After Entering a Romance Reality Show Disguised as a Man to Win Over All the Female Leads - Chapter 8

The program team did not let this wave of popularity slip by and quickly announced the current vote count.

Rong Yu x Mu Shuiqing: 89,204

Qin Wenhan x Lin Mengxing: 3,405

Sheng Ming x He Jiao: 1,023

Seven x He Huaiting: 23,808

Seven was curled up inside the tent he had finally managed to set up. Looking down at the comments in Rong Yu’s livestream room, he was so angry he could almost die. Then he turned back to look at the CP fan voting data published by the program team’s account on Weibo. Seeing that the twenty-thousand-plus votes he and He Huaiting had only managed to get through his fans’ support were completely crushed by Rong Yu and Mu Shuiqing’s eighty-thousand-plus passerby votes, he furiously punched the tent mattress.

As a result, it pulled at his aching arm, and he cried out with an “ow.”

On the other side, by the time Mu Shuiqing finished meditating, three hours had already passed.

She glanced at the extra little paper figure in her clothes pocket, took off her jacket, lay down on the bed, and took out her phone to check the latest messages.

Only then did she discover that her WeChat notifications had already turned red with 99+.

Following the WeChat notification, Mu Shuiqing opened the group chat—

Group chat name: Group of Four

Group members’ nicknames: Lin Mengxing, He Jiao, He Huaiting

This was the group chat the four of them had created before the program started filming.

Lin Mengxing: I’m convinced. When will Qin Wenhan understand that the domineering CEO character setting is already outdated? Also, what era is this? He still wants me to clean with a mop? Does he really think I’m the domineering CEO’s runaway maid sweetheart? Ridiculous.

After sending the message, she attached a photo she had just taken. In the photo, silver-white mental-power threads filled the entire bedroom. Countless miscellaneous objects on the table were lifted into the air and steadily placed where they should go.

He Jiao: Heh. Still better than a paternalistic male professor. What status does he think he has, wanting to control me?

He Huaiting: At least better than a mommy’s boy.

Lin Mengxing: Mommy’s boy? You mean Seven?

He Huaiting: Who?

Lin Mengxing: …

He Jiao: …

Lin Mengxing: The one paired with you.

He Huaiting: Oh. Yes.

Lin Mengxing: Are there no normal men in this world? The way your world divides gender is really unnecessary. It’s not even as good as our ABO world. We don’t look at men or women at all, only attributes.

He Huaiting: There are still normal men. It’s just that when doing infinite-instance missions, they basically all die inside the instances.

He Jiao: .

Lin Mengxing: But after interacting with her today, I discovered something. Rong Yu is a woman. Did you all notice?

He Huaiting: Mm. Her bone structure is very obvious.

He Jiao: He’s a woman?!

Lin Mengxing: You didn’t notice her height was wrong?

He Jiao: …I thought he had become shorter in this life.

Lin Mengxing: Pfft. My mental power can detect it. She is indeed female. Miss Lin should have seen it too. Miss He, I feel like after you were reborn, the script seems a little different.

He Jiao: How could that be?! Impossible!

Lin Mengxing: I think she’s different from the “Rong Yu” you talked about. In the next round, I hope I can be paired with her.

He Jiao: Suit yourself. Even if Rong Yu changed bodies, Rong Yu is still Rong Yu. You may know a person’s face but not their heart. Don’t be fooled by her.

Lin Mengxing: I’m an Enigma. If she doesn’t behave, I can mark her as my Omega. I’m not afraid.

Mu Shuiqing read through their conversation from beginning to end and finally could not help but cut in.

Mu Shuiqing: She’s different.

Mu Shuiqing: I can sense a clean and pure aura around her.

He Jiao: Heh. Miss Mu is still too innocent. You’ve only spent a few hours together and you’ve already been fooled.

Mu Shuiqing thought for a moment and tactfully advised her:

Mu Shuiqing: Even fixed rules can produce accidental variables. Besides, you were reborn. You and Lin Mengxing have also said that the character settings of the four of us are all different from before. We can’t look at things with a closed-minded perspective.

