Chapter 23#

Hidden Sharpness#

“Director Xiang!”

The director, deputy director, and several planners were watching the recording in the room when suddenly a man with a camera on his shoulder rushed in hurriedly.

“What’s so urgent?”

“This,” the cameraman cautiously put down the camera in his hand, and before his breath was steady, he said, “The footage in the camera… have a look… Mo Xuzhi… recorded it last night.”

“Mo Xuzhi recorded it?”

“No… it’s not.”

Perhaps because he hadn’t caught his breath yet, the cameraman’s brain was blank, and he didn’t organize his language well, and his words were incoherent.

The director didn’t understand what he said, but he saw something in his anxious expression and had someone export the records in the camera, saying, “Catch your breath first and speak after you’ve thought about it.”

The cameraman nodded, his face flushed.

“Director Xiang, the records have been exported. Shall we watch it now?”

The director waved his hand: “Let’s see.”

The cameraman really was out of breath, leaning on his knees and panting.

The staff vacated a screen to play the recording.

Several people in the room all curiously craned their necks to watch.

The recording looked ordinary, even with a strange angle.

It roughly captured Du Minsheng entering the instrument shop, trying out instruments, and humming a few sounds.

There were no special highlights.

At least not to the point where it was worth the cameraman running over to show them.

The director asked, “Old Tang, is there… anything different?”

The cameraman called Old Tang wiped his face and finally found his voice, saying, “Fast forward, fast forward to the middle part.”

The director glanced at him and had the staff fast forward to the middle part Old Tang mentioned.

Everything was normal.

“Stop, stop, stop! Wait, go back!”

The progress bar jumped too fast, and the director and others only saw the scene of Du Minsheng and another person leaving.

Who was the other person?

“That’s Mo Xuzhi.”

Old Tang overrode the staff and pressed the keyboard to slow down and rewind. As he rewound, he said, “I was following Du Minsheng. Yesterday several guests were preparing to go back to the hotel. I thought there would be Old Yang filming on the way back, and there are cameras in the guests’ rooms back at the hotel, so I left the camera in the instrument shop, thinking I would continue filming today.”

“When I went to the instrument shop to pick up the camera today, I found that the camera function was on. Fearing that a whole night of blank images would take up memory, I roughly looked at what was recorded yesterday. If there was no image, I would just delete it.”

“Then,” Old Tang let go of the rewind button and clicked the play button, “I saw this.”

The director and others finally saw clearly who the other person was.

“Mo Xuzhi?”

Someone “eh"ed, then remembered something and said, “Yesterday Mo Xuzhi did go to find Du Minsheng.”

They watched yesterday’s recording, originally wanting to edit a misleading Mo Xuzhi and Du Minsheng CP shot, but found that except for Mo Xuzhi’s initiative to find Du Minsheng this once, the two were both flat and light, with few decent CP-like shots in the same frame.

They had originally given up, but didn’t expect there was another segment here.

“The key is in the back; I’ll turn up the volume a bit.”

Then came the casual conversation between Mo Xuzhi and Du Minsheng.

Several pairs of eyes stared fixedly at the screen, and soon they discovered something was wrong.

Mo Xuzhi and Du Minsheng seemed to know each other, and it was the kind of knowing each other for a long time.

They didn’t say much, nor did they talk about the past, but every action was extremely natural. Mo Xuzhi’s action of tilting his head to ask Du Minsheng if he wanted to hear him sing was also very familiar, as if he had done it countless times.

There was a natural atmosphere between the two that others couldn’t break into.

“This is good! We can edit a…”

“Don’t speak yet.” The director’s eyes looked at the screen, and after finishing his words, he fell into silence.

The entire room also followed suit and became quiet.

A clear and gentle voice filled the entire space.

There was no post-editing or mixing, and besides an ordinary piano with poor tone, there was no other accompaniment. But this piece of music happened to seep into the limbs and bones of everyone present.

Gently melodious, yet very penetrating, it easily broke the fixed impression of Du Minsheng’s version of “Whale” in their hearts.

Finally, they heard Mo Xuzhi say, “One audience member, Teacher Du, is enough,” and felt their eardrums were about to melt.

As expected, Du Minsheng’s ears instantly turned red.

“Holy crap, he’s so good at it!”

A girl sitting on the side who had just joined the crew couldn’t help but exclaim.

Those who had mocked Mo Xuzhi openly and secretly laughed awkwardly, “Haha… I didn’t expect he could sing.”

The director didn’t speak, went back and watched it again.

“What does Director Xiang think?”

Old Tang was originally also enthusiastically participating in the discussion of others, but when he saw the director sitting on a stool without speaking, he also became quiet. Seeing the director finish watching again, he couldn’t help but speak out.

