The moment Huo Jingyuan left, Tang Can took advantage of the follow-cameraman not having come in yet and immediately started pinching bruise-like marks onto his own neck.
He had not expected himself to be the type whose skin marked so easily. Never mind how exaggerated the “hickeys” he pinched out looked—he was beginning to worry there might actually be something wrong with his body. But all the parameters from his previous physical had been fairly normal, especially his blood count…
Tang Can lowered his head and looked at the scrapes on his left hand and forearm that he had never really taken seriously. They seemed to be healing normally too?
He had covered them with waterproof dressings for a little over ten minutes while soaking in the hot spring, and now the wounds looked almost exactly the same as before.
Because he had barely bandaged them and had kept them well ventilated after cleaning, the light abrasions on his forearm had already dried completely. The slightly worse spots around his wrist and the heel of his palm were only mildly swollen around the edges.
For now, everything looked fine. He could pay closer attention to whether they left marks once they scabbed over.
After washing up, Tang Can quickly climbed into bed and reunited with the sleeping little cub.
His cub addiction was acting up. If Old Man Huo had not suddenly appeared, he would already have finished inhaling the child to his heart’s content. He had been holding back for far too long!
Tang Can first planted several soft little kisses on Dengdeng’s tender cheek, then buried his face in the child’s shoulder and neck and took one deeeeeep, endless inhale. That faint milky scent with its powdery sweetness instantly made his fatherly love overflow!
Ah~ his cub~ his soft, sweet-smelling precious cub~ so adorable he wanted to eat him in one bite!
Tang Can had dealt with at least several hundred young children in his previous life, yet little Huo Dengdeng could still effortlessly trigger his cute aggression—the strange instinct that made the brain react aggressively to something overwhelmingly adorable, making a person want to squeeze it, knead it, or even take a tiny bite.
Tang Can badly wanted to lift the child’s pajamas and plant kisses all over that especially round, squeezable little belly tonight. Unfortunately, Dengdeng was wearing a one-piece silk sleeper, and taking it off would make too much noise and might wake him.
Besides, the night-vision livestream camera was standing right in the corner of the room. Even if only for appearance’s sake, Tang Can had to pretend to be a human being, right?
Tang Can sighed inwardly. Having such a good cub right beside him yet being unable to inhale him until satisfied—how was he supposed to sleep?
Then he closed his eyes and lost consciousness the very next second. Even cutting the power could not have shut him down faster.
Tang Can slept beautifully, completely unaware of what kind of earthquake those two deep-red bruise-like marks he had pinched onto himself had set off in the livestream.
【Aaaaaah Tang Can, how can you possibly fall asleep?! At your age, you should be doing what should be done—doing it!】
【Holy damn, dating shows are flavorless now. Nothing hits like an actual married couple!】
【Those hickeys are way too red! Hiss, slurp! I already can’t wait to watch the three-person family livestream later!!! Wei Kai, hurry the hell up!!!】
【Tang Can’s hickeys are making even me blush. Hard to tell whether Tang Can has been deprived too long and was burning with desire, or whether his husband lost control and got too rough, hehehe~】
【Flew back into the country and rushed over overnight. Think about that carefully~ So spicy~ slurp slurp!】
【For fuck’s sake, who was the bastard that lied to me before? Saying Tang Can’s husband was a golden toad, and that Tang Can drugged him, forced a pregnancy, and climbed the social ladder only to be despised… turns out every bit of it was bullshit!】
【+11111 Those rumors screwed me over so badly!】
【Am I the only one who thinks Tang Can’s husband showing up feels too deliberate? And how do I put it… we haven’t seen his face, but the height and body proportions look way too much like a male model. Does anyone get what I mean?】
【Yes yes yes! I feel that too. TYChen’s husband is already the extremely rare kind of CEO who has both money and looks, but his appearance still falls within a reasonable range. Tang Can’s guy feels more like a male model he hired to fake a loving-marriage scene and crush the rumors. Otherwise why refuse to show his face the whole time?】
【Could be the kind of handsome guy where everything below the neck is edible but the head ruins it. Maybe his face is big, his features are ugly, and his skin is all rough and bumpy? That would line up with the old golden-toad rumor [chin in hand].】
【Hahahahahaha, dying. Not impossible, but with those insane head-to-body proportions I would sooner believe Tang Can hired a male model than believe that body comes with a golden-toad head.】
While Tang Can’s livestream passionately debated this mysterious husband who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, the discussion in the other livestreams had long since shifted to how inhumane the production team was.
