Clearly, just as Xia Qingwei had said, it wasn’t troublesome.

After a while, she prepared three plates of food.

There were already three other plates of dishes that Xia Qingwei had cooked before.

Zhou Cheng and Xiao Chen ate them, and everyone praised that it was delicious.

“Oh right, are you going to sign the contract with that show The Performer?” Xia Qingwei asked.

“I didn’t sign it. One senior of mine didn’t sign it either, but the other three people did,” Lu Man said.

“Why? Is it that… that they didn’t let you two sign it? What happened?” Xia Qingwei asked, shocked and flustered.

Hence, Lu Man explained everything regarding the contract to her. “That’s why I can’t sign it. To me, signing such a contract and joining the show has no benefit.”

“Right, you can’t sign it.” After Xia Qingwei heard the reason, she stood on Lu Man’s side. “I support you regarding this matter.”

In the afternoon, Han Zhuoli came to pick Lu Man up after work. Lu Man told this whole incident to Han Zhuoli as well.

Coincidentally, on the way back to Han Zhuoli’s home, the old mansion called them too. They also remembered that Lu Man was going to join The Performer.

Clearly and patiently, Lu Man explained everything from start to end to Old Mrs. Han.

“Sigh. I thought that I could see more of you on television, but it’s right that you didn’t join it. If you did, you would be taken advantage of!” Old Mrs. Han said angrily. “Are there still any TV shows that aren’t fake?! Let’s not watch such shows!”

Helpless, Lu Man coaxed Old Mrs. Han for a really long time until she finally became happy again. Only then did she hang up the phone.

***

Two weeks before the program started airing, the finals of the Chinese Arts Championships was finally uploaded onto Xing Ke Station’s app.

Originally, since they were trying to hype things up for The Performer, the production crew discussed if they should still leave any screentime for Lu Man and Li Zeyu, who didn’t sign the contract to join the program.

Ultimately, they still decided to leave screentime for them. After all, The Performer still had to release an announcement separately, stating that Lu Man and Li Zeyu won’t be joining the program.

The netizens already knew that Lu Man won first place while Li Zeyu won third place.

If they edited out their performances just because they didn’t join the program?

Not only would the video be incoherent, but they might even be scolded by the audience for being petty and small-minded.

It really would be rather ugly if they didn’t air both their performances just because they weren’t participating in the program.

Ultimately, the video was still released in its entirety.

The reception was very good.

Even though Lu Man and the others weren’t very popular, they each still had a rather sizeable number of fans.

Just these fans were quite a lot, and they added a lot of views to the video.

Nonetheless, netizens who didn’t watch the performances live were ultimately still the majority.

There were also netizens who did watch it live but wanted to watch it in detail once more through the app.

After all, they couldn’t watch it in as much detail live as they could when watching it in the video. They had missed out on quite a bit.

As a fan, how could they not watch their own idol’s performance in detail?

Eventually, once the video was released, Li Zeyu’s fans and Ni Xue’s fans started fighting.

Li Zeyu’s fans felt that Li Zeyu’s performance was so much better than Ni Xue’s.

“It was only 0.1 point, what a pity! I don’t think that Ni Xue acted better than Li Zeyu.”

“Beating him by just 0.1 point doesn’t mean anything. This was completely due to luck. Ni Xue just got more of it.”

Ni Xue’s fans were unhappy too. They insisted that Ni Xue did act better.

“Please stop being such drama queens, Li Zeyu’s fans. You have to admit it when you are less skillful than others.”

“So what if it’s just 0.1 point? In a competition, 0.1 point still creates a gap. Our Ni Xue did act better, don’t just disregard 0.1 point. If not, since Li Zeyu is so capable, why didn’t he get 0.1 point higher than our Ni Xue?!”