Chapter 67#

“Devoted” Best Actor (21)#

He Xiao was very lucky. When he first entered the entertainment industry, he had a good appearance, and just as the company planned to nurture new talents, his signing gift was the lead role in a youth drama series.

That show became a huge hit. Among the seven or eight newcomers in the same batch, all with significant screen time, only two or three became famous, and He Xiao was one of them.

The company saw his potential and allocated resources to him, thinking he could sustain the hype. He Xiao successfully carried the next two dramas, and his popularity kept rising.

The company he signed with was founded by a once-famous top agent. The entire company followed that agent’s style of promoting artists: relentless hype and controversy.

The period when He Xiao’s fan base grew the fastest was when the company poured resources into him. But after his first few successful projects, he starred in a major IP adaptation that flopped badly. Instead, the newcomer acting opposite him became a hit, even more popular than He Xiao had been.

The boss of the company He Xiao signed with was primarily focused on making money. All bosses in the world want to make money, but in the media industry, many people have a bit of artistic sentiment. They do this not just for money but also to create something unforgettable for the world.

For example, among actors, some work hard to hone their skills, while others focus only on hype. Among screenwriters, some write original scripts diligently, while others take shortcuts with plagiarism packages.

It’s not that talent is absent—anyone who becomes a huge success definitely has their shining points—but their priorities differ greatly.

The company He Xiao signed with, though large, had a poor reputation in the industry. It was notorious for producing bad movies, with popularity and criticism flying side by side. The company didn’t care about protecting its artists’ reputations.

After joining the company, He Xiao’s initial luck was indeed great, but after the flop, the company stopped paying him much attention.

Later, his popularity kept declining, which made He Xiao panicked. He asked his agent what was going on.

The agent hesitated before revealing that the company’s resources had been diverted to his peers.

The company’s rules were like this: very lax management of artists, allowing them to do whatever they wanted. As long as you could become popular, the company would support you—or you might need to pay some other price for those resources.

Although it was a big company, the culture was toxic, and its industry reputation was poor. This poor reputation was mostly known to established artists who understood the inside scoop. For newcomers like He Xiao, they could only see the company’s glamorous surface and strong capital.

It’s like an ordinary person joining a company: it looks good from the outside, but once inside, you realize how terrible it is.

If He Xiao had worked his way up from minor roles, accumulating experience and achieving fame through hard work, he might have silently endured such unspoken rules. But that wasn’t his case. He went from an unknown ordinary person to a superstar overnight, then suddenly faced a decline in popularity, being shelved by the company, and having resources snatched away.

His mentality completely collapsed. After tossing and turning for several days, he convinced himself to accept this value system and used many shady methods to bring down his peers. Once he tasted success, he went after more than one or two.

Back when Lu Yi was set up and trapped in He Xiao’s bedroom, it was because someone He Xiao had previously brought down wanted revenge and orchestrated that scene.

He thought his past actions were unlikely to be exposed, but as long as people are involved, traces remain. Moreover, He Xiao didn’t do the dirty work himself; many people knew about it. Unless they all died, the secret would eventually leak.

But this is a society governed by law, not the chivalrous world of wuxia novels. Normal people wouldn’t think of killing to silence others. To keep mouths shut, besides using both soft and hard tactics, money had to be used.

However, the people who originally did He Xiao’s dirty work weren’t exactly morally upright themselves. They kept their word because He Xiao had a decent status in the industry and a promising future. Besides, if the truth came out, they wouldn’t be able to survive in the industry either. So, after taking He Xiao’s money, they obediently shut up.

But when Kong Si investigated, he offered such generous profits that money moved hearts. Previously, they kept He Xiao’s secrets for money, but when the reward was high enough, they unhesitatingly sold him out.

Kong Si’s main job was acting; he wasn’t very familiar with marketing. Different professions require different expertise. After spending money to obtain He Xiao’s dirt and learning what he had done, Kong Si handed everything over to his assistant and quietly observed, determined not to let He Xiao off easy.

Lu Yi knew all about Kong Si spending money to investigate He Xiao’s dark secrets. After founding Star Entertainment, Lu Yi was extremely busy for a long time, working hard to develop the company. He toiled diligently for so long to gain enough strength to stand firm in the industry.

It wasn’t just for Kong Si or himself, but also for the original body.

Before, they had no capital—only a little money and influence. Any attempt to trip up those people would have been ineffective; talk of revenge was laughable.

But now, with money and connections, he could even make waves in the industry with a stamp of his foot. So he began planning to settle scores one by one.

On the day he crossed over, the agent Li He drugged him and sent him to He Xiao’s room. Back then, Lu Yi used threats and persuasion, both soft and hard, to force Li He to help him cancel his contract with the previous company.

After that, he left Li He aside and never bothered with him again.

Now that he wasn’t as busy, he remembered Li He and casually acquired the company Li He worked for.

Unlike He Xiao, the original Lu Xingchen had signed with a small company. Its biggest success was the talent show that launched Lu Xingchen’s career.

After Lu Yi acquired the company, he carried out a very normal personnel reshuffle. Many employees who were brought in through connections by senior management were fired if they lacked the competence to do their jobs.

Of course, this included Li He, the former agent of Lu Xingchen.

Lu Yi informed several big shots in the industry, hinting that he and Li He had significant past conflicts, implying that anyone who helped Li He would be going against him.

In this circle, connections are everything. Li He was just a small fry. Offending someone he shouldn’t have made his life difficult.

Besides, someone leaked to Li He’s hot-tempered wife that he was having an affair. After she had a group beat up the mistress, her brothers came and gave Li He a beating, nearly crippling him.

Lu Yi wasn’t some gangster. Knowing that Li He was having a rough time was enough to put his mind at ease.

Li He was one of the main culprits. The person who had no qualms about drugging him alongside Li He to frame He Xiao was no good either.

Since that person loved popularity so much, Lu Yi spent money to obtain some explicit photos of them with a greasy old man and helped them make headlines in a big way.

For netizens, those months were probably the most eventful. First, the new trending actor Yu Si was revealed to be married—to a company president who looked a lot like him.

Before Yu Si’s fans could even explode, the next day a huge scandal about He Xiao broke out, and it kept coming like a TV series, one revelation after another.

The final piece of news about He Xiao was that he was suspected of criminal activities, arrested, and temporarily detained for investigation.

They say black fame is still fame, but this level of blackness had a far greater negative impact on He Xiao.

Then came the explosive news about a plastic surgery-disaster artist who had a feud with He Xiao. Netizens were overwhelmed with gossip, watching these people cause chaos day after day.

During this time, Yu Si’s film won several awards at an international film festival and also earned him a prestigious domestic Best Actor award at the Golden X Awards, which also trended on Weibo. It was one of the few positive trending topics in the entertainment industry during that period.

About a month later, the nationwide gossip frenzy finally subsided. Because he was brought into the spotlight during the chaos, Yu Si’s popularity soared several times over.

But at the peak of his career, Yu Si’s studio account posted an announcement that he planned to retire from acting. Yu Si’s fans rubbed their eyes in disbelief.

They checked the calendar; it wasn’t April Fools’ Day.

“This must be a publicity stunt,” they thought optimistically. “They’ll probably deny it soon.”

Until Kong Si logged into his main account and personally reposted the news.