According to the process, all the guests need to cook lunch together. The ingredients were prepared by the production team early in the morning. Because the filming tomorrow actually only has half a day, it is used to reshoot the scene of going to the market for purchase, and then edited and replaced in the later stage.
The ingredients prepared were not meant to embarrass the guests. Fresh shrimp, scallops, oysters, and a four-pound grouper... ... which were relatively easy to handle among the seafood. In addition, Yu Fulin's cooking skills were surprisingly good, so the cooking process could barely be considered the most realistic part of the entire reality show.
"What did Wang Ran talk to you about just now? I heard that you two had a quarrel?"
Li Xuan usually doesn't drink water, and knowing how to make instant noodles is enough for him. But the camera was filming, and he couldn't let Sheng Min be known as lazy after the broadcast, so he gritted his teeth and took a small basin of shrimp to pick out the shrimp thread.
Just after dealing with two of them, Liu Yinying came over mysteriously—she was also a guest in this episode, a girl idol, a few years older than Sheng Min, but she always followed the route of a lively girl. However, she was indeed lively and had a small face, which was not out of place. She turned off her own microphone, and quickly turned off the one in front of Li Xuan, and asked him with a gossipy look on her face.
Now Li Xuan knew how the rumor about him scolding Zhang Zhihua in the dressing room started to spread.
"Nothing." He moved aside a little, "Why don't you ask him?"
"I won't ask him." Liu Yinying was also a half-child star, and she knew Sheng Min when they were young. Although they developed in different ways later and didn't have much contact, they were still closer than casual acquaintances. There was a special familiarity when she spoke. "Don't pay attention to him either. Failure makes people crazy."
Sheng Min had told Li Xuan about their friendship beforehand. Li Xuan couldn't just kick him out, so he nodded indifferently without saying anything more. Liu Yinying continued to talk on his own, saying that Wang Ran was so angry with him that he was making indirect accusations in the tent. After a few words, the PD who was following them came up to remind them.
"Teachers, please keep the microphones on. We can't record the sound, and it's not easy to film."
"Wait a minute, sister." Liu Yinying said coquettishly with a smile, "We'll start soon. We don't need this little bit of material. Let me talk to Sheng Min. We haven't seen each other for a long time. Ten minutes, just ten minutes."
She made a please gesture, and her attitude was very good. The PD who was following her said with some embarrassment, "Please go a little faster," and walked away for the time being.
"What do you want to say? Let's talk after the filming." Sheng Min knew her, but it was the first time for Li Xuan to meet her. If she hadn't come over on her own initiative, he wouldn't have really wanted to talk.
"That won't work! Don't you know? It's illegal not to finish gossiping at once! Xiao Min, why are you like this? You look so cold today." Liu Yinying pretended to blame him, and then laughed again, "But a beautiful woman with a cold face looks good too."
After all, she was a young girl, so her behavior was not annoying, but Li Xuan was impatient to fight back, so he continued to process the shrimp thread in silence. Fresh shrimps were much harder to pick than cooked ones, and he picked a good shrimp into several pieces. Liu Yinying beside him imitated Wang Ran's expression from beginning to end in a vivid way. Li Xuan occasionally hummed twice, pretending to listen, but in fact he was already wandering away. After processing half a plate of shrimps, he subconsciously glanced at Sheng Min while changing the plates.
This time he didn't walk far. He was still sitting under the parasol. He seemed to have a book in his hand, reading it with his head down.
"What are you looking at?" Liu Yinying finished the gossip in one breath. Her mouth was dry, so she drank half a glass of water. Seeing that Li Xuan was staring at something in a daze, she called him again, "Sheng Min?"
"Nothing. Are you done?"
"As if she was expecting me to finish." She pouted and looked in the direction where Li Xuan was looking. "Oh, by the way. I wanted to ask you when you came today. Is she your assistant or the newly signed artist of your company? She looks so beautiful."
"Assistant." Li Xuan retracted his gaze.
"Where's Yang Xu? Did you drive him away?"
"Something else."
"I was thinking, if you want to fire him, you can let him come to me. I think Yang Xu is pretty cute... But is he really an assistant? None of the new trainees in our company are as good-looking as him. Why don't I ask him if he's willing to come so I can recommend him. It's a shame for him to be an assistant when he looks like this."
"He's not coming." After processing it for a while, Li Xuan became more skilled and quickly finished the remaining shrimps, although they were still in tatters.
"Hey, no one would block other people's money path like you." Liu Yinying joked, "Then I have to find a way to get into your company. I also want a handsome guy to be my assistant."
Li Xuan didn't respond, but put the shrimp aside and took out the already killed grouper from the sink. He didn't know how to handle it, but he probably knew that he should cut it first after washing it, so he found a kitchen knife.
"Hey." Although Liu Yinying kept talking, she was not idle. Seeing that he had picked out the shrimp thread, she took the initiative to rinse it under the faucet. Then she asked excitedly, "What's the name of your new assistant? Do you have a girlfriend?"
Li Xuan chopped the fish in half with the knife in his hand. He used too much force and one half was ejected half a meter away.
"Xiao Min, you're glaring at me?" Liu Yinying widened her eyes.
"No. You're seeing things." Li Xuan pulled the knife off the chopping board with a cold face. "What did you just say... Girlfriend, right? What? Are you interested?"
"How dare I? Don't talk nonsense." Liu Yinying shouted exaggeratedly, "Girls with vitality can't fall in love. My agent will kill me if he finds out... But it's okay to get to know each other. So is there a relationship or not?"
