Elephant immediately reassured her. "They're just asking you to drink with them, right? So what if they're rich? If you don't want to go, it's not like they can force you. This is my bro's bar!"
The girl quickly said, "Elephant, I'm just worried I'll get drunk with them. Just keep an eye on me, okay? I'll cut you in for 300 later."
"Now we're talking!" Elephant's eyes lit up.
Only then did the girl relax and walk toward one of the tables.
Having known Elephant for so long, she knew he was a loyal guy she could count on.
One DJ track ended.
A new song began to play.
The sound of the turntables stopped. Jiang Xiaobai stepped down from the DJ booth, trading places with the next DJ.
She was on break now, so she picked up her phone to check it. She'd received a flood of messages, nearly all from guys asking her out. She deleted most of them at a glance, not even bothering to read past the sender's name.
When she saw a message from the contact saved as 'Scumbag,' she tapped it open.
"Come to the office when you're on break. There's something I need to talk to you about!"
Seeing the message, she was tempted to ignore it, just as he'd ignored her when he'd walked off earlier.
But a thought was just a thought. Her legs carried her toward the office area against her will.
'He wants me to come to the office... I wonder what for.'
'Could he be planning some kind of office fantasy game, considering he's a well-known internet scumbag?'
'What kind of woman does he think I am?'
'Next thing I know, all his sweet talk will turn into him "loving me more than anyone"… right up until he walks out the office door!'
For some reason, she was so angry she wanted to stomp her foot.
Finally, she reached the bar owner's private office. Just outside, she saw the scumbag himself, arguing into his phone. "Look, miss, let me tell you, that line—'No one loves you more than me before we check out'—I've absolutely never said that. Wouldn't a person who does that be a total animal? How could I, Chen Jincheng, possibly do something like that?"
Jiang Xiaobai curled her lip.
'I've seen it all now. It's the first time I've ever seen someone call himself an animal.'
'He's definitely trying to sweet-talk some girl, denying everything.'
So she said deliberately, "You sure ran off fast this morning!"
She'd said it on purpose, to let the girl on the other end of the line know that this guy really was a scumbag who would do exactly that kind of thing.
'Let's see how he's going to talk his way out of this one.'
Seeing the dumbfounded look on his face, just as she'd expected, made her feel a little smug.
Chen Jincheng really was dumbfounded. He was in the middle of a live stream. Who would have thought Jiang Xiaobai would suddenly barge in and drop a line like that?
The girl on the other end was stunned, too, and blurted out, "Holy shit, my mom told me to stay away from scumbags. I'm out, I'm out!"
Chen Jincheng sighed, looking at the disconnected call. He'd finally found a girl willing to go live with him.
For any other male streamer, especially one who catered to a female fanbase, a stunt like this would have been a career-ending disaster. But his stream was different. The chat, instead, grew bizarrely enthusiastic:
"666, is this the Ancestral Master putting 'I love you most before check-out' into practice?"
"Cheng, give us the details of your escape!"
"Please share the secret to running off so fast in the morning!"
"..."
The Ancestral Master truly lived up to his name. He didn't just preach the gospel; he lived it.
The fans were fired up.
Chen Jincheng gave Jiang Xiaobai a helpless wave.
'Didn't her words just imply that I slept with her and then ditched her first thing in the morning?'
'I was already planning on signing her as my first publicity project. Her walking right into it like this is actually a great start.'
Hearing that the girl had bailed, Jiang Xiaobai had a smug look on her pretty face. When the scumbag waved her over, she walked to his side, smiling brightly.
But when she glanced at his phone screen, she froze.
He was live streaming. And there were 5,374 viewers online.
"???"
'Did all those people just hear what I said?'
A strange wave of shame washed over her.
"Pull up a chair and sit down," Chen Jincheng said.
Jiang Xiaobai's brain felt like it had short-circuited. She heard his words and obeyed almost automatically, pulling up a chair and sitting down beside him.
