Diners eating skewers watched this scene unfold, wishing they had a time-lapse machine to jump forward two minutes.
But in reality, such a thing didn't exist. So at this moment, all the TV viewers could do was stare at the boring commercials on their screens.
Just then, a young woman from a couple eating skewers placed her finished skewer into the bucket beside the foldable dining table.
With a "clink," the tip of the skewer hit the plastic bottom of the bucket, a crisp sound. The woman blinked and leaned forward towards the man sitting opposite her, asking curiously, "Hey, Li Biao, why did I think Mr. Hu was holding a knife in the preview just now?"
Hearing his girlfriend Pingping say this, Li Biao quickly nodded in agreement, "I thought so too!"
As they spoke, a middle-aged man at the next table, who had been drinking and eating skewers alone, chimed in, "What do you mean 'thought so'? It definitely was! Clearly, it was just a small knife for cutting fruit at home! A coward like that only dares to throw his weight around with his own daughter. If he dared to fight us, and pulled a knife, I'd take him down on the spot!"
Upon hearing the man's words, Pingping became worried about the calm young girl named Liu Chen on TV.
"Oh no, did something really happen?"
The man waved his hand at her words, "Don't worry, I just texted my friend at the TV station. She's not injured, just scared. Her own father actually laid hands on his own daughter. Fortunately, her boyfriend protected her, though his hand got a cut."
"Oh! Isn't Liu Chen heartbroken?"
As they chatted back and forth, customers at other surrounding tables couldn't help but join the conversation. One person said, "I know this Mr. Hu. He's the neighbor of the employer of the neighbor of the nanny of my seventh aunt's family. When they moved into the complex a few years ago, they seemed very harmonious. The wife was articulate, and the old lady was greedy and stingy. They had a little daughter who was well-behaved and good at her studies. But guess what happened? The wife he later married tricked the old lady with a fake jade bracelet. When the old lady found out, they had a fight in front of the neighbors they had invited. The old lady broke her bones and was later somehow hospitalized and ended up half-paralyzed. But the later wife endured it and took care of her. After a few months of care, she colluded with Mr. Hu's subordinate and his own sister to drain the company's funds. Then, the pair ran off, and she was left behind. Mr. Hu was ruthless and directly reported his wife to the police, sending her to prison!"
As this person spoke, residents who happened to be passing by the complex stopped to listen. Someone, after hearing it, couldn't contain themselves and quickly asked, "And then?!"
"And then what happened to the old lady and her granddaughter?"
The speaker spread their hands, "I don't know about that. The last time she told me, that's where the story ended."
Just then, the TV commercials finally ended, and the talk show returned. Perhaps because there was so little new material today, the talk show replayed three minutes of the segment before the commercials after the ads. These three minutes made residents pushing electric bikes to charge stop in their tracks, pushing their bikes to the outer edge of the stall, looking from afar at the old-fashioned, big-backed television under the awning.
"I did my best for Qianqian..."
"No, he said unless Qianqian sleeps with him one more night..."
At this statement, Pingping, who had been watching TV and eating potato chips, was stunned. Her mouth hung open, and a potato chip fell onto the plate on the table.
It made a "clink" sound, splashing chili powder onto Pingping's royal blue down jacket, which she had deliberately worn for her date.
The TV continued to play.
The man at the table next to Pingping's couldn't take it anymore and slammed the table, "Damn it! What kind of scum is this!"
This outburst was like pressing play, and the audience members in the vicinity began to curse angrily.
"Does this kind of person deserve to be a father? What is this!"
"Holy crap, he'd even sell his own daughter. What kind of company does this person run? The female employees in there must be..."
The same scenes were unfolding everywhere, in front of televisions in C City and across S Province.
Soon, the first of the TV station's hotlines rang, followed by the second, third, fourth... And after these hotlines were connected, they were all filled with people scolding the program crew.
"You invited such trash onto the show! And you almost stabbed the female guest! What kind of safety measures did you have in place!"
"For the sake of exposure, your show released that statement. Didn't you consider the harm to that young girl!"
"..."
The calls kept coming, and the switchboard operators at the program department's mouths were getting sore, but they had to continue apologizing on the phone.
Meanwhile, Xu Danli, the decision-maker behind all of this, was in the control room.
"The talk show interviews have all aired. Now upload the interview program to our television station's website."
A staff member wearing black-rimmed glasses adjusted his glasses, hesitating slightly, "Sister Li, should we perhaps mute that line? The young lady..."
Xu Danli interrupted the black-rimmed glasses man before he could finish, patting his shoulder. "Did you see our program's ratings today?"
The black-rimmed glasses man nodded, "I saw them, Sister. Our program's ratings have broken the station's record, even higher than the finale of the most popular Korean drama the station has ever aired."
Xu Danli crossed her arms and looked down at the black-rimmed glasses man with a raised eyebrow. "Then why are you still wasting my time with this nonsense?"
"Yes!"
After Xu Danli had the interview uploaded online, she even instructed the glasses man to post on Hupu and Weibo using his own account.
"Most Beautiful Campus Belle Scholar Nearly Stabbed!"
With the addition of "Most Beautiful Campus Belle Scholar," and given Liu Chen's existing popularity, the post quickly gained traction.
Soon, the first batch of people who refreshed the post clicked on the official website link within the thread.
In early 2010, users browsing forums on their mobile phones were still a minority. Because data usage fees were still relatively expensive, most people chose to surf the web on their computers. Therefore, watching videos in one browser window while browsing Hupu in another was common. Then, as they browsed, new posts on Hupu rapidly appeared by the dozens.
'The Most Beautiful Campus Belle Scholar is truly miserable!'
Hu Qian, who had been consistently following posts about the Most Beautiful Campus Belle Scholar, felt a surge of joy upon seeing the title of this post. She quickly moved her cursor to the post and double-clicked.