Chapter 72: The Red Little Stones Poured into the Sea…

The director who came to urge him on almost thought he had seen wrong.

Before this, in the program group, aside from facing the financial backer and that psychopathic weird entity, wasn’t he always the center of attention at other times?

Blue 534 could never have imagined that a trainee would dare to curse him.

Cursing him was one thing, but he even attacked his taste, calling his outfit both ugly and fat!

Did this trainee not want to live?

Considering that Trainee No. 43 had recently earned him some extra cash, Blue 534 stared at him for a few more seconds on the spot.

A few seconds later, seeing that No. 43 still showed no reaction, Director Blue 534 sneered coldly and turned to leave.

If a trainee wanted to court death, he had no reason not to oblige.

Even if this trainee had been the so-called popularity king before.

As long as he kept running this program, there would be many more seasons’ top contenders.

As he turned to leave, Blue 534 took out his walkie-talkie, and his voice transmitted to the emcee’s earpiece at the front: “Trainee No. 43 forfeits. Send the next one up.”

In the back, Wang Xingxing listened just like that, said nothing more, and made no further moves.

He was the fourteenth trainee to take the stage.

Next up was Rao Fei.

Unsurprisingly, after another long ten minutes, Rao Fei, who also failed to take the stage, found a seat next to Wang Xingxing.

With the thought that this was his last chance to chat with anyone, Wang Xingxing spoke up: “Captain Rao, do you have any regrets left?”

If so, it wasn’t too late to pass them on to Bureau Chief Lin now.

Nearby, Lin Lan, who had a low presence but had been squatting there from start to finish, turned his head.

Rao Fei’s expression paused as he thought for a moment before speaking: “You know, I actually do have something unfinished.”

But now, he could only entrust that regret to the others at the Bureau to handle for him.

Lin Lan took the initiative to ask: “What is it?”

Rao Fei made a chopping motion with his hand: “If anyone encounters Su Yue later, give him a quick end.”

At this time, the Confidentiality Bureau’s understanding of the Weird World was still rather shallow.

They only knew that players assimilated by a dungeon became the lowest-grade weird entities in that dungeon. No consciousness, no sense of self. Like walking corpses.

These words sparked an idea in Wang Xingxing, who immediately raised his hand: “Me too.”

After this, if they ever met again in a dungeon, just finish him off.

With that said, Wang Xingxing’s gaze swept over Peng Jia and Peng Xu, who had sat down nearby, and he pointed at them: “And them too. Don’t let them off!”

Peng Jia and Peng Xu, these two cool guys, stayed silent, which counted as agreement.

Lin Lan nodded seriously, indicating he had noted it down.

Another dozen minutes passed, and the emcee-mentor up front called the seventeenth number.

Lin Lan stood up, walked steadily from backstage to the front of the stage.

This was his most flawless performance yet.

Before entering the dungeon, even a simple split had left him screaming in agony under the teacher’s correction. Now, he could pull off several extremely difficult dance moves in one breath on stage.

Lin Lan clearly remembered how many colleagues from the Confidentiality Bureau had sacrificed for him since he entered the dungeon.

His strength was restricted by a weird prop, but as he cleared more dungeons, the difficulty of the ones he entered kept rising.

Perhaps in the future, even more colleagues would get trapped in dungeons because of him, only to be thoroughly killed by other human players in those dungeons.

But he couldn’t turn back.

He could feel guilt, but not break down.

He could grieve, but he absolutely could not lose control.

With those two arrogant forfeiting trainees setting the stage beforehand, after Lin Lan’s performance ended, the audience vented their frustration by giving him a relatively high vote count.

But this “relatively high” was only compared to Lin Lan’s own previous scores.

To stabilize him in the top nine, as per the original plan, Peng Jia and Peng Xu, scheduled for the nineteenth and twentieth spots, also forfeited.

Not only did they forfeit themselves, they also knocked out two scheming players who wanted to sabotage others to secure their own debut positions.

These two had been hiding in the bathroom, targeting the players previously ranked in the top nine, only to get counter-killed by Peng Jia and Peng Xu when they went to the restroom.