“Don’t broadcast it for now,” the director mused for a moment, then had others quiet down and said, “When editing the first episode, cut it right before the competition result comes out, leaving a hook. This scene will be left for the second episode to broadcast.”

“Remember not to forget to edit the words he recorded on the bus earlier—make it as hateful as possible.”

Several staff members understood and smiled.

Suppress before praising; the harder the scolding, the higher the ratings and attention.

When the reversal comes, it’ll be another wave of traffic.

This was the first time Mo Xuzhi sang in front of people.

A character reversal for a star who had been criticized for a long time and called a “three-nothing traffic” star—they had even thought about what keywords to carry for the Weibo trending search at that time.

Their crew never intentionally praised or deliberately suppressed people. They filmed wherever there was traffic, and everything was out of interest considerations, including but not limited to crazy praise and malicious editing.

One could say they had no bottom line or principles at all.

“Keep the backup of the recording. Oh, right, remember to give Mo Xuzhi and others some task cards, anything will do, as long as they aren’t idle.”

After resolving the matter at hand, the director remembered the complaints from the cameraman following Mo Xuzhi and others, saying that the several people all curled up in their rooms, didn’t communicate, and didn’t even go out, so there was simply no material to film.

Zhang Xuanxuan and others next door were very proactive and conscious. They followed the hotel kitchen staff to cook early in the morning, saying they were experiencing life, then went to the hills to seek inspiration, with constant interaction and ambiguous small bubbles flying everywhere.

Only those four had been curled up in their rooms. Mo Xuzhi went out once, but when the cameraman went to follow him at work, the person had returned to the hotel.

Looking at the scene captured by the camera, he had probably started playing games again.

The cameraman sighed vicissitudes: “Why is the internet addiction so strong?”

“Let him play.”

The director didn’t look anxious, his eyes shining with light, clearly planning something again,

“Have him play to his heart’s content with professional players when the time comes.”

Silver meets professionals—both painful and fast, and there’s traffic to watch.

Professional players?

When the director said this, others became excited and cautiously tested the waters. The director didn’t say anything, only prevaricating “the contract hasn’t been obtained yet” and “you’ll know when the time comes.”

They could definitely win this traffic battle.

After spending a leisurely morning, Mo Xuzhi wrote a few processes. If he was tired, he would play bot games with Du Minsheng to face off against bots; if they lost, he would continue working. It was simply relaxed and comfortable.

But this relaxation was destined to be broken.

A staff member knocked cautiously on the door and handed a small card to him and Du Minsheng respectively.

After getting the card, Mo Xuzhi didn’t open it immediately, but turned it over and over in his hand, commenting objectively: “The card is quite exquisite, you’ve put in some heart.”

The staff member was a bit confused, craned his neck to look, and saw a few grease stains on the card.

If one smelled carefully, there was also the smell of fried chicken.

When the director said write whatever, it really was writing whatever, and even the paper looked casual.

“Please complete your exclusive small tasks.”

the staff member gave a sheepish smile and slipped away immediately.

Mo Xuzhi opened the card in front of Du Minsheng after returning to the room.

Mo Xuzhi was expressionless: “…”

Du Minsheng was slightly confused: “…”

Not only did the card look simple, but the tasks were also very simple.

Mo Xuzhi subsequently pulled weeds for a whole afternoon with Du Minsheng.

They even hoed two plots of land while they were at it.

The farmers in Wanwan Town even praised them for being kind and gave them two apples to take back and nibble on.

When they returned, it was already late.

The sunset glow reddened half the sky, spreading out in layers.

They were walking toward the hotel when they met a staff member halfway. The staff member said they were going to prepare for tonight’s competition, and they didn’t need to return to the hotel, but could go straight to the square.

Better not to return to the hotel; Mo Xuzhi was also lazy to walk more, so he directly turned around and followed the staff to the square.

Du Minsheng walked beside Mo Xuzhi, and with a tilt of his head, he could see his somewhat tired eyes.

Mo Xuzhi hadn’t rested for a long time.

After he and Mo Xuzhi slept at twelve o’clock last night, he woke up in the middle of the night. Mo Xuzhi, who should have been sound asleep, had somehow got up again and opened his computer.

The computer screen brightness was very low, glowing with a faint blue light. He had his head down, appearing to be calculating something on paper. The tip of the pen moved rapidly, and before the initial ink was dry, a whole sheet of paper was finished, at a speed comparable to a printer.

The lenses of the silver-framed glasses on the bridge of his nose reflected the cold light, and Mo Xuzhi suddenly seemed several degrees colder, his whole being appearing quiet and sharp.

Tense, agile, and single-minded.

This was Mo Xuzhi’s state when immersed in work.

He hadn’t even noticed Du Minsheng, who had already woken up.