Xie Guan’s facial injuries weren’t too serious. After two days of recuperation, his wounds had crusted, and the bruises no longer looked so scary. Usually, he wasn’t someone who could stay idle; Xie Guan liked to watch the director teach the other actors or observe the crew if he didn’t have any scenes to film. However, during this unprecedented time, he stayed in his hotel room and slept for two days.
Although Xie Guan planned on utilizing his skills to eat one day, he wasn’t at that point in his career yet. He could only rely on his face thus far, and so he did not dare neglect his own rice bowl. As such, Xie Guan meticulously applied medicine like serving the Buddha everyday in fear of leaving conspicuous scars.
He was visited by the director and several familiar staff members during this rest period. When Xiao Guan met Zhou Xiaoqi at the hotel’s restaurant, the two also exchanged some words in a polite manner. From start to finish, only Zhong Guanhua never showed up, citing that he took a few days off to film another show.
After the crew received a warning, the “Zhong Guanhua beat someone up” incident wasn’t spread around. Unfortunately, while the director could control everyone’s mouths, he couldn’t control the hands writing anonymous complaints. Within the past week, the topic of “little fresh meat putting on big airs” circulated like the reign of terror, and the people in question became unexpected collateral damage. Because of previous black material that the public managed to pull out, Zhong Guanhua had a bright spotlight shone on him for several days.
Xie Guan logged onto his burner account and swiped around on Weibo until he saw an account of a blogger who recounted a thorough history of Zhong Guanhua. He couldn’t hold back and liked the post. After half an hour, he reflected on his action and felt that the hidden danger was still too great. Xie Guan gloomily retracted the like.
Xie Guan’s burner account ID was called “Canned Crabs”, and only had twenty-six zombie followers. In addition to notifications urging him to upgrade the Weibo client to its newest version, he only had posts about receiving red envelope money. The myriad of accounts he followed included different gossip accounts, celebrities, and the official accounts of the dramas he has participated in before.
The actor who lives in the same room with him had not yet returned to the room. Xie Guan followed Zhou Xiaoqi and the director’s Weibo accounts, and after some swiping around, he set an alarm and fell asleep with the bedside lamp still on.
On the day he returned to the set, Xie Guan obtained the new script, which was two pages longer than the original. He opened the booklet with a trembling hand that had once picked up two hundred dollars on the roadside, and found that the screenwriter changed his character’s ending. There was a new martial arts fight as well as a literary battle—all to stylishly beat up the male lead.
Xie Guan was too afraid to imagine Zhong Guanhua’s expression when the latter read the script, and thought that the screenwriter really disapproved of wicked people—is it really okay to slap his face so obviously? Outwardly, however, Xie Guan smiled very sincerely: “Thank you teacher and Sister Qi for your hard work, I will play my part well.”
With an enigmatic smile, the coordinator replied, “Aiyah, you don’t need to be so polite with me.”
Rising Tides of the Blue Sea follows the traditional tropes of a martial arts novel. The protagonist harbors both a secret martial art technique and is the target of a blood feud. As such, both the righteous and villainous factions have their eyes on him, with the demonic sect being one of those forces. The demon sect guardian proceeds to relentlessly pursue the hero, attempting to seize his family’s ancestral sword manual and kill him. After the protagonist’s martial arts skills reach their peak, the guardian takes the initiative to provoke him and becomes the first antagonist to be fatally stabbed by the hero.
To put it bluntly, the role of the guardian is to merely be a stepping stone for the protagonist. He barely had any scenes, died early, and didn’t even have a serious name. Moreover, he was originally written as an ordinary-looking, and chuunibyou young man.
However, in the revised script, there was an extra scene in which the guardian drove the male lead to his wit’s end just by talking. With the addition of good looks and a boastful attitude, he transformed into a handsome young man with high intelligence and strong combat abilities, while maintaining an antisocial streak. Ultimately, after a showdown with the protagonist, he suffered severe injuries and fell off a cliff. When you thought about it, it was surprisingly cute.
Xie Guan often checked Weibo and held some ideas about what it meant to create a fan-friendly persona. Whether or not he can win over fans after the release is unknown, but the fact that the director and screenwriter made special efforts to accommodate his role is enough to leave a lasting impression on him.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
When Xie Guan acted alongside Zhong Guanhua again, the latter didn’t give him a warm reception. He even heard that Zhong Guanhua’s agent had a heated argument with the director’s team over this. However, it seemed like they recognized the director’s intention to nurture Xie Guan, and consequently didn’t make too much noise about it.
