The self-introductions started from the row nearest the door, one student after another.
Shi Jing sat toward the back. Relaxed against the backrest of his chair, he lowered his head and sent messages to Qin Yu.
Shi Jing: 【How did Jiang Yu end up being the freshman representative?】
Qin Yu: 【Isn’t that normal? Provincial top scorer, went viral, and handsome too.】
Shi Jing scoffed.
After a brief pause, he opened the browser on his phone and searched for Jiang Yu’s name.
A Baidu entry immediately popped up.
Shi Jing had never been interested in the drama Jiang Yu had acted in before, but now he suddenly felt a little curious.
The drama Jiang Yu filmed during the summer was a suspense series.
The production budget had been quite high. It featured many veteran actors, aired while filming, and had only a small number of episodes.
Jiang Yu played a villain named Ji Bai. On the surface, Ji Bai was a wealthy young gentleman who enjoyed worshipping Buddha, wore traditional long robes, and spoke in a refined, scholarly manner. In reality, he was a twisted serial killer who aided evil deeds.
The suspense drama had only sixteen episodes.
Shi Jing lacked the patience to start from the beginning, so he opened Douyin and searched for Jiang Yu’s name. After refreshing the page, numerous videos appeared.
The most popular one had already received over five hundred thousand likes.
Putting on his Bluetooth earphones, he tapped the video.
The opening shot focused on the entrance of a temple.
The temple looked ancient and simple, standing halfway up a mountain. Its gates were slightly worn. Mist swirled around the mountain as a figure stepped onto moss-covered stone stairs.
He wore a long robe from the Republican era and climbed one step after another.
The camera zoomed in, revealing the young man’s profile.
His brow ridge was pronounced, his nose straight and elegant, yet his lips were red as blood.
His face was so pale that it hardly looked human.
The scene shifted.
A monk stood in the courtyard and said softly, “Amitabha. For what reason has the benefactor come this time?”
The mountain was covered in thick morning fog.
Ji Bai lit an incense stick. A trace of devotion appeared on his face as he gazed at the serene Buddha statue in the distance.
“I believe the Abbot knows what I seek.”
The monk lowered his head.
“Please enlighten this humble monk.”
Ji Bai said, “The person I love… does he now have even the slightest affection for me?”
The monk lowered his eyes.
“Some things cannot be forced.”
At that moment, a gust of wind blew through the open doorway and brushed against the monk’s shoulder. The smoke from the incense in Ji Bai’s hand became even more tangled, drifting upward in slow spirals.
Ji Bai narrowed his eyes and looked toward the mountain peak.
The fog thickened on all sides.
Stubbornly, he stared at the distant outline of the mountain as though he refused to stop until he saw through it completely.
For the first time, this ruthless and heartless villain revealed a trace of vulnerability.
The video ended there.
Shi Jing froze.
By the time he came back to himself, the video had already started replaying.
Jiang Yu’s acting was actually pretty good…
He had genuinely felt a little sorry for the character.
Shi Jing frowned, puzzled by this strange emotion that had suddenly surfaced.
He opened the comments.
The top comment read:
“Who understands this, guys? He suddenly started acting here.”
The second comment:
“Possessed-level improvement. I only tolerated him for the first eight episodes because of his face. Then in episode nine he suddenly had actual acting skills…”
The third comment:
“Husband, don’t be sad. I love you.”
The fourth comment replied:
“Sis, put some pants on. The internet is not lawless territory.”
Shi Jing watched a few more videos.
Jiang Yu’s character didn’t have many scenes, so there weren’t many clips available for editing.
Jiang Yu ultimately wasn’t professionally trained. His acting was close to nonexistent most of the time.
The only exception was the wealthy young master’s aura, which he portrayed perfectly.
More accurately, he already possessed that aura himself.
After scrolling through more than a dozen short videos, Shi Jing finally reached a conclusion.
—The sympathy he had felt earlier was simply because Jiang Yu had acted that scene well.
Because when Jiang Yu first appeared in the drama, his performance had truly been awkward.
Shi Jing had watched those scenes with complete indifference.
Of course, after watching enough clips, he also learned quite a few things.
For example, Jiang Yu had not originally been cast as Ji Bai.
The actor initially selected for the role had been caught in a scandal involving multiple partners in June.
