The Eunuch Is A Heartthrob On A Survival Variety Show [Ancient To Modern] - Chapter 5

Only five or six people had cutting tools. Although everyone was exhausted on the first night, most were still driven by the fresh, thrilling excitement of spending the night in the wild, so their movements were relatively fast.

Damahou followed behind, picking up tree branches, and caught sight of Wei Yan. “Brother, why is this Wei Yan following us again? Is he trailing you?”

Zhou Youlan noticed it as well.

“I certainly don’t want him following, but he’s here to participate in the show, and our destination is the same. Can he really be shaken off?”

“That’s true.” Damahou was startled. “Could it be that he likes you?”

Zhou Youlan’s machete suddenly slipped from his grip, and a wrist-thick tree branch was chopped cleanly in two.

“All your fans say you have a magnet-for-gay-men constitution. It looks like they weren’t making it up. Didn’t Niu Xixi come here specifically for you? I reckon this Wei Yan is probably doing the same.”

Zhou Youlan brought his machete down heavily, a surge of irritation welling up inside him.

He considered himself a straight man; at least up until now, he had never harbored feelings for the same sex, nor for the opposite sex either. The entertainment industry was crawling with beauties, but he simply didn’t like a single one of them.

Over the years, the number of men and women pursuing him was too countless to tally. Many girls would grieve for a while after being rejected and then let the matter drop, but some men were even more persistent than women.

Some men even told him they didn’t need to develop a romantic relationship, wanting only to crawl into his bed for a one-night stand just for the thrill, or hoping to trade for a bit of the resources in his hands. It had terrified him, leaving him with an instinctive psychological aversion to gay men who were overly enthusiastic right from the start.

And Wei Yan looked precisely like the type who wanted to use a trending topic with him to secure self-serving resources.

Damahou picked up that section of a branch. “Still, with someone like him, judging by that physical fitness, he won’t last many days anyway. Once he can’t take it anymore, he’ll leave on his own. If you’re annoyed, I’ll figure out a way to chase him off.”

“How would you chase him off?” Zhou Youlan gave him a sidelong glance. “What kind of ideas do you have?”

Damahou’s devious scheme surfaced. “That’s simple. Just get him injured, and even if he doesn’t quit, he’ll be forced to. Besides, the production team doesn’t care whether the guests live or die. When there’s no medicine to cure him, he’ll have to save his own skin first.”

Zhou Youlan slapped him on the back of the head again. “What kind of rotten idea is that? Why would you hurt someone?”

“Then what do you mean?”

Zhou Youlan continued chopping branches. “Just scare him a bit. He should know when to quit.”

Damahou curled his lips. Figures.

Zhou Youlan looked tall, broad-shouldered, and dark-skinned, giving off a rugged, fierce vibe resembling a wild wolf cub. Yet his actual temperament lacked any arrogant airs of a rich kid, nor was he selfish and reckless like those spoiled, wealthy second-generation heirs.

As long as his bottom line wasn’t crossed, he rarely lost his temper with anyone. Most of the time, he resembled a child, devoid of schemes and devoid of cunning.

Had the Zhou family not been protecting him, in a cutthroat place like the entertainment industry, Zhou Youlan probably would have struggled to survive against those unscrupulous capitalists.

When they returned to the campsite with the chopped branches and leaves, the fire was already burning.

Dry leaves and branches were abundant here, and the forest made starting a fire much easier than in the dense rainforest.

However, building a shelter was a difficult problem. Many people had never done it before and had no idea how to construct one so that it remained stable and effectively blocked the unexpected rain and constantly pestering mosquitoes and insects.

Just as everyone was arguing and tossing around random suggestions, Wei Yan had already begun constructing one.

First, he laid a layer of thick branches at the bottom to insulate it from the ground, then planted two upright branches on the left and right sides at shoulder height. The top ends of these vertical branches were notched into concave grooves, and a separate branch with notched ends on both sides was wedged across them to serve as the main beam. Finally, other branches were laid densely and obliquely against the ground and the crossbeam.

The dense arrangement was primarily because coniferous trees predominated in this vicinity; the gathered leaves were mostly needle-shaped, thin, and sparse, failing to provide the wide-area coverage of broad-leaved plants, which meant the branches had to be placed closer together.

Wei Yan had just observed the pine cones on the trees within the pine grove; most of the pine cone scales were naturally open and unclosed, proving that the weather had been dry over the past few days. Coupled with the bright, clear stars, it shouldn’t rain tonight, so the top layer of leaves could be kept thinner, just enough to block flying mosquitoes and insects.

The opening faced the direction of the campfire, with a few strands of tree leaves hanging upside down from it. When the wind blew, the sway of the leaves kept mosquitoes from coming close, preventing a large swarm from surrounding and biting people.

His speed was fast and highly methodical, clearly showing this wasn’t his first time doing such work.

“A lean-to shelter,” Zhou Youlan remarked.

