FLME Ch23: Program Broadcast

The scene shifted. Yu Wen, who had been prematurely labeled a “poor little thing” by the bullet screen, came out of his room. He had slept until his hair was completely fluffy, a single stray ahoge sticking straight up as he stood dazed in front of the stairs.

[What’s wrong? Still half asleep?]

[One look and you can tell my baby misses me, damn it, send him back to me quick.]

[This new guest looks like his lips are super soft, very kissable.]

The young boy exuded a vibrant, youthful energy. Wearing only a thin T-shirt with absolutely zero makeup or styling, he attracted countless gazes just by standing there.

He didn’t do anything at all, yet the bullet screen went completely wild thirsting over his face for ages.

Yu Wen stood in place for a moment, dazedly rubbing the back of his head twice, which made his already messy hair even fluffier. Sporting a bird’s nest of hair, he walked over to the stair railing, leaned his weight on it, and cautiously hopped down one step.

[Ah…]

[LMAO, I almost forgot he was so tired climbing the mountain last night that he couldn’t stand. Today his legs are probably so sore it feels like he got run over by a car.]

[Previous guests had sore legs too, but it didn’t seem this severe?]

[Commenter above, the extended version is out. He took a different path—steeper and much more ‘refreshing’.]

[Can you feel it? The production team’s burning love.]

[So warm it gives you third-degree burns (Yu Wen’s tone)]

Leaning on the handrail the whole way, he cautiously hopped down. When he reached the kitchen, he encountered steps again. This time, Yu Wen didn’t hesitate; he directly spread his wings like a great roc, focused his energy in his dantian, and executed a perfect leap.

[Ten points!]

[Elegant, truly elegant.]

[Where did this little Jiangshi come from, so cute I’m dead.]

[So skilled it makes my heart ache.]

Chu Han was facing away from the door making egg pancakes, with Xi Su assisting him. The intense crackling of hot oil masked the noise of Yu Wen’s hopping. The uninvited little zombie guest looked around on his own and found a cup to pour himself some hot water.

He wasn’t the least bit constrained, bustling about by himself without waiting to be hosted. Seeing flower tea bags nearby, he even brewed himself a cup.

Once finished, he cupped his tea, leaned against the doorway, and watched the busy Chu Han and Xi Su with a thoughtful expression.

[Stop thinking, his target today isn’t Chu Han, it’s you!]

[Run, wifey!]

[Watch out for Xi Su! Watch out for Xi Su! Watch out for Xi Su!]

“Xi Su ge, are you a ‘Gold Stealer’?”

The two cooking were startled by him. Xi Su naturally denied it flat out, taking the opportunity to turn the tables: “Compared to me, Teacher Yu, you’re the weird one.”

Yu Wen counted on his fingers the direct or indirect physical contact the two had just shared.

Xi Su was clearly caught off guard by his meticulous observation and blurted out: “There’s only one specific physical contact spot…”

“How do you know? Did you receive a task card?”

Yu Wen’s gaze was direct, his expression calm, carrying a sharpness that seemed to see right through everything.

With this scene edited in, in the eyes of the audience, Xi Su had already thoroughly exposed himself. His subsequent explanations were incoherent and illogical, and even Chu Han, who was usually on good terms with him, quietly distanced himself a little.

But after listening, Yu Wen actually believed him.

“You’re right. Mere physical contact would be far too broad.”

Immediately after, he transformed back into a little zombie and hopped out of the kitchen.

[Newcomers are still too naive, believing whatever others say.]

[Don’t be too naive, baby.]

[This old man closes his eyes, unable to see a future for the good guys’ faction.]

The audience had roughly accepted the fact that the good guy faction consisted of three hardcore, sweet-and-naive rookies. By the time Xi Su actually began to make his move, only a few bullet comments were yelling warnings through the screen, while the vast majority had peacefully lain flat in acceptance.

[Don’t let him touch your hair! Don’t let him touch your hair!]

[Baby, your points are going to be stolen…]

[Forget it, forget it, it’s a foregone conclusion anyway.]

[I feel like during tonight’s tally, the three sweet-and-naive teachers will lose their life savings.]

[More than losing their life savings, our Teacher Yu will straight up leave in debt.]

[It’d be alright if they could root out the undercovers, but they’re getting stolen from and are still totally clueless.]

Yet at this very moment, Yu Wen, who was adjusting his hair, revealed a thoughtful expression.

The production team magnified this expression and gave it a full three-second close-up, formally blowing the horn for the good guys’ counterattack and laying the foreshadowing for his effortless mastery later on.

Unfortunately, not many in the bullet screen at this time could decipher the profound meaning behind this look.

Only one or two audience members with 5G internet speeds, who had finished watching once and were on their second rewatch, began to drop subtle spoilers:

[He guessed it starting from here?]