Filming had already begun by then, so the production team had no choice but to find a replacement at the last minute.
The few young actors in the entertainment industry who fit the role all had scheduling conflicts.
Coincidentally, Jiang Yu had been bored at the time and had gone to the set to work as a bit-part actor.
That very morning, he had still been squatting in a corner of the set, eating a boxed lunch as an extra and earning two hundred yuan a day.
At noon, while the director was frantically worrying over the casting problem, he happened to spot Jiang Yu.
With a wave of his hand, Jiang Yu went from an extra in the morning to a named villain by the afternoon.
If they couldn’t find anyone else, then even an emergency replacement had to be someone good-looking.
Who could have expected the suspense drama to become a massive hit?
The plot was thrilling, and the characters were exceptionally well-written.
The title Jiang Yu became most famous for was—
The Most Handsome Person in the Cast.
#The Man Who Turned a Suspense Drama Into an Idol Drama in One Second#
Staring at the face on the screen, Shi Jing suddenly found his thoughts drifting back to the first time he had ever seen Jiang Yu.
It had been the third day of the first semester of their second year in high school.
Shi Jing hadn’t attended school during the first two days because he had been absent with a high fever.
Qin Yu had messaged him on WeChat, saying that his title as the school’s most handsome boy had been stolen by a transfer student named Jiang Yu.
That was the first time the name Jiang Yu had appeared in Shi Jing’s world.
At the time, he hadn’t felt much about it.
After all, he truly didn’t care about the title of school heartthrob.
If given a choice, he would much rather have everyone call him “the top student of the grade.”
Their year had never gone through military training.
During their first year of high school, the school’s athletic field had been under renovation, leaving no place for training. As a result, military training had been postponed until their second year.
On the third day, Shi Jing put on his freshly washed military training uniform and headed to school.
After an entire day of training, it finally ended at six in the evening.
He and Qin Yu headed toward the cafeteria together.
Just as they exited the training field, Qin Yu bumped his arm and exclaimed twice.
“Hey, hey! Look! The new school heartthrob!”
Shi Jing had only recently recovered from his illness. After a full day of training, his mind felt somewhat muddled.
Instinctively, he looked up.
The sun was sinking below the horizon, resembling the rich yolk of a salted duck egg.
The clouds along the horizon burned bright red and gold, while the sky faded from azure to deep blue.
He spotted Jiang Yu immediately.
The young man wore a camouflage uniform. His eyes were dark, his nose straight, and his lips thin.
It was the kind of handsomeness that nobody could deny.
Holding a bottle of water in one hand, he looked broad-shouldered, long-legged, and lean-waisted in the military uniform.
Shi Jing saw Jiang Yu.
But Jiang Yu did not see him.
He walked straight past him, chatting and laughing with several friends beside him.
The lines of his profile appeared sharp and indifferent.
The first thought that surfaced in Shi Jing’s mind was that he was indeed devastatingly handsome.
Shi Jing had a baby face and fair skin, qualities that naturally made him popular among girls.
But when compared to someone like Jiang Yu, whose attractiveness carried an overwhelming masculine charisma, he stood no chance.
Ninety percent of girls would choose Jiang Yu.
The title of school heartthrob truly belonged to him.
Shi Jing’s second thought was that this new school heartthrob was unbelievably arrogant.
The guy hadn’t spared him even a glance from the corner of his eye.
He was stingy to an extreme.
Even now, Shi Jing could not tell whether the annoyance he had felt back then came from being ignored by Jiang Yu or from some other reason entirely.
After half a month of military training ended, Jiang Yu took off the camouflage uniform and changed back into his own clothes.
That only made him even more famous.
This time, it was because of his young-master lifestyle.
Designer brands from head to toe.
A Maybach picked him up and dropped him off every day.
There were truly a lot of girls pursuing Jiang Yu.
Shi Jing felt extremely uncomfortable about it.
He had never competed with anyone over the number of admirers before.
In the end, he could only convince himself that all those negative emotions stemmed from simply not getting along with Jiang Yu.
Until after the first monthly examination.
Standing before the grade rankings as he always did, he habitually started reading from the very top.
And discovered that the name in first place was not his.
It was Jiang Yu’s.
At that moment…
All those inexplicable emotions transformed completely into dislike.