New Times, New Hell-Chapter 124 - Changing Heads

Chapter 124 - Changing Heads

The entertainment activities of Luofeng’s annual party continued for the entire afternoon. The employees and guests all had a great time. Unknowingly, it became time for the banquet. Under the guidance of the workers, everyone gradually entered the main guest area and prepared to officially start the banquet.

Wei Xiao returned to the kids’ area to pick Wei Mo up too. In actuality, halfway through the afternoon, he had worried that his daughter – who had rarely left the house since birth – would feel uncomfortable. He had run over to check on Wei Mo multiple times. Unexpectedly, Wei Mo had already become great friends with the little kids and was obviously on the path to becoming best friends with Peppa Goose. They were having a lot of fun. She had long since forgotten her dad, who she used to be extremely clingy towards.

Wei Xiao was forced to experience the feeling of “it’s hard to keep your daughter around when she gets older” in advance. Heart twinging in pain, he cried the tears of an old father.

However, he did manage to relax and socialize with a few friends in the industry. Additionally, he personally experienced Luofeng’s activity planning skills. It had to be said that many of the details of Luofeng’s activities left deep impressions in his mind. This offered him some inspiration into the new map for《Dream Tour of Fengdu》that was under development.

Wei Xiao led Wei Mo into the banquet hall. The entire way, Wei Mo excitedly shared stories from when she had been playing with Peppa, George, and them. Listening to these, Wei Xiao really felt like lamenting. “Since you like Peppa so much, when Dad comes to their company again in the future, I’ll bring you along too, okay?”

“Okay.” Wei Mo nodded. She also added, “Dad, can you sign me up for a math Olympiad tutoring class? I want to try the math Olympiad.”

Wei Xiao was lost listening to this. His daughter truly had attended lots of tutoring classes since young, but she had never liked math. Why was she suddenly bringing up studying for the math Olympiad?

Wei Mo swung her pigtails around and said, “Peppa said she’s studying for the math Olympiad right now. I want to learn too. In the future, I can do practice problems with her.”

Wei Xiao almost choked on his own spit. “Peppa’s studying for the math Olympiad?”

Wei Mo nodded. “Her grades are great!”

Wei Xiao felt very dazed. He didn’t know if he ought to remind his daughter that normal geese didn’t know how to do math Olympiad problems.

The father-daughter duo followed a staff member into the banquet hall.

The banquet was actually pretty high class. The environment and food were both top tier. However, Luofeng hadn’t actually sent out any requirements to attendees about a dress code. As such, when one scanned the crowd, they would discover that everyone was very relaxed, especially employees of Luofeng and their subsidiary company, Amazing Future. At this moment, these people were already high off adrenaline. While waiting for the banquet to start, they buzzed with excitement and were busy taking pictures with their coworkers to post to their Moments.

Wei Xiao held hands with Wei Mo and led her to the VIP seats. As soon as he turned around, he coincidentally saw Zhao Ruola walking Jiao Shanlan over.

“Yo, landry.” Wei Xiao cocked an eyebrow and teased Jiao Shanlan, “You still haven’t given up on stealing singer away? Or have Luofeng’s counterattacks been successful and you’ve decided to jump ship to join them instead?”

The fact that Jiao Shanlan’s laboratory was adamantly trying to steal singer away had already become a public piece of gossip in the industry. However, what nobody else knew was that Jiao Shanlan’s private relationship with singer was still pretty great. Cosmos Factory clearly didn’t have any collaborations with Luofeng, but he had surprisingly still been invited to attend Luofeng’s annual party.

Jiao Shanlan facepalmed in exasperation. “When do you guys plan on using this matter to tease me until?”

Wei Xiao roared with laughter. Zhao Ruola mediated on Jiao Shanlan’s behalf from off to the side. “Don’t make such comments, Boss Wei. landry is our company’s VIP guest too.”

Jiao Shanlan looked at Zhao Ruola in horror. Zhao Ruola smiled slightly. “It’s all up to you to see if our company will be able to collaborate with Cosmos Factory this year.”

