Chapter 25: School Beauty Selection? I'm Really Here to Rig the Results!
The main auditorium of Sheng Lan Academy was packed to its three-thousand-person capacity.
A massive LED screen looped promotional videos of the school beauty candidates, while the air was thick with a mixture of youthful hormones and expensive perfume.
As the top aristocratic school in the capital, this so-called "School Beauty Selection" was, in essence, a gladiator arena for various family factions.
The aura emanating from the judges' panel was even more terrifying.
The eldest sister, Lu Qingwan, was dressed in high-end professional attire, as cold and elegant as an ice queen; the second sister, Lu Zhirou, wore a white lab coat (having just rushed over from the lab), twirling a scalpel in her hand with a sharp gaze; the Fifth Sister, Lu Sisi, wore a mask and hat, yet still couldn't hide the radiance of a top-tier idol.
With the three Lu sisters personally overseeing things, the sheer prestige of the lineup was enough to make the principal stand tremblingly to the side, serving tea and water.
Bang!
The auditorium doors were roughly pushed open.
Lu Shixuan walked in swaggeringly, wearing an incredibly flamboyant gold-sequined suit and sunglasses, followed by four bodyguards in black.
He had an unlit cigar dangling from his mouth, his gaze sweeping the room as if inspecting his own pig farm.
Yo, quite a grand display.
My sisters are all here?
Perfect!
Today, This Young Master is going to demonstrate the meaning of "abusing power for personal gain" to the extreme in front of the entire school's faculty, students, and my sisters!
Where's that kid Ye Chen?
Didn't he say he was going to ruin my reputation?
Hurry up and come out. This Young Master is practically sticking his face out for you; it'd be embarrassing if you didn't hit me.
Lu Shixuan walked to the center of the first row, kicked aside the chair originally reserved for a school board member, and sat down with a wide, arrogant stance.
"Start! What are you dawdling for? This Young Master's time is billed by the second!"
He propped his legs up on the back of the seat in front of him—the judges' table, specifically the back of Lu Qingwan's chair.
The entire venue fell into a dead silence.
To dare prop his feet on the chair of the head of the Lu Corporation—was This Young Master Lu tired of living?
However, Lu Qingwan merely tilted her head slightly, glanced at the arrogant leather shoe, and instead of getting angry, she quietly adjusted her sitting position, seemingly afraid the chair back was too hard and might hurt her brother's foot.
Backstage, in the dressing room.
Chu Yaoyao looked at herself in the mirror, her face somewhat pale.
She was wearing a light blue off-the-shoulder evening gown, which Ye Chen had specifically sent someone to deliver earlier, calling it a "sponsorship."
Though she didn't want to wear it, her own gown had suddenly disappeared for some reason, so she had to change into this one for the time being.
"Yaoyao, hurry! It's your turn to go on!" a stagehand urged from the door.
Chu Yaoyao took a deep breath, lifted her skirt, and walked toward the stage's side entrance.
Just as she was about to step onto the stairs.
A large hand suddenly appeared out of nowhere, grabbed her back collar, and yanked hard.
"Ah!"
Chu Yaoyao cried out, stumbling backward and nearly falling.
She turned back in terror, only to see Lu Shixuan's face, which was written all over with "disgust."
"What kind of trash is this you're wearing?"
Lu Shixuan pointed at her gown, his voice loud enough for the entire backstage to hear.
"Blue? How tacky can you get? Are you trying to cosplay as an Avatar?"
"This kind of garbage is fit for the stage? It's practically polluting This Young Master's eyes!"
As he spoke, he performed an action that left everyone dumbfounded.
Rip—!
Lu Shixuan suddenly reached out and actually tore off the shoulder strap of Chu Yaoyao's gown!
The entire room erupted in an uproar!
The backstage staff and the other girls waiting to go on all covered their mouths.
Tearing a girl's gown in public?
This was blatant hooligan behavior!
It was sexual harassment!
It was bullying!
Chu Yaoyao was even more terrified, her face pale as she desperately clutched her chest with both hands, her eyes full of disbelief.
"Young Master Lu... you..."
Lu Shixuan was ecstatic in his heart.
Haha!
Scared now?
Hate me yet?
This kind of behavior—humiliating a female classmate in public—will definitely get me banned from the entire internet!
Eldest Sister will surely be so angry she'll slap me right here!
However, in the next second, his anxious inner voice exploded like a thunderclap in the minds of Chu Yaoyao and the sisters on the judges' panel.
(Damn it!)
(That beast Ye Chen is truly insidious!)
(The shoulder straps of this gown were cut with a razor, held together by only a few threads!)
(And the zipper at the waist was tampered with too!)