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Xie Guan was left bewildered, and it wasn’t until he returned to his hotel room that evening that he pieced things together. Zhong Guanhua and the second female lead, Liu Danqing, are both alumni from Star Era Entertainment. On the other hand, Zhou Xiaoqi is affiliated with Xihua Entertainment, and there is constant tension between these two female stars.
Liu Danqing probably thought that by cozying up to Zhou Xiaoqi, she gained the director’s favor, so she used the pretext of standing up for Zhong Guanhua to take a jab at Xie Guan. In reality, though, she was indirectly undermining Zhou Xiaoqi’s position.
Xie Guan didn’t even know what sort of celebrities Star Era Entertainment managed, but it seemed like a case of birds of a feather flocking together with all the eccentrics gathered under one company.
Xie Guan’s role only had twelve scenes, and was originally scheduled to wrap up in early June. However, as the director wanted to enhance the quality of the action scenes, polishing up the scenes delayed the wrap-up until mid-June. On the evening of his return trip, while the director was busy shooting, Xie Guan sent messages to everyone who had helped him and said goodbye in the WeChat group. He spent the entire journey looking at his phone, smiling foolishly, and it wasn’t until he boarded the high-speed train that he belatedly felt a hint of the bittersweet taste of parting.
After seven years in the industry, Xie Guan had played countless supporting and minor roles, but this was the first time he truly felt a sense of belonging to a production. Setting aside Zhong Guanhua and Liu Danqing, the other actors and crew members were very friendly towards him, and the director had even shown him special favor. Xie Guan had been stumbling along this path of acting, taking one step forward and one step back for so many years. Only now did he finally see a faint glimmer of light shining at the end of the darkness.
When Xie Guan arrived in B City, it was already evening, and he lugged his suitcase through the rush hour traffic. By the time he reached the artist dormitory provided by the company, it was two hours later.
His two roommates were not present, and the room was filled with the musty odor of not being aired out for a long time. Moreover, the place looked like it had gone through an apocalypse. In the month he had been away, the shoes and clothes of his roommates had practically taken over the entire living room.
Xie Guan didn’t consider himself particularly diligent, and most men had some laziness when it came to “household chores.” However, in the face of this mess, he couldn’t even muster a sigh and simply propped his suitcase by the door, changed his shoes, rolled up his sleeves, and began cleaning up the room.
After what felt like an eternity, he managed to restore the living room to the way it looked before he left. It was already 11:30 PM and just as Xie Guan sat down to catch his breath, he heard the sound of keys turning at the door. His roommate Wang Ruolun stumbled in, struggling to bring in another drunken roommate, Qu Jie.
“Back already? When did you get here?”
Xie Guan hurriedly got up and went over to help Wang Ruolun share the weight of Qu Jie, saying, “I just arrived this afternoon. What have you two been up to? How did you end up like this?”
Wang Ruolun was also a bit tipsy, exuding a nauseating mix of smoke and alcohol. He took off his clothes after pushing Qu Jie into his own room, and rushed into the bathroom. “What else besides building connections? Little Qu doesn’t know any better, and that old scoundrel Wang was forcibly pouring drinks down his throat. If I hadn’t pulled him away, he’d be done for under the table tonight.”
Xie Guan listened to the sound of rushing water coming from the bathroom, then glanced once more at the completely unconscious Qu Jie. He couldn’t help but sigh and said, “Drinking again?”
“It’s unavoidable,” Wang Ruolun’s voice was mostly drowned out by the sound of water. “Wang Zhe got involved in a big project and wants to bring Little Qu into it. They drink with the production team and investors every day until they’re damn near getting cirrhosis. Not to mention, those bastards keep stringing them along and never give a definite answer. By the way, I forgot to ask, how’s your filming going? Is it tough?”
Xie Guan smiled and replied, “It’s not too bad, not as tough as cleaning the house.”
Wang Ruolun chuckled a few times. “We’ve been too busy… and tired. Every time we come back, we’re so drunk that we can’t even recognize our own front door. We actually planned to clean up before you came back, but we got caught up in other things.”
“"The insight is a little late," Xie Guan said as he adjusted the air conditioning, then knocked on the bathroom door. “I’m going to bed now. You should finish your shower and get some sleep too. Goodnight.”
