CH 54

Chapter 54: Countless Fans

“Is filming over?” Yan Qiuchi asked as he kept staring at Shen Jintai.

Shen Jintai’s hair was longer which accentuated his round head making it look small. It looked like he had just taken off his makeup and costume. His face was fair showing white skin and rosy lips as it was adorned with a warm and bright smile.

Shen Jintai: “I’m about to call it a day. Why are you here at this time?”

“Came to have a look at the crew.” Yan Qiuchi’s heart was pounding. He felt as if Shen Jintai had a layer of light enveloped around him that was not from the headlights behind him, but from a natural aura that came from the charm of his performance.

Shen Jintai gave him another smile, bowed, then walked towards his RV.

Yan Qiuchi eyes followed him. His heartbeat was pounding uncontrollably that he couldn’t help but exclaim: “Jintai.”

Shen Jintai turned his head leaving Yan Qiuchi speechless. Thinking quickly, he blurted out: “I watched today’s broadcast. You acted phenomenally.”

Shen Jintai smiled: “Thank you.”

“President Yan?”

Yan Qiuchi glanced back and saw a crew member greeting him. He greeted the man and exchanged some pleasantries. By the time he finished, Shen Jintai had already gotten into his RV. It was given to him by Monsoon. It wasn’t comparable to Bai Qingquan’s or Yang Lizhi’s, but it was sufficient for eating and sleeping.

Shen Jintai closed the door. Xiao Tang who was resting inside immediately sat up: “Brother.”

Shen Jintai: “You don’t have to stay with the crew all the time. I’m staying with the crew. Generally, there’s nothing else to do. You should go to the hotel to sleep. I’ll call you if I need something.”

Xiao Tang said: “Brother treats me so well, of course I have to do my duty.”

Shen Jintai had always been generous when he had money on hand. On the 11th, Shen Jintai had sent him a large red envelope. When Shen Jintai was richer than now, he had never sent him such a large amount before. He knew Shen Jintai’s family was bankrupt, and he needed to help them out. So far, Shen Jintai hadn’t earned much besides the renumeration from The East Palace and Aishang’s endorsement.

Shen Jintai half-jokingly said: “In the future, I will become more popular and richer. I’ll give lots of benefits to my employees and gift them a house.”

Although the goal was still far away, with Shen Jintai’s current popularity level, it was still within the realm of possibility. How could this not make Xiao Tang highly motivated?!

Shen Jintai also knew the importance of making money. He had a two-day break. With the schedule arranged in advance, he asked Li Meilan to help him find promotional activities he could participate in during these intervals. He had multiple events in four different cities.

With Yan Qiuchi’s sudden appearance on set, a lot of people were alarmed. Director Guo and the other also came over to greet him. Yan Qiuchi was polite to them as he exchanged greetings all while he kept staring at Shen Jintai’s RV. The RV started to drive off into the night, and his heart seemed to move with it.

Coming out of his promotional trip, Shen Jintai felt is popularity was much higher than before. The first city event was a newly opened shopping plaza. The six floors were full of people that it made him a little intimidated. When he came on stage to give his greetings, he couldn’t help but keep looking up. The crowd was so rambunctious that he was worried something bad would happen.

Compared with before where there were more gold powders, these events have more passersby than fans. Many just came to shop, but when they heard that Li Xu was there, they started to crowd around him. It could be considered that Li Xu had become a household name.

The promotional event in the second city was even more sensational. On a freezing cold day, fans had already gathered and waited before dawn. When it was noon, they were notified that the event was cancelled due to too many people and insufficient security measures.

“Can I go and say hello to the fans?” Shen Jintai asked: “I heard Xiao Tang said that many fans flew over from other cities to see me.”

Li Meilan: “Make a post on Weibo. Don’t go to the scene. Safety first.”

“Why don’t you have a live broadcast, brother?” Xiao Tang said: “Open a live feed for a few minutes and comfort the fans. It’s really not easy for them on such a cold day. Besides this can help repair any animosity your fans are feeling.”

Li Meilan asked Shen Jintai: “Do you want to do a live broadcast? If so, I’ll have Xiao Sun and the others come over.”

Xiao Sun was the makeup artist assigned to him by Monsoon Entertainment. They also assigned him a fashion designer and others who specializes in serving him. He now had over seven people on his team.

