There’re Always Paranoid Thoughts to Monopolize Me - CHAPTER 44.2

Judging from their expressions, the other two male guests clearly had similar internal reactions—after all, among the four celebrity newcomers, even July, who looked the youngest, had just turned 18 recently. With a real academic genius joining this “Academic Genius Show,” they really didn’t know how to react for a moment.

However, Qi Tian, having been informed earlier, reacted the quickest.

She smiled brightly at Qin Ke. “Oh my, I heard from the production team that it’s a first-year high school girl with exceptionally good grades, the top scorer in the high school entrance exam, and first in her grade for all official exams in the first semester of high school. I thought I’d see a little sister wearing black-framed glasses—I really didn’t expect that you’d look no different from people in our industry.”

“…”

This statement didn’t mention Qin Ke’s appearance directly, yet every word was aimed at her face.

And Qi Tian’s earlier pause was clearly because—she had imagined an unremarkable or even unattractive female academic genius, and knowing in advance about Ling Shuang, a guest who posed no threat to her, she was prepared to dazzle the production team and sit comfortably in the spotlight of beauty. She didn’t expect to find a non-celebrity whose appearance was no less attractive than her own as soon as she entered.

The smile in Qi Tian’s eyes twisted for a moment, but she eventually covered it up, greeting everyone warmly as she sat down among the four.

Seeing Qin Ke’s delicate features and beautiful face up close, Qi Tian felt uncomfortable for a long time—if she had known earlier, she should have whispered more in Song Qingzhuo’s ear to “screen” the academic genius selection quota through her.

Despite her regret, there was nothing she could do now. Qi Tian could only suppress her smile and chat softly with the people at the table.

Qin Ke remained impassive, rarely responding to the other’s warmth.

She didn’t much like Qi Tian.

It wasn’t because of what Ling Shuang had said. Perhaps it was more likely because… she felt that Qi Tian’s masked-like smile when looking at people was extremely similar to Qin Yan’s.

Just as the conversation in the room was becoming less awkward, the door of the private room was suddenly pushed open.

A person from the director’s team and several cameramen walked in.

Everyone was stunned.

No one had expected this sudden situation.

After all, in the process outlined in the “mini-script” given by the production team… it wasn’t written like this!

At this moment, the spokesperson from the director’s team, walking at the front, spoke with a very punchable smile—

“Surprise, surprise, don’t get excited everyone. It’s like this, this afternoon is the recording of our first episode of ‘Academic Genius Show’, but before that, we want to give everyone a warm-up session.”

July, who looked the youngest, was the quickest to respond. He pretended to be startled, covering his chest. “This isn’t a surprise, it’s clearly a shock! Who gives a warm-up by suddenly running out without any notice?”

Qi Tian came to her senses and didn’t want to be outdone.

However, she didn’t pretend to be shocked, but just blinked at the guy from the director’s team, “But I’m a bit curious now, what kind of warm-up?”

“Actually, it’s very simple.” The guy from the director’s team grinned.

“.”

Qin Ke inwardly added, the more they say it’s simple, the more it indicates it won’t be simple at all.

As if to validate Qin Ke’s thought, the guy from the director’s team spoke up.

“In this afternoon’s recording, each guest present will be given a new identity—as it’s the first episode, our director’s team has decided to give a special privilege.”

“What privilege?”

Surprisingly, Ling Shuang spoke up to ask.

“The privilege of choosing identity cards first—we’ll play a small game, and the winner of this game will get the right to choose from several clues hinting at identities.”

Ling Shuang glanced inconspicuously at Qi Tian and asked coldly, “What about the others?”

The guy from the director’s team scratched his head, “The others will follow the original plan, with the identity cards shuffled and randomly drawn.”

“…”

The room was quiet for two seconds, then Qi Tian smiled and clapped her hands, “I like this—so what game is it?”

The guy from the director’s team smiled mysteriously at her words.

“Of course, it’s a game that perfectly fits our show’s name.”

The room fell silent again.

What was the show’s name?

‘Academic Genius Show’.

A not-so-good premonition suddenly arose in the hearts of the four celebrity newcomers.

Their gazes uniformly fell on Qin Ke.

At the focus of their gaze, Qin Ke was calmly zoning out—with a foggy head and throbbing temples, she felt she was already entering a state of transcendence.

After all, she would get her pay once the recording was over.

As for her performance…

She didn’t even have the energy to see where the cameras were now.

Well, let everything be as it may.

Amidst the various reactions of the five guests, the door of the private room had opened again, and a movable small blackboard was pushed in.

After it stopped, the guy from the director’s team walked over with a smile.

