Chapter 77
[Film Emperor Lu must be trying to show off with this Weibo post. Wuwuwuwu, I want a Weiwei too!]
[Everyone else is sharing their life, but how come when it comes to Film Emperor Lu, it’s just a public display of affection? As a member of the Dog Lovers Association, I strongly condemn this!]
[Hey, am I the only one who thinks this is a double entendre?!]
[The person above me has a dirty mind!]
His idol had posted about him on Weibo.
Ji Wei’s heart started pounding, and a faint blush spread across every inch of skin on his neck. Fortunately, the steam rising from the copper pot hid his reaction.
He restrained himself and put down his phone.
Ma Laoyezi called for everyone to start cooking the food. They started with the meat, putting in fatty beef, luncheon meat, and beef balls.
The boiling water instantly cooled down, with only a few spots gurgling and bubbling.
After a moment, the red broth came to a boil again.
The clear broth was a little slower.
Ji Wei picked up a thinly sliced piece of tender beef. It was his first time trying Huang Bo’s homemade hot pot base.
Judging by the customers’ positive reviews today, the reviews would probably be even better in China.
With that thought, he rolled the cooked beef slice, which was dotted with Sichuan peppercorns, in his dipping sauce.
Coated in sesame oil and carrying bits of green scallion and cilantro, the first bite was heavenly. It wasn’t just spicy; it was also numbing, savory, and fragrant.
“Holy crap, this is so delicious,” Zhao Yue said after eating a piece of fatty beef, gasping for air as he chugged a drink.
Ning Qing nodded in agreement.
Only Lu Shenxing didn’t touch his chopsticks. He only started eating after the clear broth came to a boil, becoming the only guest to eat from the clear broth.
[Film Emperor Lu actually can’t handle spicy food, but Zhao Yue can!]
[Weiwei must have asked for the clear broth for Film Emperor Lu. I’m belatedly realizing I’ve been fed another public display of affection. Help me up, I can still ship this!]
[What haven’t the guests eaten before? For their reviews to be so high, it must be incredibly delicious. Ahhhhh, I don’t care, I’m saving up for a plane ticket to America this month!]
[Hahahaha, flying to America is too hardcore. I’ve already opened a bag of instant noodles to eat while I watch.]
Normally, as influencer celebrities, Zhao Yue and Xiao Chi were very strict about maintaining their figures. But today, they ate until late into the night, their once-flat stomachs visibly rounding out.
After they finished eating and lay back in their chairs, they were still quite reluctant to be done.
Even Teacher Ning Qing was in no better state, holding his stomach as he shakily returned to his room with Ma Laoyezi.
After Ji Wei and the others cleaned up the bowls and chopsticks, they also returned to their rooms. Exhausted from a long day of work, Ji Wei fell asleep almost as soon as he hit the bed. The next day, he woke up and boarded a plane back to Yancheng.
***
Huang Bo’s day began with grocery shopping.
Although the Hua Ting property management offered free delivery of fresh vegetables and meat, he still preferred to cross half of Dongcheng District to go to the largest market in Yancheng.
The bok choy had to be fresh, with dew on its leaves.
The white radishes had to have damp soil clinging to their roots.
The beef had to be freshly cut from a cow slaughtered right before his eyes.
…
His proudest achievement was raising A-Xing so well. From kindergarten, he was always the tallest, and as an adult, he was a full 1.89 meters tall, a head taller than him.
Weiwei, on the other hand, wasn’t sturdy enough. He definitely wasn’t eating enough and needed to be nourished.
With that thought, he asked for another ten kilograms of beef.
The beef vendor handed him the meat and couldn’t help but ask worriedly, “Can you carry all this… sir?”
It looked like it weighed at least twenty or twenty-five kilograms.
Huang Bo took the beef with ease. “I’m old now, this is all I can carry.”
The vendor was speechless.
After finishing his shopping, Huang Bo took the bus back to Hua Ting.
He wasn’t used to taking the bus, but his friends from the community who went shopping with him all took it, saying it was low-carbon and environmentally friendly, and that seniors even got a senior card. So he started taking the bus with them.
When he reached the residential complex, he saw two children in No. 3 Middle School uniforms, craning their necks to look inside. The security guard said with a headache, “You can’t enter without a key card.”
“We’re not going in.”
“We’re looking for Ji Wei.”
Huang Bo walked over with his things and asked, puzzled, “I’m Ji Wei’s butler. What are you looking for Ji Wei for?”
He had never seen these two friends of Weiwei’s before.
