Chapter 81: Compression (8)
81 – Compression (8)
“Look, look!” Qi Yun shoved his phone right in front of him.
Lin Xun focused his gaze.
The top trending search was neither Qi Yun nor Lin Xun.
It was #DongJun#.
The next one was #DongJun’sBoyfriendSuspectedToBeRelatedToQiYun#.
And another #QiYunMermaidLook#.
Followed by #QiYunInterview#.
“Did your company buy these?” he asked.
Qi Yun: “Maybe. My agent just sent me a WeChat message telling me to do well.”
Feeling puzzled, he clicked on the first one, #DongJun#.
The first thing that caught his eye was four words: “This circle is really messy.”
Scrolling further down.
He saw a familiar face.
Galaxy-BossLady: Today I saw the little one carrying a cat to the company looking for someone. Yes, I didn’t mistake him—it was definitely the little one. I’d recognize him even if he turned to ashes. The little one said the company’s artist Qi Yun is his brother. I thought it was just a normal visit, but then I discovered something incredible.
—Attached was a recording, the one of Lin Xun looking for someone.
Then came two videos.
The first was of Qi Yun alone.
This person had started out with live-streaming rap and short videos, a bit of a chatterbox. Even when he was still an unknown uploader, he’d rambled to his audience about many things.
In the video, Qi Yun’s style wasn’t as flashy back then, and he answered questions from the chat in a very casual tone. Someone in the chat asked if his family wasn’t worried about him going alone to film videos deep in the snowy mountains.
“Not worried. I don’t have any family,” Qi Yun said with a grin. “I have no relatives or friends. I was raised by my master, and I usually only hang out with my junior brother.”
The video cut off abruptly there.
Actually, that wasn’t a big deal.
He claimed to be Qi Yun’s brother, which contradicted Qi Yun’s statement. That wasn’t a big deal either.
What was most damning was the next video.
The internet has a memory—an old video had been dug up.
It wasn’t actually that old, no more than ten days ago, when Qi Yun first trended. That trending topic was called “QiYunWhatTheFuck,” and the content was Qi Yun on stage announcing he was going to perform a rap, and its name was…
Then, Qi Yun blurted out, “What the fuck.”
At the time, people compared videos from different angles and figured out that the reason Qi Yun’s brother blurted out the profanity was because of another young man in the audience. Just as Qi Yun had taken the stage, this young man had looked at Qi Yun on stage and laughed, and continued “smiling brightly”—as netizens defined it. Then, Qi Yun scanned the audience and naturally saw this young man sitting in the front row. Qi Yun locked eyes with him for a moment, and the next second, he uttered a “what the fuck” whose exact meaning was unclear.
After hearing that, the young man laughed even harder.
—This video had been shared before, and some people even shipped Qi Yun and this person. Unfortunately, it didn’t get many views. But now, it had resurfaced and gained countless views.
The reason was that they realized the person in the video seemed to be the little one from Dong Jun’s household.
Finally, the boss lady said: “My intuition tells me this isn’t simple, little one. Your smile was just too beautiful.”
Smiled too beautifully?
Lin Xun recalled that moment.
He had indeed smiled, and smiled happily—but it was a mocking smile, laughing at the fact that a sword cultivator’s scope of work was so broad that he’d even taken to the stage for a talent show.
But netizens didn’t see it that way.
His smile and Qi Yun’s momentary lapse were just too subtle.
For a moment, Dong Jun was surrounded by a rather unflattering aura.
Lin Xun truly hadn’t expected that he could be dragged into this kind of relationship with Qi Yun. He thought that even Qi Yun himself would probably find it disgusting.
But unexpectedly, Qi Yun was watching with great interest, not only going through each post one by one but also saying to Lin Xun, “Then why don’t you just team up with me to create a CP buzz?”
Lin Xun: “No.”
Qi Yun: “Such a great opportunity, I’ll help you debut as the center.”