She was joking, of course, and Li Xuan understood that. Besides, who was Liu Yinying talking about now, Sheng Min or himself? It was hard to tell. However, even so, he still felt a little unhappy. But Liu Yinying was still blinking and waiting for his answer.
"Yes." Li Xuan remained calm.
"real?"
"real."
"What a pity." Liu Yinying shook her head exaggeratedly, "What a pity. A beauty like me cannot take the initiative to meet a guy who has a boyfriend. It's easy to be misunderstood, which is not good for me."
"It's not good." Li Xuan nodded in agreement. After chopping the last piece of fish, he turned on his microphone. "So we should record the show quickly. The PD has been waiting for a long time."
Apart from Wang Ran's tactless disruption, the whole day's recording went smoothly. At lunch, Yu Fulin praised his fried shrimps - even though Li Xuan himself obviously put less salt in them. Compared with other guests, he did not receive any deliberate harassment from the program team during the game session. When taking a group photo under the sunset, Wang Ran even tried to put his arm around his shoulder to show that they were having fun - but of course Li Xuan avoided him.
He knew that whether it was Yu Fuyan's care or the program team's preferential treatment, the root cause was the same. Regardless of the time of debut or the status of the trophy, Sheng Min was indeed very popular at the moment in terms of fame. Even among the sponsors of the program, two of them were endorsed by Sheng Min.
However, despite being a vested interest, Li Xuan was not proud of such preferential treatment. On the contrary, he even felt a little disgusted. He remembered that interview, and it was precisely because of Sheng Min's fame that the host would risk offending him and repeatedly poke his scars in exchange for more traffic. Fame protects Sheng Min, but also hurts him. Unless he can jump out of this circle, Li Xuan can't help but have this thought. When the director called out "Cut", he felt that the turbid air in his chest finally slowly dissipated.
If they followed the two-day and one-night schedule, they would need to set up tents by the sea tonight. Considering that the open-air environment was somewhat inconvenient, the program team actually allowed the guests to return to the hotel and add a shot of them leaving the tent the next day. This place is 40 kilometers away from the city, and it takes an hour and a half to go back and forth. Li Xuan was too lazy to go on the road, and he felt that Sheng Min seemed to like the beach very much, so he stayed.
He actually didn't have much camping experience, but seriously speaking, he had camped outdoors before. The last time he told Shengmin about sleeping under a bridge, it wasn't all a joke. After nightfall, the staff brought a few bottles of mosquito repellent. After confirming the time to get up and shoot the next day, they said good night and enthusiastically closed the tent door for him.
Li Xuan casually said good night, but he was not ready to go to bed. He always carried his computer with him, and tonight he planned to test the chat system that Qi Boyuan had set up last time.
Everything was going well at first, until he noticed that the inflatable mattress was sinking for some reason.
"Wait a minute." Li Xuan interrupted Qi Boyuan and glanced down at the inflatable mat. It was not an illusion. Apart from the two layers of plastic, he was basically no different from sitting on the ground. The beach was not very flat and the small stones hurt his thighs. The unique wetness of the sand could not be blocked by the moisture-proof mat alone.
Qi Boyuan was puzzled on the other end of the phone: "What's wrong?"
"Something's up. Wait a minute." Li Xuan took the computer off his knees, got out of the tent, and looked around the tent with the flashlight on his phone. It didn't take long to find the culprit - a swimming crab had slipped onto the shore at some point, and the inflatable cushion had been punctured, and the air was almost leaking out.
Li Xuan sighed, grabbed the crab by its abdomen and pulled it out of the sand, threatening it expressionlessly: "You're so greedy now, but I'll roast you like a salt and pepper later."
"Li Xuan, what are you talking about?" Qi Boyuan couldn't hear clearly, "The signal is not good there."
"Nothing. Can you hear me now?" The swimming crab was obviously not intimidated by Li Xuan, and waved its claws fiercely. Li Xuan raised his voice a little, "The chat system is basically like this. I think the general logic is fine. I will directly modify some minor parts."
"Okay." Qi Boyuan hummed, "Then I'll go to sleep first. By the way, I'll tell you about the player trading function this afternoon..."
"No. We have already agreed on this."
"But then I thought about it again..."
"Don't think about it." Li Xuan frowned, "Since you have so much free time, you can do the next few maps."
Qi Boyuan decisively hung up the phone: "Goodbye."
The moon was high tonight, casting a bright light on the sea. Li Xuan rubbed his eyes and took off his headphones. He walked a few steps toward the coast and threw the ignorant swimming crab back into the sea. The hole in the inflatable cushion was obviously not repairable for the time being, so this tent could not be used. The production team should have prepared extra ones, but they were all locked in the car.
He looked at his watch and saw that it was already past two in the morning. Li Xuan really didn't think it was a good idea to disturb someone's sweet sleep - and it was very likely that more than one person would be disturbed, and he would have to listen to another round of apologies.
After looking around, he found a lighthouse not far away. During the day, there were several rows of benches below for tourists to rest and take photos. He could spend the night there. Having made up his mind, Li Xuan took out the computer from the tent.
When walking through the campground towards the lighthouse, I unexpectedly discovered that there was a tent with a light on. The tents prepared by the program team all looked the same and were set up far apart from each other. In the darkness, the direction was not so clear. Li Xuan didn't care and was about to go around when the tent door suddenly opened.