[Should be earlier, it seems he locked onto Xi Su the moment Xi Su made that slip of the tongue.]

Because it was his variety show debut, Yu Wen fully intended to catch up on it all, but his body wouldn’t obey his brain’s commands. Halfway through, he truly couldn’t withstand the invasion of sleepiness and groggily fell asleep sprawled over his computer desk.

The next day, the doorbell rang, waking him from his heavy slumber. As soon as he opened his eyes, he had a splitting headache, and his voice was as hoarse as An Lingrong’s.

“…Baojuan, Baojuan?” He leisurely entertained himself for a bit, drank some cool boiled water to soothe his throat, and only then wrapped his small blanket tightly around himself to get up and answer the door.

It was eight in the morning. There shouldn’t be any visitors at this time, so Yu Wen just assumed it was some online shopping package he didn’t remember ordering, and opened the door completely unguarded.

The moment the door opened, he saw a Xie Heyu.

In a flash, his cold-dulled brain was hijacked by a guilty conscience. He paused for merely a second before his body made an evasive reaction faster than his brain could process—he shut the door.

Xie Heyu was quick on the draw, using both hands and feet to block the door from closing.

Xie Heyu hadn’t fully processed what happened either, his eyes carrying quite a bit of astonishment. But once his gaze landed on Yu Wen’s face and he studied it for two seconds, that normally expressionless handsome face slowly frowned. His expression shifted from complicated to dangerous.

He said, “Open the door.”

Yu Wen sat perfectly upright on the sofa, looking incredibly well-behaved.

There were no standard medicines at home, so Xie Heyu had gone downstairs to buy some. He entered carrying a plastic bag and was currently changing into slippers.

“Teacher Xie…” Yu Wen’s voice was absurdly hoarse, which even startled himself. Under Xie Heyu’s chilly gaze, he immediately sat even more primly. “There are new slippers prepared for you in the shoe cabinet, the blue ones…”

This apartment rarely saw visitors. Only Xie Heyu would occasionally be called over by Xie Jiamao to help him restock the fridge, or to make a few bento boxes so Yu Wen could just heat them up and eat when he got busy.

Nearing finals, Xie Heyu’s coursework was heavy, so he came less often. The new slippers Yu Wen bought for him had remained unopened until now.

Xie Heyu found the slippers he described in the cabinet, put them on, and spoke in a slightly cold tone, “Stop talking.”

Oh.

Yu Wen obediently shut his mouth.

Xie Heyu walked straight into the kitchen. Yu Wen sat on the sofa, not daring to move an inch, staring blankly at his toe socks.

He raised one big toe, put it down, raised it again, put it down.

After playing a few rounds, he found it boring. Xie Heyu was still bustling about in the kitchen, not saying a single word to him.

Teacher Xie normally didn’t talk much either, but he was never like this.

Silence.

A silence carrying the heavy implication of a cold war.

Xie Heyu had turned on the AC the first second he walked in. The heat slowly climbed, making the indoors dry and warm. Yu Wen touched his cheek, unsure if it was from the heat or a fever; it was scorching hot.

The plastic bag was left on the coffee table. Yu Wen carefully glanced at the kitchen, hesitated, then dug through the plastic bag himself, found the digital thermometer, and beeped it against his forehead.

The screen turned a dangerous red.

“37.8?” A clear, cool voice suddenly sounded above his head. Yu Wen’s hand trembled, and the thermometer slipped from his grasp, dropping onto the carpet.

He tilted his face up. “Teacher Xie.”

Xie Heyu looked down at him from above, his dark, sharp brows suddenly knitting together.

He reached out, the back of his hand brushing against Yu Wen’s cheek, leaving as soon as it touched.

“So hot…”

The back of his hand was ice-cold. Yu Wen unconsciously tilted his face. Before he could lean in to rub against it, Xie Heyu had already retracted his hand and was rummaging for medicine in the plastic bag.

Yu Wen stared fixedly at that hand with its distinctly defined knuckles.

“You need to take fever reducers. Your throat might hurt this week, so remember to drink the cough syrup…”

“…Oh.”

Yu Wen picked up a capsule from the coffee table, popped it out, and brought it straight to his mouth.

Xie Heyu grabbed his wrist. “…What are you doing?”

Yu Wen: “Taking medicine.”

“Have you eaten breakfast?”

“…”

Seeing his silence, Xie Heyu nodded in understanding. He placed the bowl in his hand onto the coffee table. Inside were two peeled boiled eggs and a small silver thread roll.

“You can’t take medicine on an empty stomach. Eat these to line your stomach. It might be dry, so here’s some soy milk.”

Xie Heyu pierced the soy milk straw for him, then got up and went back into the kitchen.

The stove was on, boiling who-knows-what; Yu Wen could hear the bubbling sound.

