Chapter 38
Interstellar Internet Celebrity Live Broadcast Compet.i.tion (Arc 3.11)
Jing Yang ate dinner at the restaurant in the lounge area and then returned to his room to prepare to take a shower, and then go to sleep.
The restroom was filled with mist, the warm water was flowing over his body when the bathroom door suddenly opened, startling Jing Yang. Immediately he opened his eyes to see that it actually was Bowie standing at the door.
Jing Yang turned off the water and pulled over the bath towel to cover his waist. He looked at Bowie somewhat guardedly and asked, "What are you doing?”
Bowie entered the bathroom and closed the door, leaning back on the door with his arms crossed. He looked Jing Yang over a few times and then said, "I want to chat with you.”
"At this time? In this place? Chat?" Jing Yang looked at him inexplicably. "Can you let me get out and put on some clothes first?”
Bowie walked forward a few steps, and Jing Yang was forced to retreat, backing up against the wall. Bowie placed both his hands on the wall, trapping Jing Yang between his arms.
"If you want to chat about the training camp, we can go out and slowly chat about it." Jing Yang could feel the desire in his eyes, he also really wanted to confirm right now whether or not he was his lover, but he still had the compet.i.tion tomorrow. If he were really his lover, he would definitely not be able to escape tonight.
"We can talk about business at any time in the future, right now let"s talk about some personal matters." Bowie"s face approached closer and closer, whispering in Jing Yang"s ear, "We"ll just chat here.”
Jing Yang"s ears were very sensitive, he couldn"t bear him blowing on his ears like this. He reached out to push his face away a bit, asking, "What do you want to chat about?”
"From the first moment I saw you, I was attracted to you. I want to pursue you." Bowie confessed to him very directly.
"I accept your pursuit, but everything should have its own process. Can we not first go out, and then sit down and discuss with each other our interests or something, get to know each other first." Jing Yang attempted to talk it over with him.
"My interests are extremely simple, before I was only interested in earning money, and now I have another one, you." Bowie pinched his chin, rubbing his lips with his thumb. "Since you have already agreed, then we are lovers now, can I enjoy my welfare?”
Jing Yang covered his hand, saying nervously, "I only agreed to let you pursue me, I didn"t agree to be with you. If you progress like this, are you going a little too fast?”
"This is already very slow for me, did you know how much torture it was for me to only be able to see you through the projection these past days?" He stroked his reddened cheek. "Did you know how much I wanted to touch you, to hug you?”
When his hand slipped over Jing Yang"s neck, Jing Yang trembled a bit. He pressed down on his hand, not letting him continue. If it had been someone else, Jing Yang would long have already beaten him until all his teeth had fallen out when he entered. But when he faced Bowie"s eyes full of his desire to devour him, his will to resist became weaker and weaker.
Bowie cupped Jing Yang"s head, kissing him hard. He contained his lips and stretched his tongue in to wreak havoc on his mouth.
Jing Yang was kissed dizzy, his soul became restless from longing, that empty feeling again appeared, he needed to be satisfied. This kind of familiar desire of his soul allowed him to determine that this person was his own lover, but he still used his last thread of reason to push him away.
"You calm down a bit, we"re moving too quickly, I can"t take it. We should still slow down a bit……" Jing Yang desperately tried to stay clear-headed and find a reason to refuse him.
Bowie picked him up easily and walked out of the restroom. He pressed him on the bed and kissed him while saying, "I can"t wait any more, if we slow down, I might be unable to resist charging over to pounce on you while you"re competing. I don"t mind the gazes of other people, if you also don"t care about them…….”
"Ah!" The towel around Jing Yang"s waist was ripped off, and he was startled a bit. He knew that he could no longer resist, because his body had thoroughly surrendered to him.
~
Jing Yang limply lay in his arms, and Bowie hugged him, endlessly kissing his face and lips.