Jiao Shanlan weakly responded, “I knew it. You wouldn’t invite me for no reason……”

It had to be said that as a company, Luofeng was very strange. No matter what, in the past, Zhao Ruola had worked at top tier businesses. Any project that passed through her hands was easily worth hundreds of millions. Unexpectedly, after joining Luofeng, she had become down-to-earth overnight. Not a moment went by when she didn’t remember to procure more business opportunities.

Zhao Ruola patted him on the shoulder. Her expression was meaningful. “You’ll thank me in the future.”

In the midst of their conversation, a few programmers from Amazing Future sneakily approached. “Erica, landry, come take a picture with us?”

God-like entities such as Zhao Ruola and Jiao Shanlan were basically celebrities in the Internet industry. Each annual party, it was basically part of their schedule to get dragged off by the programmers working for them to take pictures together. The two of them very familiarly revealed perfunct smiles.

While taking pictures, Jiao Shanlan lamented, “Your programmers have such dense hair growth.”

There was also a programmer waiting in line for a picture who snuck a glance at Wei Xiao. Then, he silently scooted close. “Boss Wei, let’s take a picture together?”

Wei Xiao side-eyed the other. “I’m a product manager.”

Product managers and programmers were sworn enemies.

That programmer puffed up his chest and held up his head. “Let us do our part in quelling the conflict between programmers and product managers!”

Wei Xiao: “……Your company’s employees are really quite good at making up excuses.”

Not only were Amazing Future’s programmers good at making excuses, they were also good at snapping aggro. After taking pictures with the big shots, everyone started uploading these pictures into their various group chats. This garnered the envious cries of programmers from other companies.

Very quickly, the dinner banquet officially began. Before food got brought out, the MC cued the process, as usual. First, CEO came out to give a summary of the past year as a means of encouraging the staff.

Shang Que had been running a company in the mortal realm for quite a few years already. He honestly had never made a public speech like this before. Today was another day that he was forced to work.

Fortunately, Luofeng’s planning department had made preparations long ago. They had written a speech for him in advance; Shang Que only needed to read off of the script.

Shang Que had also gotten used to having to do these things. He stood up straight and finished reading the script in an elegant manner. In the end, he didn’t forget to reveal the standard smile of an elite. This was what Yu Zhengdu had specially trained him to do prior to the banquet.

“……Much thanks to everyone and all the hard work you did in the past year. I also hope that our company will be able to create a better future for everyone. In the new year, let’s work hard together.”

Passionate applause sounded out from the audience.

Shang Que finished his work and retreated offstage with no hesitation at all. The MC, Hu Xiaoyue, hurriedly returned. Going off what he had just said, she continued, “Thank you to CEO for his exciting speech. It was everyone’s tireless efforts and immaculate collaborations that allowed our company to achieve the results we have achieved today. In the new year, we look forward to seeing everyone continue to work hard, be pioneers, keep up with the times, and write a brand new chapter together.”

According to the need for interaction they had decided upon in advance, Hu Xiaoyue ultimately needed to fervidly cue her coworkers offstage too. “Coworkers, our goal is——”

Headquarters’ employees fought to answer first. They loudly yelled, “Attain full modernization of work processes——”

This garnered the scorn of the programmers from the subsidiary company.

“Headquarters has reached such a high level of realization!”

“More like they’re really good at bootlicking!”

“What? Full modernization? Why didn’t they say Four Modernizations too?”

“No, we can’t lose. Let them hear our innermost thoughts!”

Thus, after headquarters yelled out their answer, the programmers’ whistling and shouting started up too.

“Our goal is&#k2014;&#k2014;to not go bald!”

“To marry Hu Xiaoyue and reach the pinnacle of life&#k2014;&#k2014;”

Originally, a fox demon’s ability to garner roars from a whole crowd of men ought to have been their clan’s goal and glory. However, at this time, Hu Xiaoyue only felt like her whole body was trembling. She instinctively glanced offstage. As expected, CEO’s eyes had slightly narrowed. He was in the middle of staring at CTO and observing his reaction.

