With a loud crash, Shang Xueyan was kicked by the male lead into a filthy river.
In late March, Beijing had not yet warmed up. The river water was not only dirty but also freezing cold. Seeping through a single layer of thin cloth, the chill bit straight into his bones, causing Shang Xueyan to shiver.
Shang Xueyan swam to the bank. There were no dry towels available, so a production assistant handed him a damp one.
After he simply wiped his hair and face, the director decided that the visual composition of the scene wasn’t pretty enough. The assistant then used a hair dryer on Shang Xueyan and a few other extra actors to dry their hair before re-shooting the assassination scene.
Crash, thud, splash, crash.
Falling into the turbid, freezing water for the sixth time, Shang Xueyan climbed ashore with trembling arms and bright red fingers.
The assistant handed him a towel that was barely dry, and Shang Xueyan heard the heavenly sound of the director calling, “Wrap for today.”
He went to a nearby dressing trailer to shed his soaked costume along with the other extras, took off his hairpiece, and changed into dry clothes. Only then did Shang Xueyan feel like he had come back to life.
This scene was filmed in the suburbs. After the crew drove back to the Hengdian hotel, Shang Xueyan hoisted his nine-yuan-and-ninety-cent canvas bag and walked toward the subway entrance.
Tonight was a night shoot, and it was already past 11:00 PM. Several hours of high-intensity work left Shang Xueyan ravenously hungry. As he approached the subway entrance, he caught the aroma wafting from a bakery. Since it was close to closing time, the bakery was having a sale.
Shang Xueyan walked inside; very few cakes and pastries remained in the glass display cases.
He took a stroll around and spotted a mini mango pomelo sago cake, about the size of a palm, priced at twenty-six yuan after the discount. His gaze then shifted to a matcha-filled bread next to it, and he mentally calculated its discounted price of twelve yuan.
He swallowed hard, pushed open the display case, and his fingers instinctively reached for the mini mango pomelo sago cake. But the moment his eyes landed on the price tag, he redirected his hand and grabbed the matcha-filled ice bread instead.
After paying and stepping out of the bakery, two young girls outside were staring intently at the LED billboard across the street, appearing to sincerely marvel at how handsome Jiang Lan was.
Hearing a somewhat familiar name, Shang Xueyan bit into his bread and looked up at the big screen not far away.
The screen was apparently playing a makeup commercial. The entire face of a decent-looking young man was magnified onto the hundreds-of-inches display, smiling craftily.
“Ahhh, so handsome.”
The young girl beside him excitedly pulled out her phone and took pictures of the giant screen.
Shang Xueyan turned and left.
The phone in his pocket vibrated twice.
Shang Xueyan fished out his phone, cleared the system notifications, and saw that someone nicknamed Lu Shitter had sent him a few messages.
Lu Shitter: [Shang Rong, I heard you went to play a corpse today.]
Lu Shitter: [Jiang Lan just signed another male lead role with a top director today.]
Lu Shitter: [Do you regret it now? The male lead role, international brand endorsements, all of these could have been yours.]
This jerk was actually still in his contacts. With a light flick of his finger, Shang Xueyan blocked him straight away.
The night wind was a bit chilly. Shang Xueyan pulled the hood of his hoodie over his head, tightened the drawstrings on both sides, and had not taken two steps when his phone started buzzing.
The incoming call was from an unfamiliar number.
Shang Xueyan had recently submitted resumes to many film crews and feared it might be work-related. He answered the call and greeted them with a warm, enthusiastic hello.
Before he could finish, he heard a voice full of contained anger from the man on the other end: “Shang Rong, you blocked me.”
Shang Xueyan rolled his eyes. “President Lu, tell me, who could tolerate having a lump of cow dung in their phone? No, cow dung can at least be burned as fuel, but you are a stinking piece of dog shit.”
Lu Han breathed heavily, his voice strained. “Shang Rong, you are…”
Before the other man could finish, Shang Xueyan abruptly hung up the phone, deleted the number, and blocked it again.
Listening to the busy tone coming from the speaker, Lu Han’s expression turned as dark as ink. With a fierce and sinister look, he spat out Shang Rong’s name.
When he got home, Shang Xueyan took a shower and fell fast asleep the moment his head hit the pillow. He urgently needed money right now, wishing he could stretch twenty-four hours into forty-eight. He was too exhausted to think about anything other than making money.