"You really went overboard." Jing Yang complained, he had almost fallen apart from this guy. His movements were still as domineering as before, making him completely lose his spirit afterwards.
"You still enjoyed it though, right?" Bowie kissed him again.
"I still have to compete tomorrow, you scoundrel." That feeling just now of his soul almost being sucked out of his body made him feel incomparably sluggish. But this kind of stimulating pleasure still let his heart and body feel extremely enjoyable.
"That"s why I only did it two times, just two times. If it were not because you still needed to compete tomorrow, I would not have let you go for an entire night." Bowie"s broad palms swam over his body. "I fell in love with you at first sight, ever since the moment I first saw you, I was unable to take my eyes off of you. I immediately ran over to see you, but even though we were so close, I still missed you so much. You have hooked my soul away, did you know?”
"Do you want to use your loving words to submerge and then drown me to death?" Jing Yang raised his limp hand, touching his face.
Bowie pressed him down, laying his hand on his heart. "You also like me, I can feel it.”
Every time Bowie used the excuse of mooching off his food to get the opportunity to see Jing Yang, he would use immense effort to conceal his own emotions, not daring to reveal any behavior that was too out of the ordinary. He actually didn"t care about what other people thought about him, he was just afraid that it would have a bad influence on Jing Yang, who was still in the middle of the compet.i.tion.
But even if he had already tried to restrain himself, from the gentle gaze he exposed when looking at Jing Yang, and the ambiguous atmosphere from the two men"s spiritual communication, it was still seen by some netizens. But the good news was that the number of people who hoped that they could be together was in the majority, and also because of the majesty and power of the royal family, no bad rumors were disseminated.
~
The next day, Ruth announced to the contestants that the wilderness survival portion of the compet.i.tion was over. From today on, they would be entering the extreme sports challenge portion.
In the compet.i.tion tasks, they would do an extreme sports relay race on the first day. There were three extreme sports events, and each team would decide amongst themselves how to allocate their members. The next day they would have aerial surfing performances, with each team picking a representative to compete.
Previously Kedi had so many fans precisely because he was good at extreme sports. It was also because he had exposed Milton many times using protective equipment while challenging extreme sports that he had caused Milton to be attacked so badly.
Finally reaching the compet.i.tion content that he was best at, Kedi was full of confidence and fighting spirit. He wanted to use all possible methods to press down on Milton"s arrogance, and through his performance during this time"s compet.i.tion portion, redeem his image with the netizens.
Kedi"s brainless fans also hoped that he would be able to thoroughly crush Milton this time, and even left comments saying that Milton talking to Earl Wilson about creating a training camp and saying something about using the help of high tech products wasn"t wrong, was really only him finding excuses for himself. The live broadcast of the extreme sports challenge would completely expose his true strength and prove that he simply would not be able to complete those events after leaving his high tech products behind.
The three events were whitewater speedboating, cross country obstacle motorcycling, and wall climbing. Some people"s facial expression immediately changed just listening to these three events. The danger of these events was really high, even completing all of them would be simply too difficult for some of them.
But the good thing was that there were some loopholes. Ruth said that if you failed during the challenge, you could restart the challenge or give up the challenge. This also meant that they could just pretend to fail and avoid getting into danger. Anyways giving up the challenge was only not getting a score and would not be considered as withdrawing from the compet.i.tion. After all, they just couldn"t complete it, and the organizers also couldn"t just force them to die, could they?
Jing Yang let Jake and Danny work together to challenge the whitewater speedboating, and he alone would complete the cross country obstacle course motorcycling and the wall climbing.
Before he headed over to the waiting area for the next event, Jing Yang instructed them, "Go slowly, don"t be too anxious. It doesn"t matter if you"re slower a little, I can catch up afterwards.”
Kedi heard Jing Yang"s arrangements next to them, and in order to be able to completely go head to head with him, he also made the same arrangement. He told Rhett and Goodyear to complete the whitewater speedboating together, and he would complete the cross country obstacle course and wall climbing himself.