He slowly finished the silver thread roll. Xie Heyu was just coming out of the kitchen holding a brewed medicinal powder drink, an empty cup in his other hand.

Yu Wen figured his anger should have subsided by now. He sniffled, and summoning his courage, struck up a conversation. “What’s boiling in the kitchen?”

“Milk.”

Yu Wen: “There’s a microwave.”

Xie Heyu: “I’m making ginger milk curd.”

Yu Wen immediately understood who this was for and resisted: “I don’t eat ginger.”

Xie Heyu poured the medicinal liquid back and forth between the two cups to rapidly cool it down. Hearing this, he let out a noncommittal “Mhm,” and added, “I originally wanted to make ginger soup.”

Yu Wen: “…”

Ginger soup had a much stronger taste. The implication was that he had already shown mercy.

The optimally-temperatured medicine was handed to Yu Wen, but he didn’t take it. Xie Heyu lowered his eyes, glanced at his expression, and said mildly, “There are no other ingredients in the fridge. I’m making it for you just in case, it’s fine if you don’t want to eat it.”

Yu Wen still didn’t make a sound.

“…I’ll make you something else later.”

His tone didn’t soften, but Xie Heyu clearly didn’t know what to do with him. Even though it was a cold tone, Yu Wen could hear a hint of indulgence in it.

The fingers hidden in his sleeves quietly curled.

With things said to this point, Yu Wen couldn’t well keep being difficult. He took the cold medicine and downed it in one gulp, then used half a cup of soy milk to wash down the fever capsule.

After taking the medicine, he found a comfortable corner on the sofa, draped a thick blanket over his shoulders, and squatted there like a little mushroom.

The little mushroom grabbed the remote from the coffee table and turned on the TV.

The pungent smell of ginger drifted out, filling the entire apartment.

Yu Wen wrinkled his nose in disgust, hypnotizing himself into believing this was trash, not food, and Teacher Xie would throw it away soon… Meanwhile, he found Mountain Courtyard on the TV, dragged the progress bar to where he hadn’t finished last night, and continued chasing the variety show.

Xie Heyu finished making the ginger milk curd but didn’t bring it out, casually leaving it on the counter.

He wiped his hands clean, preparing to head out to the wet market to buy some ingredients. Who knows what that little mushroom on the sofa was zoning out about; the moment he came out, those dark eyes followed him like they were pulled by a magnet, spinning right along with his movements.

Xie Heyu rested his hand on the door handle, truly unable to ignore this excessively intense gaze.

He turned around. “Is there anything you want to eat?”

Yu Wen finally snapped back to reality, blinking his eyes as if blinking his soul back into his body.

“Do you have classes today?” he asked.

Xie Heyu: “No, why?”

“Nothing.” Yu Wen shook his head. His words started strong but trailed off, vague and unclear; he himself didn’t know what he wanted to say. “You go ahead.”

He used what he considered a very polite tone to bid farewell to this colleague who had taken care of him all morning while he was sick.

The door shut gently with a click.

Before leaving, Xie Heyu told him to go sleep in his bed, not on the sofa, as it was easy to catch a chill.

Yu Wen fiddled with the remote, thinking to himself: You’re already gone, can you still control me?

He didn’t want to sleep at all.

He was going to sit on the sofa.

He grabbed his phone and checked the date—Saturday, Xie Heyu shouldn’t have classes.

Maybe he had other things to do.

Yu Wen watched the TV absentmindedly. As he watched, he kept feeling that his sick brain was extraordinarily dull; the smooth-flowing deductions in the show seemed as floaty and elusive as clouds right now.

Looks like I’m very stupid today, not suited for thinking. He thought to himself.

The TV had already reached the scene of him and Song Chenglei picking mushrooms.

“Little Yu, you got mud on your shoes.”

“It’s fine.”

“White shoes are so hard to wash when they get dirty, you should wipe them. My daughter is just like you, every time she comes home her shoes are terribly dirty. She especially likes white shoes, too, which worries her mother and me to death.”

Yu Wen had no choice but to squat down and wipe his shoes, looking miserable. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have worn white shoes. So troublesome…”

Before this, the production team had aired the conversation between him and the trailing PD in the car. His line, “I hope Teacher Xi doesn’t steal my points today,” made many viewers see a glimmer of hope for victory, but the majority just assumed he had guessed it right by pure luck and didn’t hold much hope.

Unlike last night, today’s bullet screen had many more “spoiler party” members, who had finished their first watch and were coming back for a second or third.

[As expected of the newbie protection period, to even guess this right hhh]

[Teacher, trust your intuition! Xi Su is the bad guy!]

[Is it possible to reverse the situation relying on this handsome guy’s good luck…]

[I advise everyone to stop guessing and just keep watching.]

[Don’t underestimate our Little Yu, you bastards! (Hot-blooded anime tone)]

[Get ready for a huge shock.]