Shen Jintai: “No, that’s not necessary.”

Shen Jintai was good in this aspect and Li Meilan believed in his vision.

“Brother doesn’t look good with makeup on now.” Xiao Tang said: “I’m not trying to flatter him.”

“You are such a rainbow fart.” Li Meilan said.

Shen Jintai posted on Weibo: [I am sorry about today’s cancelled event. At 8:00 PM tonight, I’ll interact with you live on Weibo. Be careful and make sure to keep warm when it’s cold out. Thank you for your love. Everyone has worked hard.]

After this Weibo was sent out, he felt that his Weibo followers had skyrocketed, and it broke 10 million in a short amount of time. This live broadcast could be considered a benefit to more than 10 million people.

“Report, Touhua is going to do a live broadcast!”

“This is the first time he’s done a live broadcast. I’m so excited.”

“He is so popular now. I wonder how many people will watch it.”

“Is this better? It seems better than doing endorsements. The black history of Touhua has been dragging on. His fire has become like this yet the follow-up endorsements had not kept up.”

“Actors should rely on their works. I think Touhua will get up sooner or later. Isn’t it rumored that skin care brands xx and xxxx are in contact with him? Monsoon Entertainment has no film and television resources, but they are still capable* of tearing endorsements.”

*Reminder: Two brushes (两把刷子) = describe someone’s ability to things capably or intelligently. I used the translated meaning.

“Last week’s drama really got me. I hope Touhua will grow red. His acting skills are really awesome.”

“For sure. I keep watching it to cry again. In the past few days, almost five of the top ten clips from Station B were all Jintai Qiongying. Shen Jintai has a lot of lalang* matches. I found that regardless of age and appearance, he’s just right to be CPed with many people.”

*Lalang (拉郎) = buzzword that means to pull together two people who have no emotional foundation to form a pair (CP).

“I don’t care. I will only recognize him and Zheng Siqi. Is Zheng Siqi gay? If so, can you wrap your head around it? The two of them are now a national couple.”

“The two of them have too little interaction in real life. The last time was at Shen Jintai’s signing ceremony. I could swipe the GIF of the two of them whispering to each other 10,000 times! It’s so sweet!”

“Is Jintai Qiongying really like this? I don’t believe it!”

“I think Jintai Qiongying’s CP fans are puzzled. The analysis says that the prince should not be dead. However, in the original work, he is indeed dead. It also showed in the TV series of him poisoning himself and vomiting blood. Damn, when I think about it, I just can’t help…”

“You think it’s easy to be a CP fan? They go through every scene and line just to find any trace of evidence that his Royal Highness is still alive. I think the evidence they found is that Zheng Siqi, the actor of the prince, is still alive. According to the tradition of <The East Palace is Coming>, the official blog would post death stills of any character that died… but they haven’t done it with Zheng Siqi.”

“Oh my God, really??? If they can make this CP have a good ending, I’m willing to refresh a hundred times a day to contribute to the click-through rate!”

“This drama is being filmed and broadcast. The episode of the prince’s death that just aired should have been filmed at least a month or two ago. What has Zheng Siqi been doing in the past two months? Has no one picked this up?”

“This crew is very bad. Zheng Siqi’s fans said that there has been no news from their brother for two months. It’s a sign that this is a sure thing.”

“That being said, I really doubt that his character’s been killed off. Otherwise, why are they trying to hide this if he’s truly dead.”

“The crew is happy to see the common hype tactics from Monsoon Entertainment. Half of the ratings for this drama is carried by Jintai Qiongying. Now that the prince is offline, the crew is afraid the ratings will drop so they’re deliberately hiding it and won’t announce it.”

“There must be a lot of CP fans in the live broadcast today to ask him this question. Time to squat down!”

Shen Jintai was a little nervous. This was his first live broadcast ever. He was mainly afraid that he didn’t know what to say. After thinking about it, he asked his assistant to order takeout and prepared to broadcast while eating.

“Let me remind you in advance that as soon as the live broadcast barrage opens, your psychological strength must be strong. There is no guarantee that it’s all gold powder. There may also be black powder coming to cause trouble or ask some messy questions. If you see those questions, just ignore them. Pick the questions you want to respond to.” Li Meilan reminded him.

Shen Jintai nodded as Xiao Tang and the others helped get his meal ready. Shen Jintai took the chopsticks and looked at the time. It was almost eight.

