Inside her personal space, Yun Ruoxi’s figure slowly began to take shape.
Ignoring the faint discomfort in her throat, she immediately summoned the system to check her current popularity.
That last performance had gone fairly well; the popularity gains should be substantial…
【Popularity +19,345】
【Current Popularity: 50,665】
Yun Ruoxi’s eyes curved with a smile, and the corners of her mouth lifted.
In a dangerous place like the battle camp, if she didn’t have some popularity reserves for emergencies, she couldn’t help but feel uneasy.
But now, with fifty thousand popularity points, she could exchange them for a skill or two, or a few quite useful items.
She closed the system panel and shifted her gaze to the upper right corner of her vision.
Lin Zhen was still waiting for his next opponent on screen, his expression somber, seemingly not happy about defeating her.
Meanwhile, the live comments were still expressing concern over what had just happened.
“Did they notice I went easy on him?” Yun Ruoxi murmured inwardly, “But the audience’s imaginations are actually pretty interesting.
Although she was caught in Lin Zhen’s Grappling Technique just now, it wasn’t as if she had no way to break free.
In fact, being ambushed and losing to Lin Zhen was actually part of her plan.
Lin Zhen’s fighting skills weren’t truly strong.
His strength lay in being able to think tactically, leveraging his advantages to barely reach the fourth round.
So, he and Yun Ruoxi weren’t really on the same level.
In the original story, he was crushed in the fifth round and had to work hard to improve his fighting skills, making considerable progress later.
This time, Yun Ruoxi chose to intervene and change the storyline by sending him into the sixth round.
This was not only to gain popularity from altering the story but also to further solidify her character.
A grateful little white flower who couldn’t strike back against her benefactor……………… just thinking about it perfectly pokes the audience’s soft spot for a good girl image.
Later, when she wins the Revival Match and emerges from the Loser’s Bracket, letting the audience and the male lead know she had thrown the fight and that her true strength was far beyond that,
it would deepen the audience’s impression of this persona.
Gaining the male lead’s favor while winning the audience’s love.
Just one change in the plot, but it brought three benefits at once. Yun Ruoxi was willing to call her plan a one-stone-three-birds strategy.
She hadn’t expected that by following her plan, she would inadvertently cooperate well with the production team.
The melancholy ending BGM paired with her performance unexpectedly triggered the audience’s concern for her.
And her popularity surged solidly once again.
That was quite a pleasant surprise.
So it goes to show, the audience’s imagination is something else; she hadn’t even thought this moment could serve as a foreshadowing for a future reveal.
But it didn’t matter.
Yun Ruoxi already had this down.
Your creativity is great, but now it’s mine.JPG
“The audience is right. A gun doesn’t appear in a plot for no reason; I can’t waste this setup. As a fan-loving little Xi, I have to satisfy everyone’s worst suspicions.”
Yun Ruoxi chuckled mischievously to herself.
“That’s what you call Murphy’s Law!”
Though if she really followed through on what she was thinking, the production team would probably be cursed to the heavens.
But no matter, she’d bear the brunt for popularity’s sake!
Yun Ruoxi clicked into 【Combat Simulation】, preparing for the Loser’s Bracket match.
Since she lost to Lin Zhen, her ranking in the 【Combat Assessment】 had instantly plummeted by nearly a thousand spots.
But it didn’t matter. As long as she won the Revival Match, everything would turn around.
This 【Combat Assessment】 was her home turf; she had already scripted the story, and her performance was far from over!
I actually won…
On the fifth round stage, Lin Zhen stared at his palms in a daze, barely able to believe it.
Although he had the physical advantage and had seized a fleeting chance to successfully complete the Grappling Technique, Yun Ruoxi hadn’t just given up without a fight.
With her fighting foundation, she should have had several counters to escape the Grappling Technique.
So why did she not even try and simply chose to give up calmly?
Lin Zhen desperately wanted to believe he had won through his own efforts, step by step, giving it his all.
But he was clear in his heart.
Except for the first round, his previous three wins had been narrow escapes, and the fourth round was a fluke victory by exploiting an opponent’s weakness.
If it came to it again, he wasn’t confident he could win.
Given this, the only reasonable explanation for his victory over Yun Ruoxi was that she had thrown the fight.
Considering how she insisted on not attacking him and only agreed to fight with the system’s orders, the “probability” could almost be removed entirely!
“This girl, seriously, am I the kind of person who can’t lose or can’t lose to a woman?”
Lin Zhen shook his head with a smile, a trace of softness flickering in his eyes.
In this era of rampant materialism, extreme technological advancement, and early maturity, pure girls like Yun Ruoxi were truly rare.
He guessed her family background must be very good; otherwise, she wouldn’t have been cultivated into such a personality.
Recalling the utterly hopeless expression she had when they first met, Lin Zhen vaguely understood something.
A prompt sounded.
Lin Zhen took a deep breath, shook his head to suppress his tangled thoughts, and focused all his energy on the upcoming sixth round battle.
Even if Yun Ruoxi had thrown the fight, combined with his physical advantage, his win in the fifth round could only be considered a narrow victory.
The path ahead would not be so easy.
Reaching the sixth round, he was now among the top 313.
At this stage, opponents would no longer have obvious weaknesses like Yun Ruoxi.
Their fighting skills and physical condition would definitely overwhelm him.
He was like a sheep lost among wolves, any opponent could easily tear him apart.
Though Lin Zhen still hoped to advance further, this ranking was likely his limit.
Swish!
Lin Zhen’s figure slowly appeared on a brand-new arena, and across from him, a figure also took shape from a cluster of light points.
He looked up and, as usual, appraised his sixth-round opponent, his pupils suddenly contracting.
This was a lean brown-haired boy.
Plain-looking, expression indifferent, but Lin Zhen recognized him.
His number was……0001!
At first, 0001 might not have been intimidating.
But after a month of training, all the unworthy had fallen back to their rightful places.
Anyone still holding onto the 0001 throne was definitely a monster among monsters.
This meant his learning progress had to be maintained within the top 1% of ten thousand people.
All assessment results also had to be in the top three, or else the 4000% negative incentive coefficient would instantly drag him off his pedestal.