The surrounding noise and clamor continued to rise.
Ye Qiusuo opened her eyes, reached up to rub her temples, and looked at the few people sitting on the stage in the middle, laughing, chatting, and touching up their makeup. She then glanced towards the side of the stage below, where several camera lenses were trained on those individuals.
She suddenly froze.
She remembered. These people were recording a knowledge competition show, and she had been invited by a friend at the last minute to fill a spot as a guest participant.
Having spent several consecutive days holed up in the laboratory before being dragged here, it was now the mid-show break. She had been sitting in her seat with her eyes closed, resting, and had subsequently had a dream.
In the dream, she was actually a minor supporting character in a book, while the female celebrity sitting on the right side of the stage was the female lead. The female lead shone brilliantly on this show; with her decent educational background and good looks, once the program aired, she directly leapt from a second-tier star to a first-tier celebrity, receiving an endless stream of resources.
The female lead stepped over a bunch of ordinary participants to rise to fame, establishing a "top student" persona in the entertainment industry. Ye Qiusuo was the ordinary participant trampled most harshly in the first episode. Because her looks among the ordinary participants were no less than the female lead's, the author used her as the perfect stepping stone for this female lead's perfection, being utterly outmatched by the female lead in both answering questions and breadth of knowledge.
However, Ye Qiusuo basically didn't appear again in the later parts of the book, a complete extra.
In the dream, Ye Qiusuo was forced to read the entire book, which was all about the female lead using the fame from this show to harvest various male idols and business tycoons in the entertainment circle, with fan-shipped couples (CPs) being hyped like crazy.
Ye Qiusuo: "?"
Leaving aside whether this dream was real or fake, using her as a stepping stone in this kind of knowledge show? Had the author's logic been eaten by a dog?
While Ye Qiusuo was still pondering, the program recording resumed. The question-and-answer session between the guests on stage and the fifty ordinary participants had already begun, and every development was exactly the same as described in the dream.
This knowledge show mainly followed a pattern of answering questions + discussion. The answering questions part involved both the resident guests on stage and the ordinary participants answering together, followed by an expanded discussion. With fifty ordinary participants answering, after one recording session, the top thirty scorers could stay and continue to the next episode's recording. This continued, with a corresponding number of ordinary guest participants being eliminated each round, until finally five ordinary participants remained to compete against the five guests on stage.
The five resident guests on stage included a host from the cultural and entertainment industry, a crosstalk performer, actor celebrities, and so on.
Essentially, they were all insiders in the industry. The female lead, Wan Yurou, was the only young female celebrity among the five guests. There was also a male actor around her age, while the other three were middle-aged men.
In the dream, what happened next was that Wan Yurou answered all questions correctly, while Ye Qiusuo, as the lowest scorer in the entire venue, had the camera shoved in her face. Two equally young and good-looking women made for a very striking contrast. Having not rested well for several days, dragged in by a friend at the last minute to make up numbers, and with the program crew not providing makeup or styling for the fifty ordinary participants, her complexion naturally wasn't as good as the meticulously made-up female lead sitting on stage.
The stark contrast in scores, coupled with Wan Yurou's eloquent and articulate speech versus Ye Qiusuo's taciturnity, created an 'exciting' comparison that was immediately highlighted by the post-production team in their editing.
Once the show aired, Wan Yurou unsurprisingly became wildly popular, while Ye Qiusuo, used as the stepping stone, naturally faced scorn from netizens, with comments like "brainless star" and so on.
And in reality, events were also developing towards the plot in the dream, specifically manifested in Ye Qiusuo's answer button device being broken, with only the A option registering when pressed.
In the dream, Ye Qiusuo was just there to make up the numbers and couldn't be bothered to find a staff member to replace the broken device. She closed her eyes to rest in the guest seat, only to end up being stepped on by the female lead on her way up.
If she hadn't had this dream, given Ye Qiusuo's character of preferring to avoid trouble, she might have really let the button device stay broken and get the recording over with sooner.
But now...
Ye Qiusuo wanted to see what would happen if she didn't follow the so-called plot development from the book.
She directly stood up and walked down from the guest seating area.
The cameras were still following. Staff below saw an ordinary guest participant coming down and immediately someone rushed over: "We're still recording. Guests cannot come down now."
Ye Qiusuo opened her palm, revealing the button device: "This only registers the A button. It's broken."
The staff member was taken aback for a moment, then said, "Please wait a moment." He immediately took the button device from her hand to test and discuss with others.
