to get involved? If he’s missing, someone will go find him. What if you get in danger? You’re even bringing Zhu Qing. What can she do? You’re just getting older without getting any wiser.”

Li Lan’s expression faltered when she heard the word “older,” but she still insisted, “We’re not going far. We’ll just look around the nearby area and we’re bringing the crew. Nothing will happen.”

Hu Xu still looked disapproving. Li Lan thought for a moment and whispered, “I think Qi Yao isn’t really missing, teachers… you can also look around.”

After she said that, Li Lan didn’t explain any further. She took Zhu Qing and called a few crew members, as well as a person from her own studio that Qian Chu had placed on the team, and they all went to look for Qi Yao.

Xu Yuzhi and Sun Qi exchanged a look. The smart ones quickly understood the key point. “Why don’t we go and look, too?”

Hu Xu and Liu Yini didn’t follow. Regardless of the reason, there was no need for two older people to get involved. But Hu Xu was still a little angry.

“So reckless, too reckless,” Hu Xu said, scolding them. “What if it’s not safe?”

Liu Yini comforted her. “Why did she join this show? Wasn’t it for her career, for popularity, for fame? Without me telling you, you know where all the attention has gone in the last few episodes. If she doesn’t do anything else, she would have come on this show for nothing.”

“But she shouldn’t risk her life,” Hu Xu said, although her anger had subsided a little. She sighed and said, “It’s… hey, it’s not easy for her to get to where she is today.”

On the other side, Li Lan held Zhu Qing’s hand as they walked unevenly towards an area said to have a swamp.

Zhu Qing was worried. “Will he come here?”

Li Lan shook her head. “I don’t know. The route the crew planned is very clear, with cameras along the way. Unless he took a different path, how could he not be found?”

Zhu Qing looked around, occasionally calling out his name loudly. They walked through all the side paths they could find. Their energy was running low, and they looked exhausted.

During a break, they ran into Yu Ling. Yu Ling’s face showed some urgency. She grabbed the two of them and said, “Are you two also looking for him? Do you have any news about him?”

Li Lan’s expression was serious, and she shook her head, looking towards a path deeper inside. “There are still some places we haven’t checked. We’re going to go look there.”

That was the most dangerous place in the area. There was a large swamp, and they could easily step into it if they weren’t careful.

Yu Ling was surprised. Li Lan asked, “Do you want to come with us?” She looked at Yu Ling, her eyes calm, but if you looked closely, there was a subtle hint of a warning.

Yu Ling lowered her head, gritted her teeth, and thought for a few seconds. She still refused. “I don’t think he’s over there. I’ll go look somewhere else.”

After she left, Li Lan and Zhu Qing walked towards the area. Zhu Qing wasn’t sure if they would find him, and she was even starting to doubt if Qi Yao was really lost or had been carried away by some animal.

Fortunately, after they walked around a large, difficult area and walked for another ten minutes, they finally found Qi Yao resting under a large rock.

“Qi Yao!” Zhu Qing called out, quickly running over. “Is that you!”

Qi Yao was holding a camera and filming himself. When he heard the voice, a clear look of shock flashed across his face. In that time, Li Lan and Zhu Qing had already arrived.

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

Li Lan took out her phone to notify the crew. The crew members following behind her also arrived and helped Qi Yao up.

The director rushed over. “Qi Yao, what on earth happened!”

Qi Yao looked at the camera that was still filming. He felt a little flustered but still stuck to the plan. “I fell from above when I was walking back. My clothes and backpack were with my assistant. The assistant went to use the restroom, so I only had this small camera with me.”

The director suppressed his anger. “Then why didn’t you go back? Do you know that we all thought you were missing?” And this trending search that went up as soon as it came out was clearly something that someone had prepared in advance. This matter had to be related to Qi Yao.

Qi Yao said innocently, “I wanted to go, but I saw it was all a swamp outside. I don’t know the way, so I didn’t dare to walk around. Didn’t the guide also say that if you get lost, you shouldn’t walk around? The best thing to do is to stay put and wait for others to find you.”

The director’s face turned green and red. He clearly didn’t believe a word of it, but he couldn’t get mad on the spot. He tried his best to suppress his emotions. “…Let’s go back first.”

