After a few days away, the environment and atmosphere of the set changed a lot. There were  fewer staff walking around the set and everyone was in a hurry. No one was getting together to chat and there were more security guards paroling. Access to the set also became much stricter.

Qi Cong found that although the staff he met along the way to set would still look at him, after noticing him their gazes were much more restrained than before, and they would  leave quickly after glancing at him.

After entering the set, Zhao Zhenxun first took Qi Cong to meet the producer who was guarding the set.

The producer took the initiative to shake Qi Cong’s hand and assure him, “Don’t worry, I will definitely catch the person who leaked the crew’s affairs, and give you and Mr. Gu an explanation!”

Qi Cong knew this was just polite talk and the focus of this sentence was he would give Gu Xun an explanation. After responding, Qi Cong closed his mouth and wisely stopped talking.

The producer and Zhao Zhenxun needed to speak alone so Qi Cong left first and went to the courtyard where Shen Jia was filming.

Several of the main actors just finished shooting a group scene so they were ready to disperse and eat. Shen Jia noticed Qi Cong first and quickly rushed to him, looking him up and down with a stiff expression, as if he couldn’t say what he wanted to say.

“I’m fine,” Qi Cong appeased, noticing that the drama director was watching them from the side. He whispered, “I’ll say hello to the director first, and I’ll see you later.”

Shen Jia hurriedly took Qi Cong’s arm and said, “I will go with you.”

The two of them walked together to the director. Qi Cong greeted the drama director and he gave Qi Cong a simple response. After instructing Qi Cong with a few words, he waved his hand, letting the two of them leave.

Shen Jia immediately dragged Qi Cong back to his own rest area, and not even bothering to eat his meal, he asked, “What is the story about all those rumors? How is Brother Zhao going to handle it? Obviously you didn’t-“

“Don’t rush.” Qi Cong warmly interrupted Shen Jia’s words, held up his phone and shook it. “My new song is recorded, want to listen?”

Shen Jia became distracted as his eyes fell on Qi Cong’s phone. His eyes lit up as he nodded. “Yes, yes, yes!”

The two of them squeezed together on Shen Jia’s big lounge chair. Qi Cong wanted to give both headphones to Shen Jia, but Shen Jia was reluctant, so they shared one together.

The song began to play and Shen Jia lowered his head, listening very attentively.

Qi Cong noticed that Yuan Yuan was pointing up her cell phone at the two of them again and turned his head to look over.

Yuan Yuan immediately put on an expression of “I am preparing promotional materials, it’s the right thing to do”.

Qi Cong was helpless, withdrew his eyes and lowered his head to concentrate on listening to the song.

The second version of Master Cao’s lyrics for ‘A New Life’ was slightly more emotional than the first version, having more details that fit Qi Cong’s own experiences. So when he listened to it, it was like experiencing everything in the past all over again.

When he heard the latter part of ‘A New Life’ he couldn’t help but smile, but Shen Jia beside him suddenly buried his head and raised his hand to wipe his eyes.

Qi Cong froze and leaned even closer as he said, “Jia Jia?”

Shen Jia pressed his eyes again, suddenly straightened up and snatched away the other half of Qi Cong headphones and put them on himself. Then he took the phone from Qi Cong’s hand, got up and walked to the side. Sitting back on the small bench with his back to Qi Cong, he continued to listen to the song.

Qi Cong looked at the figure of Shen Jia sitting on a small bench and then looked at his now empty hands. He got up and walked closer, reaching up to ruffle Shen Jia’s hair. He softly said, “Jia Jia, my ‘A New Life’ was brought to me by you, thank you.”

He didn’t know whether Shen Jia heard it or not, as he just looked intently at the rotating mobile phone screen, pulling back the progress bar of the song from time to time, his eyelashes wet.

More than ten minutes later, Shen Jia finally put down Qi Cong’s cellphone and  took off his headphones. He tried to wipe his eyes with his sleeve, but he was blocked by an outstretched hand holding a tissue out to him.

“Use this, if you dirty the sleeves of the costume the director will scold you.”

Shen Jia stared at the tissue and then looked at Qi Cong. He didn’t know how long Qi Cong had stayed by his side. The rims of his eyes were red but Shen Jia took the tissue and wiped his eyes hard. He rubbed his eyeliner into dark circles, and then said seriously, “It sounded good! Super good! When are you going to release this song? I’ll help you promote it.”

