Xie Guan's face wasn't a big deal. He rested for two days, the wound scabbed over, and the bruise didn't look so scary anymore. He was the type who couldn't stay idle; usually, even when he had no scenes, he would hang around the set to watch the director coach other actors. This time, however, he uncharacteristically stayed in his hotel room and slept for two days.

Because although Xie Guan always felt that sooner or later he would have to rely on his skills to make a living, at this stage, he could only rely on his face. Therefore, he didn't dare to neglect his "rice bowl," applying medicine and facial masks every day as if he were serving the Empress Dowager, terrified of being left with a conspicuous scar.

During the break from filming to recover, the director and a few familiar staff members came to see him. When he ran into Zhou Xiaoqi in the hotel restaurant, the two also exchanged a few polite pleasantries. Only Zhong Guanhua never showed up from beginning to end; word was he had taken leave to record a show in another city.

Thanks to the prior warning on set, the incident of Zhong Guanhua hitting someone wasn't leaked. But while the director could control everyone's mouths, he couldn't control their hands from posting anonymous complaints online. For the past week, online debates about "popular young actor throwing his weight around" would erupt into a bloodbath at least once a day. Countless young starlets and actors were caught in the crossfire, and Zhong Guanhua, due to his past scandals, was also dragged out for public shaming for several days.

Xie Guan, using his side account to browse Weibo, couldn't resist liking a post from a blogger who was listing Zhong Guanhua's past scandals. Half an hour later, after some self-reflection, he felt the potential risk was too great and sheepishly snuck back to that Weibo post to unlike it.

Xie Guan's side account ID was "Canned Crab," with only twenty-six zombie followers and not even a premium membership. The Weibo content consisted of nothing but winning someone's red envelope in a lottery or notifications that the Weibo client had been updated to a new version. He did follow a lot of people, though: various gossip accounts, celebrities, and the official Weibo accounts of shows he had acted in before.

The actor he shared a room with hadn't returned yet. Xie Guan found Zhou Xiaoqi's and the director's Weibo accounts and followed them. He scrolled through his feed for a while longer before logging out, setting his phone alarm, and falling asleep with the bedside lamp on.

On the day he returned to the set, Xie Guan received a new script from the production coordinator. It had a whole two extra pages of scenes compared to the original. With hands trembling as if he'd just found two hundred yuan on the street, Xie Guan flipped open the pages and discovered the screenwriter had changed his ending, adding one martial arts scene and one dialogue-heavy scene—all of which were plots of him stylishly trouncing the male lead.

Xie Guan couldn't even imagine the look on Zhong Guanhua's face when he saw this script. He thought to himself, 'This screenwriter really despises evil. Is it really okay to make the face-slapping this obvious?'

But the smile on his face was extremely sincere: "Thank you for your hard work, Teacher. Thank you, Sister Qi. I will definitely act my part well."

The production coordinator wore an enigmatic smile. "Ah, no need to be so polite with me."

The Rising Tides of the Azure Sea followed the traditional tropes of wuxia novels. The protagonist possessed a family-inherited ultimate skill and a deep-seated feud, coveted by both the righteous and unorthodox factions of the martial world, with the Demon Sect being one of those forces. The Protector's role was to relentlessly hunt down the male lead and openly try to steal his ancestral sword manual. After the protagonist mastered his martial arts, the Protector would proactively show up to provoke him, becoming the first villain to be run through by the protagonist's sword.

To put it bluntly, the Protector character was just a stepping stone on the protagonist's path to growth. He had few scenes, died early, and didn't even have a proper name. Moreover, his original character design was a plain-looking, moody, chunibyo, and antisocial young man.

However, in the revised script, a scene was added where the Protector, relying solely on his words, cornered the male protagonist. With the added bonus of good looks, and after unlocking his verbal sparring skills, the Protector was instantly upgraded to a handsome young man who was highly intelligent, highly skilled in martial arts, and still antisocial.

In the end, he would be gravely injured in a duel with the protagonist and fall off a cliff. Thinking about it this way, he was actually quite moe.

Xie Guan often browsed Weibo, so he knew a thing or two about what constituted a "fan-attracting" character design. Whether he could actually attract fans when the show aired was another matter, but just the favor of the director and screenwriter specially rewriting his scenes was enough to make him feel eternally grateful.

When he acted opposite Zhong Guanhua again, the other man, as expected, didn't give him a pleasant look. He heard that Zhong Guanhua's agent had even had a fight with the directing team over it. But perhaps because they could see the director's intention to cultivate Xie Guan, they didn't make too big a fuss.