He Jiao: You don’t understand anything at all! Looks like all that talk about being a divination master before was fake! You’re just a charlatan!

He Huaiting: He Jiao.

Lin Mengxing: Don’t fight, don’t fight. Did you forget our previous agreement?

He Jiao: …

He Jiao: Sorry. I got too worked up.

Mu Shuiqing: It’s fine.

He Jiao: I don’t know how he became a woman in this life, but in his previous life, he was really good at pretending. On the show, whatever you needed, he would learn it and do it. In front of the camera, he was practically perfect. But once the variety show ended, he immediately changed faces. Not only did he embezzle all the prize money, he also slandered and defamed me, causing me to be hit and killed by his brain-dead fan’s car. He deliberately waited until I was completely dead before calling the police. His acting ability is terrifying beyond your imagination. That’s all I can say.

The WeChat group instantly fell silent.

No one spoke again. Lin Mengxing sent a “hug” sticker.

Only after a while did Mu Shuiqing speak again.

Mu Shuiqing: It’s also possible that this Rong Yu isn’t him at all.

He Jiao: …You really are obsessed beyond reason. Did she put a spell on you?!

Mu Shuiqing: I’ve only heard of talismans. What is a spell?

He Jiao: …

Lin Mengxing: Alright, alright. Let’s observe for another two days. If Rong Yu isn’t that person from before, that would be best.

Mu Shuiqing, who was lying on the bed holding her phone, frowned slightly. She wanted to continue typing, but did not know how to explain.

But she just felt that Rong Yu and the person He Jiao described were not the same person.

Mu Shuiqing lay on the bed with a wooden expression for a while. Suddenly, an ominous premonition rose in her heart. The peach-wood sword beside her began heating up in waves. On the bedside table, it turned directions on its own, pointing straight toward Rong Yu’s room.

Mu Shuiqing’s long brows drew together slightly. She picked up the wooden sword, quickly got out of bed, pushed open the door, and ran toward Rong Yu’s bedroom.

The viewers still waiting in the livestream room were dumbfounded when they saw Mu Shuiqing rushing toward Rong Yu’s room with a wooden sword.

[W-what is she going to do?]

[Cough, cough. Um, is she about to force herself on him?]

[Sister above, explain the forcing in detail.]

[True or false? I have a friend who wants to see.]

When Mu Shuiqing pushed open the door and rushed into Rong Yu’s bedroom, she immediately felt waves of eerie coldness pressing down over the entire room, making it hard to breathe. Transparent ice crystals had condensed on the wooden walls in the four corners of the room. Even a thin layer of ice had formed underfoot.

On the canopied bed in the center of the room, Rong Yu was pale-faced and pressed beneath the quilt. A humanoid black shadow loomed over her. It was semi-transparent, like mist and yet like something solid. It was just about to bend down and move close to Rong Yu’s head.

Mu Shuiqing drew the wooden sword and made a sword flower in the air. She quietly recited an incantation, and the wide peach-wood sword suddenly emitted a clear, ringing sword hum.

With a hanging sword movement, the peach-wood sword immediately flew from her hand, stabbing straight toward the black shadow—

·

When Rong Yu opened her eyes, she realized she had returned to the hospital ward.

The brain device still covered her head, and everything around her was a glaring white. Beside her, Doctor Lin opened the device on her head and let Rong Yu sit up.

As soon as Rong Yu sat up, she turned to look at Lian Langsheng beside her.

Lian Langsheng’s hospital bed was right next to hers. The same brain device was placed over her head, and she was still peacefully asleep. Beneath the device’s semi-transparent casing, Lian Langsheng’s face was exposed, slightly pale and bloodless from long-term nutrient injections.

That face was sixty to seventy percent similar to He Jiao’s, but it was even brighter and more moving, gorgeous and graceful like a work of art. Not only had that face not lost any beauty because of its lack of color, it instead carried an even colder, more fragile, broken quality.

