Ch52 - Alluring and Dangerous

No one would have thought that after debuting for so many years without any relationship scandals, Ji Xiunian would finally go on the hot search because of one, and that was just a mistake.

Ba Mei was Lu Xu’s family’s little representative and could be considered an internet sensation. There were many netizens who recognised it. After learning that the alleged girlfriend was Lu Xu, everyone couldn’t stop laughing.

Even the reactions of the members of room 201 after discovering this hot search was to laugh at Lu Xu so hard tears almost came out.

When Xu Haoming saw the rumour-making account say Ba Mei was Ji Xiunian’s girlfriend’s cat, he couldn’t help slapping his bed as he laughed out loud. “Hahaha Xu ge, you’ve really been shot while lying down.”

Han Tianyu was the same. He didn’t forget to congratulate Lu Xu. “Our Ba Mei is a filial golden goose; it makes no sound before sending a hot search over to you. Although it’s a mistake, it’s really funny ah.”

Even Song Zhe, who usually didn’t comment much, couldn’t resist this time. Every time he saw Lu Xu, he wanted to laugh. “As the rumoured girlfriend, what are you going to do now, ah? Are you going to come out and clarify?”

“No need.” Lu Xu was rather speechless after seeing this kind of hot search, but he wasn’t too bothered by it. Anyways, it was just someone else’s misunderstanding and didn’t have much to do with him.

As he thought this, Ji Xiunian’s message was delivered—

[Ji Xiunian: I’m really sorry, I didn’t think posting pictures would result in this kind of a situation.]

Ji Xiunian was also innocent, he had merely posted an album of Ba Mei pictures; who would’ve thought others would misunderstand it as a relationship scandal?

In the end, in the time it took to bathe the cat and turn his phone on again, he discovered that he had gone on the hot search because of a ‘relationship scandal’, and even brought Lu Xu along with him.

As a person who was involved, Ji Xiunian’s first thought was of Lu Xu. He immediately sent him a message in apology.

Lu Xu really didn’t think this was anything to fuss over, and responded to him casually—

[SS-Lu Xu: Hahaha it’s not a problem. Nian ge shouldn’t think too much of it either. Anyways, we know it’s a mistake.]

After responding, Lu Xu opened up Ji Xiunian’s status posts, found the newest post, and liked it.

Seeing Lu Xu’s profile picture appear in his own interactions, Ji Xiunian smiled without realising. A smiling face reflected in the glass window. Even he himself didn’t know why he suddenly felt happy.

Seeing that the preview the production team had put out for episode three contained a voting duel between Lu Xu and Lan Gaojie, the fans couldn’t help but begin looking forward to it––

One was a very capable contestant, one was a black horse that had suddenly appeared. It would probably be very interesting when these two parties faced off against each other.

After settling the music arrangement, there were only a few days left before the start of the public performance. In order to get a good ranking on the third episode, the trainees worked even harder than before.

Before it was even 6 o’clock in the morning, the Little Effort Team, with Lu Xu as their leader, were already gathered at the dance studio.

They wanted to use a day’s worth of time to digest and learn the new arrangement, as well as to finish off integrating the dance and team formation. The task was relatively arduous.

As the selected centre for the team, Lu Xu’s workload was naturally heavier than the other members’.

“Since it’s a charming and dangerous monster, can we consider taking on a dark concept for the costumes and props?”

“I also think so. Suits and roses, what do you guys think? Red and black plus lighting, it’s exciting just thinking about it.”

“I think suits and stuff are okay, but please don’t let it be too uptight…”

Everyone was trying hard to describe the image of the dance stage they had in their minds, all they could think about was standing on the stage and stunning the audience..

Xu Lele saw Lu Xu over at the side seemingly pondering over something, and couldn’t resist asking, “Xu ge Xu ge, do you have any good ideas?”

“Mn, I’m thinking about the suits. We can probably try the look of ‘gentle on the surface, but the heart is dark’.” Bloodthirsty and charming souls hidden underneath an elegant skin, the danger of the unknown was even more attractive, wasn’t it?