Song Chenglei went to use the restroom, while Yu Wen sat on the steps, zoning out.

As soon as he opened his mouth: “How many points did Teacher Song just steal from me?”

He looked at the camera, perhaps asking the trailing PD. Failing to get an answer, he started counting on his fingers himself.

“Once, twice, three times… eight, or nine? That last time I pretended to wipe it but didn’t actually wipe it, so that time shouldn’t count. So it’s roughly eight, right?”

[Really love a quote from the entertainment industry: Huh?]

[???]

[Did I miss something? How did he know?]

[Could it be Mission Impossible today? An undercover above the undercovers?]

[Scared me.]

[It can’t possibly be an omniscient view, right? I literally got goosebumps just now hahahaha…]

The trailing PD asked: Why does Teacher Yu feel that Teacher Song is also a ‘Gold Stealer’?

Yu Wen propped up his chin in thought.

Starting from here, it was the highlight moment.

The pre-interview segment of Yu Wen in the car, which had never been shown, was finally aired. Tracing back from Xi Su’s line in the morning, “It can’t just be physical contact without constraint conditions,” all the way back to his exact words the previous night in the car when suggesting rules: “Stealing points through physical contact with fixed body parts; points double when touching a team member.” Within just a couple of brief moments, these phrases were deconstructed and recombined in his mind, analyzing loopholes and looking for potential traps using the production team’s mindset.

Following that, when Xi Su made his move in broad daylight, Yu Wen was the very first to notice the anomaly. With a simple deduction, he derived Xi Su’s action formula.

Possessing the undercover’s action formula, and utilizing the previously analyzed traps to determine the constants and variables in the formula, he finally concluded the complete, initial version of the action formula.

The entire logical sequence was edited into a grey flashback lasting about one minute and twenty seconds. It was almost as clear as a mind map. Then, the production team maliciously played a line Yu Wen muttered to himself right before this timeline: “I can’t be the only good guy today, right…”

Under his casual, chat-like deductions, the three undercovers had nowhere to hide, shedding their disguises one by one. Captions appeared below:

‘Gold Stealer’ Exposed!

There was a tiny set of brackets next to it: (3/3).

At this point, all the undercovers were exposed, not a single one left, wiped out in one fell swoop.

The bullet screen for this segment only had a small amount of “…”, compared to the lively situation before, it was terrifyingly quiet.

[…]

[…]

[Huh?]

[What is he saying? What am I listening to?]

[No bro, are you Conan?]

[I seriously got goosebumps…]

[Holy crap, this logical thinking ability, this observation skill—]

[Motherf—]

[Wait a minute, let me kneel, I have to listen to this part on my knees.]

[This move, this move he’s playing in the stratosphere.]

[Don’t I have the omniscient view this episode? (Confused) (Helpless) (Going crazy) (Running around)]

[Make way! The real God has arrived!]

The bullet screen went crazy with everyone talking at once for a while. For a moment, everyone completely disregarded bullet screen etiquette, and curse words flew frequently. It took a while before it finally settled down a bit.

This chaotic atmosphere lasted until Song Chenglei jokingly asked: “You couldn’t be a ‘Gold Stealer’, could you? Moping because you didn’t manage to steal any points just now?”

Yu Wen shot him a rather shocked look. In that instant, the emotions in his eyes were multicolored, a mix of heartbreak, aggrievement, and disbelief.

Song Chenglei reined in his expression and cautiously asked him: “Do you know who the undercovers are?”

Yu Wen, expressionless, shook his head.

Song Chenglei: “I suspect Xi Su.”

Yu Wen: “…Mhm.”

[…]

[Fuck hahahaha.]

[It’s here! The classic scene!]

[Xi Su: Excuse me?]

[I submit, I can’t look Teacher Song in the eye right now…]

[Whenever I think about how seriously he’s acting while the guy across from him already knew everything long ago, I want to laugh.]

[Before, people were asking Teacher Song to take care of the newcomer, now this newcomer should let Teacher Song off the hook, he is getting old after all.]

[Am I the only one curious about how he’s going to play next?]

[Although his guesses were spot on, it’ll still be a bit hard for his logic to convince Chu Chu and Ling Yun. Those two don’t use their brains and are easily misled by anyone.]

[The good guy faction only has three votes in total, even if they group together they can’t decide the outcome.]

[Fortunately right now, neither the undercover faction nor the good guy faction is clear about each other’s identities.]

[Seems like the best strategy right now is to respond to all changes by remaining unchanged?]

[Agree with the above. Earn points first. As long as they can vote all three undercovers out tonight, the stolen points will be saved.]

[I remember there’s a mysterious big gift package every episode for winning.]

[Mhm, this episode is hard to play, hope the production team is a bit generous.]

……

[Don’t know why, but I always have a subtle premonition… I feel like we’re overthinking it.]