(Once she walks to the center of the stage and the spotlights hit her, the heat expansion will cause this dress to completely burst open instantly!)
(By then, she'd truly be 'meeting everyone honestly' in front of thousands of people!)
(For a girl, that's practically forcing her to die!)
(I have to strike first and tear away this hidden danger!)
(The method is a bit rough, but it's better than letting her suffer a wardrobe malfunction on stage, right?)
(Sigh, why is this girl still trembling?)
(Is she cold?)
(The AC backstage is set so low, how can her small frame handle it?)
While Lu Shixuan was grumbling in his heart, he quickly took off his flamboyant gold suit jacket.
He roughly wrapped the jacket around Chu Yaoyao, forcefully fastening the buttons up to the very top, wrapping her up like a golden zongzi.
"Wear it! It's ugly as hell!"
Lu Shixuan roared fiercely, "This suit was handmade by an Italian master, worth eight hundred thousand! You're getting a bargain!"
"You're going on stage in this! If you dare take it off, This Young Master will break your legs!"
"This is what fashion looks like! Do you understand? You bumpkin!"
Wrapped in the suit that carried his body heat and a faint scent of tobacco, Chu Yaoyao's nose tingled.
So... he did it to save me.
He saw through Ye Chen's scheme at a glance.
To prevent me from making a fool of myself in public, he'd rather bear the infamy of being a "hooligan" and a "bully" to protect me in such an extreme way.
He even went as far as to claim it was for "fashion" just to preserve my self-esteem.
Chu Yaoyao looked up through her messy hair at the boy before her, who was clearly shouting and acting like a villain, yet whose earlobes were slightly flushed.
Her heart completely surrendered.
Just then, the stage lights suddenly flared to full brightness.
Ye Chen, dressed in a crisp white suit and holding a microphone, walked onto the stage from the other side with an expression of righteous indignation.
Behind him, several large words appeared on the screen: Exposing Campus Bullying, Returning a Pure Land to Sheng Lan.
Ye Chen looked at Chu Yaoyao wrapped in Lu Shixuan's jacket below the stage, assuming Lu Shixuan was forcing her, and his heart was filled with even more joy.
This scene was practically a godsend!
"Teachers, students, and esteemed judges."
Ye Chen's voice resonated through the speakers across the venue, carrying a force of grief and indignation.
"Today was meant to be a day for showcasing beauty. But I must stand up and expose someone's true face!"
He pointed directly at Lu Shixuan below the stage.
"Lu Shixuan! You tore a female classmate's clothes in public and forced her to wear your clothes. Such behavior is worse than that of a beast!"
"I have a video in my hand that records how Lu Shixuan normally oppresses students and even insults the sisters of the Lu family behind their backs!"
"Today, I will tear away your disguise in front of the whole school!"
The crowd was in an uproar.
Everyone's eyes were fixed on Lu Shixuan.
Lu Shixuan sat in his chair, legs crossed, looking completely nonchalant.
Oho?
It's starting?
A video?
Could it be the video of me stealing a chicken leg from an elementary student in the cafeteria last time?
Or the video of me practicing villain lines in front of the mirror in the bathroom?
Bring it on!
Play it!
Let everyone see how bad I am!
Ye Chen, if you can actually ruin my reputation this time, I'll kowtow to you!
On the judges' panel, Lu Qingwan and her two sisters exchanged glances, their eyes filled with a playful sense of watching a show.
They had long since received a message from Lu Anran.
This fool Ye Chen didn't even know that the "nuclear bomb" in his hand had long since turned into a "boomerang" that would blow him up.
"Please look at the big screen!"
Ye Chen made a grand gesture and pressed the play button with full confidence.
The massive LED screen went black for an instant, and then the image flickered to life.
A clear sound came through the speakers.
However, the person appearing in the footage was not Lu Shixuan.
It was... Ye Chen, shirtless and standing in front of a luxury bathroom mirror.
The Ye Chen in the video was posing in an incredibly greasy bodybuilding stance before the mirror, his expression both distorted and intoxicated.
"That stupid woman Chu Yaoyao, what's she acting all pure for? Once I take down the Lu family, she'll be the first one I lock in the basement and make my bitch!"
The entire venue fell into a deathly silence.
Ye Chen's smile froze on his face, and the microphone in his hand nearly fell to the floor.
The video continued.
The Ye Chen in the footage changed poses and winked at himself in the mirror.
"And those old women of the Lu family... that paralyzed-face Lu Qingwan, acting all high and mighty all day. Once I control the group, I'll definitely make her kneel and lick my shoes!"
"That clean-freak Lu Zhirou, I'm going to throw her into a trash heap!"
"As for Lu Hongyi... hmph, that violent freak, I'll find someone to gang-rape her sooner or later!"