This way, Lin Lan, who had originally been ranked thirteenth in popularity, suddenly had six competitors ahead of him drop out.

Fortunately, Peng Jia and Peng Xu had knocked out a couple extras in advance. At the end of the public performance, the big screen displayed all the trainees’ vote counts, and Lin Lan barely scraped into ninth place.

This ranking, when tallied up, was actually two spots lower than the previous public performance!

It was probably because this was all individual stages, and Wang Xingxing and the others hadn’t taken the stage to throw some flirty glances and gestures to draw in the vampires.

Wang Xingxing watched from backstage and clicked his tongue: “Looks like Bureau Chief Lin really isn’t cut out for debuting as an idol.”

This level of difficulty in hyping him up was rare.

But the result was good.

“By the way, we probably won’t suffer too much later, right?”

Rao Fei replied: “Shouldn’t be too bad. They all looked pretty peaceful before.”

Gone in the blink of an eye.

…

“Rao Fei, your hand is starting to turn transparent…”

Up front on stage.

Director 534 stepped onto the platform, the nine remaining trainees behind him as the backdrop amid a shower of atmospheric confetti, and he spoke with great emotion: “Today is the most important day of my life!”

“Tonight’s Big Star Season One comes to a perfect close.”

With that, the director flung his hand back dramatically, and nine beams of light immediately shone down on the nine trainees.

The director’s tone brimmed with excitement: “Tonight, they shine because of you!”

Under the lights, several trainees’ faces were as pale as paper. Symptoms of severe blood loss.

But when the director announced that the final nine debut positions belonged to them, these pale-faced trainees couldn’t help but show expressions of relief and joy at having survived the ordeal.

Down below, some audience members were dissatisfied.

In the southwest corner of the stadium, a group of fans holding light signs swept their gazes over the stage before suddenly shouting loudly: “Black curtain! Black curtain! Black curtain!”

One major fan from the support association got particularly worked up. The second after shouting “black curtain,” he was already on stage.

This big fan protested angrily on stage: “First place belongs to our Xingzai!”

“We, the Wang Xingxing Fan Support Association, don’t recognize any other champion!”

With that, in his rage, this fan even tore the corner of his mouth, revealing a mouthful of serrated teeth as he lunged to bite the trainee now standing in first place.

But the current Blue 534 was no longer the old Blue 534. He was now Director Blue 534!

He handled the sudden incident with practiced ease. He casually grabbed the still-biting support association big fan and tossed him into the air, sending this obsessed fan gone mad straight crashing outside the stadium.

After dealing with that, he kept a cold face, avoided a few specific spots, and scanned the audience: “Tonight’s Big Star’s format was fair, open, and transparent throughout. The trainees who didn’t appear simply forfeited for personal reasons and have already been dismissed by the program group.”

Down in the seats, hearing the director say that Wang Xingxing and the others had all forfeited for personal reasons, Su Ximu was equally puzzled.

When he had come out from backstage, Wang Xingxing had even changed into his performance outfit. How could he just forfeit like that?

Had something gone wrong elsewhere?

With that thought, Su Ximu’s first suspicion was that something had happened with Wang Xingxing and the others’ props.

Tonight was the trainees’ final public performance, and everyone had clearly put in a lot of effort. Each trainee had brought plenty of props onstage.

Or maybe it was an issue with the agencies behind the trainees?

One guess after another popped into his mind. Remembering his identity as a crew staff member, Su Ximu said hello to his eldest brother and third brother, then pulled his second brother up from their seats with him and headed backstage.

Along the way, the director on stage kept talking about something. But Su Ximu wasn’t in the mood to listen closely.

After dodging the excited fans swarming up along the way and finally reaching backstage, Su Ximu discovered that the entire backstage area was deathly quiet.

The other twelve trainees who should have still been there had all vanished.

Was this what the director meant by “already dismissed by the program group”?

Failing to find Wang Xingxing and the others, Su Ximu returned to the audience seats. By then, the director had forcefully suppressed the fans unhappy with the program group.

He also announced that Tonight’s Big Star had one final hidden Easter egg in its last episode.

