Showbiz Scandal: The Official Announcement of My Ex and Myself-Chapter 306: Male Fox Spirit

When He Ci got the news, he was still at the company talking animatedly about pulling resources for Yu Xia.

Half an hour later, Mei finally arrived, holding her phone up outside his office, quietly asking his assistant.

"How’s He doing? Any terrifying sound of smashing desks coming from inside?"

Assistant to the agent: "... No, don’t worry, He is still within the human range for now."

Mei felt that the phrase "for now" was quite accurate.

"Mei! You might as well come in when you’re here!" He Ci’s voice came from inside.

Mei had no choice but to steel herself and go in, immediately closing the door after entering, tentatively calling out, "He?" 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

"Why call me He? You should call me Yu Xia’s unlucky agent!"

He Ci stood up and slammed the desk.

The custom tabletop, which had been in use for less than a year, hurt his hand, so he turned and picked up a folder to continue slamming.

"I said don’t bother, don’t bother, and now look — affected by others, right? And randomly assigned her some silly tag as a deceived tragic lover!"

Mei honestly asked, "I looked and it doesn’t seem like many people are saying that. Plus, they’re all sympathetic to our side; isn’t that good?"

He Ci glared, "Of course not! She’s on a bright queen route; she doesn’t need sympathy! Once this comment gets ingrained, it will affect her queen-themed series, and people will say she’s faking her persona!"

Seeing beneath the surface, right now the public sentiment may seem to favor Yu Xia, but netizens aren’t all fools. If one person says they sympathize, fine. If more say it, others will think Yu Xia is exploiting the situation for hype.

Thinking about this, He Ci slammed the desk again, fiercely saying, "It’s all Xie Qingci’s fault, that male vixen!"

Mei thought that not all the blame could fall on the vixen.

"Um, He, do you really think this news came from the cast of ’Burning Spring’?"

He Ci: "Most likely, Xie Qingci is way more uninhibited on set than now, anyone with eyes can see it. There’s no guarantee people don’t think he’s become too immersed in the role... Wait, if he’s really unable to separate fiction from reality, believing he’s madly in love with Yu Xia and tries everything to pursue her..."

The more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. He Ci started to get lost in thought, prompting Mei to quickly interrupt, saying, "Impossible, he wasn’t like that because of getting into character; he liked her even before that."

"No, it’s different."

He Ci stood up, pacing back and forth like Kogoro Akechi, continuing to follow his train of thought.

"He wasn’t that fanatical before. When did it start... right, it started when Yu Xia fell off the roof. He couldn’t control himself then, and the shoot had already progressed by then, right? He was already deeply into Lu Jiu’s role.

In the show, Yu Xia seduces him but abandons him; he couldn’t take it, so he brought those emotions outside the scenes. Remember the whip scene? He acted like he was going mad for staring at Yu Xia. Also, the time we ran into him in the hotel corridor; he had a fever so severe his eye sockets were sunken, looking at Yu Xia as if he was seeing the main character who abandoned him after thousands of years."

Mei: "..."

She was almost brainwashed by his detailed conjecture, with a look of being struck by lightning.

"He, don’t be like this—this idea is wrong. Even if you don’t believe in Xie Qingci, you should trust Yu Xia, right? She can differentiate between reality and fiction."

"Who knows, maybe she’s only after his tender, delicious body?" He Ci asked expressionlessly.

Mei: ...Well, that is possible.

"No, no, Yu Xia’s not that brainless, and Xie Qingci isn’t completely crazy either. Even if he can’t distinguish between on-screen and off-screen, he knows going public now could impact his career, right? But he’s still determined to make it public."

He Ci sat down and thought about it.

"That’s true."

Mei hadn’t even exhaled when he jumped up again.

"What day are they on for the show? Xie Qingci won’t pop out and coax Yu Xia to go public right away, will he?!"

——

It’s already the evening of the third day, and the two on the show aren’t aware of the online public opinion yet.

The drone footage showed an empty scene, focusing on a patch of underbrush.

After a while, a head popped out from the bushes.

Yu Xia held her breath, only daring to show her eyes, scanning the outside through the gaps between the grass roots.

After so long, she finally crawled up and whispered to Xie Qingci behind her, "No one."

A tall figure emerged from behind the bushes.

They had been hiding from pursuers like this for two days.

Originally, they thought survival in the wild was the hardest thing on the show, but hiding from pursuers turned out to be the toughest. In this episode, the pursuers were dead set on catching them, braving knife mountains and flames, determined as ever to capture them.

Yu Xia and the others were terrified of staying in one place for too long, unable to even find time to boil water. If they ran into pursuers, they’d have to sprint wildly up and down mountains, legs flailing high in the air, a hundred and eighty degrees stretched.

After such intense exercise, Yu Xia was sore all over, forcing them to slow down, determined to hold out until the cease-fire time.

At the third task location, they used their only Fast Forward Card, immediately obtaining the fourth location clue, now ahead of everyone else. So even with a slower pace, there was no issue.

After getting up, Yu Xia looked around and asked Xie Qingci, "Where do we go next? Head straight to the fourth point?"

Two more guest teams had been turned into pursuers in the past two days, so there were more pursuers now, possibly lurking around every corner. The remaining two stages were immensely difficult.

Xie Qingci opened the map on his phone, pointing at a mark to show her, "Here might be a scenic spot, let’s check it out."

"This area has many paths, and is on the curve to the fourth point," she thought carefully, "Checking it out sounds good, maybe we can find some transportation and save my legs."

She reasonably suspected her legs had thickened after days of sprinting.

Xie Qingci put away his phone, placed the flower crown hanging from his backpack on her head.

He made it from tender, gentle vines, adorned with small blue flowers, around wide leaves to shade sunlight.

Yu Xia had already praised his dexterity, though perhaps not in the way he wanted to hear, as yesterday she was held and kissed for half an hour before being released.

She wore the flower crown and walked ahead, stepping unevenly.

The scenic area was quite far, but along the way, they saw increasingly many artificially planted trees, indicating they were getting closer, with such segmented smaller goals making it feel like the destination was quickly approaching.

So walking like this didn’t feel as exhausting as before.

Midway through, they took another route for a while to confuse the pursuers.

That was calculated because Xie Qingci had roughly estimated the times they checked their location, used as a reverse pursuit tactic.

Looking at the sun’s position, he said, "As long as we reach by 18:00 within the next half hour, they can’t check the location again, so won’t know we’ve arrived, keeping us safe for awhile."