It was clear that the production team took great care of the guests’ food, accommodation, and living conditions. The dining hall in the building was large and clean, with a buffet offering everything from sweet to savory dishes, vegetarian to meat options, from appetizer fruits to desserts. Jiang Nan’an casually picked some light dishes, a bowl of rice, half an ear of corn, and a piece of pumpkin, and that was his meal.
As he sat down at the table, he noticed Yan Jie staring at his plate, seemingly wanting to say something but holding back.
“Do you have any opinions about my lunch?”
“How would I dare?”
He just wanted to sigh that being a celebrity was truly not a job ordinary people could do-eating so plainly, like a rabbit.
He looked at Jiang Nan’an and casually asked:
“Hey, Mr. Hang, what keyword did you choose during the selection earlier when you first arrived?”
Jiang Nan’an carefully peeled his corn kernel by kernel, casually replying with a sound: “i.”
Across from him, inBlue raised his eyebrows upon hearing this:
“So that was for roommate selection, right? Who did you end up rooming with? I still don’t know who all came to this show.”
“Sheng Yujia,” Jiang Nan’an said as he put the peeled corn kernels into his mouth.
Watching his movements, Yan Jie’s gaze subtly shifted downward.
A moment later, his Adam’s apple moved almost imperceptibly as he looked away, then glanced up at inBlue and suddenly asked:
“Guess what I chose?”
Suddenly being called on, inBlue perked up his ears warily. Seeing Yan Jie’s expression, he knew there must be something coming: “What?”
Yan Jie smiled mysteriously: “Looks Carrier.”
inBlue immediately put down his chopsticks:
“Great, when you convinced me to join the competition, you made it sound so good, but as soon as we arrive, you want to ditch me. I’m quitting right now-you can play by yourself.”
“Don’t be like that! After all the twists and turns, we still ended up together, right? What does that mean? It means both the production team and I really recognize your good looks. Our Lan is just handsome.”
“…So you’d rather acknowledge my looks than my skills? Are you saying I don’t deserve the title ‘Canyon Overlord’? Look, Old Spring, let’s not play games-can you honestly say your hand reaching for ‘Looks Carrier’ was meant for me?”
“Come on, don’t worry about those details. No matter how many twists and turns along the way, those are just stories of the journey. The ending is still that we’re destined for each other, kindred spirits.”
Yan Jie glanced at Jiang Nan’an beside him, who was quietly peeling corn while watching the show:
“But then again, I really didn’t expect Mr. Hang to choose ‘i’-picking the only keyword that had absolutely nothing to do with me. Can’t complain about that-it’s truly fate that we didn’t match. If you’d chosen anything else, I might have had a chance to tag along with you.”
“?” Jiang Nan’an hadn’t expected this conversation to turn toward him. The smile at the corner of his lips disappeared before it even formed.
Just then, Sheng Yujia entered the dining hall and spotted him. Jiang Nan’an greeted him, picked up his plate, and before heading to join his roommate, left Yan Jie with one parting line:
“Then I truly dodged a bullet.”
Hearing this, inBlue chuckled softly, and once Jiang Nan’an was far enough away, he asked:
“Why do you keep teasing him? Look how smug you are.”
Yan Jie glanced at Jiang Nan’an’s retreating figure, looking quite pleased with himself:
“It’s so much fun, isn’t it?”
inBlue deliberately sighed, shaking his head with an ambiguous meaning.
The afternoon filming location was at Studio 17 in the park. By the time Jiang Nan’an and Sheng Yujia arrived, most of the guests were already there.
Studio 17 was quite spacious, with tiered seating on one side and an LED screen covering an entire wall on the other, continuously playing the concept trailer for “Burning Eternity.”
Jiang Nan’an and Sheng Yujia weren’t very social and didn’t know many people in the industry. For instance, they couldn’t name more than half the people in the studio. After greeting the guests and shaking hands, they exchanged a glance and, with perfect understanding, found seats in a corner of the tiered seating and sat down side by side.
The filming of “Burning Eternity” was divided into two stages: the training stage and the competition stage. Before the training period began, the production team would divide the thirty contestants into Classes A, B, and C based on their paper qualifications and practical performance. Now, Jiang Nan’an and the others were sitting here preparing for the upcoming assessment match.
After introducing the general process of the show and the coaching lineup for the three classes, the “Burning Eternity” class assessment officially began.
The assessment was divided into two parts: 1v1 and 5v5. In the 1v1 Solo battles, each contestant could choose their most proficient hero from the five lane routes to face off against professional players selected from the Blazing Holy Grail professional teams as examiners.
The guests invited by the show had varying gaming abilities. The strong ones included world-class jungler Yan Jie and high-ranking technical streamers like inBlue, while the weak ones included players at the bottom of the rank ladder, from Heroic Bronze to even Resilient Iron. For most contestants here, beating a professional player in a Solo battle was almost impossible. The production team knew the opponents they brought were too strong, so the focus of this segment was actually to examine each contestant’s understanding of heroes and their skill ceiling.
After thirty lane Solo battles, only Yan Jie in the jungle lane and a mysterious player who had reached the national server’s top twenty emerged victorious. The other contestants all fell in the 1v1 Rift arena, with most being toyed with by their examiners. Only a few standouts could be described as “going toe-to-toe with the examiners.”
After a half-hour break following the Solo battles, three 5v5 team battles began, in a BO1 format, with the coaching team assigning players to the red and blue teams based on their paper qualifications and performance in the Solo matches.
