The TV drama adaptation of The Rising Tides of the Azure Sea began airing on Hulu TV's Star Theater on January 20th. The show boasted a strong cast, exquisite production, and a conscientious team. A considerable amount of money was spent on promotion, and it was sold to a satellite TV station for the winter vacation prime time slot. Its starting point could not be said to be low, nor its initial hype lacking. However, by the tenth episode, both the buzz and the reviews had clearly begun to decline. Numerous problems, such as plot padding, reckless adaptation of the original work, and awkward acting, were laid bare. Not to mention the two lead actresses, the "acting of little fresh meat" has always been a difficult hurdle to overcome. Even with millions of fans and a halo effect as thick as bulletproof glass, the male lead, Zhong Guanhua, couldn't escape the relentless complaints of the audience.

Xie Guan, on vacation and with no appearances to make, packed his luggage and returned to his old home in the countryside for the New Year. His family lived in a rural area of S Province. Xie Guan had worked hard these past few years, saving up enough money to build a two-story house for his family, where only his father now lived. In the mountain village, there was sometimes no cell phone signal, and the village's internet access was better than nothing, but just barely. After returning home, Xie Guan was like a hermit living in seclusion, completely unaware of the various things happening online.

It wasn't until the third day after his return that he received an early morning call from Lin Yao: "Xie Guan! Have you seen Weibo? The Rising Tides of the Azure Sea's ratings broke 5% last night! You're going to be famous!"

"Hm?" Xie Guan had just finished a set of Tai Chi with his father and was still immersed in that calm and serene atmosphere. He said placidly, "Sister Lin, don't worry. Slow down, what's wrong? The signal isn't great on my end."

Lin Yao had called to report good news. She didn't expect him to be as ecstatic as Fan Jin passing the imperial exams, but he should have at least feigned some joyful excitement. Instead, Xie Guan was as unshakable as an old immortal, which in turn made Lin Yao, a top agent, seem as if she'd never seen the world.

"I said, you're about to get popular," Lin Yao, deflated by his reaction, snorted coldly. "Last night, the ratings for The Rising Tides of the Azure Sea exploded. The character you play went live the day before yesterday, and today you're a trending topic. Haven't you checked Weibo?"

Xie Guan had originally lost hope for the drama, so he was naturally happy to suddenly hear this news. But for some reason, his heart still felt heavy as if burdened by some worry. Happy was happy, but it passed with a smile. The feeling of joy was like one of those popular premixed cocktail drinks—you could taste a hint of alcohol, but it wasn't intoxicating.

"I'm at my old home. The internet is bad; it can take an hour to load a single Weibo post." Xie Guan smiled. "I'll call Director He later to thank him."

"Good." Lin Yao valued Xie Guan precisely because he was more mature than other artists his age. He was low-key, worldly-wise, and never lacking in proper etiquette. This alone saved his agent a lot of worry. "You don't have an official personal Weibo account yet, do you? I'll have someone set one up for you in a bit and get it verified. You can use it yourself, or you can have the company manage it for you."

Xie Guan said, "Thank you, Sister Lin. I'll get it from you when I get back,"

"Speaking of which, when are you planning to come back?" Lin Yao asked. "I estimate you'll start getting offers for appearances in a couple of days. You might have to return a few days early."

Xie Guan glanced toward his father. "The film crew doesn't start work until after the fifteenth day of the New Year. I booked a train ticket for the sixteenth."

"High-speed rail?"

Xie Guan smiled. "A regular train."

Lin Yao said helplessly, "Change it to a plane ticket. You might have to record a show on the seventh or eighth day of the New Year. It'll also be easy for you to get recognized on a train."

"It can't be that bad," Xie Guan still didn't think it was a big deal. "I'm just a supporting actor."

Lin Yao: "Do you know that the gossip accounts have already dug up the fact that you were Chang Jun's martial arts stunt double six years ago?"

Xie Guan immediately fell silent.