The accompanying cameraman recorded the entire process. After they got back, Zhu Qing felt strange. She didn’t know what Qi Yao was doing. Was he using his disappearance to create buzz? But this would drag the crew down, and they definitely wouldn’t be happy. Maybe they wouldn’t even show his parts in the next episode. Then why would he do this?

Zhu Qing asked Li Lan, who just told her to wait for tomorrow’s edited version.

“Don’t turn over anymore,” Li Lan said, sticking her head out of the blanket and looking at Zhu Qing, who was a meter away from her. “Or I’ll go sleep on the ground.”

Zhu Qing rolled over and put a leg on Li Lan. “You’re not allowed to leave. I finally managed to lure you onto my bed.”

Li Lan was helpless. “…Then let’s just sleep.”

“But I can’t figure it out,” Zhu Qing’s brain was about to fry.

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

Zhu Qing was so annoyed that she rolled over again, almost falling off the bed. She fell asleep with a belly full of questions and slept very soundly.

But as Li Lan had said, all her questions were answered after the new episode aired the next day. The new episode aired on schedule. Zhu Qing and Li Lan watched it on time.

It started with a few people getting up and taking a car to the reserve. Maybe to cater to the audience’s impatience, this part was only a few minutes long. Soon, it was time for them to split into groups to find animal traces. This part didn’t keep the audience waiting either. They first showed the footage of Qi Yao and Yu Ling walking forward. The camera also looked around, showing the crew members behind them. It was clear that the camera didn’t deliberately film them; maybe they had to dig through a lot of footage to find this shot that included a dozen or so crew members.

The camera clearly showed the doctor, the guide, the locals, etc., showing that the crew was very concerned about the guests’ safety.

Yu Ling quickly found many traces. Qi Yao was also looking, but he couldn’t find anything. After a while, his face turned pale. Qi Yao frowned at the camera. “I’m a little unwell and want to go back for a bit.”

After Qi Yao walked back, Yu Ling started to look for traces by herself. She enthusiastically introduced the things she found to the camera, her voice cheerful and lively. Her mood wasn’t affected at all by Qi Yao’s “strike.” She showed her bright and sunny side to the camera.

On the other side, Yu Ling took most of the crew members with her. Qi Yao was left with only one person. After that person went to use the restroom, Qi Yao was left all alone, and the camera also switched to the perspective of the camera in Qi Yao’s hand. In this perspective, Qi Yao accidentally stepped on a broken rock, and the camera shook violently. He slid down a hidden slope and only came back into the frame after a while.

Qi Yao took a while to recover. He didn’t complain and just smiled helplessly, talking to the camera. “I’m so shaken. But the leaves here are very thick, so I didn’t get hurt… Oh no, where is this?”

Qi Yao walked around with the camera. He talked to the camera by himself, but with his background of “not feeling well, being left alone, and falling into an unknown place,” the more he talked, the more people sympathized with him.

At this moment, the scene switched to the entire crew going out to look for Qi Yao. The panic, anxiety, and worry on everyone’s faces were all recorded. Xu Yuzhi and Sun Qi also got up to help. Li Lan and Zhu Qing went out to look for him directly.

Li Lan and Zhu Qing looked for him in seven or eight places. Their energy wasn’t very good. They fell several times and could only help each other up, but they never gave up. In the middle of it all, they ran into Yu Ling. It had been more than two hours since Qi Yao went missing. Yu Ling definitely hadn’t just received the news. She insisted on finishing filming her part of finding animal traces before coming out. When she saw Li Lan and Zhu Qing were going to look for Qi Yao in the swamp, she hesitated for a long time and then shook her head and refused.

The screen filled with comments:

“Damn it, I’m so mad after watching this. She’s so fake. Your partner is not feeling well, but you don’t worry about it at all. You just keep filming and having fun. After you’re done filming, you still look reluctant to go and look for him.”

“I thought Yu Ling was a genuinely sweet girl, but now it seems she’s an ultimate manipulative schemer.”

“How could she continue to film? A person is missing, and it’s because she took all the crew members with her.”

“Thinking about it, the first few episodes were the same. She deliberately showed how great and pure she was, and how useless Qi Yao was. But it turns out she’s this kind of person.”

The comments were a thick cloud of sympathy and concern for Qi Yao and disgust and curses for Yu Ling. Following Li Lan and Zhu Qing, the audience finally saw Qi Yao.