After the other guests carefully examined themselves, it turned out Youyou was not the only person bitten by a tick. Cen Jiaojiao had one too.
Cen Jiaojiao had not shown any abnormal symptoms yet, but she still planned to fly straight to the neighboring province with the twins and get comprehensive viral screening done before anything else.
Although Cen Jiaojiao usually seemed delicate, dramatic, and noisy, once she discovered she had been bitten—and that it was her rather than either child—she actually felt far more relieved.
She contacted her manager and family and immediately arranged the soonest flight for herself and the twins. Her painter husband, after receiving the news, dropped everything and took an overnight flight to the neighboring province to meet the mother and two children.
Faced with a husband who fussed over her in every possible way on the phone, Cen Jiaojiao inevitably became genuinely clingy, coquettish, and syrupy again.
But because the person on the other end really was an accomplished young talent who adored his wife, viewers found it much easier to accept this time.
【This young couple is so sweet. Looking forward to Jiaojiao’s husband coming on screen!】
【Tsk, what a powerful stink of love. Madam deeply immersed in romance, are you not going to do something about your son and daughter fighting again?】
【Confirmed: marriage turns people into baby-voiced clingers [dog head].】
【Tang Can next door too. The second his husband arrived, he turned syrupy. Every sentence ended in a whole row of tildes [laughing-crying][laughing-crying].】
【What! Tang Can’s husband came???】
【Shocking! The legendary golden-toad tycoon has appeared?!】
It was not only Cen Jiaojiao’s side. Except for Wen Tong’s livestream, which had ended early, Tang Yichen’s livestream also gained a lot of discussion about Tang Can’s husband suddenly appearing.
But most of the attention there still focused on the important business of fans controlling the comments and organizing mass reports.
Tang Yichen had actually lost his footing and fallen down the stairs on his own. Neither father nor son had a fever or had been bitten by a tick, and the new bruise on Tang Yichen’s chest had been caused when his stepson headbutted him.
But his fans’ emotions had already been whipped into an explosion. The unscrupulous production team absolutely had to give an explanation. They would not allow the show to continue trampling recklessly over the guests’ safety.
At other times, fans who jumped around screaming every single day were incredibly irritating, but in situations like this, when they were targeting the production team and defending the artist’s rights, they were surprisingly useful.
Cen Jiaojiao had few diehard fans left, but some casual fans were still willing to report and repost on her behalf.
Wen Tong’s career had steadily risen over the years. Even though her fans were unhappy that she had secretly married and had a child—and especially unhappy that she had chosen such a garbage scumbag—they still united against outsiders at a time like this and loudly rallied for her.
Only the viewers camping in Tang Can’s livestream were a little different. They had spent the whole trip eating, drinking, and playing along with Tang Can and had absolutely no idea how miserable the other three groups had truly been.
These viewers wanted to report and condemn the production team too, but what they wanted to report was why Tang Can’s husband was not being filmed face-on. Unfortunately, there was no report category for that, so they could only follow the crowd.
Still, after watching an enthusiastic viewer’s compilation titled “The Production Team’s Seven Deadly Sins,” they could not help admitting that Tang Can really had something going for him. Somehow, he had perfectly avoided every single trap.
Although it was called “The Production Team’s Seven Deadly Sins,” the main accusations were actually aimed at the local guides the show had hired.
The first sin: the ginseng incident.
The guests and staff might not have been able to tell cultivated garden ginseng from forest-grown ginseng, but the local guides certainly should have recognized the difference at a glance. Yet they had deliberately guided Cen Jiaojiao into buying ginseng at an inflated price.
Of course, in an outdoor variety show this incident by itself could still be considered within reason. The problem was that Cen Jiaojiao’s ginseng incident and Tang Yichen’s deer-antler incident were extremely similar—both involved suffering a huge loss because of misleading guidance from the guides.
Tang Yichen’s fans could not tolerate it and listed it as one of the sins, so naturally Cen Jiaojiao’s swindling incident got dragged out to lead the charge too.
