Chapter 57: Is This Female Celebrity Really This Bold?

Saying she wouldn't come for driving practice for just a day, Gu Yin ended up not seeing a single trace of Xia Qianyi for the entire week.

Lately, Gu Yin had been so busy it was giving him a headache. Two days ago, his mother suddenly insisted on bustling around her old skewered-meat stall, wanting to reopen the storefront. As a result, because of the sudden seasonal temperature drop, she caught a cold...

His mother already had some underlying health issues; she had always had a weak windpipe, and since the year before last, she had been diagnosed with mild asthma. It wasn't severe enough to require hugging an emergency inhaler at all times, but whenever a coughing fit started, it would last for a month or two minimum.

Just these past two days, after catching the cold, she had been coughing every single day...

The coughing kept her from sleeping, leaving her in a hazy daze all day long. Gu Yin felt terrible just looking at her, so he simply booked an expert appointment with the Traditional Chinese Medicine department at the Provincial Hospital and took her to see a doctor.

Why Traditional Chinese Medicine?

It wasn't that he didn't want Western medicine, but many Western medicine prescriptions contained hormones. At her age, inhaling too many hormones could actually be fatal. It was much better to drink herbal medicine to nourish and restore her health.

Every night when Gu Yin got off work, he would brew two bowls of medicine. His mother would drink one that same night, and he would reheat the second bowl in the microwave the next morning. Just taking care of his mother had him running around in a frantic mess, and on top of that, Gu悦 (Gu Yue) was stirring up all sorts of trouble over on her end...

Lately, this little girl had been coming back from evening self-study later and later, and she was nowhere to be found early in the morning on weekends. Gu Yin always had a feeling something was up, but a few days ago when he attended her parent-teacher conference, the teacher instead praised her for keeping her grades remarkably stable. This left Gu Yin with the frustrating feeling of punching a pile of cotton—he couldn't muster any force at all.

When he finally managed to corner her this weekend, the first thing out of her mouth was: "Bro, got any money?"

"Do you think your elder brother is an ATM? Only show up when you need cash?" Gu Yin, who had just walked through the front door, twitched the corner of his mouth.

Who would have thought that his high school sister, sporting a high ponytail, not only wouldn't get angry upon hearing this, but instead pouted and uttered a bizarre remark: "You shouldn't be short on money, right?"

Gu Yin simply figured his sister was completely oblivious to the hardships of the real world, and pulled out his two pockets, which were cleaner than his own face: "Take a look and tell me if your brother looks like a man with money."

"These days, only people with unclean pockets have problems." Gu Yue rolled her eyes. "Everyone uses WeChat and Alipay, who carries cash anymore?"

"If you talk back to me again, I'm really cutting off your allowance!" Gu Yin's mouth twitched.

"Tch, if you won't give it, fine..." Gu Yue pondered for a moment and said, "Then can you help me get an autograph with a personalized dedication?"

"A personalized dedication? What the heck is that?" The pun left Gu Yin completely bewildered.

"It means a personal signature written specifically for me." Gu Yue mercilessly mocked her country-bumpkin brother.

" Huh? Get it from who?" Gu Yin didn't catch on for a moment.

"Can you stop playing dumb?" Gu Yue finally ran out of patience. "Xia Qianyi, the huge celebrity. Who else could it be, you?"

"Huh? How do you know..." Halfway through his sentence, Gu Yin suddenly remembered: could it be that when he ran into Tong Liang last time, that jerk had been running his mouth and spreading it around when he went back to his hometown these past couple of days?

"Why do you want her autograph?" Gu Yin asked. "You haven't been coming home much lately; you haven't been chasing after celebrities, have you?"

If that were the case, he would actually breathe a sigh of relief. If his sister was going to chase a celebrity, at least she was following a female star who wouldn't hook up with her own fans, meaning he didn't have to worry about her running off with some dyed-blonde delinquent.

Gu Yue shrugged noncommittally and said, "She's been trending on search lists constantly these past couple of days. Bro, if you see her, help me tell her to keep it up."

"Huh?" Hearing this, Gu Yin furrowed his brows slightly.