Chen Jincheng immediately adjusted his phone, bringing Jiang Xiaobai into the frame. The moment her beautiful face appeared, the stream of comments seemed to freeze for a second before a dense barrage scrolled across the screen:
"Holy shit, Cheng... no, Ancestral Master, teach me your ways!"
"Ancestral Master, teach me your ways!"
"Ancestral Master, teach me your ways!"
"..."
The unified comments made Jiang Xiaobai's jaw drop. She was speechless. 'Teach them what?' she thought. 'How to be scumbags?'
Chen Jincheng, of course, knew exactly what his fans meant. He just smiled and explained, "Everyone, don't get the wrong idea. This young lady is a friend of mine. We just have a very innocent relationship!"
"666!"
"We get it! 😉"
"Cheng, you're amazing!"
"..."
Seeing these comments, Jiang Xiaobai wanted to strangle herself.
'It felt like I'd just dug myself a massive hole. Is this going to be all over the internet tomorrow? Is everyone going to know I got played by this scumbag?'
'This is the first time I've seen my fans this fired up. It looks like following the path of the Ancestral Master from my past life was the right move.'
He continued, "Alright, jokes aside everyone. This young lady's name is Jiang Xiaobai. You should all go give her a follow."
As he spoke, he turned to Jiang Xiaobai. "Xiaobai, you have a Tiao Yin account, right? What's your Touyin Number?"
Jiang Xiaobai snapped back to reality and quickly replied, "It's just Jiang Xiaobai!"
After speaking, she cleverly sent the scumbag a "Tiao Yin Number One" gift. The reason she'd let him have his way with her last night—aside from him being handsome and the fact that, as the bar owner, he could be her patron—was mainly because he'd promised to make her an internet celebrity, to make her famous.
'Who wouldn't want to be an internet celebrity if they had the chance?'
'A lot of people online complain about influencers, but that's mostly just because they aren't the ones being famous.'
Chen Jincheng saw the gift and smiled. "Xiaobai just gifted a Tiao Yin Number One, so she's on the contributor leaderboard. Everyone go give her a follow. She's a really great girl."
"If Cheng says she's great, she must have passed his 'physical examination'."
"A 'negative distance' examination, if you know what I mean. How else would he know the girl's great!"
"If Cheng says she's great, I'm definitely hitting that follow button!"
"..."
Although Jiang Xiaobai found the comments in the chat a bit disturbing, she also noticed her Tiao Yin followers were shooting up. She'd quickly gained over 1,000, more than doubling her original follower count.
That made her very happy.
'The scumbag has a bit of a conscience after all.'
The rest of the stream was simple. Chen Jincheng followed the playbook from the Ancestral Master's dating guide from his past life, deliberately making intimate gestures toward Jiang Xiaobai while insisting, "We're really just pure, platonic friends!"
By the time the stream ended, Chen Jincheng was stunned to see that his concurrent viewership had broken 10,000 for the first time ever.
With 1.43 million followers, that number was insane. After all, many female influencers with several million followers might only pull in two or three thousand viewers for a stream.
It showed that a good portion of his followers actually tuned in to hear his banter!
He'd even received more gifts than usual today, breaking 20,000 for the first time. After the platform's cut, he'd still made over 10,000.
'This proved his new direction was the right one.'
'If I can make ten thousand in gifts every stream, that could solve some of my financial problems. Plus, I just got that song, 'Trajectory.' If I play my cards right, I can make a killing off it on Tiao Yin, too.'
Things were suddenly looking up.
After the stream ended, he transferred the 1,000 yuan back to Jiang Xiaobai.
"Why are you sending it back?" Jiang Xiaobai asked, confused.
But Chen Jincheng just shot back, "Holy shit, you just slept with me, and now you want me to take 1,000 yuan from you? What does that make me, a gigolo?"
"..." Hearing this, Jiang Xiaobai just rolled her eyes, speechless. Then she viciously tapped 'Accept Payment.'
'This guy... he actually turned it around on me!'
'How can anyone be this shameless?'