“?” Lin Xun said coldly, “If my senior brother and I hadn’t come today, you’d already be the center of a funeral.”
Honestly, Qi Yun was already someone who had died once. If not for that tiny bit of will to survive, he would have completely lost his sanity, turned into a completely inhuman water ghost, and then been killed by Lin Xun, Chang Ji, or other seniors from the cultivation world.
“A life-saving grace should be repaid with oneself,” Qi Yun said. “See, I’ll help you get famous, isn’t that perfect repayment?”
“Think carefully, I’m a programmer,” Lin Xun said. “What significance does this have for me?”
“You can endorse yourself.”
Lin Xun: “…”
He actually couldn’t refute that.
In this round of argument, he was at a disadvantage, and Qi Yun grew increasingly excited: “Look, I got on the trending searches in a disgraceful way, and you’re also disgraced. This is called black fame—black fame is still fame, very promising.”
Lin Xun: “I won’t.”
Lin Xun: “I’m very annoyed right now.”
Lin Xun: “I’m annoyed to death.”
Qi Yun: “What’s wrong with you?”
Even Chang Ji spoke up: “Floating fame is all illusory, you need not worry about it.”
“No.” Lin Xun hugged Zhi Zhen tightly, stroking its fur, his eyes vacant: “I…”
“I…”
Qi Yun: “You what?”
Lin Xun turned his head, staring at him blankly: “I have a boyfriend.”
Qi Yun: “So?”
“So,” Lin Xun said. “What they mean is, I cheated on Dong Jun. No, you cheated on Dong Jun.”
Qi Yun: “??”
He seemed to finally realize something, shifting from happily browsing the trending searches to anxiously browsing them.
Lin Xun also looked with him and found that netizens’ opinions were clearly divided into two camps.
The first camp: This little nobody, this little pretty face who came out of nowhere, is a fresh young talent about to be launched by Dong Jun. Not only has he been publicly acknowledged by Dong Jun, but he has also followed Dong Jun in and out of the Galaxy Building multiple times. Judging by this momentum, he’s probably the future main partner—but this person is fickle and promiscuous. Already having Dong Jun, he’s still fooling around outside, developing feelings with Qi Yun through their work, tsk tsk tsk. It shows that even Dong Jun can misjudge people sometimes.
The second camp: This Qi Yun, as a singer-dancer, looks decent enough, but his professional skills are lacking. His rap is both tacky and weirdly addictive. As a small trainee with no assets, he can’t compare to Dong Jun—an all-around flawless male god—in any aspect. Yet he actually managed to cheat on him? Expert, expert. Could there be some unknown special quality?
“What,” Qi Yun muttered. “It’s fine if they praise your husband, but why drag me down?”
Lin Xun: “Anyway, you’re dead.”
Qi Yun: “You’re the one who cheated, don’t drag me into it. You die alone.”
Lin Xun: “How did I cheat?”
Qi Yun: “Oh, you didn’t cheat—wait, no.”
He slowly rolled his eyes, a look of terror appearing in his gaze: “Then he won’t come after me, will he?”
He propped himself up, gazing at Lin Xun. “Your husband seems pretty impressive.”
Lin Xun stared back at him. “You’re only realizing that now?”
Qi Yun: “How impressive?”
Lin Xun: “He could buy your talent agency like it’s a pack of bubblegum.”
Qi Yun: “…”
Qi Yun: “Then hurry up and apologize, say something nice.”
He began offering advice.
“Husband, I was wrong. I shouldn’t have laughed at Qi Yun’s dad during that talent show. He and I are just father and son.”
“Husband, I’m sorry. I’ll never trend on social media with other men again.”
“Husband, you’re not being cheated on, really.”
Lin Xun’s IQ was dragged down by Qi Yun, his hand trembling as he nearly sent the word “husband.”
He wrapped Qi Yun’s head in his kasaya to shut him up, then carefully sent Dong Jun an emoji.
A happy Zhi Zhen: qwq
Qi Yun looked disgusted. “What’s the point of that?”