In the first match, the first player picked by the coaches for the blue team was Yan Jie. Commentator A, invited by the production team, didn’t seem surprised by this choice at all:
“Oh? Spring! This player needs no introduction. As they say, ‘Though the brother has left the martial world, legends of him are everywhere!’ We all know Spring was once called the ‘Legendary Jungler,’ and he’s one of the more closely watched contestants on our show! His performance in the Solo battle just now was quite brilliant. Let’s look forward to his performance in the team battles later!”
Sitting in the hall listening to the commentator, Sheng Yujia turned slightly to ask Jiang Nan’an beside him:
“Is this person very strong?”
Jiang Nan’an, who had been staring absently at the studio ceiling, nodded objectively.
Sheng Yujia thought for a moment and said:
“Hope we don’t get matched against him.”
“You’ll be fine-you play top lane,” Jiang Nan’an said while casually listening to the commentator announce the player lineup for the first match:
“It’s the mid laners who suffer more when facing him.”
“Why?”
“He loves ganking mid, and he especially likes to dance on top of the mid laner’s body.”
“Oh, that indeed…” Sheng Yujia paused:
“Aren’t you a mid laner? What if you…”
“I…” Jiang Nan’an raised an eyebrow, about to say something, when the commentator’s captivating voice echoed through the studio:
“Red team mid laner-Jiang Nan’an!”
“…” With half a sentence still in his mouth, Jiang Nan’an was immediately met with the collective gaze of all the other contestants in the studio.
After a two-second pause, he silently closed his mouth and stood up. As he left, he glanced at the equally silent Sheng Yujia, his eyes perhaps containing a hint of resentment.
Commentator A, loving the drama: “Wow, are we really getting this kind of lineup right from the start of the team matches? Are we allowed to see this?”
Commentator B: “Jiang Nan’an is also a player carrying a lot of expectations. We all know he rarely appears outside of film sets, and this is his variety show debut. I wonder what kind of sparks will fly when our entertainment industry’s ‘high-ridge flower’ stands on the Blazing Holy Grail battlefield?”
With the first group of players confirmed, staff members led the ten people out of Studio 17 toward the competition arena.
On the way, Yan Jie came over with a smile:
“Well, Mr. Hang, so we’re matched against each other?”
He clicked his tongue twice, looking regretful:
“What a shame, I wanted to be on your side. How can I bring myself to go against you?”
Jiang Nan’an had already seen through his act.
He looked him over and said coolly:
“Why do you look so happy to me?”
“I think there must be some misunderstanding between us. What kind of person do you think I am?”
Yan Jie leaned in slightly, asking in a low voice:
“Are you going to play Siren, teacher?”
Jiang Nan’an’s face remained expressionless: “The last time I played Siren against you, you killed me sixteen times-seven tower dives, three bush ambushes, and six backline assassinations. How do you want to humiliate me this time?”
“Oh, you remember so clearly?”
Yan Jie chuckled:
“How is that humiliation? Such harsh words. It won’t be like that this time, trust me.”
Jiang Nan’an turned to look at him for a moment, seemingly trying to see through his smile to determine how much truth was in his words.
Seeing this, Yan Jie immediately raised three fingers in a swearing gesture:
“Really, if I target your Siren even once this time, I, Spring, will commit suicide to apologize. You choose how I die.”
After a pause, he curved his lips into a smile:
“Hanging is fine too.”
For a moment, Jiang Nan’an felt there was something wrong with that statement, but he had no time to think it through.
He just snorted coldly, showing his disdain for Yan Jie’s flowery words.
The staff led them into the arena. Jiang Nan’an walked to his battle station, pulled out the gaming chair, sat down, and put on his headphones and heart rate monitoring bracelet.
After the staff adjusted the cameras and equipment, the Ban & Pick phase officially began. Since this was an assessment match, the players had no coach to help with BP; they had to improvise their picks and strategies on the spot.
The jungler on Jiang Nan’an’s team was that mysterious player who had won the Solo match, one of only two to do so. As the highest-ranked player present, he took on the role of shot-caller, asking in the mic:
“What heroes is everyone good at? Mid, do you play Siren? You did pretty well in the Solo match. If possible, we can build our BP around you.”
Playing Siren would be ideal, but with Yan Jie jungling for the enemy team-knowing his tendency to gank mid-Jiang Nan’an preferred a hero with stronger self-protection. But if the BP went smoothly, Siren wasn’t out of the question. Plus, maybe Yan Jie wasn’t as malicious as he thought, and perhaps the oath he just seriously made…
Jiang Nan’an’s thought was cut off before it could fully form.
Because in the next second, the familiar mermaid icon appeared watery and bright in the blue team’s first ban slot.
[Blue team bans: Siren]
“?” Jiang Nan’an looked up at the enemy jungler’s position.
Yan Jie was probably waiting to see his reaction. Meeting his icy gaze, the man was as happy as a child.
He really was that malicious!
Jiang Nan’an took a deep breath, the oath he heard minutes ago still ringing in his ears: “If I target your Siren even once this time…”
He should have known not to trust a single word from this man’s mouth.
He was truly allergic to anyone with the surname Yan.
—
(advanced chapters available on kofi)
![After losing all his wealth, the ancestor rose from his coffin [BL]](https://www.freenovels.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Your-paragraph-text-1.png "After losing all his wealth, the ancestor rose from his coffin [BL]")