Despite his self-confident appearance, Goodyear actually looked at him with some distrust, asking, "Can you do it?”
Kedi exposed a slight smile that seemed to suggest he had a trick up his sleeve. "As long as you guys don"t take too long, I guarantee that I will be able to shake him off an entire stage. But I think that you guys will not be unable to beat even Jake and Danny those weaklings, so this time we will definitely win.”
Whitewater speedboating was indeed easier to manage with two people, one would control their balance, and one would control their direction and speed. But they had to make sure they worked together well enough, otherwise it was very easy for them to accidentally overturn the boat. If they did not control well enough and hit a stone, they would be seriously injured if they were lucky, and even killed if unlucky.
Jake and Danny acted according to Jing Yang"s words. They didn"t pursue speed, only steadily driving forward. When they encountered a steeper slope, they directly gave up speed, making efforts to steady the speedboat. They only wanted to not overturn the boat.
Rhett and Goodyear almost hit a rock because they were going too fast, but fortunately Goodyear, who was controlling their balance, was able to flip the speedboat right over, and the bottom of the boat sc.r.a.ped past the boulder, not directly crashing into the stone. But the boat had overturned, so they could only start over from the beginning.
Jake and Danny progressed the entire way steadily and surely, and actually did not overturn once. They even arrived two minutes earlier than Rhett and Goodyear.
After he received the baton, Jing Yang immediately started the off-road cross country motorbike and drove up the mountain, starting off toward the next event.
Kedi set off two minutes later than Jing Yang, he immediately chased after him to catch up and wanted to pa.s.s him on the narrow uphill mountain path.
The mountain path was very rugged and difficult to travel on, and there would also sometimes be stakes and stones rolling down on them. They had to avoid those things, otherwise they would be knocked down the mountain if they were hit.
After Jing Yang had dodged two consecutive stakes rolling down, Kedi took the opportunity to catch up to him on the side, but he also found a giant stake that was directly heading toward him. The two people chased after each other, the atmosphere was extremely exciting and tense, the people watching could not resist their heartbeats speeding up.
When they encountered a quagmire, Kedi directly drove right through, the mud splashed all over, his own body was also covered in mud. When Jing Yang had spotted the quagmire from afar, he already started accelerating, and as he approached, he forcefully raised the front tire, directly flying above Kedi"s head over the quagmire, getting in front of him.
Going downhill was actually even more difficult than going uphill, and also more dangerous. Obstacles constantly appeared on the road to further increase the difficulty of their biking.
Traveling downhill also allowed Jing Yang to pull far ahead of Kedi in an instant. Jing Yang obviously was better able to use the obstacles to help himself go faster, and help him stay more stable when he was making his jumps.
Seeing the distance between the two pull even farther, Kedi started to become anxious. But the more anxious he became, the more shaky his riding was. He had become tilted several times and nearly fallen down.
Jing Yang arrived at the last event much earlier than Kedi. He threw down the motorbike and immediately started to climb up the stone cliff.
The perfectly vertical stone cliff, combined with the complete lack of protective equipment, made even watching them climb up like this extremely disturbing.
For most of the contestants, when they arrived under the cliff and looked up at the cliff, they immediately chose to give up. There were too few spots that could act as handholds or footholds, and the wall became even smoother the higher up they went. The cliff was over a thousand meters tall, if you climbed halfway and fell down, you would die horribly.
Jing Yang was like a spider, tightly attached to the wall, his four limbs working together to climb up. Often only a single toe would have a hold on the wall, and at those times he could only use his fingertip strength and pick some small b.u.mps on the wall to climb up.
Kedi wanted to catch up to Jing Yang, so he was very impatient in his heart, which made his movements appear somewhat fl.u.s.tered. A few times he grabbed at nothing and almost fell right down, just watching him made people unable to resist breaking out into a cold sweat.
