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To Xu Ruanruan’s exasperation, due to Gu Si’s absence, the only person left without a date, Sheng Mingzhu, unexpectedly joined her and Ning Qingyan’s date.
Watching Sheng Mingzhu sticking to Ning Qingyan and even feeding him food, Xu Ruanruan inwardly cursed her bad luck—whose date was this, really?
Even if it was bound to fail, she still had to maintain her dignity. So, Xu Ruanruan joined them, turning it into a three-person outing.
Bickering, eating—honestly, it was surprisingly pleasant.
The only one struggling was Ning Qingyan. He had barely escaped the battlefield among the male contestants, only to find himself trapped in another battlefield among the female contestants.
But this time, he didn’t run away like before.
While he didn’t neglect Xu Ruanruan, he showed a subtle preference for Sheng Mingzhu.
For instance, when getting drinks for both of them, he put the straw in Sheng Mingzhu’s cup beforehand. Or, when Xu Ruanruan playfully teased him, he remained unbothered. But when Sheng Mingzhu did the same, his ears would turn red.
All these details were sending a strong signal to the audience in the live stream: the boy had fallen for Sheng Mingzhu.
The two female guests, focused on their banter, didn’t seem to notice much. But the viewers? They were analyzing everything with a magnifying glass!
As a result, the live chat exploded:
With Sheng Mingzhu unexpectedly joining the date, major fan accounts of the Ning-Sheng CP started creating analysis videos, highlighting every little moment of sweetness. The CP videos, filled with sugary interactions and double standards, went viral, even drawing in casual viewers who ended up becoming hardcore fans.
Before long, the Ning-Sheng CP ranking skyrocketed into the top three. The official program’s social media page was flooded with fans passionately promoting them.
This also confirmed one thing—this couple was mutually invested. Barring any major surprises, they were definitely ending up together.
For a show where the whole premise was to prevent couples from forming, having an undercover contestant who was actively keeping the only successful couple together made no sense.
In contrast, the other male contestants showed no enthusiasm at all, making it obvious that the undercover was one of them.
By process of elimination, after ruling out Huo Qi and Xu Ruanruan, the only ones left were Wen Shijin, Gu Si, Lin Qingqing, and Qiao Li.
Soon, major detective bloggers on Weibo started posting lengthy analyses, and most of them narrowed their suspicions down to Qiao Li and Gu Si.
Both had moments where they seemed to be interfering with Ning Qingyan—Gu Si with his flirty remarks and casual interactions, and Qiao Li with her occasional jealousy-fueled comments, like “You sure have a lot of fairy sisters.”
Meanwhile, Ning Qingyan, using his secret advantage, pushed a Ning-Sheng CP highlight video to the top of the trending list.
Fans were completely swept away by the romance, screaming that this was the only true love story of Heartbeats Accelerating and begging for a happy ending.
As a result, suspicions about Ning Qingyan being the undercover agent nearly vanished, while votes for Gu Si and Qiao Li as potential undercovers soared.
By the third night, after 24 hours at the top of the trending list with a “HOT” tag, the video finally dropped from the number one spot.
Some rational viewers and industry professionals noticed something was off, but in the face of overwhelming fandom momentum, their voices were drowned out.
Soon after, the show announced that the contestants could now freely choose their CP partners for a final round of sweet dates, provided both parties agreed.
Shocking haunted houses, escape rooms, tandem bungee jumping—Ning Qingyan and Sheng Mingzhu did it all, having the time of their lives.
Despite being scared, Ning Qingyan—being the “boyfriend”—kept shielding and reassuring Sheng Mingzhu.
Their interactions were sweet, innocent, and restrained—exactly like a freshly minted couple still shy around each other.
The live stream audience? Completely obsessed.
Meanwhile, the contestants who didn’t choose a CP were randomly paired by the show and forced into missions together.
Gu Si, who had only indulged in his emotions for one day, came back at night to see the CP highlight video trending.
Watching Ning Qingyan’s obvious favoritism, Gu Si’s usually lazy demeanor darkened, his heart aching.
The once overly clingy Gu Si suddenly started avoiding Ning Qingyan. His room was now piling up with empty liquor bottles.
Huo Qi had also seen the trending video. But having already been rejected by Ning Qingyan, he was mostly numb to it. Instead, he threw himself into work, which only meant more profits accumulating in Ning Qingyan’s revenue-sharing card.
At this point, the male contestants’ interactions boiled down to this:
Ning Qingyan and Sheng Mingzhu left together in the morning and returned at night.
Despite living in the same house, they barely saw each other. The others used to “accidentally” join their dates, but now, it was like they had vanished entirely.
Ning Qingyan felt relieved but also oddly melancholic. They had lived together for so long—how could there be no feelings at all?
With the show ending, they might never see each other again. That thought stung a little.
The female contestants, on the other hand, had a simpler mindset. They knew they had no chance with the big shots, but with the show being this popular, this was prime time to boost their exposure.
So they amped up their personas in front of the cameras, unlike the three male leads who barely spoke or showed any expressions.
The editors naturally focused on the more engaging female contestants, making up for the silent male leads.
Against this backdrop, Ning Qingyan and Sheng Mingzhu’s couple stream consistently ranked number one.
Their CP fanbase exploded, securing a stable top-three spot in trending topics.
On the night before the final confession, the voting for “Who is the Undercover?” and “Initial Character Archetypes” officially closed.
Originally ranked second in undercover suspicions, Ning Qingyan, through his masterful acting, managed to drop to fourth place.
Meanwhile, Qiao Li—who kept interfering in Ning Qingyan and Sheng Mingzhu’s dates—was voted the most likely undercover.
The highest-voted character archetypes were revealed:
That night, fans eagerly scoured analysis blogs and CP videos, reassuring themselves that they had voted correctly before falling asleep dreaming of winning the show’s giveaway prizes.
At last, the final confession day arrived.
The live stream broke one billion viewers.
The chat was so overloaded that the technical team had to limit comments to one per five minutes per user.
Now, the moment of truth—the show was about to reveal the letters the contestants had written that morning.
And to keep the suspense high, they saved the most anticipated letters—those of Qiao Li, Ning Qingyan, and Sheng Mingzhu—for last.