Chapter 22

The next morning, related keywords for All-Around Idol were trending on social media.

However, the associations weren't favorable.

#All-Around Idol Live Incident#

#All-Around Idol Forceful Promotion of Fake Young Master#

#Ke Xingzhou Bad Luck Star#

...

Out of the top 50 trending topics, eight were related to All-Around Idol, with two featuring the word "hot" and one with "boiling," each attracting over 200,000 discussions.

It all started late last night when a few posts on the All-Around Idol supertopic exploded, sparking intense discussions among netizens.

At first, someone had mentioned that they hadn't seen Ke Xingzhou's profile during the auditions, wondering how he had made it straight into the show.

When netizens realized that All-Around Idol, a reality show that prided itself on fairness, justice, and openness, seemed to have backstage connections, they became increasingly alert. Various netizens stayed up all night digging into Ke Xingzhou's past and uncovered a lot of information from what's available online.

The most attention-grabbing revelation was undoubtedly Ke Xingzhou’s identity as a fake young master from a wealthy family.

Just recently, there had been a heated online debate about the authenticity of young masters, and it turned out that digging up related details was surprisingly easy.

Soon, everyone learned that Ke Xingzhou was a fake young master who had occupied a prestigious position for over twenty years. Even now that the real heir had returned, he refused to leave and even followed the program, creating confusion. Nobody knew what he was after.

At first, the topic seemed like a family feud between the true and fake young masters of the Ke family. Even if some questioned how Ke Xingzhou bypassed the auditions to enter the main program, the production team had prepared an explanation for that.

Who would have guessed that the investigative skills of this batch of netizens were so powerful, they uncovered multiple accidents that the production team had tried to suppress.

Now, the issue was no longer just about favoritism.

After all, favoritism was just a matter of the production team's reputation, but when it came to the safety of the contestants, that was a legal issue!

The situation quickly became highly sensational, with many netizens joining the discussion. Some even had insider information, and once they started leaking details online, the truth in the eyes of the public seemed to spiral into even more bizarre territory.

First, the fans of a contestant who had withdrawn from the show spoke up, demanding an explanation for their idol's innocent injury, which had almost cost them their dreams. Then, the family of a contestant cried out, claiming that their child had been involved in a much more serious accident while others were fine, questioning why it had to happen to their child.

Just when everyone was focusing their blame on the production team's negligence, the situation took an unexpected twist.

The turning point came when netizens, digging deeper into the incident, found that just two days before the stage accident occurred and the live stream was cut off, one of the injured contestant's fans had released several screenshots from the live stream, captioning them: "Damn bad luck star, can he stay away from my treasure? It’s all because of him! Otherwise, my treasure wouldn’t have been so unlucky to be assigned to the disastrous performance!"

The images clearly showed the rest area before the performance, where several contestants were looking to provoke Ke Xingzhou, only to be stopped by Xie An.Fans venting their emotions would normally not attract much attention, but when the subsequent incidents involving An He Guang and Ke Yuan Bai were uncovered, and people realized that Ke Xingzhou was involved in all these events, things started to take on a surreal turn.

By the time the contestants gradually woke up and headed to the practice rooms for the start of a new day of rehearsals, the number one trending comment on the supertopic was already:

"I don't understand lip reading, but after zooming in, that rag the fake young master took out, isn't it the kind of fortune-telling flag sold by street con artists for 10 yuan at the square near my house? Good heavens, publicly promoting feudal superstition! And this isn’t enough to discourage All-Around Idol? Does the production team want the entire show to be a joke? This is criminal, and the shows in this circle are getting more absurd."

Below that, various conspiracy theories emerged.

Some speculated that Ke Xingzhou had learned some dark arts, using fortune-telling as a front to deliberately harm others. After all, why were only those who interacted with him the ones suffering incidents?

More people, however, thought he lacked such ability.

For over twenty years, Ke Xingzhou had lived as the second young master of the Ke family, enjoying the best education and resources. But now, as his true identity came to light, netizens couldn't find any information about him. Not a single friend had spoken out in his favor, a clear sign of his failed life.

Such a failure couldn't have learned anything in a short time, let alone harm others. Even if he wanted to, his own brain wasn't capable of it.

Netizens believed that Ke Xingzhou either bribed the production team, attempting to create a mystical persona for himself, to facilitate his future development in the entertainment industry, or he had found some shady ways to make money and cause harm under the guise of fortune-telling.

The latter theory seemed especially absurd, but still, many believed it.

When Ke Xingzhou was led to a small room by the staff and sat in front of the live broadcast screen, the once quiet bullet comments suddenly exploded, filling the screen with over ten thousand messages, overwhelming the display to the point that nothing could be seen clearly.

Ke Xingzhou couldn't help but glance at the staff.

Since it was an entertainment show, there were constant worries about the audience getting bored of watching rehearsals. The production team changed the live streaming schedule daily.

Today marked the third day of the first episode’s live broadcast. With the audience now familiar with the contestants, the production team decided to spice things up—

Early in the morning, the production team collected everyone’s communication devices, even taking away the usual live-streaming equipment, keeping the contestants in closed training until now.

A staff member handed Ke Xingzhou a mission card: *"Hello to all future 'All-Around Idols.' Due to your excellent performance in the auditions and the first two days of live streaming, you have attracted the attention of generous investors.

