9: Chapter 009 Bricklaying and Pig Feeding? This guy's a dance master?!

As soon as that abrupt bullet comment popped up in the stream, the viewers who had been frantically spamming "Scripted!" paused for a rare moment.

Immediately after, the direction of the comments shifted.

[Bro, are you alright? I'd believe it if you said he was a plant, but a construction site bricklayer?]

[Can a bricklayer at your site pull off that level of Electric Wave? Why bother with professional dancers then? Just send them all to work at a construction site for two months.]

[Exactly! Even though yesterday's video was blurry, those beats and rhythm were definitely built from childhood training. You couldn't pull that off without at least eight or ten years of practice.]

[This person must be a rabid fan of Zhang Yixing. They can't bear anyone saying someone dances better than their oppa, so they came here to stir up trouble.]

[And calling him ugly? If that face is ugly, half the male celebrities in the Chinese Entertainment Industry need plastic surgery!]

[Anyone can talk big! Bring out the proof if you've got the balls!]

[...]

Yan Yu was fuming with rage.

She was already annoyed enough that he had run off, and now someone was barging into her stream to throw mud at him.

She held her selfie stick across her chest and pointed right at the screen.

"Don't come in here being disgusting!"

"He is a legitimate dance teacher! The sign for his studio is right here, and these people behind me are all from our Dance Academy. Our teacher even came over in person today!"

"Do you even know what muscle control is? Do you know what frame means?"

"Constantly calling him a bricklayer—why don't you find a bricklayer to dance for me then? If he can pull off yesterday's level of skill, I'll eat this glass door on the spot!"

Yan Yu's rapid-fire rant left her three roommates behind her completely stunned.

Shen Yun stood to the side, her brows furrowed.

Usually at school, Yan Yu had a noisy, dramatic personality and often got scolded by her.

But today's words actually made Shen Yun view her in a slightly different light.

Although this girl was quirky, she didn't drop the ball at crucial moments, protected her own, and had a bottom line.

In truth, the anger in Shen Yun's heart wasn't any less than Yan Yu's.

She was, after all, a principal Classical Dance dancer who had won national awards.

The movements of that man in yesterday's video—that absolute control over every inch of muscle in his body—was built up through thousands of hours of sweat and pain.

Now some random keyboard warrior pops up claiming he's just a construction site bricklayer.

Completely invalidating decades of hard work.

This was the ultimate insult to the very concept of dance.

What's more...

He was very likely KING, who had trained in South Korea for over a decade.

Her former idol!

That made her even less willing to watch these people talk nonsense!

Facing the onslaught from so many people, that user was still undaunted.

[Still being stubborn? Won't shed a tear until you see the coffin, huh?]

[Fine, you want proof? I'll give you proof.]

[Go check the latest video I just posted on my homepage. Open your dog eyes wide and see clearly what kind of trash your supposed dance god—who's supposedly better than my oppa—actually is!]

Yan Yu sneered, immediately toggling out of the stream interface and clicking into that user's profile via their ID.

"Fine! I'd like to see what you can pull out..."

Before she could finish her sentence, Yan Yu's voice got stuck in her throat.

The thousands of people in the stream also followed the lead and clicked into that video.

The video quality wasn't particularly clear, but judging from the environment, it seemed to be a construction site.

The background noise was the roar of machinery and a contractor yelling work chants at the top of his lungs.

The camera shook slightly and focused on a young man not far away.

The man wore a faded grey sleeveless undershirt, a dirty towel draped over his shoulder, and mud-stained camouflage pants on his lower half.

Bending over, he grabbed four red bricks in each hand and stacked them onto a wheelbarrow.

His movements were extremely skillful.

A lift, a flip, a place.

Dust rose into the air, landing on his sweat-drenched hair.

Even with dirt on his face, even wearing such tattered clothes...

But that high nose bridge, that sharp jawline, and that highly recognizable tuft of curly hair...

Yan Yu could recognize him even if he turned to ash.

This was the very man whose photo hung on the wall.

Su Chen!

The comment section fell into a dead silence.

Only after a good dozen seconds did someone tentatively post a comment.

[Holy shit... That face, it really seems to be the same person?]

[No way? Is he really a f***ing bricklayer?!]

[Look at how he stacks those bricks. Without two or three years of construction site experience, there's no way he could work at that speed.]

[Those muscle lines... Incredible! No wonder he exerted so much force while Dancing yesterday. Turns out it was forged through laying bricks?]

[This world is too surreal, my brain can't process this.]

[...]

"Impossible!"

Yan Yu stared intently at the screen and shook her head vigorously.

"It must be an AI face swap! Technology is so advanced nowadays, you can synthesize it with any random photo!"

She dragged the progress bar back, trying to spot signs of pixel distortion or editing at the edges of the frame.

Right then, the video screen went dark.

Then it cut to the next scene.

This time it wasn't a construction site.

It was an extremely rudimentary rural pigpen.

In the video, Su Chen wore high waterproof rubber boots and carried a large iron bucket full of slop.

"Oink, oink—"

A pack of large white pigs jostled around the trough.

Expressionlessly, Su Chen lifted the heavy iron bucket and flicked his wrist.

Splash!

The slop poured with precision into the trough.

He even lifted his foot to gently nudge aside a pig trying to hog the food.

His movements were smooth and fluid, carrying a sense of practiced ease from living in the countryside for half a lifetime.

Next, the scene switched once more.

In a paddy field.

With his pant legs rolled up, Su Chen was bent over planting rice seedlings.

The sun made his skin flush red. Straightening up, he wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and casually yelled toward the camera, "How much bigger is this plot?"

The video abruptly ended there.

Laying bricks.

Feeding pigs.

Planting rice seedlings.

Three scenes, three different kinds of farm work.

Every single clip was so real it made one's scalp tingle.

No filters, no lighting—just the rawest record of labor.

Especially during the rice planting segment, Su Chen's speaking voice had a slight pant and rasp, and even the sound of running water in the background was crystal clear.

This couldn't possibly be synthesized.

The stream completely blew up.

[Holy s*** s*** s*** s*** s***! He's a real-deal farmer!]

[That pig-feeding technique—even my granddad would praise him as an expert!]

[Where's the guy from yesterday who said this bro could debut in center position in South Korea? Step out and take a walk! He's debuting in center position in a pigpen!]

[Case closed! He's no hidden master at all; he's just a migrant worker who returned to his village to farm!]

[LMAO, the streamer just swore a vow to eat a glass door earlier! Where's the door now? Should I bring you some cumin?]

[Hyped to heaven yesterday, slammed into the mud today. Even screenwriters wouldn't dare write a twist like this!]

[I knew that rhythm felt weird—turns out that sense of rhythm came from planting rice seedlings, Hahaha!]

That hater jumped out again.

[Can you see clearly now? Does a mud-puddling bumpkin like this even deserve to be compared to my oppa? Go take a leak and look at what kind of trash you are!]

[And "perfect standard answer"? This is the standard answer for bricklaying!]

With all this commotion, the stream's viewer count surged directly to four thousand!

But Yan Yu couldn't laugh at all.

Her hand holding the phone was trembling, her mind in complete disarray.

How could this happen?

This doesn't make any sense!

She had studied dance for over ten years; could she really not even tell someone's foundation apart?

How could that effortless, fluid control possibly come from doing farm work?

But with the video right before her eyes, she had no choice but to believe it.

"Teacher Shen..."