Chapter 9

The next day, Ouyang Xia decided to make money by herding sheep. He exchanged an aluminum lunchbox printed with “High School Gift” from his home and a box of well-preserved shoe patterns with a local villager.

Zhang Zexuan chose to help a local family with “corn shelling*.”

He used the sole of an old Liberation-style shoe, flipped upside down on a wooden rack, to rub the corn cobs against, removing the kernels with the raised tread.

The villager promised that if he could finish shelling all the corn in the yard within three days, they would give him an old-style Chrysanthemum-brand desktop electric fan.

That was a big deal!

Zhang Zexuan was so fired up that he shelled corn until he got blisters on his palms.

Since Chen Mengjie was a girl, the production team didn’t dare let her do heavy labor. Instead, they sent her off with a bamboo basket to pick mushrooms in the poplar* forest with the villagers.

Freshly harvested poplar mushrooms could sell for 20 yuan per jin at the morning market.

Chen Mengjie was confident she’d earn the most money among the four guests. But once she entered the poplar forest, she realized that the villagers seemed to have some kind of “mushroom detection radar”—they kept finding clusters of mushrooms everywhere.

Meanwhile, she was staring so hard her eyes nearly went blind, yet all she saw were piles of fallen poplar leaves. After half a day, she had found absolutely nothing.

By the end of the first day, it was actually Wei Sheng—who seemed to have no survival skills—who made the most money!

Compared to the others, Wei Sheng was a city kid through and through. He didn’t know how to do any of the rural work!

But while he wasn’t good at farm labor, he was good at business!

While Chen Mengjie was struggling to find mushrooms in the forest, Wei Sheng borrowed two woven sacks and a bicycle from the auntie he was staying with. Then, he rode around town buying dried mushrooms that local farmers had sun-dried themselves.

He’d seen his grandmother buy this type of dried poplar mushroom at the market before—for over 50 yuan per jin.

He had already asked around about the local purchase price: high-quality ones could be bought for 25 per jin, while lower-quality ones went for 18 to 20 per jin.

After half a day, he had collected two big sacks of dried poplar mushrooms.

Then came the moment of magic.

Instead of following the script and setting up a stall at the market, he simply messaged a few restaurant-owner friends on WeChat to see if they wanted to buy dried poplar mushrooms.

In less than half an hour, he had sold both sacks online.

After deducting the cost of the mushrooms, shipping, and packaging, Wei Sheng made over 500 yuan in a single day.

The other three: “….”

Zhang Zexuan was on the verge of tears.

“Xiao Wei, how about I go with you tomorrow to buy mushrooms? Shelling corn is killing me, wuwuwu~”

Chen Mengjie was also amazed.

Why didn’t she think of that?

If she could pick mushrooms, she could sell them too!

Seeing that all the guests wanted to switch to mushroom trading, the director immediately grabbed a megaphone and shut it down—

“No way! The rules don’t allow it! Whatever job you chose at the start, you have to stick with it until the end of this episode!”

Chen Mengjie and Zhang Zexuan immediately looked like they were attending a funeral.

Even Ouyang Xia couldn’t help showing a hint of disappointment.

He had thought herding sheep would be his strong suit—after all, his family had raised a few sheep when he was a kid.

But he never expected the production team to be so cruel—they assigned him to a huge sheep farm!

Dozens of sheep were running wild across the grassland!

He couldn’t even get the farm’s herding dog to listen to him. He spent the entire day chasing after sheep and almost got lost in the grassland…

When this scene aired later, the internet exploded with laughter.

One moment, he was modestly saying, “I’ve helped my family herd sheep since I was a kid.”

The next moment, he was leading a massive flock and nearly losing himself in the wilderness…

Since he couldn’t help his teammates cheat, Wei Sheng just shrugged helplessly and went out alone the next day to hunt for antiques in town.

At this moment, within the completely unmotivated production team, no one realized that even though they had given up on promoting the show, viewers’ anticipation was skyrocketing.

This “highly toxic” variety show was climbing into the top five trending reality shows.

Hilarious!

A variety show so broke that it couldn’t even afford D-list celebrities—how on earth did it manage to generate so much hype among viewers?

