Chapter 19 | TOC | Chapter 21

Chapter 20 You Have a Fever

Ling Che adjusted the seat to the maximum height. As he had said, he alone was enough and Xu Tangzhou didn’t need to work too hard. The two-person bicycle quickly sped up on the trail, as the vehicles followed at a comfortable distance behind them.

Riding a two-person bicycle requires some coordination, and pedaling at the same frequency would allow them to travel faster.

However… Because they were too close and his medication went missing, the pheromones that Xu Tangzhou stopped being sensitive to were currently spreading from Ling Che’s body toward his glands.

As soon as he got on the bike, Xu Tangzhou knew that it was over for him. As expected, he really wanted to jump off the bike now.

Was Ling Che looking at him? Would he realize that something was off?

The more sensitive Xu Tangzhou was, the more uneasy he felt. All sorts of random and disordered thoughts appeared of what would happen after being discovered by Ling Che. No matter which thought would be discovered, none of the results would be pretty. He could only try his hardest to focus his attention downward.

He should just ride the bike!

What car was his brain driving*!

TN: so “riding” a bike and “driving” a car uses the same verb, so he’s wondering how riding a bike turned into thinking… ahem… thoughts

The coconut trees, the sea breeze, the scorching sun.

With this type of scenery, Xu Tangzhou stared straight at the revolving wheels.

As if he were hypnotized, gradually all of his surroundings faded into the background. The coconut trees turned into soft green willow leaves, the mineral water bottles inside the bicycle basket turned into daisies, and the shoes on his feet turned into canvas shoes.

Before his eyes, the scenery became the little trail he saw halfway up the mountain near Ling Che’s house when Huang Ge had driven Ling Che home after the annual party.

In that scene, he was pedaling the bicycle by himself. Because he couldn’t catch up to the person in front of him, he abruptly stood up and pedaled hard: “Wait for me!”

In front of him, the person’s shirt was lifted by the wind. Looking back while pedaling, the other person spoke in a relaxed tone: “You can do it Xu Tangzhou! Do you usually save your energy for sleeping?”

The person’s face was unclear.

Just thinking about that person’s face made his head hurt.

“Xu Tangzhou.” Behind him, Ling Che suddenly spoke.

Xu Tangzhou came back to his senses. His forehead was covered in a cold sweat and his body was leaning forward. Ling Che had pressed on the brakes.

His legs were on the ground and supporting him, and he had already awoken from the chaotic scenes: “Yes?”

From behind, Ling Che just realized something was wrong after riding for half an hour.

“You don’t feel well?” Ling Che frowned and reached out to touch his forehead.

Looking closely, he just realized that Xu Tangzhou’s thick eyelashes still had beads of sweat on them. The sweat made his face seem cold and beautiful and added a bit of sparkle. That pair of eyes blinked as if they could speak words of affection.

Ling Che suddenly withdrew his hand as if nothing had happened.

On the other hand, Xu Tangzhou’s face, which was already red from the sun, suddenly turned a deeper shade of red. The gland that was somewhat calm suddenly showed signs of restlessness. He knew that his body wanted to be touched by Ling Che, what sort of pheromone sensitivity was this*!

TN: Oof, this line actually had a nice rhythm and it also rhymed in the raws, can’t do that here tho…

The program team’s car stopped. Momo ran over to ask: “What’s wrong with Zhouzhou? Did he get a heatstroke?”

Perhaps he disliked the commotion from Momo, but Ling Che didn’t respond. He directly twisted the cap off of the water bottle in the bicycle basket.

He handed it to Xu Tangzhou: “Drink some water. Let’s rest here first.”

Xu Tangzhou nodded and gulped down half of the bottle in one sitting. After drinking, he felt better as the hot and dry feeling faded.

Momo was still very worried. Were Omegas really this weak? She was afraid if something went wrong, they wouldn’t be able to take responsibility. Huang Qian had already talked to her many times already. She suggested: “There’s no need to race for who arrives at the Mermaid Reef first today. Che Shen, were you riding too quickly earlier?”

The implication was that they wanted to win and that Xu Tangzhou was in this state because he couldn’t keep up with Ling Che’s speed.

But she didn’t dare to say it directly.

Ling Che was too lazy to explain.

Xu Tangzhou told her sheepishly: “No. In fact, I didn’t even help much. Only he was doing everything. I usually don’t exercise, perhaps I save my energy for sleeping.”

Ling Che was slightly startled and glanced at him.

Xu Tangzhou seemed to have sensed his gaze. He looked up to face Ling Che, but Ling Che quickly looked away again.

Was Ling Che angry?

Who would’ve known that after drinking water, his pale lips glistening from the reflection of the water, paired with his somewhat pitiful appearance, made others want to simply chomp on him.

Everyone rested by the side of the road for a bit. When they were about to set off, Ling Che said: “You sit in the back.”