“This game is really simple.”

As he spoke, the guy from the director’s team reached out and flipped over the small blackboard.

A jumble of Chinese characters was arranged before everyone—

[Sha Shi Jia Ma Hu An Yong Ru Jing Xie Si Luan Xiao Shan Ben Lu Dong Tan Nan Bei Jun Yong Hai Chuan Wei Dan Si San]

(TL: 沙 (shā): Sand, 石 (shí): Stone, 嘉 (jiā): Excellent, auspicious, 麻 (má): Hemp, numb, 胡 (hú): Beard, nonsense (also a surname), 安 (ān): Peace, safe, 永 (yǒng): Eternal, forever, 如 (rú): Like, as, if, 淨 (jìng): Clean, pure, 謝 (xiè): Thank, decline (also a surname), 似 (sì): Similar, resemble, 亂 (luàn): Chaos, disorder, 笑 (xiào): Laugh, smile, 山 (shān): Mountain, 奔 (bēn): Run, rush, 虜 (lǔ): Captive, prisoner, 東 (dōng): East, 談 (tán): Talk, discuss, 南 (nán): South, 北 (běi): North, 君 (jūn): Lord, gentleman, 用 (yòng): Use, apply, 海 (hǎi): Sea, 川 (chuān): River, 爲 (wèi): For, because of (traditional form of 为), 但 (dàn): But, however, 四 (sì): Four, 三 (sān): Three)

July scratched his forehead and asked softly, “Are we supposed to mark the pinyin for these?”

“…..”

The guy from the director’s team who was about to speak suddenly choked.

After several seconds, he managed to squeeze out a stiff smile.

“No, this is a poem. Please reconstruct it. The first person to do so will get the privilege of choosing their identity.”

Upon hearing this, the guests all fell silent, immediately focusing their gaze on the small blackboard—since this segment wasn’t in the mini-script where the director’s team reminded them of the schedule, it meant it was entirely up to their performance.

The four celebrity newcomers were all on this show for one purpose, so of course, they didn’t want to miss such an easy opportunity to stand out.

However, two minutes later, the four celebrity newcomers strongly requested to put quotation marks around the word “easy”.

July was the first to look dejected, speaking to the camera with humor. “I’m sorry to you all, my elementary school Chinese teacher, middle school Chinese teacher, high school Chinese teacher—I’ve forgotten everything you taught me.”

Next to him, the usually quiet Gu Yuncheng looked at the paper in his hand, which was covered in scribbles, and let out a long sigh.

His agreement with July’s sentiment was obvious without words.

As for the other side, Ling Shuang, who already had a blank expression, became even more expressionless. However, when her gaze fell on Qi Tian next to her, who was equally unsuccessful, she seemed to feel much better.

The only hope could be placed on…

Ling Shuang turned back, looking expectantly towards the corner at the girl who, unlike the four of them, didn’t seem to care about camera exposure—

A blank sheet of paper.

Ling Shuang: “?”

Ling Shuang looked up curiously, and then, thanks to her excellent geographical advantage, she discovered…

The fair-skinned girl was taking a nap—in the camera’s blind spot.

Ling Shuang: “…………”

Ling Shuang: I only slept at 4 AM last night, how come I’m not as sleepy as her!

Unfortunately, Ling Shuang wasn’t the only one who noticed Qin Ke’s near-sleeping state—

Qi Tian, who had been observing everyone’s reactions, also noticed.

She had already been wary of Qin Ke stealing her spotlight and now, seeing her so blatantly slacking off under the production team’s nose, she inwardly sneered. On the surface, she smiled and spoke softly.

“Oh, I’ve caught someone slacking off—Qin Ke, are you particularly confident? Look at you, you’re almost falling asleep!”

“…”

Of course, Qin Ke wouldn’t actually fall asleep during such an important recording. Her head was just extremely foggy, and with the room being so quiet, she expected this segment would be cut by the director’s team anyway, so she just wanted to close her eyes and rest for a moment.

However, upon hearing that sweet female voice, Qin Ke knew she wouldn’t be left in peace.

—

Not just for this second, but for this entire episode… perhaps even the whole season.

Why did she always attract such “pests”?

Qin Ke almost wanted to reflect on herself, wondering what she had done to attract so many pests.

As these thoughts flashed through her mind, Qin Ke had already opened her eyes.

Noticing that the camera had also been drawn over by Qi Tian’s words, Qin Ke smiled faintly.

“No, it’s just that I’m not used to writing on paper. I’m more accustomed to mental calculations.”