“Wow, gentle and dark, like me?” Xu Lele purposely narrowed his eyes and made a cold pose. Nevertheless, although what followed after was uncontrolled laughter, one had to admit that cold-looking boys carried a sense of mysterious attraction.

When Ji Xiunian came over to direct them, the Little Effort Team members had already roughly choreographed a dance.

Lu Xu standing in centre position was explosively handsome, it was just that there was something missing from their expressions.

Ji Xiunian watched them several times, and very quickly found the problem and called for them to stop the performance.

“Lu Xu, there’s a little bit of a problem with your emotions.”

“Mn?” When Lu Xu heard that, he couldn’t help but be shocked. The others were also confused. In their eyes, whether it was dancing or that face, Lu Xu was already very close to perfection. When Lu Xu stood on the stage, he was a perfect male god. But Ji Xiunian said that there was a problem with his emotions, so what on earth was the problem?

The six of them were confused, and they all obediently watched Ji Xiunian, waiting for him to speak.

Ji Xiunian looked into Lu Xu’s eyes, and pointed out the problem directly, “Other than his superior appearance, there is another big reason the protagonist of “Monster” hides his fatal attraction, it’s because of his deceptive personality. People easily fall in love with someone they think loves them in return, and the monster uses this. When he looks at you, he’ll give you the illusion that you are his entire world, and it becomes easier to charm the other party.” After simply breaking down the monster’s unique personality traits, Ji Xiunian continued, “When you’re performing, there isn’t an emotion like love in your eyes, I think there’s something missing. And all of you, it’s also the same.”

The six boys were focused on showing their manly charm, but if there was no reality to the feeling, then it couldn’t be called a perfect stage performance.

“Love?” It was the first time since entering the competition that Lu Xu had felt confused. In his eyes, it was an extremely unnecessary emotion, so once he heard Ji Xiunian say that, he really didn’t know what expression he should use to show it well.

Seeing that his eyes were carrying a few degrees of confusion, Ji Xiunian thought about it and gave him a tip. “You can substitute it with your first love, and think about that feeling of youthfulness.”

Lu Xu spread out his hands “But I don’t have any kind of first love.”

Thinking that Lu Xu was only eighteen, it was normal to not have fallen in love yet.

Ji Xiunian hesitated for a moment, then simply guided them himself. “How about this, you pretend you are the monster and treat me as your prey. You want me to be dominated by you, want me to fall deep for you. You have to use real actions to come and deceive me, make me feel that you love me.”

“Oooooh! Xu ge is acting!” It was rare to see Lu Xu perform. His teammates all looked extremely excited and urged Lu Xu to try it out.

After so many years in his career, Lu Xu had seen too many people. Life and death were normal to him, emotions and things like “love” were useless to him.

But now Ji Xiunian was standing in front of him, requesting that he display such emotions. Lu Xu shrugged and laughed, and decided to still give it a try.

Seeing Lu Xu make an ‘OK’ gesture, Xu Lele hurriedly went and played the song.

The music for “Monster” began. Lu Xu curled the corner of his lips upwards and slowly walked towards Ji Xiunian––

“They all say I’m a god, worshipping in the name of love…”

The young boy’s smile concealed his arrogance, like a king at the top of his tower, looking down upon the world.

“I’m hiding behind you, watching you become fascinated with me…”

He raised his head and looked at the Ji Xiunian standing in front of him, and unconsciously remembered that this was his big order. When thinking about the bright moment when he harvested him, Lu Xu burst with joy from the bottom of his heart, and he looked at Ji Xiunian with a gaze full of desire and passion.

“You’ll love me even more, after all, I’m an elegant monster…”

Die happily; when that time comes, I will walk with you together on the road to the underworld.

At this moment, the boy who was already very attractive displayed a stunning visage.

“Fuck, who can handle that gaze?”