Xie Guan could clearly feel that Zhong Guanhua's mind was no longer on this drama, losing the high-profile and deliberate attitude from before. On the other hand, the assistant of the second female lead would say a few sarcastic, passive-aggressive remarks whenever she saw Xie Guan, to the effect of, 'Look at your pathetic face, you little flatterer. Why don't you look in the mirror and see if you're even fit to be a star?'

Xie Guan was completely bewildered. It was only after finishing work for the day and returning to the hotel that he figured out the reason: Zhong Guanhua and the second female lead, Liu Danqing, were senior and junior disciples, both signed under Galaxy Times, while Zhou Xiaoqi was from Xihua Entertainment. There were constant undercurrents between the two actresses. Liu Danqing probably thought he had latched onto Zhou Xiaoqi's coattails to gain the director's favor, so she used the pretext of standing up for Zhong Guanhua to stomp on him a few times, when in reality, she was still slapping Zhou Xiaoqi's face.

He had no idea what kind of "stars" "Galaxy Times" was gathering. As expected, fish seek fish, shrimp seek shrimp—all the weirdos in the world belong to one family.

Xie Guan only had twelve scenes and was scheduled to wrap up in early June. However, because the director wanted to elevate the quality of the martial arts scenes, he stayed to meticulously polish two more scenes, dragging it out until mid-June before he finally wrapped.

On the night of his return journey, the director was busy filming on the mountain. Xie Guan sent text messages one by one to the people who had helped him, said his goodbyes to the crew in the WeChat group, and giggled foolishly at his phone the whole way. It wasn't until he had his ticket checked and boarded the high-speed train that he belatedly savored a trace of sentimental sadness from the parting.

Xie Guan had been in the industry for seven years and had played countless supporting roles and extras, but this was the first time he'd felt a sense of belonging to a crew. Leaving aside Zhong Guanhua and Liu Danqing, the other actors and staff were all very friendly to him, and the director had shown him the grace of mentorship. He had stumbled blindly in the dark on this path of an actor for so many years, and only now, at this moment, could he finally see a faint light flickering at the end of the darkness.

He arrived in B City just as evening fell. Xie Guan, carrying his suitcase, braved the evening rush hour and struggled on the road for two hours before finally getting back to the artist dormitory arranged by the company.

His two roommates weren't there. A stuffy smell from a long lack of ventilation permeated the room. The place was a mess, as if it had just gone through the apocalypse. He had only been gone for a month, but the other two's shoes and clothes had completely buried the living room.

Xie Guan didn't consider himself diligent; most men have some degree of laziness when it comes to "housework." But faced with this scene, he couldn't even be bothered to sigh. He plonked his suitcase down by the door, changed his shoes, rolled up his sleeves, and started to clean up the room.

By the time he finally managed to restore the living room to how it was before he left, it was already 11:30 at night. Just as Xie Guan sat down to catch his breath, the sound of a key turning in the lock came from the door. His roommate, Wang Ruolun, was supporting their other drunk roommate, Qu Jie, as they struggled into the room.

"You're back? When did you get in?"

Xie Guan quickly got up to help Wang Ruolun with Qu Jie's weight. "Just got here this afternoon. What were you two up to? How did you get so drunk?"

Wang Ruolun was a bit drunk too, reeking of a nauseatingly strong smell of smoke and alcohol. He dumped Qu Jie into his own room, quickly stripped off his clothes, and dashed into the bathroom. "What else could we be doing? Networking. Little Qu doesn't know how to handle things and got held down by an old bastard who forced him to drink like his life depended on it. If I hadn't dragged him out, that kid would've been done for under the table tonight."

Listening to the rushing sound of water from the bathroom, Xie Guan glanced at the unconscious Qu Jie and couldn't help but sigh. "Drinking again?"

"Can't be helped," Wang Ruolun's voice was mostly muffled by the sound of the water. "Wang Zhe has latched onto a big project and wants to shove Little Qu into it. He's been taking him out drinking with the production company and investors every day. He's practically drunk himself into cirrhosis of the liver, and those bastards are still just stringing him along, refusing to give a definite answer. By the way, I forgot to ask, how was your shoot? Was it tough?"

Xie Guan smiled. "It was okay. Not as tough as cleaning the room."

Wang Ruolun gave a dry laugh. "We've both been really busy... and tired. Every time we drink, we get so drunk we can't even find our own front door. We were planning to clean up before you got back, but we got busy and forgot."

"Too little, too late," Xie Guan turned the air conditioner up by two degrees and knocked on the bathroom door. "I'm going to bed first. You should also get to bed early after your shower. Good night."

"Thanks for your hard work. Good night."