Xia Qianyi had been out of contact for over a week now, and this was the first time he had heard any news about her from someone else's mouth.

Come to think of it, he had been way too busy lately to have any time to surf the internet or scroll through videos...

Taking a free moment that evening, Gu Yin picked up his phone, searched for Xia Qianyi, and a whole string of trending topics popped up immediately:

"#Xia Qianyi exposes industry insider secrets: company executives actually used music copyrights to blackmail her into sleeping with them!#"

"#Xia Qianyi appears late at night at the luxury mansion of Beijing socialite Du Jingrui, publicly slapping Du Jingrui in the face!#"

"#Xia Qianyi unilaterally announces termination of contract with Yixing Entertainment, and renounces all music copyrights!#"

"Hiss..."

Gu Yin stared in absolute, jaw-dropping shock.

Wait, was this female celebrity really this bold?

Exposing secrets and beating people up—anyone online who didn't know the full story would think she had completely lost her mind.

"She... she didn't learn this from me, did she?" Gu Yin felt a lingering sense of dread, suddenly recalling the complicated look Xia Qianyi had given him that day, as if she had learned something profound from him...

He definitely couldn't afford to take the blame for this!

Just as he was deep in thought, his phone chimed with a "ding-dong." Gu Yin picked it up to take a look, and nearly dropped the device out of sheer fright...

Xia Qianyi: "I'm back. Driving practice tomorrow?"

Just a simple eight-character sentence, without a single emoji attached. Yet for some reason, Gu Yin inexplicably got the feeling of a queen returning to her throne, expecting him to personally roll out the welcome wagon.

Gu Yin shook his head: "Practice. Who could possibly out-practice you anyway."

Xia Qianyi: "?"

...

The next day, at dawn, facing the morning glow, Gu Yin woke up early. After heating up the medicine for his mother and placing it on her bedside table, he grabbed his car keys and headed out.

It was very early, not even seven o'clock. Gu Yin wasn't driving the instructor car today—Liu Ge had dropped him off with it yesterday, but mainly because his own "battle chariot," the BYD Qin, had finished repairs, and his cousin had notified him the previous day to come pick it up.

To be completely honest, the practice cars really couldn't hold a candle to his beloved BYD Qin. Even though driving a manual transmission was already deeply engraved into Gu Yin's DNA, the sheer silkiness of an automatic electric vehicle was something you truly had to experience to believe.

He remembered how back in the first two years when electric vehicles were just starting to take off, those veteran drivers he knew would trash-talk them at every turn, calling EVs garbage and useless novelties. Yet once they hopped in and took a spin around the block, every single one of them ended up eating their words, their faces stinging from the sheer force of the slap.

Even with taking the time to pick up the car, it was still quite early, and Gu Yin would have had plenty of time to punch in at the driving school. However, less than three kilometers after leaving his house, he saw traffic cones blocking the road ahead...

"Road construction, road construction, fucking road construction again!"

Gu Yin was seething with rage. What on earth was wrong with those bureaucrats? Was road construction genuinely the only thing capable of proving their achievements while in office?!

Was that pittance of a rural cooperative medical insurance hike every year really just meant to be squandered by you bastards like this?!

Forced to take a wide detour, he arrived at the driving school somewhat late. Gu Yin scrambled over in a panic to punch in, only to realize he had completely forgotten to turn on the livestreaming equipment for *Reconciling with Life*.

"I'll just have to stream a bit longer tonight." Thinking this to himself, Gu Yin switched on the camera.

The moment the broadcast went live, the livestream room was packed with people, and the comment section scrolled by at lightning speed:

【The throne of first place belongs exclusively to me, whoever snatches it is a dog! Wakaka!】

【Ahhh, Goddess Qianyi hasn't come for a whole week, where did she go?!】

【Daily question: Has Xia Qianyi arrived yet?】

...

It seemed that because Xia Qianyi had been trending so frequently lately, and some people were speculating that her unhinged behavior was related to Gu Yin, the traffic on Gu Yin's *Reconciling with Life* stream had been horrifyingly high every single day, with massive crowds calling out for Xia Qianyi around the clock.

...