A real killer playing a villain; the guy surnamed Zhen in Detective, run!

#Cold-blooded and perverted on screen, a Pinduoduo sales tycoon off screen#

This term suddenly appeared at the top of Weibo's trending topics at 1:17 AM.

The number of real-time discussions surged at a rate of 8,000 per minute, surpassing the total volume of all entertainment topics during the same period.

"Give Lao Liu a shout-out! The orange cat with the best food and treatment in all of China!"

Lu Yuan: I can endure hardship, but my cat can't.

"Wait, did you guys notice something? His running posture is incredibly low, his center of gravity is very low, his stride frequency is stable, and he's carrying such a huge box at such a fast pace. What level of physical fitness is that?"

"Why are you digging into physical fitness? Go dig into whether that windbreaker is really 29.9 yuan? I want to buy the same one."

An e-commerce platform launched "Lu Yuan's Style Windbreaker" and "Lu Yuan's Style Thermos" overnight. The product description of the latter reads: "500ml capacity, standard with six goji berries."

Old Poison's Studio.

All the data indicators on the four screens were showing red – not his data, but Lu Yuan's.

Of the top ten trending topics on Weibo, three were directly related to Lu Yuan. His video did indeed garner over 50,000 reposts, but the comments on all of them were—

"Hahahaha, thanks to Old Poison for providing the hilarious first-hand material!"

"Old Poison, are you the data team Lu Yuan hired? This Bohe fan conversion rate is too high!"

"@EntertainmentNumberOneDog, you spent half a month painstakingly filming this video, and it helped someone gain eight million followers. How do you feel about that? Can you share your thoughts?"

Old Poison was so angry that he threw the mouse away.

The plastic casing hit the wall, and the battery cover bounced off and rolled under the table.

He's been in the industry for ten years. He's seen over two hundred celebrities suffer. He's always the one deciding their fate.

Today, the bullet was fired, but it took a detour and ended up in my own knee.

---

An old residential area in the south of the city, third floor.

Lu Yuan's phone screen lit up and then went out, then lit up again. The Weibo notifications never stopped.

He rolled over and tucked his phone under his pillow.

The sixth cat poked its head out from the hammock at the top of the cat tree and meowed at him.

"sleep."

The sixth brother called out again.

"The salmon is sold out. I'll see if there are any discounts tomorrow."

The hammock on the cat tree swayed twice before settling back down.

The phone under the pillow vibrated again. It was a WeChat message from Su Qinghan.

Have you seen the trending topics?

Lu Yuan took out his phone and typed with one hand.

"Nothing. What's wrong?"

The other end replied instantly: "You're trending at number one. Because you're too stingy when it comes to groceries."

Lu Yuan stared at the line of text for three seconds. "That means you know how to manage your finances, not that you're stingy."

"The whole internet is laughing."

"Let him laugh if he wants." After typing those four words, he added, "My windbreaker wasn't actually 29.9 yuan; it was 24 yuan during a promotion."

There was a long silence on the other end, then a facepalm emoji was sent.

Lu Yuan tossed his phone back under his pillow and closed his eyes.

It trended on social media all night.

At 7 a.m., the hashtag "Cold-blooded pervert on screen, Pinduoduo war god off screen" was still stuck at the top of the list and refused to come down. The growth curve of the number of views was sticking straight up, and even Weibo's recommendation algorithm was almost giving it PTSD.

Lu Yuan yawned and got out of bed. In the hammock on the top floor of the cat tree, Lao Liu was lying on his back with his four paws in the air, not a single cat hair had moved.

"get up."

no response.

Lu Yuan reached into the cat food bag, grabbed a handful, and poured it into the bowl. The kibble made a crisp sound as it hit the stainless steel bowl. Lao Liu's ears perked up instantly, and the cat sprang from the three-tiered hammock, landing steadily with its head buried in the bowl.

Lu Yuan went to the kitchen to boil water, unscrewed the lid of the thermos, and counted out six goji berries from the bag.

......

Eight hundred kilometers away, a top-tier TV station building.

Escape Room producer Yan Ji stood in the conference room, his hands supporting him on the table, staring at the data on the projection screen.

Discussion volume, Weibo index, Douyin views, Baidu search heatmap—all curves point to the same name, and it's a clear lead.

"He's the one." Yan Ji turned around, glancing at the table full of planners and directors. "For the Escape Room special episode, spare no expense to bring this guy over."

The planning team leader raised his hand: "Mr. Yan, he doesn't have a management company or an agent. Who should we contact?"

"Su Qinghan, the director of 'Black Gold'." Yan Ji picked up his phone. "I'm closest to her. Call her."

---

Su Qinghan's studio.

The black coffee had gone cold, and a layer of oil had formed on the cup.

When the phone rang, she had just finished a whole night of color matching and monitoring the market. Her shoulders and neck were stiff as a board. After listening to the other party introduce themselves and their purpose, she listened to their introduction.

Su Qinghan's gaze shifted to the computer screen, where Lu Yuan, wearing that 24-yuan windbreaker, was running wildly under a street lamp carrying a cat tree, a scene that was extremely comical.

Send the proposal to my email.

She picked up her coffee cup and took a sip; it was cold and bitter, making her frown.

I put down the cup, grabbed my bag, and headed out.

---

An old residential area in the south of the city, third floor.

When Lu Yuan opened the door, he was still holding a cat toy in his right hand, and half of the feather hanging from the rope had been bitten off by Lao Liu.

Su Qinghan was wearing a beige trench coat, her hair casually tucked behind her ears, her jawline and brow bone so sharp they could be used to cut paper.

Without waiting for Lu Yuan to make way, he squeezed through the door.

A neatly bound proposal was slapped on the coffee table: "Escape Room, a top-tier variety show on a leading TV station, wants you to be on a special episode."

Lu Yuan glanced at the program logo on the cover.

"A locked room?"

"right."

"The one where a bunch of people are chased through a dark room by costumed crew members, and they're screaming their eyes out?"

"right."

Lu Yuan leaned back on the sofa and took a sip from his thermos.

"No, I'm doing fine now. I have food and drink, and Lao Liu has a new climbing frame. I'm doing okay."

"And I'm a coward."

Su Qinghan looked at him. This man, who had broken through the serial killer's mental defenses in the interrogation room, claimed to be a coward.

"Six figures." Su Qinghan pulled her phone out of her bag and shoved the screenshot of the quote Yan Ji had sent her in front of him.

"No-fault notification fee, payment will be made immediately after recording."

The thermos flask was suspended in mid-air. The goji berries on the lid slid back into the water with a "plop".

"Director Su." Lu Yuan placed his thermos on the coffee table, leaned forward, and clasped his hands on his knees. His expression shifted almost as quickly as it had in the interrogation room. "I've loved the dark since I was a child. Cracking a locked-room mystery has always been my lifelong dream."