As a seasoned entertainment industry gossip consumer and a blogger for a certain entertainment account, Si Si had the perfect answer:

Why was everyone suddenly paying attention to a show that was doomed to flop?

Simple—because this show was radioactive!

In just one episode, it had already taken down three different “legal case” celebrities!

This was basically the entertainment industry version of “Legal Report”!

Now, all the major entertainment forums had betting pools going, with people speculating on which guests would appear in the next episode—and which fanbases would implode next.

But according to some insider gossip, because of the show’s “toxicity,” no celebrity with even a little bit of fame dared to accept an invitation.

Rumors had it that J Province TV had set its sights on rookie idol groups. After all, new idols were usually cheap to book.

Now, it was the idol fandoms’ turn to panic.

On one hand, they were hyping up their idols in their fan groups, confidently declaring that their favorites would never get caught in a scandal.

On the other hand, they were pretending to be concerned on public forums, saying things like—

“Surely a well-established provincial TV station like J Province TV isn’t so broke that they can’t even afford a few legit actors?”

Their fans argued that their idols were young and inexperienced—it would be better to wait a few years, gain some credentials, and then appear on J Province TV’s programs…

J Province TV: “……”

Despite being dismissed, they weren’t upset at all. In fact, they were eager for the controversy to escalate.

After all, this was real, tangible traffic!

Didn’t they see that over at H Province TV, in order to generate buzz for their own variety show, they resorted to throwing their guests under the bus—maliciously editing footage and even buying negative trending topics—just to get fans and bystanders to curse them out?

Those guys were spending money to get hate.

J Province TV, on the other hand, hadn’t spent a single penny, and yet the entire internet was lining up to roast them.

Heh… was this what they called “winning by doing nothing”?

At the end of August, amid the anticipation of the entire internet’s melon-eating (Gossiping) crowd, the third episode of “Back to Hometown with My Bros”, which had been on hiatus for two weeks, finally aired!

There was even a little incident before the broadcast.

Originally, this program had the unfortunate timing of airing in the same slot as H Province TV’s prime-time summer drama Hello, Ex-Husband. One was a red-hot trending drama that made it to the trending topics list every day, and the other was a provincial TV self-produced program teetering on the edge of irrelevance, struggling even to invite minor internet celebrities. Even a blind person could tell which one would win, right?

But then, the screenwriter of Hello, Ex-Husband decided to completely screw over the audience.

At first, they had portrayed the scumbag male lead so vilely that viewers wanted to jump into the screen and poison him themselves. But according to recent plot developments and leaks from marketing accounts, the screenwriter was actually planning to redeem this absolute scumbag in the end!

The female lead—who lost her own sister because of him, got fired, and nearly had to sell herself to pay off debts—was actually going to forgive this piece of trash?!

What the hell kind of “chasing his wife through the crematorium” nonsense was this? They didn’t want a bullshit “happy ending” tainted with filth!

Couldn’t they just let the strong, independent female lead flourish on her own?

Did a woman have to be faithful to only one man her whole life? No matter how much wrong he did, as long as he showed the slightest remorse and came back sobbing for forgiveness, she was obligated to forgive him?

Outraged by the utterly braindead and saintly scriptwriting, the audience collectively decided:

Forget the finale. They’d wait for spoilers first. If the female lead really forgave that scumbag ex-husband and even got back together with him, then there was no need to watch the ending at all—they’d just drop the show!

But then came the question: it was Saturday night—if they weren’t watching the trending drama, what else was there to do?

While scrolling through the trending topics, these bored viewers suddenly stumbled upon another spectacle.

Huh? That supposedly “guaranteed career-ending” toxic variety show was back on air? Let’s go check it out—who was the poor soul getting wrecked this time?

Chinese audiences loved a good drama. And when it came to celebrities falling from grace, well, everyone knew how thrilling that could be! They feared it might be their own fave in trouble, but at the same time, they secretly hoped… what if it was their rival’s idol taking the fall?

Now that would be truly satisfying.

J Province TV never expected that, because their self-produced show was only available on television and their own app, some viewers—who didn’t even own TVs—had no choice but to download the app just to watch it. Overnight, before the show even went viral, the app had already blown up!