Interviews with the nine debuted trainees, plus highlight clips of high-popularity contestants from previous episodes.

This move hooked the fans all over again.

After all, no matter which trainee’s fans they were, everyone thought their idol was the real high-popularity star.

The final episode was bound to have material they hadn’t seen before!

Compared to the fans’ excitement, the other nine trainees on stage weren’t feeling so great.

They had thought the public performance would end the dungeon, but now there was some interview at the end.

The final public performance felt somewhat lackluster because several high-popularity contestants had dropped out all at once.

As the audience gradually left, this time Su Xuanxiao and Su Jianglou boarded the ship to Bizarre Island with Xiao Xi.

They had agreed yesterday that they would come today to help Xiao Xi with his luggage.

While the ship was underway, Su Ximu spotted Lin Lan sitting alone and slowly sat down next to him.

After sitting, he heard the young man ask in a tone both curious and concerned: “Wang Xingxing, Rao Fei, and the others—did your agency take them all away?”

The performance hadn’t even ended, and the people were already gone.

It felt eerily fast.

Lin Lan’s heart nearly bled with pain at that moment, but his expression remained his usual refined calm as he went along with the young man’s weird words: “Yeah, they’re all gone.”

Forfeiting, at its core, violated the dungeon rules.

So before the public performance fully ended, they… were no more.

After saying that, Lin Lan fell silent.

The other trainee players were equally exhausted in body and mind.

Silence spread through the cabin.

After disembarking on the island, Su Ximu went with his brothers to pack his luggage and collect his pay from the finance team.

Lin Lan and the others went to record their interviews.

Blue 534 was relatively trustworthy as a weird—though it might also have been because he had now become the program group’s director and taken over this dungeon, thus bound by the rules.

So, Lin Lan and the others’ interviews didn’t take too long.

At the island’s dock, under the glow of neon light signs, the entire pier was lit up like daylight.

At the far end of the dock stood a grand archway wreathed in flowers.

A long red carpet lined with flowers connected the neon signs to the archway.

For the remaining nine trainees, they just needed to walk this long red carpet, pass through the archway, and the calm, waveless sea surface beneath the dock would be their road home.

Director Blue 534 intended to carry on this ceremonial flair season after season.

By the time the trainees were walking the flower path, Su Ximu had already packed his luggage.

His luggage was light. His eldest brother wheeled the suitcase, his third brother carried the potted plant, his second brother carried another item, and Su Ximu himself only needed to bring his glass bottle.

From a nearby spot on the deck, Su Ximu also gazed down at the sea surface below the deck.

The sea was fitted with some lights too.

So the waters around Bizarre Island didn’t look deep or terrifying even at night. They remained clear and blue.

Su Ximu looked at the sea, then at the large glass bottle in his hand, and suddenly thought of something.

He looked up: “Second Brother, can I pour the little stones into the sea now?”

His second brother had told him the first time he gave him these little stones that once the show wrapped, pouring them into the sea would lead to something amazing.

Now, the variety show recording should have ended, right?

Su Wuzi held the small Mushroom Potted Plant in his hands and nodded.

At the same time, he reached out and handed over another handful of Red Small Pebbles.

Roughly counting, there were twelve.

The boy squatting at the edge of the deck took that handful of stones from his second brother’s hand. With great ceremony, he first put these little stones into the bottle as well, then shook it.

He raised the bottle and carefully observed the Glass Bottle in his hand again under the light of the neon sign.

On the other side, Lin Lan, who was last in line on the flower path, noticed this scene and involuntarily cast his gaze over.

Having looked enough at the Glass Bottle and the little stones inside, the boy held the bottle with both hands and tilted the mouth of the bottle toward the sea surface.

He didn’t forget to tell his brothers to help record the video. They shouldn’t miss this very magical moment.

Although he temporarily had no idea exactly how magical it was, since his second brother said it was magical, it should be very magical.

The red small stones almost filled the bottle. After he tilted the mouth of the bottle, the first small pebble quickly dropped into the clear seawater, landing in the crevices of the pink coral.

With the shake of the boy’s wrist, then came the second, third, fourth…