The second sin: the hypothermia incident.
Every guide had carried spare clothing in their bag, clearly because they knew Changyun Mountain had been rainy lately.
In the wilderness, one of the greatest dangers was getting soaked and becoming hypothermic. Yet under those circumstances, the production team still worked with the guides to draw the guests deep into the mountain. It was far too black-hearted.
And that directly led to the third sin: Youyou and Cen Jiaojiao being bitten by ticks.
There was also the fourth sin: maliciously taking the guests deep into the mountains where they could not find supplies, forcing them to exhaust themselves and get hurt for nothing. After all, Tang Can, the one person who ignored the production team and never went deep into the mountain, had been the only guest to stumble across reishi mushrooms this time.
Then there was the fifth sin. The guests had not only been exposed to ticks; during the livestream, viewers had seen large numbers of trees with bark stripped off by black bears. That meant the guests’ mountain route significantly overlapped with black-bear activity. They had not actually encountered one, but the thought still sent chills down people’s backs.
The sixth and seventh sins concerned Tang Yichen’s deer antlers and his fainting from low blood sugar.
After reading all seven accusations, viewers concluded that while the production team did bear responsibility for poor supervision, most of the blame lay with the black-hearted local guides deceiving everyone.
The fact that the middlemen at the mountain-foot produce collection station pocketed most of the profit had also left viewers with an especially terrible impression.
Whether they were random spectators or viewers who had followed the other three guests throughout the whole livestream, everyone was united in anger.
Dissatisfaction with the Changyun Mountain guides even spread to Changyun Mountain’s tourism industry. Many people said they would never consider visiting a place riddled with traps like that no matter how beautiful the scenery was.
Only viewers who had already been regulars in Tang Can’s livestream before the mistress scandal reversed and exploded in popularity were completely bewildered:
【Wait, what? None of you know? All of that was required by the production team! The old guide who came down the mountain with Tang Can said he thought he was only leading a group up to record a program. He only learned after signing the contract that they also had to cooperate with staged acting.】
【Exactly! I saw it too! Damn, I opened my phone and the sky had fallen. How did Changyun Village suddenly become everyone’s public enemy???】
【People with IP addresses around Changyun are already rushing out to whitewash it this fast? Save your energy. Everyone knows your area is famous for low-quality people.】
【??? The person above is the one embarrassing our free-shipping-region IPs. Fine, fine. I’m from the same free-shipping region too, so let me say something.
Go find the recording from Tang Can’s livestream after he came down the mountain yesterday morning. Not only did the production team require the guides to act, the old guide told Tang Can in advance about the tricks at the collection station. He even gave Tang Can two enormous bags of dried mushrooms. The old man was genuinely such a good person!】
In reality, this was far from the first time Wei Kai had screwed someone over.
Within the industry, the man was notorious for chasing buzz. As long as something generated attention, everything else had to step aside.
That was why he invited guests who were currently the most controversial and discussion-worthy, and why, when he set traps, he went for the throat without mercy.
The reason nothing had happened to him so far was partly because he had a powerful major platform backing him, and partly because he always selected a convenient scapegoat in advance. This time, that scapegoat was the Changyun Mountain guides.
If Tang Can had not pulled one of his bizarre stunts—not only refusing to enter the mountain, but also chatting with the old guide on the way down until they accidentally exposed contract details the production team had forbidden them to disclose—
then Wei Kai could have casually tossed the whole blame onto the guides and cleared the stage without taking a scratch.
After all, Changyun Mountain was a remote mountainous region only developed for tourism in the past two years. The tourism industry was still in its infancy, the local government was not especially capable, and the area had almost no voice in publicity or crisis PR. There was no way it could compare to the giant platform standing behind the production team.
But even now, the problem was not especially serious. The moment Wei Kai came down the mountain and heard about it, he immediately arranged for people to take down every recording clip circulating online.
“Shining Little Ones” had not only twenty-four-hour livestreams, but also released an edited version one week after each installment ended.
Thus, while viewers could buy VIP access and follow the livestream online, recording it themselves counted as infringement. In the early stages, to attract more viewers, the production team tacitly allowed free edited clips to circulate on major platforms—especially the video site commonly known by a single letter—and even tolerated users directly uploading long stretches of recorded footage.