“Right right, Xu ge even said that he’s never fallen in love before, but look at the way he’s looking at Ji Xiunian. If I didn’t know that there was nothing between the two of them, my brain could even write out a 10,000 word essay!”

His teammates weren’t the only ones who were stunned by this. Even Ji Xiunian was shocked.

He had only simply mentioned this and had thought it would require a lot of effort. He didn’t think Lu Xu would immerse himself so quickly. Just now, in the moment when Lu Xu had looked at him, he almost thought he actually did like him in that way.

It was only in that moment that Ji Xiunian suddenly understood what “mindless in love” meant—if the other party was attractive enough, then even if one party seduced the other to their death in the name of love, the person would happily agree.

“Nian ge, is this okay?”

A light tone broke through Ji Xiunian’s trance. When he returned to his senses, he saw the still sunny and polite boy in front of him.

Without waiting for Ji Xiunian to speak, his groupmates were already answering him at the top of their lungs. “It’s too good! Xu ge, if you use this kind of gaze to look at me, this straight man will immediately bend into mosquito repellant for you!”

“Please don’t.” Lu Xu acted as if he disliked the idea, but the corners of his mouth went up slightly. He turned around to squarely look at Ji Xiunian, waiting for his answer.

“It’s very good. I’m 100% anticipating your performance.” When meeting those smiling, peach blossom eyes, Ji Xiunian suddenly felt very curious. He didn’t know what Lu Xu’s eyes would look like when he faced the person he liked.

This was an approval.

To be proclaimed as something Ji Xiunian would anticipate, didn’t this confirm that he was already a master at this?

“Too amazing!”

“Xu ge, let’s go go go!”

The group members immediately became very excited.

Speaking of this, after watching Lu Xu’s performance, all of them seemed to have gotten the hang of it.

Many emotions were difficult to express by oneself, but as long as they had a model example to learn from, everything would become much easier.

In order to have a better stage, the Little Effort Team took great importance in keeping their practises secret.

They went to practise every day in a mysterious manner. They would not reveal anything about their stage outfits or performance details to others. This made everyone’s hearts exceedingly itchy, only wishing that their performance would come sooner.

Three days passed by very quickly. After the selected evaluating audience registered and entered the studio, the performance officially began.

Compared to the two previous episodes, this stage was much more magnificent.

In order to show better effects on the program, Dongcheng TV Station had transferred its biggest stage to the ‘Birth of an Idol’ program team. More than a thousand members of the public served as judges and sat in the audience, waiting for the program to begin.

The trainees sat backstage and felt nervous and excited at the sight of the studio.

The MC Liang Da walked onstage and slowly began to speak as he faced the camera. “Welcome everyone to the live stage of ‘Birth of an Idol.’ Tonight, our trainees have been separated into 16 groups that will face each other in a two-party PK. Who will win between the ability and effort teams, let us wait and see…now, let’s have the two teams’ mentors send out the first opposing teams…”

As the ability team’s heads, Gu Wenan and Qing Kewei discussed with each other for a moment, then made their decision. “The first team we are sending out is the ‘Ability Assault Force!”

Seeing that their chosen opponent had been decided, Ji Xiunian calmly announced that he was sending out the ‘Little Effort Team’.

After the first PK competition was announced, the trainees backstage were completely shocked—

“Wa, I thought they would leave Xu ge and Lao Gaojie for the end. I hadn’t thought that they would throw a bomb at the beginning!”

“I heard Lan Gaojie’s group’s ‘Pink Summer Dream’ is really good. Lu Xu’s group probably has a lot of pressure.”

“Aaaaaaaaaaa Xu ge better not lose. The ability team is by nature really strong. Xu ge is our effort team’s biggest hope. If he goes up and loses, then our effort team doesn’t really have any chances left, right?”

…

As the leader of the first battling ability team, Lan Gaojie took a deep breath as he faced the thousand and more people under the stage—

This was his stage tonight. Walking on this path, he could never lose!