After a group discussion, the staff member from before returned with a new button device: "Sorry about that. We've replaced it with a new one; this one works. However, we can't re-record the previous answers, so..."
Ye Qiusuo nodded, took the device from his hand, turned around, and walked back up to the tiered seating.
Sitting down with the working button device, Ye Qiusuo leaned back loosely in her seat, listening carefully to the questions. These questions seemed varied, covering astronomy, geography, humanities, history, etc., but they were actually just superficial questions from various fields, meant to impress non-professionals.
And moreover... the book mentioned in passing that Wan Yurou had access to the question bank and had seen it beforehand; she was simply memorizing the questions.
Ye Qiusuo listened to the questions being presented on stage and pressed the selection button along with everyone else present. Although she had no score for the first half, after the obstacle of the broken device was removed in the second half, she got a perfect score.
Yet this score was completely inconspicuous among the fifty ordinary participants.
"How many points does Yurou have now?" One of the celebrity guests on stage turned to ask the young woman beside him.
"Four hundred and seventy points," Wan Yurou replied with a light smile, seeming somewhat embarrassed. "I got two wrong."
"Only two wrong? I think I got about twenty wrong," another guest, the crosstalk performer, calculated his own score and said.
"Twenty? Hahaha, Lao Jiang, your knowledge is a bit lacking," one guest joked.
The crosstalk performer nodded earnestly: "Indeed, I need to learn more from Yurou."
The entire competition had fifty questions in total, with ten points for each correct answer. Only the final question remained.
The final question appeared on the large screen. It was a technology question, with four options as usual, asking about the common method for battery-free electronic skin systems. Ye Qiusuo glanced over it and pressed her button. After everyone had made their selections, the guests on stage were still debating, each with their own guesses and opinions.
"Personally, I think it's option B, Near-Field Communication. If I remember correctly, the smart medical watch from Tianqiu Technology uses this method." Wan Yurou, wearing a white long dress, sat in the guest seat, speaking at a gentle pace, appearing extremely elegant and refined among the group of middle-aged guests arguing heatedly with red faces.
"Yurou, you even know about this?" The crosstalk performer next to her was very surprised.
Wan Yurou brushed aside the stray hair by her ear and smiled lightly: "I just learned a little about it before."
"Speaking of which, Tianqiu Technology is really impressive. Several projects they've developed in recent years have had a big impact on our lives."
"Why would Yurou go and learn about Tianqiu Technology's projects?"
The five guests on stage began to chat casually, but clearly everyone was very interested in the information Wan Yurou had just revealed.
Facing a barrage of cameras, Wan Yurou showed no timidity. With a light smile, she said, "During university, I once visited Tianqiu Tech with a professor. The guide there mentioned it once."
Everyone present couldn't help but let out a collective sigh of admiration.
As everyone knew, Tianqiu Tech had consecutively developed several electronic tech products in recent years that significantly impacted daily life, yet the company was famously mysterious and low-key.
It was said their employee salaries were exceptionally high, making their staff highly sought-after in the dating market in recent years.
Ordinary people rarely got the chance to visit such a company. Looking at Wan Yurou again, everyone's gaze instantly changed—truly worthy of a top graduate from Caltech, having even been to Tianqiu Tech.
"Host, hurry up and reveal the answer, let's see who got it right," the crosstalk actor Jiang Fei called out to the host.
"Alright, let's reveal the final question and see who scores," the host raised a hand, and the correct answer immediately appeared on the large screen.
As expected, the correct answer was B. Wan Yurou's score reached a staggering 480, the highest in the room.
"Now, let's see which of our civilian guests chose the correct answer. There are... thirty-five people!" The host stood facing the fifty guests. "Good, then we'll randomly select one civilian guest to explain why they chose this answer."
When Ye Qiusuo heard this, she was looking down at her own score: a total of five hundred points. She had scored two hundred and fifty, having chosen all A's in the first half and gotten zero points.
A spotlight roamed among the fifty civilian guests' seats, finally settling on Ye Qiusuo's position.
The light dazzled Ye Qiusuo's eyes. She slowly raised a hand to shield her brow: "..." Was this forcing her to confront the female lead?
"Guest number 43, could you tell us why you chose B?" the host asked with a smile.
The white circular spotlight shone on Ye Qiusuo. She could even guess that several cameras were now trained on her.
"Near-field communication is abbreviated as NFC."