Since he had no shoots scheduled for the next day, Shang Xueyan went to work a part-time shift at a coffee shop.
During dusk, he received a phone call belonging to his body’s original manager. Shang Xueyan had originally been a person from the An Dynasty a thousand years ago, and after dying, he woke up a millennium later.
This body shared his surname, Shang, and was named Shang Rong. He had no parents and grew up in an orphanage. Two years ago, by a twist of fate, he caught the eye of a web-drama director and filmed two micro-dramas, one of which became a hit.
Afterward, he signed with an entertainment agency called Tianli Entertainment. At first, the company treated him quite well, directly casting him as the second male lead in a full-length drama. However, just as filming wrapped up, there was a shake-up in senior management, and Lu Han took over. Lu Han was a disgusting homosexual who tried to force unexpressed favors on the original owner.
Neither the original owner nor Shang Xueyan liked men, so naturally, they refused.
When Lu Han’s threats and lures failed, he started leaking black material on the original owner and suspended all of his work.
Shang Rong’s manager had always looked down on him, viewing him merely as a high school dropout waiter. A year ago, when Shang Rong offended Lu Han, the manager began treating him as if he didn’t exist; therefore, the manager calling him definitely spelled trouble.
Shang Xueyan answered the call.
The man’s irritated voice pierced his eardrum. “Shang Rong, the company has lined up a drama for you. Remember to report to the set tomorrow.”
The company was getting him a gig?
Lu Han had personally blacklisted him, yet he would still hook him up with a role? Tianli Entertainment’s blacklisting was utterly disgusting. Not only did the company withhold resources from Shang Rong, but whenever Shang Rong auditioned for even slightly important roles outside the company, Lu Han would bombard those production crews one after another, demanding that Shang Rong be barred from employment.
Shang Rong’s micro-drama streaming stats had been decent, but when it came down to it, he was just a seventeen-tier actor in the entertainment industry, not famous enough for anyone to brave the headache of using him.
Even if someone wanted to cast him, the company wouldn’t sign the contracts, leaving Shang Xueyan unable to act because his contract was riddled with traps.
The only exception was running errands as an extra or playing a disposable cannon-fodder character on set. First, Lu Han considered playing extras and cannon fodder to be humiliating, because had Shang Rong submitted to him, he would currently be a male lead. Second, extras and cannon fodder generally didn’t require signing formal contracts, and their pay was settled daily.
A few minutes later, after reading the details sent by the manager, Shang Xueyan roughly guessed the reason.
Since he had a shoot the next day, Shang Xueyan skipped his shift at the coffee shop and headed to Hengdian near Beijing early in the morning.
After arriving in this millennium, Shang Xueyan discovered he could work as an extra. At first, he was quite content; playing an extra with lines could earn him a few hundred yuan a day, which was completely enough to support himself in this modern era.
It was just that right now, he desperately needed money. A daily income of three to four hundred yuan was a drop in the bucket for him, and work wasn’t guaranteed every day, as it largely depended on luck.
Thinking about money, Shang Xueyan noticed a red banner hanging outside a roadside welfare lottery shop, warmly celebrating a certain customer surnamed Li who had won two million yuan.
The lottery!
Shang Xueyan spent four yuan to buy two welfare lottery tickets.
Carefully tucking the tickets into his pocket, Shang Xueyan hurried to squeeze into the subway.
The role Shang Xueyan was playing today was also a cannon-fodder character, a good-for-nothing hoodlum who gets beaten to a pulp by the male lead for harassing the female lead.
After arriving at the production crew’s dressing room, putting on his makeup, and changing into his costume, Shang Xueyan went to the set.
Because he had a fight scene with the male lead later, the action director called him over to run through the choreography with the male lead so that their movements would look polished on camera.
After waiting for quite a while, the male lead finally arrived fashionably late. Upon seeing who the male lead was, Shang Xueyan completely understood Lu Han’s intentions.
He had initially thought Lu Han cast him as the cannon fodder beaten by the male lead simply to humiliate him, but the male lead of this production was Jiang Lan.
Jiang Lan was the original owner’s best friend. The two had been junior high school classmates, and later, when Shang Xueyan entered the entertainment industry to act, Jiang Lan followed suit. Jiang Lan had played supporting roles in two micro-dramas, neither of which gained much traction. Later, when Shang Rong signed with Tianli, he strongly recommended Jiang Lan, and Jiang Lan signed with Tianli Entertainment alongside him.
