This top guy is crazy!

Zhanbo looked incredulous: "Alright, alright, stop messing around! It must be a prank by Xiao Hei downstairs using AI face-swapping."

Zhao Haitang shook his head:
"No, no! This is a shocking secret that I spent forty-nine hours dredging up from the unfathomable ocean of the internet. It has nothing to do with Xiao Hei downstairs, and as everyone knows, videos can't be photoshopped, so this must be real! Just like a pizza can't be without cheese, Lu Ziqiao can't be without hair gel!"

Lu Ziqiao pulled half a biscuit from the crack in the sofa: "You're right! I can testify that Xiao Hei was absolutely not involved in this!"

Back in his room, Zhanbo started searching on his own. He found a webpage and exclaimed in surprise:
"Five Treasures for Protection Against Lightning!"

On Sunday, Zhanbo returned home, where Hu Yifei's Taekwondo certificate and Zhanbo's programming competition trophy were hanging on the wall.

Pushing open the door, Zhanbo shouted:
"Dad, Mom, I'm back!"

Aunt Hu rushed out with a spatula:

"Zhanbo, you're back? Didn't Yifei come back with you? Yesterday she said she'd teach me how to post videos on Douyin, that she was going to make a 'Hardcore Mom Teaches You How to Cook' series, but she dropped her phone into the soup as soon as she started filming..."

“.” Zhanbo looked speechless: “Mom, I came back to see Dad about something.”

Lu Zhanbo's father, Comrade Lu Lutong, was wearing a pot on his head, facing the window in a Tai Chi starting posture, with a few drops of oil still hanging on the edge of the pot.

Zhanbo went up and took it off for him. This is the first time Zhanbo's father appears in the show. Hu Yifei's mother did appear once, played by the English teacher from "A Little Thing Called First Love".

"Dad, stop practicing your lousy skills. I need to talk to you."

Lu Lutong was extremely dissatisfied:

"I am receiving cosmic signals."

He turned the pot upside down and held it on his head: "Look at this curve, it's perfect for amplifying electromagnetic waves from the Gamma constellation!"

Zhanbo took out his phone:
"Who do you think this is?"

Lulutong:
"Isn't this you?"

Zhanbo: "Look again!"

Lu Lutong: "You've been filming a movie? And you've gone abroad?"

Zhanbo: "Dad, don't you remember anything?! Like, I'm not your biological son, this person is my long-lost biological father, you switched me at the hospital, or this person is your twin brother—"

Lu Lutong's face suddenly showed an expression of reminiscing about the past: "Speaking of twin brothers... I did have a twin brother."

Suddenly, Lu Lu touched the oil on the side of the pot and shouted:
"Didn't I tell you? Don't use my pot to cook. I smelled winter melon and pork ribs when I was receiving cosmic signals just now, which made me distracted when I was chatting with the Martians!"

Zhanbo automatically ignored the second half of Lu Lutong's sentence and was greatly alarmed:
"So it really exists?"

He grabbed Lu Lutong's shoulder:

"Forget about the winter melon and pork ribs, tell me about my second uncle and your second brother!"

Next, Lu Lutong fell into reminiscence:

"That day, the kindergarten organized a spring outing to the zoo, and the teacher had us hold hands and line up in a row—"

This scene cuts to a flashback, using a silent film filter and accompanied by violin music.

The scene shifts to six-year-old Lu Lutong and his second uncle, both wearing matching overalls with name tags that read "Lu Da" and "Lu Er" pinned to them.

Little Lu Lutong said in his childish voice, "Second brother, the teacher said we should raise our hands to report when we see a peacock displaying its tail feathers!"

Uncle Er suddenly let go of her hand: "Brother, look! There's an uncle over there selling cotton candy! Cotton candy! Cotton candy!"

In front of the cotton candy stall, a disheveled-looking, suspicious-looking man was handing out cotton candy to each child. Little Lu Lutong reached out to pull him away, saying, "Don't go! The teacher said we should line up properly."

Zhanbo's voice chimed in:

"So, was Second Uncle kidnapped by this cotton candy seller?"

Lu Lu said through the airway, "Don't disturb my recollection! The truth is far more bizarre than you can imagine—"

The sound effect suddenly changed to a piercing alarm. In the flashback, an "alien" dressed entirely in silver and red descended from the sky, picked up Uncle Xiao Er, and laughed heartily.

A deep, resonant voiceover, suitable for land-based communication:
"Actually, all of this has nothing to do with the cotton candy vendor, but rather—aliens!"

At that moment, the cotton candy vendor took off his clothes and transformed into another alien wearing a suit of armor: "Put down that child!"

A deep, resonant voiceover, suitable for land-based communication:
"The guardians of Earth, the armored warriors from the ancient times, ultimately couldn't defeat the alien Ultraman from Nebula M78!"

The Armor Hero lay on the ground, crying and pounding the earth:

"Damn it, I still failed to protect the Earth."

As the flashback ended, Lu Lutong looked weary: "That day, I lost my second brother forever, and you lost your second uncle forever."

Zhanbo had a "Are you kidding me?" look on his face.

"Dad, are you sure you haven't gone crazy from talking to aliens?"

Suddenly, the screen went black, and white text appeared: [The above is, of course, all fake.]
In the empty space, a voice filled with serious academic tone rang out:

“When people face unbearable pain, powerful psychological defense mechanisms are activated. This memory is just Lu Lutong’s imagination. The pain of losing his younger brother made him automatically modify his childhood memories.”

"The actual situation is this—"

The flashback scene cuts back to the scene where Uncle Er accidentally got separated from his family and was kidnapped by a bad guy wearing an alien mask with a lollipop.

Back at the Love Apartment, Lu Zhanbo becomes infatuated with his second uncle, who was separated from him when they were young.

He began frantically searching for everything about his second uncle, Joey, finding all the media reports about Joey at the time, all the movies and TV series Joey had acted in, and all the strange little advertisements.

The living room of Love Apartment.

Zhanbo showed these to other people.

The members of Love Apartment sat on the sofa like children in a row.

Chen Meijia laughed so hard she slapped her thigh, pointing at the screen and laughing out loud: "Hahaha, Zhanbo, your second uncle is hilarious!"

Lu Ziqiao said:

"Zhanbo, your second uncle's experiences are even more legendary than your aunt's—advertisements for wart removal cream, AIDS, and men's lipstick!"

Tang Youyou: ""

Zhan Bodao:
“I checked. His original name was Lu Lushun. After he disappeared in 1981, he was adopted by a couple from the capital. Later, he went to Serbia to become an actor and changed his name to Joey Tribiani.”

“Most importantly!” Zhanbo said, “Uncle Joey also has five friends in Cyprus who live in the same apartment, and I found a photo that was taken back then.”

Zhanbo projected a group photo of the six Friends members in a coffee shop onto the screen.

This photo looks exactly like a picture the main characters of "iPartment" took in a bar booth, like a comparison between them across different times. (End of Chapter)