10. Spend It All!

Page 1 of 3

010

Zhiwei leaned back wearily, slanting against the sofa.

Mustering her spirits, she said to the brimming-with-energy Andre, “You are not to pull strings or haggle. Absolutely not.”

Spend as much as it costs. Spend every last bit of the money!

Watching his cheerful expression, Zhiwei was utterly at a loss.

Andre was like a golden retriever that had been cooped up for far too long, bouncing and scrambling everywhere, possessed of an inexhaustible supply of energy.

He looked every inch the pampered young master. He had never done many of these things before, yet somehow he had the strength to fuss over everything. Nothing seemed too troublesome, and he wanted to try it all.

Zhiwei hurried to placate him. “You have already worked hard enough. You do not need to put yourself through something like that.”

“We will spend exactly what it costs at the original price. We have six million now, do we not?”

Andre answered with great precision, “Five million nine hundred thousand… because we paid the security deposit.”

Then he checked the website’s administrative panel again and corrected himself. “Oh, no. You were right. It is six million. More donations came in while we were speaking.”

Zhiwei raised her voice. “…Spend it all!”

Andre stared at her. “What?”

“I mean, a starship is essential. We will need one when we go to the electoral districts to canvass for votes and so on. How much does a starship cost?”

Over the past two days, Zhiwei had used the StarNet to cram herself full of interstellar knowledge. She knew that the hovercraft Andre had previously driven and a proper starship were two entirely different things.

It was rather like the difference between a car and a spacecraft.

The gap in price was anything but small.

Sure enough, Andre’s expression grew hesitant. “A brand-new, large, modern military starship generally costs about as much as an entire electoral district’s tax revenue for one year.”

Zhiwei reversed every word Andre had just said and asked, “Then is there a reference price for a small, outdated civilian starship on the secondhand market?”

“That depends on how badly worn-out it is.” Andre hesitated. “Six million could buy you something in absolutely dreadful condition… Should I pull some strings after all? My family is in the starship business.”

Zhiwei heard the unspoken reluctance in his voice.

As expected, this thing was expensive. She was delighted.

Wonderful. Spend all the money on a starship. That way, once enough time had passed, discussion of her campaign platform on the StarNet would die down, the website would stop receiving donations, and she would have no money left to hold rallies!

In Zhiwei’s understanding, a rally was a combination of a fan meeting and grassroots campaigning. Holding one could both consolidate existing support and attract new supporters.

So if she held no rallies, she would gain no new supporters while driving away the old ones!

The best of both worlds. A perfect outcome!

Zhiwei refused point-blank to let Andre pull strings. She insisted that he pay full price.

Naturally, she could not tell him that this was her ingenious little plan to lose the election. Instead, she said, “I can tell that your background is far from ordinary.”

But stop going out of your way to help me in ways that make everything worse, damn it!

That was what she thought, but not what she said.

She had once been an underground idol. An idol was still an idol, and idols were very good at speaking in the polished, professional language of public relations.

Zhiwei gazed deeply into his eyes and said something deeply moving. “But the only thing I value is you as a person. Everything wrapped around you is merely a burden to me.”

The meaning was the same, only the phrasing had changed.

The words she left unsaid lingered in her throat, while their exchanged gazes remained clear and natural.

Andre froze for a moment. Slowly, he lowered his eyes, his head dipping slightly.

In a low voice, he admitted, “I support you, but I… truly have no way to make my family support you as well.”

Zhiwei thought, Oh, please. I understand.

You are my fan, but you cannot drag your mother and father along to become fans too. That is perfectly normal!

She did not care about that. She urged Andre to cheer up instead of sitting there, dejectedly blaming himself.

Page 1 of 3

Page 2 of 3

Zhiwei could no longer run away. She still had to compete in the divine election for the time being. Her earlier restless thoughts had faded away.

She might as well tidy up her belongings and put her mind in order.

Zhiwei rummaged through her canvas bag. It had crossed over with her on the way to the audition.

Inside were her phone, a hundred yuan note hidden in the phone case, the lipstick and powder she used for touch-ups, tissues, keys, and various other small items.

Aside from those, the most noteworthy things she carried were a little stone and a vial of water and soil.

She had picked up the stone at the seaside some time ago. Since the word for “stone” sounded like the word for “time,” she had taken it as a sign that her luck would turn. She needed some good fortune for the audition, so she had tucked it into her bag.

The water-and-soil vial was a tiny glass bottle about the size of a thumb, divided down the middle into two compartments.

One half held soil, the other water, symbolizing the soil and water of one’s homeland. It was supposed to be an auspicious token as well.

Zhiwei pinched the little bottle between her fingers and held it up for a closer look.

When she had bought it, she had merely been leaving her hometown to make a living in the big city. Carrying it with her had made it feel as though she had never truly left home.

But now, things were different. She had not merely moved to another city. She had moved straight into another interstellar age.

She kept running farther and farther away! Someone save her.

Zhiwei took out her phone too. Fortunately, she had switched it off earlier. After powering it on, she saw that it still had half a charge.

She had no charger, and there were no compatible outlets or voltage supplies here. She switched it off again, thinking that she would have to find a solution later.

Shouldering her canvas bag, Zhiwei sighed.

Since she had already paid the money and her nearest escape route had been cut off, she had no choice but to gather her spirits.

She rose from the sofa and asked, “Are the people outside still blocking the door?”

Andre nodded. “Half of them are reporters. The other half are small organizations that want to invite you to join them.”

He explained, “Your status as an independent candidate is extremely appealing to them.”