Jing Yang"s climbing movements made the people watching him excited and exhilarated, he perfectly displayed the strength and skill required for rock climbing. His climbing looked like a brilliant performance.
And Kedi"s actions that seemed like he might fall down at any moment, besides making the people watching feel terrified and on edge, they felt no desire to keep on watching.
By the time Kedi had climbed halfway up, Jing Yang had already made it to the top.
The contestants were all cheering for him, and the netizens were also cheering him on. Jing Yang stood at the edge of the cliff, the largest flying camera was constantly flying around him to shoot. On Star Network, all of the screens had focused on him.
He had conquered this cliff and trampled it under his feet. Even though when looking from afar, he seemed very small compared to the tall cliff, but at this moment his image in the other people"s minds was incomparably tall. This was exactly the charm of extreme sports—relying on his own strength, he completed something impossible. Conquering something natural and powerful was a very exciting matter.
When Kedi returned to the gathering point, his face was extremely ugly. He felt that all of the gazes falling on him were full of sarcasm, and even his teammates Rhett and Goodyear stood far away from him after seeing his expression. No one went up to comfort him.
"It"s all your fault!" Kedi had already lost his reason from his anger. He pointed at Rhett and Goodyear to vent his anger, blaming them for his loss. "If you hadn"t been so slow during the first event, how could I have lost to him? You two couldn"t even beat the two weakest people, you were actually even slower than them!”
Kedi"s accusation made Rhett and Goodyear"s expression immediately also become ugly. Goodyear retorted, "Please do not be mistaken, we were only later by two minutes, but you were thrown away half a stage by him. If you"re not as strong as other people, you should just generously admit it, putting the responsibility on someone else will not be able to cover up your incompetence.”
"You said I"m incompetent?" Kedi glared at him, becoming even angrier. "Since you feel like I"m incompetent, then don"t be in the same team as me. Tomorrow"s aerial surfing is precisely what I am best at, the scores that I earn myself will not be counted as yours.”
Goodyear mocked, "You also said that you were best at wilderness survival, you also said that you were best at identifying plants, and you also said that you were best at extreme sports. You seem to be best at many different things, but in reality you are inferior to other people.”
Goodyear had voiced the thoughts in the netizens" minds, their affection for Kedi had already dropped to a negative number. Kedi"s supporting votes continued to decline, and the number of people who continued to support him, had already become very few.
Translator Notes:
[1] become restless – 蠢蠢欲动, idiom, literally means begin to stir
[2] incomparably sluggish – 缓不过来, I think this just means like extremely 缓, which means sluggish
[3] aerial surfing – 空中冲浪, literal meaning, I had previously put like flyboarding since I didn’t quite remember what it was, but it is aerial surfing. If you see flyboarding still left in here anywhere, please lmk!
[4] trick up his sleeve – 胸有成竹, idiom, means plan in advance
[5] steadily and surely – 稳扎稳打, idiom, literally means to go steady and strike hard
[6] extremely disturbing – 惊心动魄, idiom, hair-raising, shaking to the core
[7] die horribly – 粉身碎骨, idiom, literally torn body and crushed bones
Random Notes:
A little over 1.5 hours: 2:30 pm – 4:10 pm, for 4.4k characters to 3k words. This took slightly longer for some reason, I think it was bc of the extreme sports lol. That’s not really a topic I delve into very often in my life, though I remember watching some videos probably about BTOB (the only kpop group I follow btw, and they’re amazing check them out) where I think one of the members may have done something like the flyboarding. So I’m not sure exactly if it’s like jetpacking on the water or if it’s actually surfing. I’ll check again tomorrow when we actually get to the next chapter about it.
Also I was right~~ the smex occurs this chapter! Don’t you hate that it just gets censored. Smh people, we’re all adults here. Right?? They keep getting together so late every arc so far.
Edit: Well, for at least two years BTOB was the only kpop group I followed. A month ago I started to follow SVT, mainly the China Line. I recommend Night and Rain by Xu Minghao to everyone ?