The two students, one fat and one thin, had bruised and swollen faces. They scrambled to say, “We want to ask Senior Ji Wei to tutor us.”
Seeing their dirty school uniforms and the holes in their sneakers, Huang Bo was reminded of his own childhood. He became a bit more patient and didn’t immediately refuse. “Tutoring costs money. Do you have money?”
“We have money.” Shouhou pulled out a scattered one thousand two hundred yuan from his pocket. “Mr. Butler, do you think this is enough?”
Huang Bo couldn’t help but laugh. This amount of money was less than the cost of the groceries he was carrying.
Just as he was about to shake his head, a car pulled up behind him and stopped.
Ji Wei got out of the car. Seeing Huang Bo with two students from No. 3 Middle School, he couldn’t help but ask, “What happened?”
“These two little guys want to ask you for tutoring,” Huang Bo said, subtly positioning himself between Ji Wei and the two students.
The thin one immediately introduced himself, “Hello, Senior Ji Wei. My name is Shouhou, and he’s Panghu. We’d like to ask you to tutor us.”
After listening to them for a while, Ji Wei finally understood. His last geography lecture series had received a good response online.
Among the students he had taught, even the one with the smallest improvement had raised their score by eight points in the geography mock exam.
So these two juniors had come to him for tutoring because of his reputation.
According to the security guard, they had been waiting at the community gate for over half a month.
Looking at their expectant eyes and the crumpled money in their hands, all saved up from five and ten yuan bills, Ji Wei couldn’t bear to refuse. “During the holidays, I should have time in the afternoon. You can decide when you want to come.”
He didn’t want to take their money.
But the two students insisted he take it, their expressions looking like they were about to cry.
Ji Wei had no choice but to accept the heavy bundle of money.
Panghu and Shouhou were happy at first, their eyes smiling like crescent moons. But then they realized and waved their hands. “It’s not us who need tutoring.”
They don’t need tutoring?
Ji Wei was confused. “Then why did you come…”
Shouhou said timidly, “We want to ask Senior Ji Wei to tutor our boss.”
“Who is your boss?” Huang Bo asked warily.
“Meng Hao.”
Ji Wei remembered him.
—He was the student his father had defended, even at the cost of his job.
***
Yancheng’s Beicheng District was the poorest district, so poor that some called it a slum. It wasn’t actually that poor, but compared to the prosperity and cleanliness of the other districts, it looked dilapidated.
The roads were lined with freely dumped smelly ditches, and the low-rise houses were on the verge of collapse. The shanties that filled the streets and alleys blocked out the sun, leaving only a dim light.
“Do you live here?” Huang Bo asked, driving the car.
“The alley up ahead,” Panghu pointed at the window.
Thinking of the money, Ji Wei asked, “Where did you get the money?”
Panghu was simple-minded and immediately replied proudly, “Underground black boxing. You can win several thousand if you win.”
Shouhou quickly explained, “The boss won’t let us fight. We went secretly. He’s different from us. He’s someone who’s going to college.”
Ji Wei remembered Meng Hao’s appearance—an exceptionally silent person, like a wolf hiding in the dark. He voiced the question that had been buried in his mind for a long time, “Can I know why he wants to go to college?”
Panghu and Shouhou fell silent.
After a long while, Shouhou finally spoke carefully, “His father wanted him to go to college.”
Panghu also added, “We also want him to go to college.”
The car stopped.
Shouhou and Panghu said goodbye to Ji Wei and got out of the car.
Meng Hao saw them from a distance.
And the car that shouldn’t be in this place.
Panghu ran over, panting, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Boss, we found a tutor for you. You can start classes tomorrow at two in the afternoon.”
“Where did you get the money?” Meng Hao frowned.
“We saved it ourselves,” Shouhou said immediately, carefully handing over the piece of paper with Ji Wei’s phone number written on it.
Meng Hao looked at the bruises on their faces and understood everything. “How many times have I told you, people can die in that place. You might win once, but can you win every time?”
“But boss, haven’t you always won?” Panghu said in a small voice.
Meng Hao closed his eyes.
He didn’t always win.
The last time, he was beaten black and blue and thrown off the stage, suspected of using banned substances. Otherwise, how could he have fought so desperately?
He just wanted to earn money for his mother’s medical bills.
Seeing him silent for a long time, Panghu said hastily, “Boss, I was wrong. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“It’s all in the past,” Meng Hao said, turning and walking into the house.
“Xiao Hao, you’re back,” a weak woman lying on the bed said. “Don’t buy any more medicine. I’ve been much better recently.”