Qi Cong’s heart felt soft and funny as he squeezed Shen Jia’s hair. “It’ll take three days at the earliest. They need time to edit the Making of Vlog, and the MV also needs to be done quickly.”

Shen Jia sat up straight and said, “Three days from now? Isn’t that the day when “Heaven Asked?” will premiere? Did you make an appointment with Gu Xun to publish your works together?” He suddenly stared. “Do you want to go public? Gu Xun has already publicly expressed his love, so you…” Shen Jia wanted to say something.

Qi Cong froze, reflected on this in hindsight, and shook his head. “No, it won’t premiere on the same day, we also won’t go public.” He smiled at Shen Jia’s increasingly doubtful eyes, and then squeezed Shen Jia’s hair once again. “Jia Jia, he and I are not together …… he is waiting for me.”

 

……

 

Qi Cong spent a quarter of an hour explaining to Shen Jia about his and Gu Xun’s current relationship status, and mentioned the current gossip situation.

After hearing all of it, Shen Jia frowned deeply, suddenly turned his head and looked around. Then he leaned closer to Qi Cong and said in a low voice, “Say…could the person who revealed the harmful gossip about you be Qin Zhengji?”

This was unexpected for Qi Cong. “Qin Zhengji?”

“Hmm.” Shen Jia came a little bit closer to Qi Cong. “Just yesterday, I went with Lian Pengxing to get props. On the way, I heard two staff members chatting. It turns out that Qin Zhengji had gone to the chief screenwriter to inquire about your additional scenes. I think he might’ve been worried about you being promoted and  lowering his screen time, so he looked for someone to harm you and drive you out of the cast!”

Qi Cong frowned.

Yesterday the crew was conducting a big screening, and at a time like this, someone was still daring to gossip about the actors on the side?

Qi Cong looked at Shen Jia’s expression that seemed to have already decided that this was the truth, and asked, “Why were you and Lian Pengxing getting the props together? Where was the staff?”

“At that time we were going to change the scenes so everyone was busy, but since me and Lian Pengxing happened to be empty handed we decided to help.”

Xiao Han suddenly came over and said, “Jia Jia, Lian Pengxing’s assistant has just come over and asked you if you want any more specialties? His family is coming over on tomorrow’s flight.”

Shen Jia nodded, “Yes! Thank Lian Pengxing for me.”

Xiao Han just nodded.

Shen Jia turned his head to look at Qi Cong and happily said, “Lian Pengxing’s family is from Liaocheng. They have a special product that is both delicious and sweet. You should like it. His family is coming to see him in two days, so I asked him if they could bring me two boxes.”

Qi Cong looked at the young assistant who just turned away after chatting with Xiao Han. He looked at Shen Jia’s naturally friendly expression when he mentioned Lian Pengxing and asked, “Have you been getting along well with Lian Pengxing recently?”

‘Its okay. At first he tried to suppress my acting, so I thought he was kind of a particularly scheming person, but later I found out that he was actually like that because he isn’t very good at acting. He’s actually quite easy to get along with, so everyone has a good relationship with him.”

Qi Cong raised his eyes to the other side where Lian Pengxing was sitting in his rest area with a thoughtful expression.

 

…….

 

Zhao Zhenxun came over before the end of Shen Jia’s lunch break. He spoke a few words with Shen Jia, then left with Qi Cong to find the etiquette teacher for class.

When walking in a less crowded corridor, Qi Cong told Zhao Zhenxun about the conversation he just had with Shen Jia.

Zhao Zhenxun frowned after hearing it and said, “I’ll go talk with Jia Jia later.”

Qi Cong nodded and asked, “Brother Zhao, when are you going to release my new song?”

“The studio is working on it. The initial plan was five days, but the exact time hasn’t been decided. It depends on when the public opinion calms down this time.” Zhao Zhenxun noticed that Qi Cong’s expression wasn’t right and asked, “What’s wrong? Do you have a better time?”

Five days later means his release won’t coincide with the release of “Heaven Asked?”. Qi Cong was relieved, shook his head and replied, “No brother Zhao I just wanted to know the arrangement.”

 

…..