—

Bai Qingquan had a rest day today. After eating around 7 he went back to the hotel to relax.

Zhou Jing was now the crown prince. He had to deal with the old ministers in the front while also handled all the palace fights between He Lanbi and a bunch of women in the back. Li Xu also hadn’t made things easy for him either. His position as crown prince was also coveted by several of his brothers, and the emperor still had multiple suspicions against him. With all these scenarios, Bai Qingquan now had the most scenes. All the characters in the drama had rival scenes against him making him particularly tired due to the increased workload.

Seeing that he was so exhausted, the director gave him a half-day off.

Lately the scripts were slow to come out. With the ratings so popular, the screenwriters were under a lot of pressure, so they were more cautious when writing. The filming had resolved to relying on flying pages now. For the next day scenes, the script would be released later that night. After a day of filming, Bai Qingquan would return back to his hotel and memorize his lines for the filming tomorrow.

However, instead of memorizing his lines, he decided to turn on his phone and squatted on Shen Jintai’s live broadcast. With 10 minutes left before it hit 8, he went to browse Weibo and forums. Perhaps it was because he was tired for the day or he had grown accustomed to it, but whenever he sees Shen Jintai being praised everywhere, he no longer had any feelings towards it.

As a little 0 beauty who was looking forward to love very much in his heart, he was also very fond of Jintai Qiongyang. The love between men always pokes at his girlish heart the most. Wuwuwu.

Although he already watched when they film the scene of the prince’s death, when he watched it again on the broadcast, he still burst into tears! He was so afraid Wei Gei, who was next door, would hear, so he had to strongly endure it!

He felt that that he was going to become a fan of Shen Jintai. He had both jealousy and admiration for the close-up shots that lasted over a minute. He was jealous because Director Guo had never arranged for such a close-up facial shot for him before. He admired because he felt that if such a shot was arrange for him, he didn’t think he had the ability to act like that.

Filming this kind of scene was extremely testing. It takes a long time to cry. If you released your emotions too early, your tears would dry before the scene can finish.  The rhythm of when to release your tears and how long you needed to cry were also very important. But the most critical thing was Shen Jintai’s eyes. It held so much emotion. Looking at his eyes and watching him cry, you couldn’t help but cry along with him.

When Bai Qingquan finished crying, he thought ‘How could Shen Jintai act so well!’

It was truly awe-inspiring. This emotion lingered in his heart and didn’t dissipate even after a full day. When Shen Jintai had only been away for a day, he had already missed him.

These good feelings he had… it couldn’t be stopped. Bai Qingquan was a man with ambition. He couldn’t hate this kind of solid acting ability. Performing together with Shen Jintai have given him immense enjoyment. He was jealous, but also loved it.

He couldn’t help but think that one day in the future, he would become an actor of the same caliber as Shen Jintai. When that time comes, he’ll surely have a good time acting with him.

—

“I thought Xiao Jin would take a two-day break,” Mrs. Yan said: “Instead he ran off to four cities in two days. He probably slept while on the road.”

“He’s very popular now. Though the itinerary looks full, it’s normal for an artist of his position.” Yan Qiuchi said.

“I haven’t seen him for a long time,” Mrs. Yan took out her phone: “I’ll ask him what time he will be back tomorrow. If he comes back early, I’ll ask him to have dinner together.”

Although she no longer had thoughts about matching the two of them anymore, her old habits was hard to change. Mrs. Yan smiled and asked: “Do you want to come along too?”

Yan Qiuchi surprisingly responded with: “Okay.”

Mrs. Yan was still dialing on her phone with a smile and didn’t react. Suddenly, she raised her head and abruptly said: “Ah?!”. She looked at her son’s expression that seemed usual. She returned to her phone and said: “I’ll ask the assistant to book a restaurant.”

The author has something to say：

Sit and collect two heavyweight fans.

Kinky Thoughts: Lol I love how the fans are becoming detectives and trying to find any kind of clue that Zhou Ying isn’t dead. Sorry to break it to them, even Sherlock Holmes can’t save him. We all know the fucking producer and screenwriter are sadists.

Bai Qingquan is so adorable!!! He pokes MY heart whenever he wuwuwu. He’s also a Jintai Qiongyang fan. You and me both sis… you and me both.