Hearing this, a look of disdain flashed through Qi Tian’s eyes—

What mental calculations, it’s clearly just an excuse.

From the moment the question board was put up, Qin Ke had looked at it for less than ten seconds before closing her eyes!

Thinking this, Qi Tian’s face only showed a sweet smile. “Is that so? It sounds amazing. Have you calculated the result in your head then?”

“…”

Qin Ke was familiar with the personality of narrow-minded people like Qi Tian, just as she was familiar with Qin Yan. So she knew very well that if she didn’t intimidate her today, the other party would absolutely not know how to behave.

Thinking this, Qin Ke looked at the small blackboard, stared for two seconds, then turned to the guy from the director’s team beside the blackboard.

“This question actually has two solutions, right?”

The guy was stunned, very surprised.

“You’ve figured it out?”

Qin Ke took the initiative, stood up and walked over, stopping in front of the blackboard.

The girl raised a finger, her fair fingertip lightly tracing across the small blackboard.

“The simplest is the mathematical method. Since it’s said to be a poem, it’s very likely to be either a five-character or seven-character quatrain. Judging by the number of characters, it’s obvious—it’s a seven-character quatrain.”

Qin Ke picked up a piece of chalk and quickly numbered each character.

“1 to 28, assuming they aren’t randomly scrambled, there must be a pattern. The simplest would be to extract them word by word.”

As she spoke, Qin Ke divided the 28 characters into 7 groups of 4, starting from number 1.

As she finished explaining, someone among the four behind her exclaimed—

“Ah, I think I can see something.” It was July who spoke, but after saying this, he made a puzzled sound, “Wait, no. ‘Sand Hu Jing Xiao Tan Jun Wei’? It doesn’t make a sentence.”

Qin Ke smiled helplessly and turned around.

“Read it backwards—’Wei Jun Tan Xiao Jing Hu Sha’. It’s from Li Bai’s ‘Song of Prince Yong’s Eastern Tour (Part Two)’.”

The guy from the director’s team beside her reminded, “Only the first person to write out or recite the entire poem wins, you know.”

Qin Ke nodded, walked to an empty space on the blackboard, and without even looking at the jumbled characters, directly wrote the entire poem from memory—

‘Song of Prince Yong’s Eastern Tour (Part Two)’ 

(Tang Dynasty) Li Bai

San chuan bei lu luan ru ma, si hai nan ben si yong jia. 

Dan yong dong shan xie an shi, wei jun tan xiao jing hu sha.

(TL: “The chaos caused by the northern invaders is as tangled as hemp in the Three Rivers region,

While in the Four Seas, refugees flee south like during the Yongjia era.

But with Xie Anshi from Dongshan, we’ll clear the Hu (northern) sand with laughter and talk for you.”)

Among the four guests behind, except for Qi Tian, the other three had basically given up. Only Qi Tian was still trying to piece it together using the method Qin Ke had described—however, she was completely unfamiliar with this poem, so naturally couldn’t match Qin Ke’s proficiency.

Therefore, by the time Qin Ke finished, she hadn’t even written out the complete second-to-last line.

Qi Tian was grinding her teeth in anger internally, taking out her phone to secretly send a text message under the table.

At this moment, among the others.

July was looking at Qin Ke’s back, “I noticed ‘An’ and ‘Shi’ earlier, and thought it was talking about Wang Anshi, but I couldn’t find the character for ‘Wang’ no matter how I looked, sigh.”

Hearing this, Qin Ke hesitated for a moment, but still spoke up.

“This poem isn’t talking about Wang Anshi of the Wang family, but Xie Anshi of the Xie family—Dongshan Xie Anshi refers to the famous story of Xie An’s comeback. This prime minister’s story is quite legendary, his achievements in history are no less than Wang Anshi’s.”

At this point, Ling Shuang spoke up after a silence. “Qin Ke, the second method you mentioned, it wouldn’t happen to be relying on accumulated knowledge to recognize it at a glance, would it?”

“…”

Qin Ke smiled faintly, giving her a very humble silence as an answer.

The guy from the director’s team finally came back to his senses, muttering internally that this was indeed worthy of being the academic genius specially recruited to support the show, otherwise today’s scene would have been really cold, and they would have had to rely on cheating and editing…

Thinking this, his smile towards Qin Ke became several degrees more sincere, “Well then, it seems this privilege goes to Qin—”

Before he could finish, two noisy sounds came from the door.

“Second Young Master Song, Second Young Master Song, you can’t go in! They’re in the middle of recording!”

“Tch, why can’t I enter my own invested show?”

The latter half of this sentence was already coming directly into everyone’s ears as someone pushed open the door.