Chapter 24: Brother Xiang's Furrowed Brow

"Qinghe, please select your next challenger!"

....

"Qinghe, please select your next challenger!"

....

"Qinghe, you now have the right to choose to quit while you're ahead — you may leave with the prizes you've already won, or you may continue the challenge. What is your decision?"

"I choose to continue!"

"Very well! And your next challenger is?!"

"I choose Number Three!"

To the disbelief of everyone watching, Ye Qinghe knocked down one challenger after another. Whether they were university students from top-tier institutions or online authors with broad general knowledge, none of them gave him even the slightest trouble.

For every question, Ye Qinghe answered as though he had known the answer all along, responding the very instant he laid eyes on it.

"He's incredible! Truly incredible! At the rate he's going, just becoming a Stand God is no longer the ceiling — he's gunning for a three-episode championship and that two-hundred-thousand-yuan annual salary!"

"Now that would really be something — a bedridden paralytic walking away with a two-hundred-thousand-yuan annual salary!"

"Do you think the show might have planted a shill? Like, none of this is real, and the production team gave him all the questions in advance just to manufacture a viral moment?"

"That's possible, but if the show wanted to fake it, there'd be no reason to use someone this distinctive. Whether a person like him actually exists is easy enough to verify — the risk of getting caught would be way too high!"

"I'm from Jinling Hospital. This Ye Qinghe wasn't my patient, but I do remember him — he came to our hospital for an examination. We couldn't identify the cause of his condition, and he left not long after."

For every conspiracy theory someone raised, someone else stepped forward to refute it. Before long, staff members from different hospitals came forward publicly to confirm that Ye Qinghe was indeed a real person, and that the man on the show was genuinely him.

This prompted a swift backlash against the person who had been pushing the conspiracy angle just moments before.

Meanwhile, as the comment section erupted into a heated argument, Ye Qinghe calmly dethroned the defending champions one by one and claimed the Stand God position.

"I've looked over these five questions, and they really are quite difficult. If I didn't know they were drawn at random, I'd genuinely suspect the production team was trying to make sure Qinghe doesn't win."

After seeing the five randomly drawn final questions, Brother Xiang first furrowed his brow, then spoke with a hint of displeasure.

In his view, these five questions were the hardest to appear in any episode in recent memory.

"They really are tough," agreed Xiao Min, looking at the questions with a trace of doubt about whether Ye Qinghe could answer them correctly. "Qinghe, you should mentally prepare yourself."

These five questions didn't feel random at all — they felt like they had been deliberately crafted to trip Ye Qinghe up.

"It's fine. I came here for the challenge. If I fail, it just means there's still a great deal more for me to learn."

Ye Qinghe smiled, a faint trace of weariness on his face.

He had beaten ten challengers, and that was no short process. For the past two years, he hadn't focused this intently on anything — especially not a head-to-head contest with another person.

A little fatigue was only natural.

"But before I start answering — could I have some water? I've been talking for so long, my mouth is getting a bit dry."

Ye Qinghe's lips had already grown slightly parched. For an ordinary person, this level of exertion would be nothing; for him, it was a genuine challenge.

"Of course — that was our oversight!"

Brother Xiang immediately noticed Ye Qinghe's condition.

"The production team really dropped the ball on this one. How did no one think of that?"

"You can't really blame them — normally, every contestant has water placed nearby. Ye Qinghe can't reach it himself, so he had to speak up."

"Look at poor Qinghe, his lips are all dry!"

"My heart goes out to Qinghe!"

Ye Dali, too, realized his own mistake at that moment. It was his first time in a setting like this, and although he didn't need to speak, the cameras had been trained on him the entire time. Standing behind Ye Qinghe, he had barely dared to move — and had completely forgotten about giving Ye Qinghe water.

He quickly took the bottle a backstage crew member handed over, unscrewed the cap, and held it to Ye Qinghe's lips.

Ye Qinghe was genuinely thirsty. He drank in long, steady gulps — glug, glug, glug — draining nearly half the bottle before he stopped.

"Alright, I'm good."

After Ye Dali wiped his mouth with a tissue, Ye Qinghe turned to Brother Xiang.

"Good. These five final questions are all in the science and technology category — which is fairly unusual — and they're all on the cutting edge of the field. That's why I felt they seemed a little deliberately unfair."

Brother Xiang glanced down at the questions in his hand.

"It's fine. I trust in my own abilities."

The time had been short, but with his Photographic Memory, the sheer volume of material Ye Qinghe had read through over the past few days was enormous. Even in the realm of cutting-edge science and technology, he had covered a great deal. He didn't believe it was possible that every single question would be something he didn't know.

"Very well. Please listen to the question!"

[During the Chang'e-5 lunar sample return mission, in order to prevent the sampler from being contaminated by lunar dust adhesion, what special aerospace-derived protective coating was applied to the surface of the sampling robotic arm?]

The moment the question appeared on the large screen, every audience member understood why Brother Xiang had reacted the way he did earlier.

This question was genuinely brutal. Chang'e-5 had only returned not long ago, and a question like this appearing now was absolutely not good news for Ye Qinghe.

"This is way too hard!"

"Seriously, who would even know that?!"

"Has this technology ever been publicly disclosed? If not, is it really appropriate to use it as a quiz question?"

"Whoever was talking about a conspiracy earlier — I'm starting to think they were right. This is clearly targeted at Ye Qinghe!"

"If he actually gets this right, then I swear..."

It wasn't just the live audience buzzing — the online viewers erupted as well. Everyone now understood why Brother Xiang's expression had soured earlier, and they all began to worry for Ye Qinghe.

The overwhelming consensus was that a question like this had no business appearing at this particular moment.

"This question really is something else. I never imagined a question like this would come up at a time like this. Ye Qinghe's luck seems to be..."

Xiao Min looked at Ye Qinghe with a face full of concern.

"Actually, I do happen to know this one. The coating used is a polytetrafluoroethylene-based self-cleaning coating!"

But before Xiao Min could even finish her sentence, Ye Qinghe had already given his answer.

"I couldn't even memorize that name if someone made me!"

"What kind of technology is that? Can any experts out there explain?"

"Absolutely incredible — he rattled off the answer to a question like that as if it were common knowledge!"

"No way. That's just insane!"

Everyone stared at Ye Qinghe in astonishment. No one could have imagined that he would actually know something this obscure and cutting-edge.