Lin Yao reminded him not to let his guard down even in his hometown. Both of their phones were ringing nonstop with calls, so they hung up after a few more words. On Xie Guan's end, Li Yan and Wang Ruolun both called. The moment he opened the WeChat group for the Jingwu Youth cast, his phone was instantly overwhelmed by a downpour of "sprinkling flowers" and "muah muah" and froze.

Xie Guan replied to thank everyone who sent him messages of congratulations one by one. After some back-and-forth chatting, the morning passed in the blink of an eye.

In the afternoon, he went to an internet cafe in town to browse Weibo. His side account, "Canned Crab," hadn't been exposed yet. On the trending topics list, "The Rising Tides of the Azure Sea" was third, "Demon Sect Protector Yue Qinglu" was seventh, and "Xie Guan Yue Qinglu" was eighteenth.

The director had originally positioned this character as one who would attract fans with his personality, but he hadn't expected the audience to be captivated by his face at first sight. Yue Qinglu had only appeared in four episodes, with his total screen time not even exceeding 40 minutes, yet he had already been clipped into countless long images and GIFs circulating all over the internet. A GIF of Xie Guan's entrance, stepping through a bloody sunset, was frantically shared and re-shared tens of thousands of times.

The two most frequent words in the reposts were "stunning" and "so handsome," which was a relatively normal style. There were also some other, more unusual comments reflecting individual tastes, such as:

"Yue Qinglu is so handsome, why isn't he the leader of the Demon Sect?"

"I suspect I might have watched a fake The Rising Tides of the Azure Sea."

"OMG, this Protector's aura is 2.3 meters tall!!"

"Honestly, this is the only domestic villain I've seen in recent years who is still devilishly charming and unrestrained without eyeliner or lipstick. Based on these four episodes, he completely crushes all of the male lead's appearances so far."

"Wow, is this character in the original novel? I can't help but want to go read it now!"

"Mama, I want to sleep with him!"

"What is all this nonsense?" Huo Mingjun finally couldn't help but speak up when he saw the last sentence. "Fang Hui, what are you doing during work hours?"

Assistant Fang, who was slacking off in the office during her lunch break, was startled by the sudden voice behind her. She fumbled to click the 'X' in the top right corner, but her hands were shaking so badly that she misclicked and accidentally maximized the video window. A cut of Yue Qinglu's scenes from the seventeenth episode of The Rising Tides of the Azure Sea was thus brazenly exposed right under Huo Mingjun's nose.

"Don't bother," Huo Mingjun said ominously. "Since you love TV dramas so much, how about I transfer you to the new company to shoot dramas tomorrow?"

Fang Hui, like a quail with its neck shrunk in, tremblingly turned her chair to face him, on the verge of tears. "Boss, I was wrong..."

Slacking off a little during lunch break was harmless and not a big deal. Fang Hui had overslept during her afternoon naps before, and Huo Mingjun had always turned a blind eye. This time, however, the root of the problem of her being caught was the content of her slacking. Wasn't The Rising Tides of the Azure Sea precisely the Great Demon King's minefield?

Fang Hui had seen Huo Mingjun's state for some time now and had also indirectly asked Zhong Heguang about it. Although he didn't say it outright, he had subtly reminded her not to mention "that person's" name in front of the boss.

Fang Hui hadn't been an assistant for so many years for nothing; she understood immediately—the Great Demon King had fallen out with Xie Guan.

She actually found it a bit of a pity, because having interacted with Xie Guan, she felt he was a person worth befriending. But Huo Mingjun was the one who paid their salaries. No matter how much Fang Hui thought well of Xie Guan, she didn't dare to go against Huo Mingjun, so she could only secretly watch Xie Guan's drama. Unexpectedly, after two episodes, she became hooked. Not only did she wait in front of the TV at home every day for it to air, she even went online to find and watch Xie Guan's cuts.