Qi Yao was resting by a rock. He looked a lot better and wasn’t injured. The disappearance was just a false alarm. At this point, the rumors of Qi Yao’s “disappearance” were debunked. His part of the episode also ended abruptly. The rest of the episode was filled in with other people’s footage, as well as the part where Li Lan and Zhu Qing encountered the lizard and the spider.

More comments appeared:

“This is a narrative in reverse, right? They specifically put Qi Yao’s part first.”

“So it turns out Li Lan and Zhu Qing went to help look for him after they finished the mission.”

“These two have been quietly working, but it turns out they’re the kindest ones.”

“After watching this season, I finally see some people I like. This couple, Li Lan and Zhu Qing, don’t compete or fight, but they do everything.”

“Qi Yao’s attitude towards them wasn’t good before, but they put that aside and were the first to come out and look for him. Sigh.”

“Don’t you think their interaction is so cute? Li Lan, who was scared by the lizard, burrowed into Zhu Qing’s arms. Zhu Qing, who was scared by the spider, burrowed into Li Lan’s arms… So good. This is what you two couples do.”

“Li Lan and Zhu Qing are a forever couple. They get a hundred points from me.”

“I’m so done with Yu Ling. There’s no way she can recover from this.”

“Yu Ling is the biggest manipulative schemer of the year.”

“If I were Qi Yao, I would also be disgusted to do a mission with this fake person.”

“Yu Ling is disgusting. Yu Ling is disgusting. Yu Ling is disgusting.”

Zhu Qing held her breath, carefully watching the entire episode, and then opened Weibo. She scrolled down the trending searches. “One, two, three, four… They’re not cursing us!” Zhu Qing exclaimed. “And there’s even a trending search praising us!”

Li Lan’s serious expression softened. “Yeah.”

“The audience was cursing Qi Yao and feeling sorry for Yu Ling just a few days ago,” Zhu Qing said in amazement, feeling a little scared. “In just one episode, the tide has completely turned.”

Zhu Qing could roughly understand. The incident of Qi Yao’s disappearance put the crew in a position where they had to respond. The crew couldn’t hide too much, so they could only try their best to shift the responsibility to others. The reason why no one was with Qi Yao wasn’t because the crew didn’t provide anyone; it was because Yu Ling took everyone away.

Qi Yao, who had been cursed by the entire internet for his performance on the show, was now being sympathized with. The tides of public opinion had turned overnight, creating a strange and unsettling feeling for Zhu Qing. She stared at the soaring number of reposts on the screen. Just yesterday, people were spamming Qi Yao’s comments with the most vicious memes, but today, they had turned their attention to Yu Ling. The people who were cursing Qi Yao had become “protectors of the best Yao Yao in the world.” Public opinion changed faster than flipping a book, so fast that it sent a chill down her spine.

Li Lan stroked Zhu Qing’s cheek, seeming to understand her feelings without her saying anything.

Zhu Qing whispered, “Are we… liked by the audience now?”

Li Lan said softly, “For now, yes.”

Zhu Qing said blankly, “Will the audience always like us?”

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

Zhu Qing looked up at Li Lan. She knew that joining this show would bring a lot of discussion. She had always been worried about being cursed by the audience, but she never thought that even when she was liked and praised with Li Lan, she would still be scared.

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

Li Lan lowered her head and hugged her, letting her head rest on her stomach. Her voice was very gentle, but very firm. “Don’t be scared. Public opinion is a meat grinder. The tide changes too quickly; the person who gets pushed into it today might be the person who was operating it yesterday. But if you’re not scared, public opinion can’t do anything to you.”

“How can anyone not be scared?” Zhu Qing had one eye exposed. She could already hear Yu Ling’s arguing voice. This voice was completely different from her usual pleasant one, filled with breakdown and accusations, questioning why the crew would maliciously edit the footage. Her voice was hysterical, which made Zhu Qing feel a chill. “I’m scared.”

Li Lan knew this day would come, that Zhu Qing would witness the cruelty of public opinion and slowly get a glimpse of the true nature of the entertainment industry. Before, when she didn’t fight or compete, there was no praise or criticism. But as long as you stand in the spotlight, you face endless discussion and judgment. Seeing Zhu Qing like this, Li Lan’s heart ached.