At 10:05 PM, Back to Hometown with My Bros officially resumed broadcast!

But right from the guest introductions, the melon-eating audience felt a pang of disappointment.

J Province TV… had they just given up entirely? They really didn’t invite a single celebrity or influencer? The main guest and three additional participants were all completely unfamiliar faces!

And to make things even funnier, all four of them were actually staff members from the TV station itself!

What the hell? Was the TV station trying to forcefully push their own people into stardom?

Hilarious! If becoming famous was that easy, wouldn’t the entire entertainment industry be a joke?

Just as netizens were about to declare “no drama to watch” and leave, the next second, they saw Chen Mengjie perform a stunningly beautiful traditional dance.

Huh? This girl actually had some real talent…

Before they could even react, Zhang Zexuan followed up with an impressive street dance routine, and Ouyang Xia gave a mesmerizing erhu solo.

Even Wei Sheng, who initially seemed the least remarkable, turned out to have an incredible singing voice—and to top it all off, he was better looking than the actual celebrities who had been on the show before!

“Hahahaha, I seriously suspect J Province TV did this on purpose—finding a guy even more handsome than the previous main guest.”

“Well done! Who cares if he’s a traffic idol or not? I’m shallow as hell—just give me a hot dude to look at!”

And it wasn’t like Wei Sheng had no skills at all. Hu Qianqian had been very meticulous about her son’s education—he had started attending art classes at the youth center when he was six, and both his sketching and watercolor skills were excellent.

Since drawing wasn’t easy to showcase on the spot, Wei Sheng had brought his violin from home and played a piece of Butterfly Lovers live.

“Holy crap! These ‘nobodies’ are actually really impressive! Their talents are more professional than some so-called ‘idols’!”

“As someone from a music major, I can tell this violinist has at least ten years of training.”

“Betting a pack of spicy sticks—if that traditional dance performer isn’t professionally trained, then I’ll eat my hat!”

Because these supposed “random nobodies” were performing way beyond expectations, very few people who tuned in for drama actually left midway.

And then, as the show continued, the audience watched as the sunshine-y Zhang Zexuan sat miserably on a tiny stool, tirelessly husking corn. They saw “successful city guy” Ouyang Xia—who once claimed to be a seasoned shepherd—getting lost in the grasslands with an entire flock of sheep. They watched as the confident dance girl Chen Mengjie, thinking she’d easily make money picking mushrooms, ended up finding absolutely nothing…

Netizens burst out laughing—it was honestly funnier than some of those well-produced rural life variety shows.

Now this was the real reaction of city folks coming to the countryside!

Who needed all that sentimental nonsense about “finding oneself” and “appreciating the beauty of rural life”?

Now this was the real reaction of city folks visiting the countryside!

Where was all that deep emotional reflection and sense of novelty?

Just look at Ouyang Xia—just like many of the post-80s leaders they knew, he could go on and on about his childhood experiences doing farm work in the countryside, speaking with great authority.

Yet when he picked up a herding stick, he looked the part, but in the end, wasn’t he still led astray by the sheep? He wasn’t even as good as the host’s sheepdog, hahaha~

Of course, the funniest one was Wei Sheng. When the audience first heard him introduce himself as someone who had grown up in the city, they assumed he had been assigned the “rich young master who can’t do anything” role by the production team.

Who would’ve thought that this guy would just sit at the village entrance, make a few phone calls, borrow a bicycle and some woven bags from the locals, and immediately run off to become a small-time reseller?

And in the end, he actually made more money than the two guests who had grown up in the village!

“Damn! This is way better than those cringe-inducing, scripted variety shows!”

Si Si immediately signed up for a J Province TV app membership and followed this bizarrely entertaining, newly revamped rural variety show.

(End of Chapter)

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—”Corn shelling” refers to the process of removing corn kernels from the cob. This can be done manually by hand or using mechanical shellers, which separate the kernels efficiently for consumption, processing, or storage.

—Poplar is a fast-growing tree from the Populus genus, known for its tall, straight trunk and lightweight wood. It’s used in furniture, plywood, paper, and windbreaks.