“Uncle Zhang and the others brought another three thousand yuan. We have money,” Meng Hao said, sitting by the bed and carefully feeding the woman her medicine.
“We’ve troubled them too much,” the woman sighed. “How can we ever repay them?”
Shouhou stood at the door, pursing his lips with a complicated expression.
No one had visited Meng Hao’s house for a long time.
Meng Hao’s father was a hero, but in that accident, not only did Meng Hao’s father die, but so did the thief.
So they were retaliated against, year after year of retaliation.
Red paint splashed on the door, threats in the middle of the night… It wasn’t enough to be a crime, but it was enough to make a widow and her orphan live in fear.
At first, they would ask for help.
People remember heroes and are always eager to lend a helping hand. But people’s sympathy is limited, and so is their energy. It was like this for one year, two years, but what about seven or eight years?
Living in darkness, he himself became the darkness. No one dared to retaliate anymore, and no one dared to get close.
The only ray of light was getting into college.
Get into college, break free from this darkness, go to a place where no one knows him, and live a decent life.
After feeding her the medicine, Meng Hao walked out of the house and said coldly, “Cancel that class and use the money to pay your own tuition.”
“You told us to keep an eye on Senior Ji Wei. Wasn’t it because you wanted to build a good relationship with him and then ask him for tutoring?” Shouhou couldn’t help but ask.
“Ji Wei?” Meng Hao’s steps suddenly halted. After a moment, he said slowly, “Give me his phone number.”
Shouhou handed it over, overjoyed.
***
The next day, Ji Wei slept until noon to recover from jet lag. He was woken up by a push notification. His idol had gone out early. He clicked on the Weibo push notification.
—Young artist Ji Wei’s million-dollar painting is on display at the Shanghai Yiqiu Art Museum today at 9 AM. A 100% replica of “A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains,” attracting numerous viewers.
Ji Wei frowned. That painting was just an impromptu work for the show. How could it be called a 100% replica? As expected, many doubtful comments appeared under this Weibo post.
[Boiled Beef] 100% replica? I really believe Ji Wei has a marketing team now. Have the people who liked this never seen the original?
[Bean Sprout] +1, if any other influencer bragged like this, Weibo and the forums would be full of mockery by now. How come there’s so much praise? I’m really jealous!
[Palm Oil] ?? The art exhibition is today, so it’s normal for there to be attention. Why are you so insistent that Ji Wei is marketing himself? Who knows if the person who posted this is a person or a ghost?
[AD Calcium Milk] Neutral netizen here. I’ve seen several different marketing accounts post about this. I won’t say much more, to each their own! [Image]
Ji Wei wasn’t angry at the comments, just found it strange. He clicked on the image in the comments. He recognized a few of the marketing accounts; they were paid to post. He suspected it might be the art museum trying to boost attention for the exhibition, but even if it was, he couldn’t say anything.
He could only post on Weibo himself.
[Ji Wei Who Plays Games] There is no end to learning. Let’s encourage each other.
Soon, there were fan comments.
[Weiwei Soy Milk] Weiwei will get better and better!
[Lu Wei is Real] I don’t know what those marketing accounts are getting so worked up about. Weiwei himself said he needs to keep learning.
[When is Ji Wei Streaming] Baby, don’t pay attention to the clout-chasers. When can you stream? Streaming yourself studying is fine too. Mommy wants to see you!
Ji Wei replied to a few comments, then got up to eat. After eating, he went to the study, sat at his desk, and opened his high school textbooks to prepare for his lesson.
Meng Hao’s foundation was too weak. His scores had improved last year, but his total score for all subjects was only over 300. The cutoff for the second-tier universities for liberal arts in Yancheng last year was 458.
He was short by over a hundred points, but fortunately, it should be possible to make it up in a month.
Today, he planned to teach math first. After reviewing the high school textbooks, it was only one o’clock. There was still some time before class, so he went back to the living room to wait for Meng Hao’s arrival.
At two o’clock, the doorbell rang.
Ji Wei pressed the switch.
Meng Hao walked in silently.
“Have a seat.”
Ji Wei moved the whiteboard opposite the sofa. Since his fans had been private messaging him to start a live stream, and thinking it wasn’t the first time, he turned on the camera to stream the lesson.
Today, he was wearing the shirt Lu Shenxing had bought for him. It was a slightly loose style, faintly revealing his slender collarbones, which made his temperament even more outstanding. His light-colored pupils seemed to hold shattered light.
[Wuwuwuwuwu, our Cub Wei is so good-looking!]
[Can Film Emperor Lu stream with him? Okay, I’m dreaming… ]
[I’m dead!]