But once the production team actually decided to intervene, it could get practically everything removed within minutes. In the end, the power to control the narrative always remained in Wei Kai’s hands.
He could not erase the memories of the viewers who had watched Tang Can’s livestream at the time, but they were only a small minority. Their words alone carried little weight, and they had no recording to prove that the simple, honest old guide had also been a victim.
Even if online public opinion was not as completely one-sided as Wei Kai originally planned, the tiny amount of noise Tang Can caused could easily be drowned out by buying paid commenters and steering the discourse.
Wei Kai could instead take advantage of the public dogpiling the Changyun Village guides and pick up a pile of free trending topics and discussion for nothing.
Besides, there were not many directors these days bold enough to go after celebrities as hard as he did. Even though people constantly criticized him, the shows he produced were undeniably entertaining. Even a parenting variety show already sliding downhill could open weak and then explode in his hands.
Discard his conscience, harvest wealth. Another day of Wei Kai winning everything!
*
Tang Can not only fell asleep instantly these days, he slept absurdly well and had somehow also lost the biological clock that used to wake him naturally on time.
He slept until nine-thirty and only woke because the old guide called him.
“You’re still not up? Young man, you… you’re really something!”
Tang Can rubbed his face and cheerfully sighed. “I think I’m pretty impressive too.”
The old man was speechless. “I wasn’t praising you.”
Tang Can smiled bashfully. “Hehe~ I’ll just take it as praise~”
Old man: “…”
The livestream viewers were immediately amused by their impromptu comedy routine:
【Hahahaha, Old Man: The last time I was this speechless was the last time!】
【I’m dying. Put these two together and they could perform a Spring Festival Gala sketch at any moment.】
【I understand now. No wonder Tang Can’s skin is so good. He can really sleep!】
【Oh my, judging by the old man’s voice, he probably hasn’t been affected by all the online garbage. Thank goodness!!】
【…Is there a possibility that he simply doesn’t know yet?】
Tang Can had technically finished recording yesterday and only needed to catch a flight back to Yun City that afternoon. The old guide still had a tour group to lead shortly, so he did not keep chatting.
“If you’re awake, hurry up and accept the money I sent you on WeChat. The market was pretty good this morning. They sold for more than sixty yuan above what I estimated, so I sent it all over. We already agreed—you have to accept it!” The old man’s tone turned stern, as though terrified Tang Can would refuse.
Tang Can exclaimed in surprise, then immediately checked the time. “You already finished the morning market this early??”
The old man proudly said, “Of course. I’m the most dependable man in Baiyun Village.”
Tang Can thanked him and immediately accepted the transfer. Seeing that, the old man finally relaxed completely and went off to handle his other business.
【The old man is genuinely so good! With his simple, honest personality, I refuse to believe all the other guides are bad people!】
【But what we think doesn’t matter. People who believe will always believe. People who don’t believe won’t change even if you talk your mouth off.】
【+1. This time Tang Yichen’s fans are the ones organizing the reports and complaints. Those people break out in hives the second they hear Tang Can’s name, let alone asking them to believe something involving Tang Can and the old guide…】
Tang Can spent his days busy squishing his cub and went to bed early at night, so he was always late to learn any news.
This time was no exception. The moment he ended the call, his attention shifted to the child sitting at the foot of the bed playing with the jumping frog and little spinning top.
Tang Can smilingly leaned over and inhaled the milky scent from the child, then rubbed the little fellow’s fluffy head, made even fluffier by bedhead. “Fun?”
The child blinked his huge dark eyes and nodded.
Tang Can propped himself up on one arm and confirmed, “Do you think all three of these colors are pretty?”
The child’s nod suddenly became much more vigorous. It was obvious this cub truly did like green. Tang Can had guessed correctly.
“Daddy thinks they’re pretty too. Then when Daddy buys things for Dengdeng in the future, should Daddy choose more green things?”
Bad Dad had gotten up late and left his little tummy a bit hungry, but after hearing that, the corners of Dengdeng’s mouth became difficult to suppress again.
Tang Can grinned and gave the child a few more vigorous rubs. Only after stretching did he finally pick up the cub and officially get out of bed. “Come on. Time to eat!”