Rong Yu clung to the edge of the bed and stared at her for a long time, until Lian Langsheng’s attending physician beside her—Doctor Lin—began holding a medical chart and explaining the problems they had recently discovered.

“In order to let you safely withdraw from the brain world without Miss Lian noticing, we had to create a sleep paralysis plot. Although the flow of time in the brain world is much slower than ours, to avoid being discovered by Mu Shuiqing, we’ll keep this brief.”

Doctor Lin gathered the long hair on her shoulder behind her head. “Here’s the situation. After monitoring the images in Miss Lian’s brain world, we discovered that the amount of time the four female guests appear from her brain’s first-person perspective is equal. I suspect—”

“They’re all Lian Langsheng’s consciousness bodies, right?” Rong Yu turned to look at her.

Doctor Lin froze, then adjusted her glasses. “You noticed?”

“It’s only a guess.” Rong Yu shook her head. “The plot of her brain world is the same as one of my novels. But the character settings of the four female guests are all different from before, and they resemble some of the character settings from novels I wrote previously.”

“So that’s how it is.” Doctor Lin suddenly understood. “Miss Lian cares about you so much. It’s normal that she’s read many of your novels. Generally speaking, people truly cannot imagine something out of thin air, so dreams are all made of people or objects they have seen before. The brain world and dreams are not very different. If you put it that way, it makes sense.”

“We woke you this time to remind you of this. Since you’ve already guessed it, hurry back.”

Doctor Lin spoke seriously.

Rong Yu suddenly remembered something. “How exactly am I supposed to wake her up?”

The doctor shook her head. “I’m sorry. You are the first participant to use this method to treat a patient, and we have not yet researched a specific plan. You’ll still have to explore it yourself.”

Doctor Lin handed the prepared food to Rong Yu. “Eat this. It’s a nutrition meal prepared especially for you.”

Rong Yu hesitated and did not take it.

Doctor Lin guessed what she was thinking and hit the nail on the head. “You’re not Miss Lian. Don’t play some drama where if she doesn’t eat, you don’t eat either. Her cranial nerves have a problem, so her bodily consumption is lower than yours. If you want to stay longer in the brain world, you need to preserve your strength.”

This time, Rong Yu did not refuse. She quickly finished the nutrition meal, then put the brain device on again.

As the system began making a “da-da-da” sound, something seemed to be tugged in her mind as well. Even her consciousness began to blur.

When she opened her eyes again, she had already returned to Lian Langsheng’s brain world.

Raising her eyes, she saw Mu Shuiqing lying over her, both hands holding down her wrists.

Rong Yu blinked. At the same time, Mu Shuiqing lowered her head, and their eyes met. For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Rong Yu had never expected this to be the situation she woke up to after sleeping. Mu Shuiqing’s upper body was pressed over hers, and her smooth black hair fell along both sides of their faces. The refreshing fragrance of orange shampoo soothed the heart.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rong Yu also saw a humanoid ghost shadow hanging from the beam in the distance. Eight paper figures were crouched on the pillar, punching and kicking “it.”

“……”

Although she knew the black shadow was only virtual data created by Doctor Lin after blurring Lian Langsheng’s consciousness, for some reason, she still felt guilty.

She was just about to speak when Mu Shuiqing, who was on top of her, suddenly leaned down and kissed her lips.

The feeling between their lips was far too soft, like being wrapped in a rose after rain. With just a little pressure, it brought out sweet floral honey.

The wrists Rong Yu had been held by Mu Shuiqing began to tingle in waves. It was as if someone were screaming and roaring in her mind, excitedly wanting more.

But Mu Shuiqing released her at that moment. She braced one arm beside Rong Yu’s face and tried to get up. Meeting Rong Yu’s gaze, Mu Shuiqing’s face instantly flushed lightly, and her throat tightened.

“I-I was only transferring…” yang energy.

The rest of her words were swallowed into Rong Yu’s mouth.

Rong Yu did not give her a chance to speak. She flipped over, pressed Mu Shuiqing beneath her, and kissed her again.