Hu Xiaoyue recalled the past with great pain. She pushed the air out of her diaphragm to loudly say, “Actually, I like women.”

The programmers: “……” Fuck!

After the speech, the dinner officially started.

Luofeng’s dinner banquet was mostly the same as those of other companies. They too ate while watching performances. There were guest performers who had been specially hired from outside, but there were also performances that each department had prepared themselves.

The ghosts from headquarters used their advantages and prepared quite a few magic and acrobatics performances. These were quite exciting too, but ultimately, they were still slightly less interesting than the subsidiary company’s performances.

It was still straight men who were the most coquettish. The programmers had been holding themselves back for the longest time. Now, they did their best to release their true selves. If not for fear of scaring the VIP guests, Liu Wei and his team almost walked onstage in fishnets. Eventually, after considering what effect that would have, they decided to take a step back and wear sailor outfits instead.

Of course, as a relatively progressive technology company, it was basically an industry consensus that the boss needed to perform. This was customary. Nobody could escape from it.

Of the VIP customers sitting offstage, as long as they were executives at dot-com companies, they had all been forced to perform before. For example, at Double Horn Technology’s annual party this year, Wei Xiao had cosplayed as Sailor Moon. Jiao Shanlan had also performed a girl group dance at Nova Technology’s annual party.

Everyone greatly anticipated what Shang Que and Yu Zhengdu would perform. The program only noted the order of performances. It didn’t include specificities about the performances.

Very quickly, the answer became revealed.

Shang Que, Yu Zhengdu, and Peppa Goose would be performing a group dance: Calorie.

Deafening cheers sounded out from offstage. The programmers yelled out in sync, “Peppa I love you——”

“Peppa, jiayou!!”

“Peppa, you’re the best!”

It couldn’t be helped. Though CEO had a lot of fans who liked his face online, he was still the absolute authority in their company. Everyone secretly played his outfit changing game in private, but didn’t dare to make jokes about him to his face at all.

Peppa was different, though. Despite the fact that she was aggressive, she was also terribly cute. Even if she stepped on your face, as long as you could suffer through this, you’d ultimately manage to be able to pet her.

Someone instantly pulled out their phone and started filming the stage.

Amidst the energetic music, CEO’s family of three started moving to the lyrics.

In all honesty, given Shang Que’s absolute authority, the planning department originally hadn’t dared to suggest having him go onstage to perform at all. However, Yu Zhengdu was young and had grown up submerged in Internet culture. Since Amazing Future had been started, it had been developing in the direction of openness and tolerance. As such, when the programmers mentioned that they hoped to see their leader performing at the annual party like the CTOs of other companies, he agreed with practically no hesitation.

Unexpectedly, Shang Que hadn’t been too against it either. Instead, he cooperated with his boyfriend and practiced the dance together. It was Yu Zhengdu who was slightly surprised.

“The first thing I say after getting out of bed every morning is something to encourage myself……”

“Each time I eat an extra grain of rice, I have to say sorry……”

The big goose flapped her wings. Her goose feet accurately moved in time to the music. Yu Zhengdu and Shang Que had changed into fresh white collared shirts and casual pants too. Following the goose’s rhythm, they took steps to the left, steps to the right, turned in a circle, and tilted their heads.

The planning department had specially hired someone to choreograph a new dance for this song. The new dance was simple and refreshing. Yu Zhengdu and Shang Que both had long arms and legs. Surprisingly, they didn’t look as comical as everyone had imagined. On the contrary, they looked crisp and neat.

But this neatness also appeared dry and uninteresting. Because in between Yu Zhengdu and Shang Que, there still stood a very eye catching white goose.

Quite a lot of people present had already known that Peppa knew how to dance. Previously, a passerby had filmed Peppa dancing ballet, added music, and uploaded it to the Internet. This video quickly went viral and garnered quite a lot of attention. It also allowed Amazing Future’s employees to become very glamorous among their friends for a bit.

But because the music for that video had been added later, there were people who suspected that everything had only been a coincidence. Things were different this time, though. This was a live video, and she was dancing with CEO and Senior. That definitely meant that the performance had been choreographed in advance.