The child could not help flashing his tiny white teeth. Cooperating as Tang Can lifted both little pale paws into the air, he waved them and chirped, “Food-food!~”
The livestream continued all the way until father and son boarded the plane.
Tang Can only realized belatedly, after reaching the airport and discovering his was the only guest group left, that all three of the others had run into problems.
Wen Tong and Cen Jiaojiao had flown to the neighboring province early because of tick bites. Tang Yichen’s condition after fainting from low blood sugar and falling seemed rather serious. In any case, he and the child had taken the earliest flight out before dawn.
Thus, among the four groups this time, only Tang Can’s completed the entire filming period. Of course, the other three groups all met special circumstances allowing them to leave early.
But correspondingly, shorter livestream hours meant much less footage available for the edited program. So the production team discussed with Tang Can whether he could stay live a little longer.
More importantly, Tang Can was scorching hot right now. Every extra minute of livestream was pure profit.
The production team offered two conditions. First, father and son would be upgraded from business class to first class. Second, Tang Can would receive additional payment proportional to the extra livestream time.
Tang Can naturally would not refuse a good thing delivered directly to his door. But remembering his respected big boss Brother Old Man’s latest instructions—not only moving him to a different house, but also assigning him a secretary—Tang Can said he could only extend the livestream until they got off the plane.
The two sides reached an agreement, and Tang Can smoothly took the child into the much better first-class cabin.
A little over three hours was neither especially long nor especially short. Tang Can had slept far too much the night before to need a nap, and this time there were no noisy twins around. He decided to watch something with Dengdeng to pass the time.
If he wanted to cater to a young child, animation would obviously be best. But in his previous life Tang Can had watched far too many cartoons just to have common topics with his kindergarten students and had grown a little sick of them. This time he set his sights on fantasy blockbusters suitable for both children and adults.
Flashy special effects, explosive visuals, and superheroes that neither children nor adults ever seemed to tire of. Even if a little child could not understand the full story, he could still enjoy the spectacle.
Dengdeng naturally did not reject Tang Can’s suggestion and obediently nodded while hugging his squash plush.
Once the plane finished taking off, father and son immediately began choosing.
The entire process consisted of Tang Can flipping through the selections while Dengdeng picked whichever movie poster interested him most.
Tang Can had actually already chosen the Hulk for the child in his heart. Unexpectedly, when the little fellow reached the Hulk, his gaze was drawn instead to the neighboring “Infinity War.”
That film had created one of the franchise’s most famous villains, but very few people started with that installment—especially when a glowing green Hulk was sitting right next to it.
Tang Can was genuinely curious. “You want this one? Not the green one beside it?”
The child blinked his big eyes and shook his head, then stretched out one tiny pale paw and pointed at Thanos, the purple sweet-potato monster taking up half the “Infinity War” poster. With his other paw, he shook the squash plush in his hand. “Daddy!”
Tang Can: ?
What a boy. What a deeply filial boy.
This cub really remembered everything. Every time he saw an ugly creature with a squash-shaped face, he had to recognize it as his father again…
Tang Can remained powerless to stop him. The only person to blame was Old Man Huo for behaving inhumanly and never looking after his own child.
Even last night’s brief appearance had happened without the child seeing him, and the agreement forbade Tang Can from mentioning him publicly. Tang Can could only correct Dengdeng a little. “Your other daddy isn’t that… distinctive-looking…”
The child, however, nodded very seriously. “He is!”
One second earlier, the livestream had still been bouncing back and forth between inhaling the cuteness of the cub and cursing the production team:
【This is so fucking frustrating. I’ve got the recording saved in my hands and can’t post it… holy crap? Dengdeng called Thanos Daddy???】
【I’m so sick of those brainwashing rumor posts online—baby, what did you just say?!! Your big daddy looks like THAT???!!!】
【Well damn. Don’t tell me that spicy man who had me completely obsessed last night has a purple-sweet-potato face? [oxygen mask.jpg]】
【Not necessarily purple-sweet-potato. Dengdeng means he looks like both the squash and Thanos. Extract their shared traits: huge square jaw, trapezoid face, and one wrinkly ugly thing…】
【This is beyond the problem of a shrimp-style handsome guy where the head is disposable. This is fraud! Isn’t the anti-fraud app going to intervene?!】
【MY EYES!!! I genuinely cannot imagine a man with that kind of body having a Thanos head! Aaaaaah no wonder he refuses to show his face!!!】
【Tang Can, you married couple deceived me so badly! [sad frog waterfall tears.jpg]】
【Sisters, calm down. I don’t think it’s possible. Looking at Dengdeng’s tiny face, there’s no way he could have been born from a Thanos-looking man!】
【Why not? Thanos just happens to be a blue-eyed foreigner too… fuck fuck fuck, everything lines up!!!】
Father and son watched movies all the way there, while the newly sprouted shippers in the livestream had their hearts shattered all the way there as well. At the same time, someone else was breaking down even harder: Secretary Chi, waiting at the airport to pick them up.