"I am the Child of Destiny! All the women in this world should submit to me! Hahahaha!"
The laughter from the video echoed throughout the auditorium.
In reality, the auditorium was so quiet one could hear a pin drop.
Thousands of teachers and students stared at the screen in stunned silence, their worldview shattered.
This was the "true young master" who was usually so gentle and refined, always talking about benevolence and morality?
This was the so-called "exposing the truth"?
This is a damn suicide bombing!
Ye Chen went frantic.
He desperately pressed the remote in his hand, trying to turn off the video, but the remote seemed to have malfunctioned and gave no response.
"No! This isn't me! This is synthesized! This is AI face-swapping!"
Ye Chen screamed hysterically at the audience, his face turning the color of pig liver.
"Lu Shixuan! It's you! You must have framed me!"
Sitting below the stage, Lu Shixuan's cigar fell out of his mouth, and he didn't even notice it burning a hole in his pants.
He was completely dumbfounded.
(Holy crap!)
(This is the... surprise An Ran mentioned?)
(This is way too terrifying!)
(This kid Ye Chen plays this dirty in private?)
(Wait, it's one thing to insult me, but why did you have to insult Eldest Sister, Second Sister, and Third Sister?)
(Are you tired of living?)
(It's over, Ye Chen is completely finished now.)
(After saying such things, if the Lu family could still tolerate him, they'd be the Ninja Turtles.)
(Then what about me?)
(What about my villain plan?)
(What about my reputation being ruined?)
System!
Help!
I'm not familiar with this plot!
At the judges' panel.
Lu Qingwan slowly stood up, her face frighteningly calm.
But those who knew her knew that this was the calm before the storm.
"Turn it off."
She calmly uttered those three words.
The system, which had been controlled by Lu Anran backstage, finally "obediently" cut the signal.
Lu Qingwan stepped onto the stage, the sound of her high heels clicking on the wooden floor sounding like a countdown from the Grim Reaper.
She walked up to Ye Chen, who had already collapsed on the floor, and looked down at him from above.
"Ye Chen, so these are your true thoughts?"
"Eldest Sister... no... President Lu, let me explain... that was a hacker Lu Shixuan found..." Ye Chen spoke incoherently, trying to grasp at the last straw.
Slap!
Lu Qingwan delivered a backhand slap, crisp and loud, sending Ye Chen flying two meters away, half his face swelling up instantly.
"The Lu family has no room for a beast like you."
"From today onward, you are expelled from the Lu family. The Lu Corporation's legal department will formally sue you for defamation, infringement of trade secrets, and... intentional harm."
"Get out."
Ye Chen clutched his face, looking at the disdainful and disgusted gazes from the audience, and at Chu Yaoyao, who was looking at him with cold indifference while wrapped in Lu Shixuan's jacket.
He knew it was over.
Completely over.
All his disguises and all his planning had turned into bubbles in this instant.
And the culprit behind all this... he looked at Lu Shixuan with a venomous gaze.
Only to find Lu Shixuan clutching his face in despair, looking even more pained than he was.
(What a sin!)
(Ye Chen, you useless piece of trash!)
(Couldn't you have tried a little harder?)
(Now that you're gone, who's going to cooperate with me in my acting in the future?)
(Who's going to serve as a foil to my wickedness?)
(I don't want to be a good person!)
(I just want to retire!)
Ding!
Detected that the host has completed the "School Beauty Selection Rigging" task (though it was passive rigging).
Since the host successfully protected the heroine Chu Yaoyao's innocence and used a borrowed knife (the sister's knife) to completely ruin the hypocrite Ye Chen's reputation.
System Judgment: The host performed an extremely brilliant "stratagem of sowing discord," winning without shedding blood—truly satisfying!
Reward: 20 million in cash.
Reward: God-level Fashion Aesthetic (Passive: Any clothes the host randomly puts together will become a trendsetter).
villain points: -10,000 (The host has become the guardian deity of Sheng Lan Academy; the favorability of all girls in the school is at maximum).
Lu Shixuan looked at the gazes from the girls around him, which felt like they wanted to devour him, and felt a chill down his spine.
He suddenly stood up and roared at the entire venue:
"What are you looking at! This Young Master just likes seeing Ye Chen make a fool of himself! I'm just that wicked! What are you going to do about it?"
Having finished, he fled in a panic.
However, what came from behind him were even more enthusiastic screams:
"Young Master Lu is so handsome!"
"Is this what they call a tsundere? Love it, love it!"
"To protect us, Young Master Lu really went to so much trouble!"
Lu Shixuan ran out of the auditorium, looked at the azure sky, and shed two lines of clear tears.
"This villain role... whoever wants it can have it!"