The investors would like to select one of you as a spokesperson, but they still have doubts about your endorsement abilities. So, within the next two hours of live streaming, you need to sell all the inventory links in your live room to win the favor of the investors.

Since you entered the room, the countdown has already begun. Now, start showing off your unique charm!"*

As Ke Xingzhou read, the broadcast announcement in the overhead speakers synchronized with the explanation of the segment to the audience.

At this moment, the bullet comments in the live room slightly cooled down. The number of comments was reduced by more than half, allowing Ke Xingzhou to finally read the messages on the screen:

"Ke Xingzhou, get out of the show!"

"How can someone so disgusting exist, playing with others' lives for personal gain? Don't you know that, just barely, those two almost died!"

"He's got the nerve to go live—no shame at all! Those two people who nearly died were Xie An's company mates! How could Xie An accept him into his group? Does he even deserve it?"

"I heard that the person with the lowest sales in this live stream will be eliminated directly? I won’t spend a penny on this fake fortune-teller. Let’s see if the production team can swallow their own words this time!"

Seeing the comments flood in, the audience grew even more enraged, bombarding him with profanities and curses that the staff could hardly block.

However, to their surprise, Ke Xingzhou didn't seem angry at all when he saw those insults.

His face remained the same lazy, indifferent expression, as if what he was reading wasn’t a barrage of venomous curses aimed at him, but just some boring spam messages.The pair of dark eyes lingered on the screen for a moment. Ke Xingzhou quickly pieced together the sequence of events and couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.

So the production team took their phones because of this?

He felt that the production team had perhaps overreacted. He never took the opinions of irrelevant people to heart.

He had heard much worse things said about him, and after all, he came to this show expecting criticism. Seeing the fans' youthful and provocative taunts, he even felt like laughing.

But soon, he realized whether the production team’s actions were necessary or not.

"Let me in!" Suddenly, Xie An's voice sounded outside the door, urgency in his tone.

It seemed that he was stopped by the staff, and he sounded a bit irritated: "The rules don't say we can't visit someone else's live broadcast room, right? I brought my live equipment, let me in! I need to go explain to them—this was a misunderstanding with my brother. I was the one stubbornly following him, they're just mad at me!"

However, once he said this, the staff dared not let him in.

They tried to explain desperately: "This live broadcast task is to test the contestants' sales ability, and they need to complete it alone based on their own ability. Please don't make it hard for us, young man..."

"Then I won't bring my live equipment, I just need to go in and talk to my brother, it won't take long!" Xie An insisted.

"This really isn’t possible..."

As the argument continued, the door suddenly opened from the inside.

Ke Xingzhou leaned against the doorframe, glanced at the scene outside, and his eyes finally landed on Xie An. With a smile, he asked, "Is this your show effect?"

Xie An froze for a moment, then cautiously asked, "Brother, didn’t you see what’s going on online?"

"See what?" Ke Xingzhou raised an eyebrow, glanced at the time, and said, "The live broadcast has been going on for five minutes already, and you're still not going back? If you don’t hurry, others will sell out first and get those endorsements."

"But..."

"No buts. I was just about to sell products. How am I supposed to continue with you here?"

Hearing this, Xie An had no choice but to leave, looking back at him multiple times.

Before leaving, he seemed to be watching his expression, probably wondering whether he truly hadn’t seen the harsh things said online or if he was just brushing him off.

Ke Xingzhou didn’t give him the chance to investigate further and turned back to the live room.

He glanced at the rapidly scrolling bullet comments, thought for a moment, and then lowered his head to bring a box of pomelos to the desk.

This was the "product" he was going to sell today.

The audience watched as he found an unboxing tool and opened the box of pomelos on the table, peeling one to taste.

He seemed satisfied with the taste, then stacked a box taller than a person behind his chair, before turning to ask the staff, "How much stock do we have? How much does one box cost?"

Just when they thought Ke Xingzhou was going to tempt them with a food broadcast, making them crave his goods, Ke Xingzhou unexpectedly pulled out his crumpled fortune-telling flag from somewhere and hung it on top of the stacked pomelos.

Holding up the peeled pomelo, he sat down on the chair, eating as he said, "One fortune-telling session for ten boxes of pomelos. If it's inaccurate, you don't pay."

One box of pomelos costs 100 yuan, so ten boxes would be 1000 yuan.The bullet comments fell silent for a moment, as if they couldn't comprehend what Ke Xingzhou was up to.

After a short pause, the fastest typist began to retaliate: "Ha! One thousand yuan for a fortune-telling? Who do you think you are? A con artist like you, scheming to make money off people's misfortune, I wouldn't let you read my fortune even for free!"

Originally just venting about the frustrations of life, with no intention of anything serious, Cheng Yi was about to log off after his rant. But unexpectedly, Ke Xingzhou, amidst countless bullet comments, precisely locked onto his message and directly requested a connection.

Caught off guard, Cheng Yi subconsciously accepted the request, and his face immediately appeared on the screen.

On the other side of the screen, those dark eyes suddenly turned to look at him. The deep gaze seemed to pierce through the distance, directly entering his heart, making Cheng Yi shiver involuntarily.

Just as he was getting a bit angry and about to curse some more, he heard Ke Xingzhou's voice, low and calm: "On this day, last year, at 2:15 AM, under the locust tree in the southwest corner, what were you doing?"