Xu Tangzhou: “???” You Alphas are too fickle?

Ling Che took a straw hat from some random staff member who was in the car. He didn’t wait for Xu Tangzhou to object before roughly placing the straw hat on his head.

This time, Xu Tangzhou didn’t need to watch the road.

Ling Che was in front and blocked most of the sun’s burning rays.

A small corner of Xu Tangzhou’s heart began to burn.

He boldly thought, ‘If he first tells Ling Che the truth, just in case there were no other options, if he begged Ling Che to give him a temporary mark to ensure that the show runs smoothly, would Ling Che agree? Everyone was familiar and honest with each other, he probably wouldn’t be beaten to death, right?’

At this moment, they met the LuMi CP group and the two Xia sisters.

Lu Chengan: “Che Shen, your stamina is not good enough.”

Ling Che: “Heh.”

Lu Chengan: “There are a lot of Omega girls sunbathing at Mermaid Reef. You won’t see them if you arrive late!”

Ling Che: “Not interested. You can take your time looking.”

Xu Tangzhou thought to himself, never mind.

He’ll definitely be beaten to death.

*

That night, after deducting the rent, utilities, and daily expenses of the first day, the program team announced the winner for that day who had the most starting funds left. Unexpectedly, it was the Xia sisters who took the lead, despite having the least amount of starting funds and needing to spend twice the amount of money on plane tickets after missing their flight.

They received the first day’s award: Free tickets for the checkpoint on the second day.

CheZhou’s group was supposed to be the winner on the first day since they were the only group with free rent. However, because Xu Tangzhou bought pheromone blockers and gland patches, they spent an extra 1000RMB, becoming third place.

For the LuMi CP, although they lost 340RMB on the plane and were forced to pay rent after the reward to choose the first room was stolen by Ling Che, as they had expected, they were comfortably in second place.

Generally, the first day of the show was the easiest and everyone didn’t have a sense of competition. But the more it continued, the fiercer the competition became.

In the show’s monitoring room, the situation in every guest’s room was recorded.

Lu Chengan and Mi Fei were like an old couple, massaging and chatting with each other.

Mi Fei said: “We have to fight for first place tomorrow so we won’t fall behind. If I had known there would be rewards, we shouldn’t have spent money to rent a bicycle. I think that we could definitely walk 10 kilometers.

Lu Chengan said with a smile: “Walking 10 kilometers isn’t difficult, but with the weather this hot, getting a heatstroke would be very troublesome.”

Mi Fei hesitated: “It looked like Zhouzhou wasn’t feeling well today. When I asked him, he said he was fine.”

Lu Chengan smiled: “With Che Shen around, nothing should happen. If you’re worried, you can ask Xu Tangzhou tomorrow. If something is wrong, see if we could help.”

Xia Yue and Xia Xing’s group were currently counting money.

Xia Xing was very excited: “We actually came in first place! Jie, you’re still blaming me for missing the flight. Aren’t we in a very stable position?”

Xia Yue rolled her eyes: “Please, our rent is the most expensive, ok? What’s the use of waiving the utility fees? As long as we stay in this house for another day, it’s another day where the others could easily surpass us. Especially Che Shen, their house is practically free. I think that the difference between their funds and our funds should be very small.”

Xia Yue took out a notebook and scribbled out how much money each group of guests had remaining.

According to her calculations, the CheZhou group had around 4000, LuMi had around 4600, and they had 4800 left. The people in the program group watching the monitor were secretly surprised. Xia Yue’s calculations were too accurate!

After reading it, Xia Xing felt that she was too dumb as she was suddenly dumbstruck*: “Right. Che Shen’s group only has two days left for their free house, while we have to pay 1200 every day for rent and utilities. Even if they did nothing, they’d overtake us in two days.”

TN: Web version has typo again…

Xia Yue said: “So, we need to win every single checkpoint event in order to win the reward for the second day. You ate two cups of instant noodles today, tomorrow you can only eat one cup.”

Xia Xing refused to accept it, and the two began quarreling.

On the other hand, the group with Ling Che and Xu Tangzhou.

There was no one in the living room

Everywhere was empty.

When the two guests went back home, they just did their own thing without any communication.

The program team switched the camera to the ones in the cabin. They saw Xu Tangzhou squatting in the yard… with a dog. The dog was very docile, and it looked very strong and well-behaved. It stuck its tongue out, allowing Xu Tangzhou to pet him.

There was an envelope on its collar and within it, Xu Tangzhou found a letter. After he opened and read it, he stood up and walked inside.

“Ling Che!” Xu Tangzhou shouted as he knocked on the door, “The program team pits us too much!”

The crowd from the program team in front of the monitor: “......”

When Ling Che opened the door, Xu Tangzhou just realized that he was wearing a black eye mask, looking as if he was about to go to sleep.