 

The “Legend of Youth” was a martial arts drama with a fuzzy background. All the etiquette in the drama was taken from a dynasty with relatively simple etiquette so there wasn’t much to learn. Smart people could master it a half an hour and stupid people could learn it in hour.

With such a small amount to study, there was no need for Qi Cong and Zhao Zhenxun to squeeze time to come back early to learn, but the role played by Qi Cong had different requirements from the other actors – bad behavior. When the rest of the actors just needed to learn the etiquette, Qi Cong needed to learn how to act like You Changqing and how to make all etiquette beautiful and proper through his character who walked with a limp in order to master his role, so the two of them tried to spare more time for the etiquette study.

Qi Cong spent the whole afternoon in a small room vacated by the crew, following the etiquette teacher and the action teacher to learn how to salute in a wheelchair, how to salute with crutches,  how to get down from the wheelchair and then salute, and how to walk with a limp for a long time.

You Changqing’s limp didn’t make him unable to walk, but one leg wasn’t fully developed because of the poisoning when he was still just the fetus, and he needed  crutches in order to walk normally.

You Changqing’s crutch was customized according to the original novel. It was a dark brown wooden crutch with a hidden weapon inside, the concealed switch was a red jewel inlaid on the armrest of the crutch.

The gem even had an origin story: it was a relic from his late mother. Before he died, You Changqing was squeezing this gem tightly in his hand.

On the way to return the crutches after practice, Qi Cong ran into the third male lead actor Qin Zhengji.

Qin Zheng’s background was that of a child actor with a high degree of national recognition but lukewarm popularity. Qi Cong didn’t have much of an impression of him because he was always very low-key in the crew. Except for filming, he usually stayed in his own lounge, and rarely socialized with other people in the crew. He was completely different from second male lead actor Lian Pengxing.

Qin Zhengji froze when he saw Qi Cong. Then, to Qi Cong’s surprise, Qin Zhengji took the initiative to walk over and struck up a conversation. “Hello, I’m Qin Zhengji.”

Remembering what Zhao Zhenxun had said earlier, that an actor might come to talk to him, Qi Cong politely replied, “Hello, I am Qi Cong.”

“I know you.” Qin Zhengji pointed to the crutch in Qi Cong hands and said, “Come to return the prop?”

“I came to get the props. Shall we go together?”

The two of them were going to the same place, so it wasn’t good to refuse the invitation. Qi Cong just nodded and walked with Qin Zhengji towards the room where the props were stored.

Qin Zhengji was the kind of person who doesn’t talk much, so although he took the initiative to speak along the way, he was relatively short, saying some meaningless stuff about his family life.

The two quickly finished with the props, and when they were almost on the set, Qin Zhengji suddenly stopped and said, “Be careful of Lian Pengxing.”

Qi Cong’s heart jumped as he also stopped and looked at Qin Zhengji.

“I’ve seen his assistant come in contact with the paparazzi… but I thought he was trying to target Shen Jia.” Qin Zhengji spoke frankly, “Qi Cong, I am being nice to you. Manju Company isn’t a company someone should offend, Gu Xun is very bad to mess with, Zhao Zhenxun has a strong backbone, but public opinion is also fierce. I don’t want to or dare to offend you. The “Legend of Youth” is a great opportunity for me, so I want to finish filming this drama properly. I’ll go first.” After saying that, he nodded towards Qi Cong and turned around to go into the inner arena first.

Qi Cong watched Qin Zhengji walk away and remembered Shen Jia’s speculation earlier. He suddenly understood the reason why Zhao Zhenxun said he was the meat and potatoes.

This time the messy gossip obviously angered Manju and Gu Xun and the crew even made a gesture to thoroughly investigate the matter. Manju was one of the big investors in the “Legend of Youth” and Gu Xun had a lot of say in this circle. While the crew controlled actors’ ‘life and death’ for a while, and coupled with the current trend of public opinion on the Internet that was speculated who published all the false information…the actors suspected of exposing the news could now be said to be at risk. Everyone was afraid of being suspected, targeted, and criticized by netizens, so the source of all the false gossip became a hot seat.

However, as long as they could have a good relationship with him, or as long as they were cleared of suspicion in front of him, they would no longer have to be afraid of Manju or Gu Xun’s revenge.

Qi Cong, who stood in the same place for some time, finally took a step forward. 

 

Edited by: Antiope1

 

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