At this time the camera moved slowly towards the temple, and a girl dressed in beautiful Hanfu could be seen, sitting on the stone pedestal, and seated in an elegant way, with an ancient Guqin on her knees. She lowered her head with a gentle gaze affixed on the Guqin. Her chignon was rather casual, with loose strands of hair on her forehead, gently flowing in the wind. Her left hand touched the strings of the Guqin without making a sound, as her right hand rested in her sleeves by her knees.

As if a special beauty suddenly emerged in a traditional Chinese painting.

Just when everyone was entranced in the scenery, Shi-senpai suddenly appeared in the four-cornered square temple. And this time he did not try to be comical, but rather stood in the middle of the temple behind the bronze bell. With both of his hands holding the wooden lumber that was hung from the timber of the temple, he hit the bell with all his might with the lumber in his hands.

“Duang.. Duang.. Duang..”

The thick and far-reaching sound spreads itself from close to afar.

The audience seemed to behold sceneries from ancient ages, with rivers and lakes, mountains, and dense forests and bamboo; sunsets, fences and mountains; all poetic and mesmerizing.

People felt moved beyond reason.

At the end of the video, the screen turned dark, and the “end of episode” in white appeared again on the screen, followed by the list of the names of producers:

Shi-senpai: He Qisi

Subtitle: Chen Han

Screenwriter: Sun Weiwei

Camera: Tao Zhiyao

Makeup: Zhang Jiaojiao

Editing: Jiang Chengfeng

Special episode guest: Hanfu Goddess

Observant audiences quickly noticed that this name-list differed from that of before: the camera and editing had changed to different names!

No wonder the picture quality and style of camera of this episode differed completely from before. It had ambiguous beauty and was serene yet warm to the liking of the young female audience.

“I imagined ‘Shi-senpai hitting the bell for the Hanfu Goddess’, would be him literally hitting the bell with his head. Never imagined it’d be this rendition. It is great for him to be serious once.”

“Haha, I thought so too. Say, him hitting the bell like that modified the whole ambiance of the scene. When there was just the Hanfu Goddess in the picture, the sight was already sufficiently pleasing to me. Now with the sound of the bell, I felt elevated in my whole being, as if I’ve seen through the toils of the mundane world.”

“I felt this way too. My eyes felt sour”.

“In any case, this episode is not the least bit funny, but I only repeated it a dozen times.”

“Pfft, I already downloaded it. I’m watching it once every day before I go to bed.”

“My focus is that the new videographer seems to be female.”

“Tao Zhiyao. It seems to be a girl from the name. She must be amazing to film such beautiful scenes.”

…

In fact, the second short video allowed the audience to witness more of Tao Zhiyao’s true talents.

The setting was still by the side of the lake, and the sun had set. The girl that sat in front of the temple was carrying a Guqin on her back.

With flowy gowns, she walked slowly on the path by the lake. Gentle rays of sunset casted on her, tainting her blue-white shaded Hanfu with a shade of orange.

She walked into the sunset. Further and further, she and her Guqin seemed to disappear into the horizon.

The text-description of the second clip was, “The Hanfu Goddess in my heart”.

The clip ended, and there were only two names in the producer list:

Videographer: Tao Zhiyan

Character: Hanfu Goddess

“Beauty beyond imagination. This is a real goddess”.

“I feel like our lives are too mundane. Look at her, this is probably the true form of The Way.”

“The Hanfu Goddess adopts stray cats. She is kind hearted, and it shows in her ways that she’s reached this high level of being a human”.

“Aiya, the Hanfu Goddess is too marvelous. Only by becoming a handsome scholar in my next life can I even dream to match her.”

“Pffft, her Wei Bo name is actually ‘Princess Man’, so she is a princess! A scholar can hardly be worthy of her – you need to be a lord or emperor at least!”

“Can’t we just dream on for a little.”

“Quiet, you bunch of mundane folks! Upon watching the video clip, thou shalt now quiet down and cultivate.”

“I want to say that the camera work is magnificent, and that the hardware is better than before; it seems quite professional. It is rare that a female may be so magnificent in videographing.”

The second video clip was published by Liu Man in her own “Hanfu Goddess Liu Man” Tik Tok account. This was the extra video that was recorded by Tao Zhiyao on Sunday.

She told He Qisi and the others, in no ambiguous terms, that she got into “Happy Guo Guo” with certain conditions – that her primary goal was to film the Hanfu while “Shi-Senpai” was her second priority.

He Qisi and others could not really disagree. The competency of Tao Zhiyao was clear, as was her financial power. The video camera worth more than 100 thousand RMB, as well as the Han Clothing worth more than 10 thousand, were powerful evidence. To be fair, this world operated not just on appearances – money was more important than appearance, and the world preferred people with money.

“Hanfu Goddess Liu Man” published a new video clip in her Tik Tok account. Her fans liked and forwarded her post in lightning speed. Despite the fact that they already viewed the clip in “Happy Guo Guo”, the sense of forwarding the video directly from the Goddess’s account was different.

Even though to date, “Hanfu Goddess Liu Man” had only published six videos with three of them rather irrelevant to her, her fans already exceeded 3 million in counting, far surpassing the 650K fan count of “Happy Guo Guo.”

The fact her fans-base inflated so rapidly was a recent phenomenon only since the performance last week. She published the video clip of her performance on Tik Tok, and her fan-base shot up by over 2 million overnight.

He Qisi teased that she was OP, as one video from her was more impactful than 100 from others.

After the concert, Liu Man’s life resumed peace shortly. Similar to before, she went to lessons, sat next to Li Xiaoru, chatted with her, and took notes.

Other classmates expressed no other discrimination against her. The one performance from her did wonders to quiet everyone down, despite the fact that the ranking of Li Xiaoru and hers was quite far behind.

Li Xiaoru quite took issue with this matter. Holding some miscellaneous news she obtained, she waited until the end of the lesson and said to Liu Man in low voice when all the other classmates were gone,

“Do you know why Wang Nina and Xu Zihan were able to get the highest ranking?”

“Perhaps it has something to do with Professor Zhu Xiyang”, Liu Man had a vague sense of the cause.

“Correct,” Li Xiaoru had a hint of contempt in her expression, “Rumor has it that Wang Nina and Zhu Xiyang slept together. Yuck.”

Li Xiaoru was still rather naive. She had no relationship before and could not imagine what it meant to sleep with one’s teacher.

Liu Man, on the other hand, felt that it was quite normal: Wang Nina was poor and, other than her body, what else could she have possibly sacrificed to Zhu Xiyang?

“No wonder you said before that Xu Zihan had asked something of Wang Nina. Their ensemble got a high mark. This course alone was 16 credits and weighed heavily on their average scores. So in the final exam, they will be within the top 80 so long as they did not fail anything.”

By the same reasoning, Liu Man and Li Xiaoru had their own average scores quite low. For example, Li Xiaoru, who was ranked number 15 in her grade previously, would slip down the rankings now unless she could achieve a perfect score in all of the following assessments.

Translated by: Valerie

Edited by: Sydney