The audience was delighted. Numerous short videos were uploaded to their group chats, garnering exclamations from the other members of these group chats.

【Your annual party actually has a performance by Peppa Goose?】

【Mom, this goose really knows how to dance!!!】

【Oh shit. Peppa Goose’s dancing is more accurate than my niece’s???】

【Peppa is too cute. I’ve decided to jump ship to Amazing Future!】

Someone couldn’t help themselves and uploaded the video onto Weibo. The netizens’ reactions were once again different from the straight male programmers’ reactions.

【Aaah, it’s CEO and Senior!】

【Why does CEO still look so good even though he’s dancing such a stupid dance?!!】

【As expected, no bosses of dot-com companies can escape this fate!】

【Emmmm, can I say that CEO, Senior, and Peppa Goose strangely look like a family of three?】

A boss’s performance was no big deal. However, CEO wasn’t a normal boss. He was a boss who had a devastatingly handsome appearance. This, along with the goose who had just gotten slightly popular a while ago because of a ballet video, caused the video to very quickly garner a lot of discussion among a small population.

The netizens howled, asking how to join Luofeng.

The lethality of a handsome boss and cute pet mascot’s performance was enormous. However, only when the MC came out to announce the next performance did Amazing Future’s employees and the netizens who were paying attention to this annual party truly go crazy.

Performance guest: your coworkers from headquarters’ entertainment department, Sagittarius Band

Performance name: Changing Heads

All of Amazing Future’s employees simultaneously expressed their shock: “What? Sagittarius Band are our coworkers from headquarters?”

“Oh fuck. Does our company have to be so lowkey??”

“I request for my coworker to give me an autograph!”

The netizens were similarly shocked. However, after feeling surprised, they instantly started commenting under the accounts that were posting videos of the Luofeng annual party:

【Aaaah, begging for a livestream!】

【It’s really Sagittarius Band! What kind of godly company is this?! Account Owner, please hold a livestream!】

【I didn’t manage to get a ticket to Sagittarius Band’s concert. Whether I’ll be able to see a fresh Sagittarius Band is up to Account Owner’s conscience!】

Ultimately, someone gave in to their desire to show off and secretly started a Weibo livestream.

Sagittarius Band’s online presence was different from a viral CEO and viral goose’s. They were genuine celebrities from the entertainment industry: a band that really and truly could cause the entire nation to start talking. Very quickly, large amounts of fans came rushing in after hearing the news.

Luofeng’s annual party, Sagittarius Band, and varying other key terms ended up on the trending topics list.

Fans swarmed into the employee’s livestream room. However, after seeing the name of Sagittarius Band’s performance on the program, everyone became quite confused:

【Changing Heads? What performance is this?】

【Is it a new song? Or a dance?】

【I’ve been to all of Sagittarius Band’s publicized schedules, but have never heard of this performance?】

Amidst a bunch of guesses, Sagittarius Band appeared. However, they weren’t dressed in their usual rock attire. Instead, they were dressed in traditional Chinese opera outfits. They didn’t have their own instruments either. The male kinnara was still wearing his signature horse head, though. But this overly avant-garde horse head seemed extremely out of place considering his traditional outfit.

Just as everyone was feeling perplexed, the music started. But it wasn’t an original song by Sagittarius Band. It was the extremely famous accompaniment for changing faces in Shu opera that everyone had heard before.

In a chorus of “Change change change change change change change, look look look; as fast as the wind, as quick as lightning, as quick as lightning,” the comments were a sea of:

【?????】

【Changing faces? Why is it changing faces?】

【Sagittarius Band isn’t singing this time? They’ve switched to performing?】

【That’s not it. Even if they’re performing, they should still be singing. What’s going on now?】

【Ah, is Sagittarius Band going to perform changing faces? They also have such a skill?】

【Wait, have you guys forgotten the name of this program?】

【Changing Heads?? Fuck, it’s not what I’m thinking, right?】

The guess in the comments had just flashed by; the netizens hadn’t had time to discuss, only to hear a loud “hong——” sound out from the livestream. The audience members watching the annual party in person had exploded.

