Chapter 164: Trading Trash for Cash

Su Wanning turned her head, shot her a sideways glance, and said, "They're all inside, go get them yourselves. I only have two hands, how could I possibly carry all of this alone?"

Hearing this, the others stood up one by one. Yu Xin pursed her lips and chimed in, half-jokingly, "Oh, so the other bowl in your hands was specially brought for President Qin, huh?"

"That's right!"

Su Wanning nodded heavily. Then she turned back, flashing a bright, radiant smile toward Qin Jingchen nearby, and said with a suggestive tone, "You need to eat your fill, okay, otherwise my heart will ache!"

As soon as Su Wanning said this, the movements of everyone preparing to head to the kitchen paused abruptly. Their faces showed varying degrees of awkward and stiff expressions. Meanwhile, Qin Jingchen, who remained seated, looked completely incredulous. Though his face maintained little outward reaction, his pupils perfectly mirrored his profound shock.

Could she really have said such a caring thing to him just now?

At the same time, the assistant guarding the live stream bounced straight up in excitement.

As expected, with his assist, President Qin was unstoppable! He had managed to completely capture Madam's heart in no time at all!

Seeing Qin Jingchen frozen in place with eyes full of shock, Su Wanning knew her plan had succeeded. She gave him a crisp, cute "wink," returned to her own seat, and lowered her head to eat her wontons.

Meanwhile, Suisui took his younger sister's hand and walked toward the kitchen. Niannian asked him in a low voice, her expression slightly stiff, "Brother, why did Mommy suddenly change like this? It feels so strange. Did an evil witch put a spell on our mommy?"

Suisui shook his head with an inscrutable expression and replied, "No."

"Oh." Young as she was, Niannian trusted her brother implicitly. "Then it must be because of Daddy!"

[Oh my god, did I see that right? Sister Su is acting like a young girl!]

[So greasy, I'm about to throw up.]

[She looks nothing like the mother of two. I'd totally believe it if someone said she was an eighteen-year-old, fresh and radiant college student.]

[What on earth is going on here? Did President Qin unlock the inner maiden trapped inside Sister Su's heart?]

Qin Jingchen ate this breakfast in unusual silence, while Su Wanning chuckled inwardly.

It seemed her strategy had worked; the man had truly called off his attacks!

After breakfast, the director's team gathered all the guests on the beach to announce the morning's activities.

"As you can all see, although this is a pristine and undeveloped beautiful island, there is still plenty of floating marine debris scattered along the beach."

Since the island was a tourist destination, despite its remote location and lack of visitors, garbage floating in the ocean was constantly washed ashore by the waves, leaving the beach littered with trash.

"During this phase of our filming on the island, the program team will set up a shop. Of course, we won't be using money to buy things; we are going back to the basics. As we all know, our country's oldest circulating currency is seashells, so—"

"If we pick up lots and lots of seashells on the beach, we can trade them for money!" Mingming was the first to jump up, shouting excitedly.

"We do need to pick things up on the beach, but not seashells—it's the garbage here. You can exchange the trash with the program team for seashells that can be used to buy things. The seashells you collect yourselves on the beach don't count, oh."

As Wang Zan's voice trailed off, Mingming's face clearly showed disappointment. Standing nearby, Feng Rui took the opportunity to make a gloving, teasing remark: "Did you really think Uncle Director was going to scatter money on the beach for us to pick up?"

Mingming raised his head and glared at her fiercely, the disgust in his eyes plain to see, but Feng Rui didn't care.

She had maintained a neutral stance over the past few days. It was clear that the rivalry between Yin Shanshan and Su Wanning was leaning toward a defeat for the former, so she naturally didn't dare to offend Su Wanning as easily as before. Yet, she couldn't afford to abandon Yin Shanshan entirely either.

Caught between the two choices, Feng Rui had actively requested to share a room with Yu Xin when choosing accommodations, but for some reason, Yu Xin had suddenly defected to Su Wanning's side.

Having no other option, Feng Rui used the excuse that Mingming was a boy and it was inconvenient to share living quarters with Daxi to demand a separate abandoned house from the director's team as a temporary residence. However, the longer she spent alone with Mingming, the more obvious the conflicts between this mother and son became.

In front of the cameras, Feng Rui held back her temper. Instead, she lowered her head and looked at the garbage on the beach with a troubled expression.

"Director, there's so much garbage here. At least tell us which kind of trash is worth the most?"

Before Wang Zan could answer, Yin Shanshan chimed in from the side, "Oh Feng, you shouldn't put it that way. The director's team arranged this to let us contribute our own share of effort toward protecting the marine environment. Trash has no distinction of noble or base; naturally, we should do our utmost to clean up all the garbage here."

[Shanshan is right, I support her!]

[Exactly! Feng Rui is just too calculating.]

[I can't stand her.]

[Why hasn't Feng Rui been kicked off the show yet?]

[Wait, since everyone is playing a game, of course they're going to care about how to maximize their labor return. It's not like she said she wouldn't work, is it necessary to make such a big deal out of it?]

[Why do Yin Shanshan's green tea remarks feel more and more frequent lately?]

[+1]

Feng Rui naturally knew that Yin Shanshan's words were a veiled dig at her, so she promptly shut her mouth. Only then did Wang Zan speak up.

"Of course, exchanging trash for seashells has its own rules. Everyone, please look over here—"

Wang Zan pointed toward a whiteboard nearby, which was covered in some incomprehensible diagrams.

While explaining, Wang Zan gestured across the board.

"As you can see, this is a scale. That means the amount of seashells you receive will be determined entirely by the weight of your garbage, regardless of the type of trash you collect."

"That's a good method, it's fair."

"But how are we supposed to carry it? We can't pick up trash with our bare hands, right?"

The other guests chimed in all at once with overlapping comments.

"Of course not. The program team will issue each of you a burlap sack, along with gloves and tongs for picking up trash. However, you will need to exchange seashells for these tools first."

"Director, where are we supposed to get seashells right now? We need to pick up trash first to earn gear, but we can't pick up trash without gear. Isn't this a chicken-and-egg dead loop?"

Su Wanning hit the nail right on the head, exposing the truth.

[Is the program team playing nesting dolls with us here?]

[As expected, the sea isn't deeper than the program team's套路 (tricks).]

[I seem to smell the scent of a conspiracy.]

[Look at how happily the director is smiling, it's definitely nothing good!]

[Sister Su, sanction him!]

Without anyone noticing, because of Su Wanning's daring attitude and willingness to speak her mind, the audience had long since regarded her as the thorn in the side of the program team.