“Thanks for your hard work, good night.”
Even though the traveling and cleaning left Xie Guan feeling exhausted, he couldn’t fall asleep now that he was in bed. Wang Ruolun’s words hit him like a shot of espresso, forcing him to stay awake amidst the drowsy haze, contemplating issues he was avoiding.
In his earlier years, Xie Guan spent a lot of time on various film sets, playing extras and minor roles. Four years ago, he had taken on a small supporting role in a popular historical drama, leading him to sign with the same agency as Wang Ruolun. At the time, he was young and excited to join such a well-known agency, thinking that being on this big ship would guarantee his success. However, reality had proven otherwise.
During that period, Starlight Films was shifting its focus towards management business. It was also the start of Starlight’s slow decline from its peak, with senior staff members and A-list actors leaving the company one after another. The new CEO, Yang Rong, was stubbornly committed to the strategy of recruiting a large number of new talents through open auditions. Industry insiders could see that Starlight Films was on a downward spiral, and its artists often faced fierce competition and poaching by other companies when it came to securing roles. Yang Rong’s solution was simple: accompany the investors.
According to Yang Rong, investors were like their patrons, and for every minute on stage, there was ten years of effort behind the scenes. After all, opportunities were only given to obedient people.
Xie Guan was presented with several opportunities to become famous quickly by entertaining investors, but he always found excuses to decline them. His agent, Wang Zhe, hinted at it several times, but upon realizing that Xie Guan was a hard nut to crack, he stopped bothering. Instead, he decided to leave Xie Guan to his own devices, intending to release him once his contract ended.
Xie Guan knew deep down that as long as he remained with the company, this ceiling would always loom over him. Unless he was content with being a forever unknown artist, he had to accept the “industry rules” Starlight Films operated by, fighting his way to fame by entertaining at the dinner table.
A new message arrived, and in the darkness, the light from his phone screen was blinding.
Director He Guangping: “Wishing you a safe journey! Looking forward to working with you again next time.”
In a drowsy state, Xie Guan didn’t know when he drifted off to sleep. He woke up the next day feeling famished and upon getting up, discovered a warm breakfast prepared by Wang Ruolun. Xie Guan grabbed a steamed bun and sat at the dining table, scrolling through Weibo. He liked a start of production post shared by Zhou Xiaoqi, then checked the trending topics out of curiosity. To his surprise, Zhong Guanhua’s name was on the trending list, and he couldn’t resist clicking on it.
The popular Weibo post was about the announcement of a new TV series adaptation of the game “Sword of the River” produced by Star Era Entertainment. It was directed by renowned director Li Hetong, starring Zhong Guanhua, Liu Danqing, Wang Ruolun and Qu Jie among others.
Within an hour of posting, it had nearly ten thousand retweets and six thousand comments.
Xie Guan finally understood why Qu Jie had been so intoxicated the previous night, and why Wang Ruolun, who usually had a high alcohol tolerance, had appeared visibly drunk.
That was their inevitable rite of passage.
The steamed bun in his mouth suddenly lost its taste, and Xie Guan didn’t know how to feel about this “good news.” He lost interest in scrolling through Weibo, and the oppressive feeling from last night returned, haunting his thoughts.
Sitting on the sofa, Xie Guan found his agent Wang Zhe’s number on his phone and dialed it.
The other end answered the call promptly. Xie Guan reported the general situation on the set and informed him of his return to B City.
Wang Zhe picked up the call promptly. Xie Guan reported the general situation on the set and informed him of his return to B City. Wang Zhe, in a good mood, responded with a couple of perfunctory words as his star’s success obviously pleased him. Xie Guan, after a moment of consideration, decided to flatter Wang Zhe with compliments and praise. With this newfound happiness, Wang Zhe generously decided to extend a helping hand to Xie Guan.
“Perfect timing, I have a meeting tomorrow night to discuss a new project. I’ll have my assistant send you the details in a moment. If you’re interested, accompany me tomorrow.”
At the other end, Xie Guan suddenly fell silent.
As Wang Zhe listened to the silence on the other side, the smile on his face gradually faded.
Just as he was inwardly resenting Xie Guan for not knowing his place and was about to hang up the call, Xie Guan suddenly cleared his throat softly.
“Thank you, Brother Wang. I’ll go. See you tomorrow.”
QwQ Little bun…
Sigh, poor guy has it rough.. 😫