As soon as Ye Qiusuo uttered this first sentence, everyone in the room immediately nodded as if suddenly enlightened. NFC was far more familiar than the term 'near-field communication'; it had been heavily promoted for mobile phones in recent years, though the general public wasn't entirely clear on the specifics, only knowing it was commonly used for access control or transit cards.
Ye Qiusuo's second sentence was to correct what Wan Yurou had said earlier: "Tianqiu's smart medical watch does not use near-field communication methods. The algorithms involved are complex and cannot be summarized by a single method."
On stage, Wan Yurou probably hadn't expected a civilian guest to correct her. After a momentary daze, she regained her composure, offering a somewhat apologetic tone: "It should be one of the methods. That's all I remember."
The implication was that she still believed she was correct.
"It has never used near-field communication," Ye Qiusuo denied once again, quite displeased with this female lead's habit of speaking offhandedly.
—Knowledge requires rigor.
The atmosphere grew slightly awkward because Ye Qiusuo said this without a trace of a smile, coupled with her cool gaze, which to the uninformed eye seemed somewhat aggressive.
Crosstalk actor Jiang Fei, wanting to ease Wan Yurou's embarrassment, said to Ye Qiusuo, "Since guest number 43 says the algorithms are complex, perhaps that near-field... NFC is one of them."
Ye Qiusuo's seat was relatively high. When she glanced down at the guests below, there was an intangible sense of aloof superiority in her demeanor; under the camera's lens, her expression appeared icy.
"I already said," Ye Qiusuo was not appeased. Having had several sleepless nights, being dragged into the show, and then discovering she was inexplicably serving as a stepping stone for the female lead in a book, her mood was far from good. Yet, she still explained calmly, "Battery-free electronic skin systems commonly use near-field communication, but Tianqiu Tech's medical watch has never employed near-field communication."
Before Wan Yurou and the host could respond, another young male guest retorted, "How can you be so sure?"
Under the lights and cameras, Ye Qiusuo enunciated each word clearly: "Because the R&D for that project at Tianqiu Tech is under my purview."
Everyone present: "..."
Had they just kicked an iron plate?
The host quickly stepped in to salvage the situation: "Haha, so guest number 43 is the project lead at Tianqiu Tech? Alright, now let's see who the top thirty finalists are." The topic shifted extremely swiftly, without even expanding on the identity of 'Tianqiu Tech project lead.'
The spotlight and camera on Ye Qiusuo were swiftly moved away. She didn't mind, sitting quietly in her seat, recalling the book she had seen in her dream.
After the scoring, Ye Qiusuo happened to rank twenty-ninth, qualifying her for the recording of the second episode.
...
"Where's the file for contestant number 43? Find it," the director asked his assistant backstage after the recording.
All civilian guests had to fill out a information form before entering, basically containing name, contact details, and occupation.
"I'll go look... Here it is."
The director sat in a chair, holding the information form for guest number 43—Ye Qiusuo. His gaze fell on the occupation column, which clearly stated: Teacher.
The term 'teacher' encompassed too broad a range.
"Look up who the project lead is for that Tianqiu Tech medical watch," the director said, looking up.
The assistant searched on the computer for a while and said, "Director, it only shows a surname. This seems to be a confidential project."
"What's the surname?"
"Ye."
The director nodded: "So the lead is guest number 43."
Another staff member nearby chimed in: "A project lead at Tianqiu Tech wouldn't be that young, would they? And have time to record our show? I heard everyone at that company brings a folding bed to work, pulling all-nighters regularly."
The director thought for a moment and asked the assistant, "What else did you find?"
"Not much. It only says the project's collaborating university is Huajing University."
"Huajing University?" The staff member perked up. "Director, then guest number 43 definitely isn't the project lead. I have a relative whose child studies there. There is indeed a very accomplished Professor Ye in that field, but she's not that young."
Before the director could speak, the assistant beside him quickly looked up this Professor Ye at Huajing University.
—Ye Qiusu, a leading figure in the tech field, renowned as the solitary beauty professor.
But however much of a beauty, she was already forty this year.
The director looked at the photo on the online encyclopedia; it was completely different from guest number 43's appearance.
"Even using a similar-sounding name. Could guest number 43 be someone planted by some small company trying to pull a stunt?" a staff member voiced a guess.
The director's face immediately turned cold. Such impersonations were common in the industry—all sorts of fake heirs were everywhere—but he hadn't expected someone to dare impersonate an academic heir now.
"Get me the post-production editing team on the line," the director said, standing up with a dark expression.
...
