A Game of False Affections

Xue Xiaowan has two jobs. By day, she is a relationship counselor, teaching people how to negotiate rationally in the dating and marriage market. By night, she is a “professional substitute chatter,” hired by popular livestreamers to use their accounts to deal with various wealthy patrons, guide them into sending gifts through carefully chosen words, and maintain false intimacy. She abides by three ironclad rules: never develop feelings, never show her face, and never cross the line. That is, until she takes on Lin Yi, the most difficult top patron of the leading streamer Mumu. This man is perceptive and lonely, yearning for a meeting of souls. During half a year of frequent exchanges, the “Mumu” played by Xue Xiaowan draws him deeply into the relationship. What he invests is not only a huge amount of money, but also the sincerity he has never given anyone else. The crisis erupts when Mumu boasts drunkenly one night: “My substitute chatter talked my top patron into becoming completely devoted to me!” Word gets out. Lin Yi is furious and begins a frenzied investigation into the truth behind the “substitute.” When the “perfect lover” constructed through lies in the virtual world collides with a ruthless capital hunter in reality; When every carefully designed scheme turns back on its creator; When the substitute chatter’s dark past is hung above the guillotine of her career... Only then does Xue Xiaowan realize that this substitute game, which began with money, has long since made the stakes her own life, and the sincere feelings that unexpectedly grew within a false identity. After Lin Jianshen uncovers every lie, he faces an even more cruel question: does he hate the shadow that deceived him, or has he fallen in love with the woman behind that shadow? Reality and virtuality intertwine, while lies and sincerity consume one another. In this hunt involving both emotion and capital, no one can escape unscathed.