It was a very basic lesson.
The bullet comments started interacting one after another.
[I know how to do this problem! The answer is 567, right?!]
[How come that little brother hasn’t figured it out yet? I’m getting anxious just watching him!]
[As the last in my grade, I suddenly feel a sense of superiority!]
[Hahahahahaha, me too. I can’t help but calculate along with them.]
Fortunately, Meng Hao didn’t know that his presence was boosting others’ confidence and enthusiasm for learning. But Ji Wei thought that even if he did, he wouldn’t say anything.
Because Meng Hao was a very silent person, it was easy to forget his presence. If Ji Wei didn’t stop him, he would keep working on a problem he couldn’t solve.
The live stream continued until six in the afternoon.
Besides students, there were also parents of students sending bullet comments.
[Even that young classmate got it right, but my son actually got it wrong. He himself feels very ashamed.]
[Uh… are there actually aunties in the live stream?]
[You didn’t know? Thanks to “The Forbidden City’s Little Shop,” Weiwei is very popular among aunties. Someone even wrote a letter to the production team asking him to act in a tragic Republican-era drama.]
[Hahahahahaha, a tragic Republican-era drama? That’s definitely my mom’s taste!]
Ji Wei streamed until six o’clock. After the stream ended, his high school fans all posted their homework on Weibo.
Many university students also joined in the fun, posting the drafts they had made while watching the live stream today.
Because of the Yiqiu Art Museum exhibition in the morning, someone had posted Ji Wei’s Weibo on a gossip forum.
[Original Poster] “There is no end to learning. Let’s encourage each other…” So pretentious it gives me goosebumps. He just ignores it when the marketing accounts praise him. Pretty much a white lotus. Am I the only one who thinks so?
The original poster had expected people to join in the mockery. But when they came back half a day later, they found that all the comments were…
[1L] Yes, you are the only one who thinks so.
[2L] Isn’t the OP’s tone even more white lotus? If Ji Wei wanted to be famous, never mind that he’s married to the Film Emperor, even if he wasn’t, he could get famous just by being a pretty face. Oh, and he’s also a Yan University academic ace.
…
[376L] ??? Didn’t the OP see Ji Wei’s live stream of him studying? He’s really studying with his fans. The Super Topic is full of math problems. I can’t, I feel sleepy just looking at it!
[377L] Did the marketing accounts’ praise hurt the OP’s feelings? If my flop idol could draw that well, I’d praise him to the heavens!
[378L] +1, even if Ji Wei bought the marketing accounts, it doesn’t affect my opinion of him. My daughter started studying seriously after watching his live stream. He teaches very meticulously, and the young classmate he invited gave her a lot of confidence.
[379L] Hahahahaha, as someone who didn’t watch the live stream, I’m suddenly a little curious. How bad is that young classmate’s foundation?
For a time, the post became a large-scale fan promotion site. The original poster, who had popped up at noon to be “rational, neutral, and objective,” never replied again in the afternoon.
Ji Wei didn’t know about this. After Meng Hao left, Ji Wei was cleaning up the desk and browsed Weibo for a while.
Because Meng Hao was wearing a high school uniform and had his back to the camera, everyone thought he was very young and called him “young classmate.”
In fact… he was three years older than him.
Ji Wei couldn’t help but find it a little funny.
As he was cleaning up the scratch paper, he suddenly found a note. It was in Meng Hao’s handwriting.
When he saw the contents of the paper clearly, he was stunned.
—Someone is following you.
Before he had time to think much about it, Lu Shenxing returned.
“Where did you go?” Ji Wei subconsciously put away the note and asked casually.
The man walked towards him, wrapped his arms around his thin waist from behind, and rested his chin on his head. “Today’s class was very good.”
The low voice came from above his head, like a fine feather brushing past.
A warm sensation came from where he was in contact with the man, but because he was held tightly, he couldn’t escape and could only press closer.
Ji Wei’s body stiffened, feeling unable to calm down. “Did you watch my live stream?”
When Lu Shenxing was interviewed, he once said that he hated math the most. His live stream was all about math problems. His idol probably wouldn’t be interested in watching his stream.
Unexpectedly, the man hummed in agreement. “I watched for an hour in the car.”
Ji Wei’s heart skipped a beat.
Then the man said another sentence: “I want to sleep.”
Ji Wei thought, as expected. His fans had also commented that they wanted to sleep after watching the stream. The next second—
The man’s fine kisses fell on his neck.
Kissed until he was out of breath, a thought flashed through Ji Wei’s mind like lightning. Did his idol mean… he wanted to sleep with him?