“Some organizations spend decades throwing everything they have into cultivating a competitive candidate and still fail to produce one.” Andre gazed at Zhiwei with admiration and awe. “And now you have appeared out of nowhere with no organization behind you, carrying a platform powerful enough to shake people’s hearts, and you are ranked seventh.”

“If they recruit you, it would be like picking up a free bargain.”

As he spoke, the sound of bells drifted over from the distance.

Zhiwei walked out onto the balcony and leaned over the railing. She realized that the bells were coming from the temple.

Andre glanced at the time. “It is midnight.”

“Do the bells ring at midnight every day? How come I never heard them before?”

“They do not ring every day. Only once every ten years.” Andre gazed at the temple’s outer walls and spoke softly. “Because this is midnight on the final day for candidates in this divine election to pay their security deposits.”

“Once midnight passes, all candidates who made it through the preliminary selection and completed their deposit payments will officially form the field for this election.”

He continued, “On the first day of every month, the temple holds a gathering and sets the elimination cutoff. According to the live rankings, anyone below the cutoff loses the right to continue competing in the divine election.”

Andre’s handsome face appeared especially solemn in the night.

“The eliminations continue like this until the end of the year, until December first, until only two candidates remain, until the electoral districts return their votes, until the temple tallies them, until… a new deity is born.”

His clear blue eyes were deep and dim in the dead of night, yet flecked with a brilliant, tempered light.

Andre murmured, “Everything begins at this moment.”

Zhiwei gazed into the night. The temple stood towering in the darkness, surrounded by bands of rainbow light, majestic and sacred.

The nearby buildings shimmered with halos of every color, while hovercraft hovered between the towers.

A few stars could be seen in the pitch-black sky. Looking closely, she realized they might not be stars at all. Perhaps they were starships streaking across the heavens. Or perhaps they were streams of data sweeping across the surface of a planetary shield during a self-diagnostic scan.

Somehow, inexplicably, she had reached this point and found herself standing here.

“All right, then.” Zhiwei sighed.

She turned and walked to the doorway of the room. She stopped there, separated from the people crowding outside by nothing more than a single door.

Page 2 of 3

Page 3 of 3

Zhiwei did not look back.

Calmly, she raised her hand, pressed the button beside the door, released the security lock, and pulled the door open.

A whole array of devices in every shape and form came at her from the other side—cameras, recording equipment, livestreaming rigs, every piece of equipment practically thrust into her face.

The crowd’s voices were noisy and chaotic.

“Zhiwei! It is Zhiwei!”

“I am asking first! Let me ask first!”

“Do not shove my equipment! Stop pushing!”

“Candidate Zhiwei, hello! Several experts have already raised objections to your campaign platform. Do you have anything you would like to explain or refute?”

“Where will your next rally be held? Which electoral district will you visit first to campaign for votes?”

“You still do not have an organization. Would you consider looking at ours? We have three fixed electoral districts, where we are practically guaranteed to win votes. Please give us some thought!”

Andre followed close behind her, moving awkwardly.

He wanted to rush forward and restore order, but feared blocking Zhiwei’s face. He wanted to remain behind her and lend her support, but lacked the necessary presence.

He looked far more nervous than Zhiwei.

As for Zhiwei, there was not the slightest hint of tension on her face. She appeared composed and unruffled.

There were cameras here!

Zhiwei’s reactions in front of a camera were instinctive. She had always been naturally sensitive to cameras and people’s gazes.

Especially during her time as an underground idol, when fans had filmed her performances from the audience. Holding on to the hope that one of those videos might go viral, she had trained herself thoroughly in front of the camera.

In front of a camera, she could produce the perfect professional reaction and make the camera capture her at her most beautiful.

A qualified idol was someone who could find the camera no matter where it emerged from.

No matter what angle the camera approached from or how it filmed her, her appearance never fell apart. Not a single ugly picture.

Zhiwei had originally opened the door merely to say hello, show her face, familiarize herself with the process, and prepare herself mentally.

But the moment she stepped out and faced so many cameras, her rational mind no longer needed to do any work. Her instincts took over, and she began performing.

Zhiwei nodded and smiled as she began answering questions.

“Thank you for the invitation, but unfortunately, I do not currently have an organization in mind.”

“Experts have commented on my platform? I am honored to have received their attention. Yes, I will take a look later.”

“For certain reasons, I was unable to meet everyone earlier. I apologize for making you wait. We should have many more opportunities to interact in the future, so there is no need to rush. It is getting late. With that, I wish you all a good night.”

Marvelous. She had not said a single useful thing. She had done nothing except coax everyone along.

It was all stock phrasing. She did not even need to think; her mouth knew what to say on its own.

And while her mouth did the talking, her expression remained perfectly managed. She appeared warm, kind, deeply empathetic, and impossibly wonderful.

Zhiwei dealt with the media, posed for group photographs, answered questions, accepted interviews, and gave vague responses to every invitation.

All the while, she was thinking that this was entirely Andre’s fault for being too capable! If he had failed to raise the hundred thousand credits, she could now have gone out in disgrace yet secretly delighted, leaving the contest behind. Instead, she had to manage public opinion like this.

After everything was over, Zhiwei coaxed the entire crowd away.

She turned around, closed the door, secured the lock, and tossed a single word at the dumbfounded Andre.

“Sleep!”

Andre’s eyes shone as he came closer. “Wow, Commander, you are amazing! And so impressive!”

He awkwardly and earnestly flattered her. “You were practically born to become a deity! You will definitely win the election, become the savior, become the one true god!”

Damn it! Zhiwei cursed inwardly. Was he an idiot? He had touched the one subject he absolutely should not have mentioned!

Zhiwei made a pained face. “…Do not say another word.”