Huo Mingjun was just momentarily unable to accept the netizens' direct enthusiasm. It was the subtle annoyance of discovering a scenic spot only to have it suddenly turn into a tourist attraction; he didn't actually intend to do anything to Fang Hui. He raised the matter high but let it drop gently, scolding her perfunctorily before his attention was drawn to the video title on the computer screen. "Cut? What's this?"

"Huh?" Fang Hui was flustered by his question and explained incoherently, "It's... all the scenes where Xie... this person appears, cut out and spliced together. It should count as a behind-the-scenes feature... I guess?"

Huo Mingjun: "Get a USB drive. Copy it for me."

Fang Hui: "Oh, okay... Huh?!"

As if in a dream, Fang Hui tremblingly downloaded the video she had found, copied it, and delivered it to Huo Mingjun's office. Returning to her desk, she closed all the windows and didn't dare to slack off anymore, conscientiously getting back to her real job.

An hour later, a call came through on the internal line from Huo Mingjun: "The drama has already aired up to episode 20. Why is the video only cut up to episode 18?"

His tone was so serious, his attitude so grave, that it even gave Fang Hui the illusion that she had just submitted a top-secret, important company document to him.

Assistant Fang felt like her brain had stopped working. "Huh? Why...? Because the last two episodes just aired, so no one has cut them yet..."

Huo Mingjun was silent on the other end for a moment, then said in a perfectly normal, business-like tone, "Go and cut the two new episodes."

Fang Hui: "..."

Boss, tell me, was that one second of silence just now because you felt the sting of your conscience?!

When Xie Guan came out of the internet cafe, the sky was already growing dark. It gets dark early in the winter. He was wrapped in a bulky black down jacket, wearing a hat, scarf, and a large face mask, armed up like a Siberian brown bear. Never mind in a small place like this, even if he were thrown into a square in B City, he might not be recognized.

His phone, after a day of bombardment, didn't have much battery left. Everyone Xie Guan was familiar with had sent their congratulations through various channels, and though he knew he shouldn't harbor unrealistic fantasies, he couldn't help but check his phone for unread messages.

This just goes to show what a terrifying habit dependency is. He had only shared good news with Huo Mingjun once, and it had already become a mental habit.

He exhaled a puff of white breath, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and walked toward the bus station in town.

It was called a station, but it was really just a metal sign standing in an empty lot, indicating where to board. As the end of the year approached, the streets became even more deserted. On the vast square, there was hardly a soul in sight. Xie Guan stood alone next to the metal sign, shivering and constantly shuffling his feet from the cold. Just then, the phone in his pocket suddenly buzzed with a "vmm" sound.

Huo Mingjun had sent a text message: "Is it convenient to take a call?"

Xie Guan stared at the screen for a long time as if he couldn't read. His fingers, exposed to the cold wind, quickly grew numb. He hesitated for a long time, still not knowing how to reply.

Huo Mingjun's text message, to put it nicely, was considerate. To put it less nicely, it was cunning.

The one who had said "Let's not see each other again" was Xie Guan. On that drunken night, this sentence had actually already been broken, but Xie Guan hadn't been sober, and Huo Mingjun had left early. The two hadn't met while sober; they had a tacit understanding but had never spoken of it. So on the surface, this was Huo Mingjun officially sending a signal, and he had given the choice to Xie Guan. If he wanted to stick to his word, he could just not reply, pretending he hadn't seen it. If he had softened, then this text message could serve as a step stool laid out for him by Huo Mingjun, allowing him to go with the flow and let go of all their past disagreements.

But they both knew full well—the whole night of companionship, the breakfast the next day... Xie Guan was someone who calculated his social debts clearly even when cutting ties, someone who would repay a bit of kindness with tenfold in return. How could he possibly turn a blind eye to the care Huo Mingjun had poured into him?

Huo Mingjun only dared to send such a feignedly polite text message because he was betting on the fact that Xie Guan wasn't an ungrateful scumbag.

However, Xie Guan's temperament had indeed been completely figured out by Huo Mingjun. If Huo Mingjun could make him lower his guard once, he had the ability to make him lower it a second time.