Wei Yan nodded in silence. When campaigning alongside his father and elder brothers, the soldiers overnighting in the wild almost always constructed temporary tents in this exact manner. This method could accommodate many people sleeping together and allowed for rapid troop assembly and reaction in the event of an enemy or beast attack.

Zhou Youlan hadn’t expected Wei Yan to know this. Although it wasn’t an overly difficult operation, executing it with such fluid, unhurried efficiency still required a certain amount of experience.

“Can this even hold?” Chen Nan patted the supporting wood at both ends. “It looks like a shoddy construction project. Won’t it collapse while someone is sleeping and crush people half to death?”

He didn’t believe Wei Yan could possibly understand these things. “Don’t tell me he just watched a few random videos and tried to copy them, going crazy just to show off.”

Everyone else curled their lips in agreement. Exactly.

“It won’t.”

Surprisingly, Zhou Youlan was the first to vouch for Wei Yan, having noticed the depth to which Wei Yan had driven the wood into the ground; unless there were gale-force winds, it wouldn’t collapse.

“If you’re worried about it collapsing, you can find two trees to serve as side supports,” Zhou Youlan began working himself. “Using two tree trunks on either side as the supporting wood to build a lean-to forest shelter makes use of local materials much more conveniently. There are two trees right here.”

Several people came over to help him lift the branches. Someone scratched their hand on the sharp edge of a broken branch, and Zhou Youlan told them to be careful.

Branches that couldn’t be chopped through in one swing ended up with somewhat sharp broken ends, making it easy to accidentally scratch oneself.

“These pieces are quite neat. They look like clean cuts. Who chopped them?”

No one went to fetch branches answered, as everyone had been too busy in the scramble to pay attention.

“Lay a layer of branches at the bottom first to separate it from the ground, just like,” Zhou Youlan paused, casting a glance at Wei Yan, “just like he did earlier. This is to avoid being bitten by snakes, insects, and ants while sleeping. Remember the right triangles from school? The top of a lean-to shelter forms the hypotenuse of a right triangle. Does that make sense?”

Everyone had a sudden realization: “Got it.”

With so many of them, this kind of shelter could accommodate a few more people sleeping together, allowing them to squeeze in for the night.

Besides, it was already dark, and they didn’t have the extra energy to go back into the forest to chop trees.

The livestream remained active at all times. The production team possessed their own network equipment, allowing real-time footage to be broadcasted to the stream even deep within the mountains and forests.

The production team had scheduled an hour-long segment where guests could operate the camera independently for interactive sessions. This meant guests could freely interact with the livestream audience for one hour, limited to one person at a time on a rotational basis.

However, everyone was too exhausted, their clothes drenched in sweat and their hairstyles disheveled. Nobody wanted to appear on camera in such a wretched state.

Zhao Jie’s chosen piece of equipment was a bag of compressed biscuits. She wasn’t stingy, sharing all the biscuits with everyone. But with so many people, a single biscuit was only enough to be evenly split among three, vanishing in two or three bites.

The night was too dark; lacking lighting tools to search for food was unrealistic, and catching fish in the river was equally impractical. Thus, they could only make do with a few bites to line their stomachs for now and plan for food tomorrow morning.

A total of four shelters had been built. The female guests occupied one, while the male guests were scattered across the remaining three.

The shelter Wei Yan built was just large enough for two people to rest. Since Wei Yan had built it himself, others felt too embarrassed to come and usurp it.

After Zhou Youlan finished assigning everyone their spots, he found that only this single slot next to Wei Yan was left empty for sleep.

Wei Yan had intended to share a sleeping space with Zhou Youlan from the start; if they were spaced too far apart, he wouldn’t be able to respond in time if anything happened at night.

Everyone had already crawled into their respective shelters to rest. Wei Yan placed his backpack next to the branches, then raised his eyes to look at Zhou Youlan, clearly waiting for him.

Zhou Youlan wanted to switch with Damahou, but Damahou was busy cozying up to the female celebrities and stubbornly refused to swap spots with him.

The firewood crackled softly, and everyone else had already tucked themselves into their shelters to make the most of their rest.

Seeing Zhou Youlan’s gaze darting around, Wei Yan spoke up: “Everyone is already resting. We just have to squeeze together.”

Poisonous snakes and insects were countless in the mountains and wilderness; a moment of carelessness could cost someone their life due to these venomous creatures. Zhou Youlan was only safe right by his side.

Zhou Youlan wore a stiff face: “I am a straight man.”

Wei Yan took off his shoes, hung them upside down on a nearby wooden twig, pulled his backpack over, and lay down. “Mhm.”

To Zhou Youlan, Wei Yan’s single mhm sounded like an act of playing dumb. Stifled with frustration and with no outlet to vent it, he sat back down by the fire to add more wood.

Enduring until the middle of the night with his eyelids drooping, he ultimately ended up lying down right next to Wei Yan. Wei Yan’s eyes were closed and his breathing was steady, as though he was already fast asleep.

Zhou Youlan thought to himself that Wei Yan never missed any opportunity to latch onto him for trending topics and hype. Waking up tomorrow and seeing him sleeping right here would probably make him tickle with joy inside.