The journey and the manual labor had accumulated a heavy fatigue, yet as Xie Guan lay in bed, he couldn't fall asleep with a clear mind like he had in the hotel on set. Wang Ruolun's words were like a cup of coffee being forcibly poured down his throat, keeping him helplessly awake amidst the encroaching drowsiness, contemplating some issues he was unwilling to face but could not avoid.

In his early years, Xie Guan had spent a long time hanging around film sets, working as an extra and a walk-on. Four years ago, he played a small supporting role in a hit historical drama, which was how he and Wang Ruolun got signed to the company. He was still young back then, his head turned by the olive branch extended by a major, well-known company like Xinghui Entertainment, thinking that once he boarded this big ship, his worries would be over.

However, the facts proved that this period was precisely when Xinghui Pictures was shifting its focus and aggressively expanding its talent agency business, and it was also the starting point of Xinghui's slow decline from its peak.

Veteran employees and A-list actors left one after another, while the new president, Yang Rong, stubbornly insisted on the path of stockpiling a large number of newcomers through open auditions. Anyone with a discerning eye in the industry could see that Xinghui Pictures was on a downward slope.

The company's artists were often pushed aside and had their roles snatched away when seeking work outside, yet Yang Rong's only solution was to have them attend drinking parties. Up-and-coming artists not only had to be able to act, but also had to have a high alcohol tolerance and the skill to coax people. If they were lucky, fawning and flattering could be exchanged for a sufficiently weighty resource; if they were unfortunate enough to encounter a difficult-to-please investor, the company would even force the artists to accept the "unspoken rules."

In Yang Rong's words, "The investors are your real fathers. One minute on stage takes ten years of practice off stage, and opportunities are only reserved for those who are obedient."

There had been several drinking party opportunities that could have made him an overnight star, but Xie Guan had turned them all down with excuses. His agent, Wang Zhe, had hinted and suggested it a few times, but upon discovering he was a lost cause, he simply stopped managing him, leaving him to fend for himself, just waiting for his contract to expire so he could tell him to get lost.

Xie Guan knew in his heart that as long as he remained at the company, this ceiling would always hang over his head. Unless he was content to be a Z-list artist who would never make it big, his only choice was to accept Xinghui Entertainment's set of "industry rules" and fight his way to fame at the drinking table.

A new text message came in. In the pitch-black darkness, the light from the phone screen was so bright it was hard to open one's eyes.

Director He Guangping: [Have a safe trip! I look forward to working with you again.]

Xie Guan was in a daze and didn't know when he had fallen asleep. The next day, he was woken up by sheer hunger. After getting up, he found breakfast that Wang Ruolun had bought on the table, still warm. So Xie Guan sat at the dining table with a small bun in his mouth, browsing Weibo. He liked a photo Zhou Xiaoqi had posted about starting work, then went to check the trending topics, where he was surprised to find Zhong Guanhua on the list. Unable to stop his meddlesome hand, he clicked on it.

The top Weibo post was unexpectedly news about a new TV series. The game 'Sword Sets the Realm' was going to be adapted into a TV series of the same name, produced by Galaxy Times, directed by the famous director Li Hetong, and starring Zhong Guanhua, Liu Danqing, Wang Ruolun, Qu Jie, and others.

An hour after the Weibo post was published, it had nearly ten thousand reposts and six thousand comments.

Xie Guan finally understood why Qu Jie had been drunk into a stupor the night before, and why Wang Ruolun, who usually had a high tolerance for alcohol, had appeared so obviously intoxicated.

This was the path they had to take.

The bun in his mouth suddenly lost its flavor. Xie Guan didn't know how he should feel about this "good news." He lost all interest in browsing Weibo, and the same uncomfortable, suffocating feeling from last night coiled around his heart again like a persistent ghost.

Xie Guan sat on the sofa, took out his phone, found his agent Wang Zhe's number, and dialed it.

The other end picked up the phone quickly. Xie Guan reported his general situation on the set and told him that he had returned to B City. The other man, in a good mood, gave him a couple of perfunctory replies. Having a promising artist under him had clearly made Wang Zhe very pleased.

Xie Guan thought for a moment, then went along with his words and flattered him a bit, complimenting Wang Zhe until he was beaming with joy. Once he was happy, Xie Guan no longer seemed so jarring to his eyes, so he magnanimously decided to let bygones be bygones and give Xie Guan a leg up.

"Perfect timing. I'm meeting someone tomorrow night to discuss a new project. I'll have my assistant send you the details in a bit. If you're interested, you can accompany me tomorrow."

There was instant silence on Xie Guan's end.

Listening to the silence, the smile on Wang Zhe's face slowly faded.

Just as he was silently cursing Xie Guan for not knowing what was good for him and was about to hang up, Xie Guan suddenly let out a soft cough.

"Thank you, Brother Wang. I'll go. See you tomorrow."