Ling Che was already very handsome. The eye mask pulled over the brown and messy hair made him give off a sense of wildness after being woken up. He looked at Xu Tangzhou with a hint of grouchiness.

Xu Tangzhou was so mesmerized that his brain crashed. He didn’t know what he was saying, but he still angrily explained the situation.

It turned out that when they were choosing a house, the program team said that the owner had asked for them to help take care of everything in the cabin. It was a pit.

The program team wouldn’t just simply gift out a free house.

The letter, brought by the dog, was written by the owner. The dog’s name was Ruby, and it missed home so much, it decided to return home by himself. Therefore, it was given to the two tenants to help feed and take care of it. The dog had been weighed, and it was currently 35kg. When they check out of the house, for every 100 grams* lost by the dog, 500RMB would be deducted from their funds. In addition, the dog has to go to the island’s pet store for grooming and a bath. All the money would be from their expenses.

(TN: 100g is 0.1kg, which is around the weight of a small apple…)

Xu Tangzhou was indignant: “The difference in weight can’t exceed 100g, is the program group insane?”

Ling Che: “......”

Ruby followed them inside, skillfully found its food bowl from somewhere, and brought it over in its mouth, proving that the dog lived there.

It was hungry.

Xu Tangzhou said: “Can we reject this? I want to change houses.”

Ling Che walked over, bent down, and lightly petted Ruby’s head.

This time, he actually didn’t insult the program group, even saying: “Keep it. Don’t you like dogs?”

Xu Tangzhou was stunned, how did Ling Che know? Could Situ Ya have told Ling Che? He remembered that he didn’t write about this kind of thing in his profile.

He truly liked dogs.

Ling Che stood up and said: “You’ve always asked to raise a dog before. Let’s count this as practice. Raising it for a few days wouldn’t be too much.”

The two stood by the door frame, and the cameras in the corridor and room coincidentally couldn’t capture either of their faces. It was a blind spot, and only the corridor and the inside of the room could be seen on the screen.

There was no sound for many seconds, and the program team thought that the microphone had issues.

Xu Tangzhou couldn’t figure out if Ling Che was pretending they were friends or something else, or perhaps Ling Che simply liked dogs. He couldn’t figure out how to play along.

He didn’t ask anything in front of the camera, only hesitantly saying: “But we don’t have much money.”

“Dog food shouldn’t be too expensive, and I can help with the bath. Ling Che said coldly, “Also, if they could do this, they knew that we wouldn’t be able to refuse.”

It sounded very reasonable.

But being suddenly given a big pit still made him feel a bit aggrieved.

This show was too terrible!!!

No wonder Ying Chen liked the post on Flow that said “Which dumb*ss actors lack braincells”.

The two walked the dog to go buy dog food, but this time, they didn’t know that the convenience store had cameras already installed by the program team. The convenience store was being sponsored to exclusively help with the filming.

Xu Tangzhou was choosing the dog food in front of the shelf. He didn’t have any experience and didn’t know which one to choose.

Ling Che looked at him for a while, waited for him to stand up, and reached out to touch his forehead.

Through the lens, Ling Che looked a bit rude. This time, he truly touched Xu Tangzhou.* The latter took a step back in shock, with his whole body leaning against the shelf.

TN: Earlier in this chapter, he took his hand back, but now he didn’t >.<

Ling Che frowned and said: “Xu Tangzhou, you have a fever.”

Xu Tangzhou frantically thought, No, it was estrus.

False estrus.

TN: Chinese terms as pinyin in this chapter

“Ge” (older brother, could be used as a respectful address for male acquaintances)

“Jie” (older sister, could be used as a respectful address for female acquaintances as well)

“Shen” (literally: god, but mainly for a highly respected and revered figure)

See glossary for more info.

Chapter 19 | TOC | Chapter 21

TN: Ack, I was looking at the comments under Asteroid in NU, and people seemed to have misunderstood a bit. Let’s just say that although the program group likes to dig pits for people and make them suffer, some things touching the bottom line (such as stealing Zaizai’s meds) wouldn’t be done by the program. After all, if they were the cause, they’d have to pay HUGE fines if a scandal happened between XTZ and someone else. (It’s honestly not worth the risk)

Also, Hai, I completed 3 applications in one day… (Cries) I have a *bit* of free time to TL, but no guarantees…

Side note that my translation account twitter gets updates first! (I sometimes forget to put it on novelupdates...) https://twitter.com/littlemoontl

I usually don't go on my tling account unless I post updates, so if any questions either email or go to my main account (where I usually chat about other stuff)

Hello hello~ Please support the author at jjwxc, there's an Audio Drama S1 and a Season 2, and a simplified physical (You'll need to click on the ones that say 小行星)!

There's now a Spanish translation too! Gracias a Kuchiki Risa por traduciendo! (Español)

(Just a heads up that if there are any errors, feel free to reach out to me!)