At first, the company gave Jiang Lan a fourth male lead role, right up until Lu Han took power. When Lu Han wanted to force unexpressed favors on Shang Rong and subsequently blacklisted and pressured him upon refusal, Jiang Lan helped Shang Rong curse Lu Han’s despicableness and shamelessness. Meanwhile, late one evening, Jiang Lan anxiously called him, saying he had been forced to drink a lot of alcohol by Lu Han, that he was terrified, and begging Shang Rong to come over immediately.
Jiang Lan urged the original owner to rescue him at the hotel. The original owner anxiously drove over, but because Jiang Lan and he had been drinking earlier that morning and the alcohol hadn’t fully cleared from his system, combined with Jiang Lan’s frantic urging on the phone, the original owner inevitably got into a car accident. Fortunately, he didn’t hit anyone, but he smashed into a roadside flower bed, and news of a certain celebrity driving under the influence instantly hit the trending searches.
Because of the fabricated scandals Lu Han had already planted, the original owner’s reputation was already poor, and now he was completely notorious.
Immediately afterward, Jiang Lan apologized profusely to comfort him. The original owner harbored no resentment toward him, believing he hadn’t done it on purpose.
It wasn’t until a short while later that he discovered Jiang Lan and Lu Han’s relationship had grown increasingly close. Jiang Lan started getting male lead roles and endorsements while becoming colder and colder toward him.
The original owner couldn’t bear to think whether that drunk driving incident had been engineered by Jiang Lan. Before the drunk driving, he could still spot a few fans speaking up for him, but after the incident, not a single one remained.
This event pushed the original owner’s breakdown level to ninety percent.
Earlier that year, Shang Rong had made it onto the entertainment trending topics once more. Following a year of intense promotion, Jiang Lan was considered an up-and-coming actor on the verge of blowing up with a solid following, while Shang Rong had faded into total obscurity.
When Shang Rong and Jiang Lan met at the company, Shang Rong gave him no pleasant expression, yet Jiang Lan kept a smiling face the entire time.
That video was posted online, prompting many to hurl abuse at the original owner, calling him bad-tempered, malicious, and a diva who threw tantrums. Worse still, some crossed the line, cursing his entire family and telling him he deserved to be an orphan.
It had taken Shang Xueyan a whole year to finally muster the courage to start over. He wanted to terminate his contract with the company; he was only twenty, still very young and full of hope.
However, those aggressive words made the original owner doubt whether he had truly committed some unforgivable sin, plunging him into utter despair. Not long after, he collapsed in his room, and the soul that woke up once more was Shang Xueyan.
Jiang Lan’s public persona had always been gentle and affable. Startled upon seeing Shang Xueyan, his gaze swept around the area until he spotted a paparazzi photographer perched on a distant roof. He affectionately called out to Shang Rong, exclaiming in surprise, “Shang Rong, you are here to film today too? Why didn’t you tell me in advance?”
Shang Xueyan simply smiled at him: “I didn’t know you were here either.”
He actually didn’t pull a long face? Jiang Lan found it strange.
The action director asked in surprise, “You two know each other?”
Shang Rong used to be moderately popular, but it was internet fame within the short-video sphere; full-length dramas and short-videos belonged to two different tracks, so his name recognition in the traditional film and television circle wasn’t high to begin with. Besides, that popularity dated back to the autumn before last, and the entertainment industry cycled through people far too fast. Plus, Shang Xueyan had changed his name, so most of the directors Shang Xueyan had encountered over the past three months assumed he was just an ordinary, obscure eighteen-tier actor.
Jiang Lan said gently, “Shang Rong and I are from the same company.”
“Shang Rong?”
Shang Xueyan said to the action director, “I used to be called Shang Rong, but I’ve changed my name now. My name is Shang Xueyan.”
The name on his household registration couldn’t be changed, but plenty of people in the entertainment industry used stage names. Ever since Shang Xueyan transmigrated, he told everyone he newly met that his name was Shang Xueyan.
If he could travel across a millennium from the ancient past to the modern era, there was a chance his family might have experienced a similar twist of fate. Hearing the name Shang Rong wouldn’t make anyone bat an eye, but if someone went by Shang Xueyan, it was bound to catch their attention.