Lin Xun: “I’m testing his mood first. Honestly, I think he can tell at a glance that it’s all rumors. I’m just worried he might be a little upset.”
After a pause, he continued, “If he replies with ‘What’s wrong?’, it means he’s in a good mood. If he replies with ‘Hmm?’, it means he’s not in a great mood. If he replies with just a ‘?’, it means I’m dead.”
Qi Yun looked nonchalant. “How dead?”
Lin Xun ignored him.
A minute passed.
Two minutes passed.
Ten minutes passed.
The car had already reached the villa district where Butterfly Madam lived and was slowly coming to a stop.
Qi Yun: “So if he doesn’t reply, what does that mean?”
Lin Xun pondered.
Pondering yielded no results.
The car stopped.
Qi Yun immediately spotted the swimming pool in the villa’s courtyard.
“Quick, quick, put me in!” he said. “I’m dying of thirst!”
Chang Ji said nothing, still picking up Qi Yun—whose tail was dry and dull—and tossing him into the swimming pool.
But then Qi Yun began thrashing wildly in the water.
Lin Xun stood by, watching.
Chang Ji fished him out with his staff. Clinging to the staff, Qi Yun finally managed to grab the pool’s edge railing. His fish tail, soaked in water, unfurled—the dark green fins spreading out, the ends like expensive gauze, quite beautiful indeed.
But the man himself was a mood killer.
He coughed up a few mouthfuls of water, clung to the railing, and poked his head out to look at the people on the shore. “I don’t know how to swim.”
Lin Xun: “Fish breathe through gills. Do you have gills?”
Qi Yun: “Huh? I breathe through my nose. I almost drowned just now.”
Lin Xun: “Then why were you thirsty?”
Qi Yun: “My tail was thirsty.”
Just then, Zhi Zhen cautiously approached the pool, stretched out a paw as if trying to fish.
“Cat!” Qi Yun’s tail twitched in alarm, and he tried to dart deeper into the water—only to choke again as soon as he submerged.
—In the end, Chang Ji, out of compassion, threw him a lifebuoy. Floating in the middle of the pool, his tail underwater and his head above, safely away from the cat on the shore, he finally settled down.
Fine.
The pool was still too deep. Lin Xun thought, this guy deserved to spend his whole life in a bathtub.
—Needing a lifebuoy to swim in a pool, a fish tail clearly didn’t help him learn to swim. There was probably no mermaid in the world more embarrassing than Qi Yun.
But this guy was high-maintenance. If he really stayed in a bathtub, he’d probably complain about the cramped space.
Just as he was thinking this, Qi Yun paddled his tail, clinging to the lifebuoy as he swam back over. “One more thing.”
His hair draped over his shoulders as he first looked at Lin Xun, then at Chang Ji. “I can’t find my… my… anymore.”
“My… that thing.”
Chang Ji frowned slightly. “What?”
Qi Yun hesitated, then turned his gaze back to Lin Xun. “The thing the monk doesn’t mention.”
“Oh.” Lin Xun understood. “Your reproductive organ.”
Qi Yun: “Where is it?”
“I’m not a fish.” Lin Xun glanced down at his phone, still waiting for a reply from Dong Jun on WeChat, and continued, “We’ll go inside later, and you can search for it yourself. Be good. It’s fine if you can’t find it—after all, you’re the only mermaid in the world.”
Zhi Zhen crept closer again. As a cat, it seemed to have a special curiosity about fish—so Qi Yun was forced to retreat back to the center of the pool.
He lay there like a dead fish. “Can I still turn back into a human?”
“Wait until Madam returns.” Lin Xun’s mood was also a bit low.
Just then, his phone lit up—but it wasn’t Dong Jun. It was Butterfly Madam.
Madam: Little darling, give me your Weibo ID. I’ll help clarify things for you.
Lin Xun hesitated for a moment.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to give it—it was just that his Weibo was a bit too embarrassing to share, and he had posted quite a lot.