This! Had to be! Tang Can! That black-hearted! Rotten bastard! Deliberately! Misleading! The young master!
What decent human being looked like a giant purple sweet potato crossed with a squash?!
And besides, what kind of dazzling, unparalleled, one-of-a-kind man was President Huo?!!!
In all these years, Secretary Chi had never seen a more perfect domineering CEO than Huo Jingyuan.
From the day he joined the company, he had firmly chosen to follow Huo Jingyuan. Huo Jingyuan had indeed valued him highly and kept him as his chief secretary for many years.
Now, although he had been transferred away from his original post, it was because he had been entrusted with an even more important mission. Even without considering the school-district apartment he had not yet received, he had both the responsibility and obligation to correct the young master’s mistaken understanding.
And although he looked down on Tang Can, he could still tell the boss now intended to draw closer to him. Since becoming entangled was already unavoidable, then the boss’s dignity had to be maintained in full!
*
After Tang Can got off the plane with the child, he first waved goodbye to the livestream viewers.
By the time he came out carrying Dengdeng in one arm and pushing a suitcase with the other, a crowd of reporters who had rushed over after hearing the news were just about to swarm forward when more than a dozen burly men in black physically held them back.
With bodyguards clearing the path, father and son reached the pickup area without difficulty.
A stretched Rolls-Royce Phantom was already waiting there. Secretary Chi, dressed in a sharp suit, opened the rear door with a smile.
If there had been enough time, Secretary Chi would have wanted to dye his hair blond too and force out a few lines in an exaggerated posh British accent.
Tang Can had always defined himself as a male nanny earning one hundred thousand yuan a month. Even after Old Man Huo suddenly went crazy and flashed into the show last night, Tang Can had assumed they were merely changing residences.
He had already felt the villa in Lijing Yayuan was too remote. If he wanted to take the child swimming, shopping, or out to play, it was inconvenient even with a car.
But this sudden leap in luxury level before his eyes…
Tang Can sat in the top-tier luxury car holding the child, feeling slightly dizzy.
When they arrived, his jaw dropped even harder.
Good lord. Hongyuan was not the upscale residential compound he had imagined at all. It was a private estate nestled against mountains and water!
Tang Can was not the only bumpkin who had never seen anything like it. The small child in his arms had not either.
From the moment the car entered the estate, father and son’s mouths never closed. Their sharp little gasps rose one after another.
They remained stunned all the way until they got out of the car. Then Secretary Chi, chin proudly lifted, led them into the main building, where the palace-like elegance and luxurious furnishings stunned them yet again.
Tang Can had no real eye for fine things, but even he could tell everything in sight looked extraordinarily high quality. In simpler terms: visibly expensive.
Before this, Tang Can had never been able to understand what the original owner could possibly have been dissatisfied with while living in a villa, driving a car worth more than a million yuan, and collecting a salary of one hundred thousand yuan every month.
After seeing Hongyuan, though, he could understand a tiny bit.
Tang Can came from generations of poor farmers. He would not dare dream this extravagantly… Even moving in made him worry his fate was not rich enough to suppress a place like this… Compared with Hongyuan, the villa in Lijing Yayuan looked like a bare unfinished shell…
Secretary Chi found Tang Can’s bumpkin expression irritating, but still reminded him at the appropriate moment, “You can first take the young master to choose a room. Other than the top floor, which is exclusively President Huo’s, you may choose any other room you—”
Secretary Chi had not finished when Tang Can whipped his head around in a three-hit combo of shock. “Top floor? President Huo? Exclusively his?”
Old Man Huo was going to live here too??