Onstage, the male kinnara’s cape had shaken and, in the blink of an eye, he had switched horse heads.

【!!!!! Fuck it’s really changing heads?】

【Didn’t someone say that his horse head can’t be removed? Why can it be changed?】

【He’s changed again he’s changed again! A white horse!】

At this moment, both the live audience at the annual party and the netizens in the livestream had their eyes wide open and jaws dropped.

Only to see that on the stage, the horse head that had once been reported to be “irremovable” by many media sources had somehow instantly changed into a different one.

The brown horse head turned into a black horse head.

The black horse then turned into a white horse.

【B-badass】

【How is he doing that?!】

The music onstage was still intense.

“It’s never too late, it’s quicker than words; those who find it difficult don’t know how, those who know how don’t find it difficult; you can take a close look or look from far away; look in front, look behind; look quickly, look slowly; look to the right, look to the left; look up, look down; look horizontally, look vertically……”

Tears streamed down the audience members’ faces simultaneously: because we can’t tell how you’re doing it at all!

However, after the initial shock had passed, everyone instantly became excited once more.

Though this Changing Heads program was a bit strange, to be perfectly honest, it was truly exhilarating and unsurpassable. Jin Luo’s horse head was an undying topic of conversation in the entertainment industry. Innumerous people wanted to see what he actually looked like under his horse head.

The media had even released a special issue: In My Life, Will I Be Able to See the Jin Luo Under the Horse Mask?

Right now, the answer had been revealed: yes.

Only, you would be seeing varying other horse heads.

After coming to terms with this, the comments instantly broke down with laughter:

【It’s your guys’ fault for continuously cueing the head under the horse mask. Now he’s actually performing for you guys to see!】

【Jin Luo is badass. Everyone else changes faces, but you’re changing heads!】

【So, how many heads does Jin Luo plan on changing tonight?】

【Probably not many. He already changed into a brown horse, black horse, and white horse just now. What other horses could there be?】

They had just finished discussing on this side when an answer immediately appeared onstage.

With an elegant spin, Jin Luo turned around once more. His head had already become a mix of black and white: a zebra.

The audience was in an uproar. The applause wouldn’t stop.

Comments:【…………………………………】

【I admit defeat!!!】

【I fucking didn’t expect that he would also turn into a zebra?!】

【He’s done now, right??】

【Should be. The music’s almost finished too.】

At the annual party, the VIP customers who had been invited to attend all started asking Yu Zhengdu like crazy, “How did you guys manage this performance?”

Yu Zhengdu could only reply with a mysterious smile, “Business secret.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to answer, but that he couldn’t answer.

How else could they have managed it? With magic, of course.

Though the kinnaras had weak magical skills that normally weren’t enough to have the male kinnara keep a changed head, they were more than enough during critical moments and to accomplish occasional changes.

Wei Mo couldn’t move her eyes away. She tugged on Wei Xiao’s hand and incessantly asked, “Dad, Dad, what horse is going to be next?”

How could Wei Xiao know? But he had calculated it. Jin Luo had already gone through most of the different types of horses. He had even already changed into a zebra. The performance was probably almost over, right?

However, to maintain a responsible attitude towards answering his daughter’s question, he still asked Yu Zhengdu first: “Boss Yu, this is the last horse head, right?”

Yu Zhengdu wasn’t too sure about the details of this performance either. He only said, “I think he’s still going to change one more time at the really end?”

Wei Xiao was confused. “What other horse hasn’t he changed into yet?”

Yu Zhengdu shook his head. “I don’t know either?”

Just as he finished saying this, the music onstage suddenly stopped. Yu Zhengdu and Wei Xiao hurriedly turned their heads back to look.

Only to see that the male kinnara had performed a neat backflip. When he landed on the ground, the horse head on his shoulders had changed again, as expected.

A hippo.

Everyone: “……”

Comments:

【No problems. A hippo is a horse too.】

The author has something to say:

Xiao Kui: Gradually becoming one with the bosses of mortal dot-com companies _(:3∠)_