That night, Wang Zhe left first. Xie Guan didn't receive the expected fury. But he knew in his heart that the longer this matter was suppressed, the more severe the consequences would be. The shoe hanging over his head would eventually drop; the only difference was whether he died sooner or later.

The next morning, when the company's call came, Xie Guan was having breakfast with Wang Ruolun and Qu Jie. The two of them were scheduled to join their film crew this afternoon. Xie Guan, who had been sleepless all night, simply got up early and cooked a full table of food. This startled the yawning Wang Ruolun, who had just come out of his room, so much that he went back, lay down on his bed, and opened his eyes again before sitting down at the table in disbelief. "What's the special occasion today?"

Xie Guan poured a cup of coffee and drank it slowly, "The day the sun rose from your bed."

He calmly finished the phone call and said to Wang Ruolun and Qu Jie, "I have to go to the company this morning. I might not be able to make it back at noon to see you two off."

"It's fine, you go do your thing," Wang Ruolun said, waving his hand. "This meal is more than enough for the two of us."

Xie Guan smiled, looking relaxed and cheerful, giving no hint of the heavy emotions weighing on his heart. He stood up, phone in hand, "I'm going to get changed first. Remember to wash the dishes after you eat, no slacking."

"Got it, got it," Wang Ruolun covered his face with his hand. "I'm begging you, just go already."

The meeting took place in Wang Zhe's office. Besides the manager, Vice President Yao Jing, the artist director, and the legal counsel were also present. The moment Xie Guan entered, several pairs of eyes were instantly glued to him. Their gazes, a mixture of curiosity and anger, held no goodwill.

Probably because the company had never had an artist as meddlesome and audaciously bold as him. He was practically a textbook example of someone rushing to their own doom.

Xie Guan greeted them one by one. No one offered him a seat, so he stood with his hands in his sleeves next to Wang Zhe's desk. His face was unperturbed by favor or disgrace, looking exceedingly well-behaved.

Yao Jing sized him up, getting a good sense of the saying "a dog that bites doesn't bark." Once the atmosphere was sufficiently heavy, she finally spoke slowly, "Xie Guan, right? Wang Zhe told me what happened last night."

"President Zhang is an important partner of ours, a point your manager has emphasized to you repeatedly. You acted on impulse over a small dispute and came to blows with President Zhang. Do you even have any regard for the company?"

Xie Guan had come with the intention of smoothing things over, so he could endure a few harsh words. He didn't defend himself, but followed Yao Jing's lead, "I'm sorry. I was indeed inconsiderate and acted impulsively. I apologize for the losses I've caused the company. I will accept any punishment from the company."

Yao Jing opened the folder in her hands and pushed an administrative document in front of him, her voice tinged with displeasure, "It's too late for apologies now. When you were causing trouble, why didn't you think about how your impulsiveness would throw the company into chaos? I don't have time to exchange pleasantries with you. The urgent priority is to cut our losses and handle the aftermath. The company's senior management held an emergency meeting last night and unanimously decided that you are not suitable to continue developing at Xinghui Entertainment. So we called you here today to discuss terminating your contract."

Xie Guan's heart suddenly sank. It was as if the ground beneath his feet had vanished, and the weightless feeling of falling instantly consumed all his senses. His body swayed on the spot, as if about to collapse, but he quickly straightened up again. The blank look on his face dissipated, returning to his usual calm expression. "Alright, please speak."

Wang Zhe silently pushed two contracts over: one was his original performance contract with the company, and the other was the termination agreement.

Xie Guan's education only went up to high school, and his cultural level was very average. He was fine with reading scripts, but when faced with something full of professional terminology like this, he was at a loss. He patiently read the beginning before putting the contract down and saying to the legal counsel, who was as quiet as a chicken, "Could you please pick out the main points and explain the termination clauses to me?"

He said this to avoid showing weakness, lest they take advantage of his inability to understand the contract and pull some tricks. The legal counsel, with a guilty conscience, thought he was there to condemn them and subconsciously picked out the clauses that were unfavorable to him. "Mr. Xie, it's like this. Your original contract with the company expires next August, but the company has decided to terminate it early. Because you are the party at fault, the company will not pay you any penalty for breach of contract or any compensation."

"Moreover," the legal counsel glanced at him with difficulty, "due to the significant losses your actions have caused the company, the company will be docking your salary for half a year—that is, your pay from January to June of this year."

Xie Guan looked as if he had just been stabbed in the back.

All the color drained from his cheeks, leaving them pale. The hands hanging at his sides were clenched tightly into fists, and his gaze suddenly turned grim.

Vice President Yao and Wang Zhe couldn't help but lean back in their chairs, as if facing a wild beast that could lash out and attack at any moment.

Xie Guan said lightly, his voice chillingly cold, "Significant losses my ass."

"We both know exactly how this happened. Don't push me too far, and don't take me for some pushover you can easily bully. If you want me to pack up and get lost, wipe your own asses clean before you talk." He curled his fingers and tapped lightly on the desk twice. "Otherwise, since I'm at a dead end either way, I'll drag someone down with me even if I die. When the time comes, let's see who's tougher."

As the saying goes, "The soft fear the hard, the hard fear the unreasonable, and the unreasonable fear the desperate." For a moment, everyone shut their mouths in unison. Xie Guan had successfully intimidated this group of bastards. A vicious, cold smile hung on his lips as he silently mouthed "Just you wait" and strode out of the office like a meteor.

The background sound effect was the earth-shattering slam of a door.

In the chairman's office on the 27th floor of the Hengrui Group building, Huo Mingjun opened his email and clicked on the investigation report sent by his assistant.

Xie Guan, male, born on May 4, 1992, in Mengmen County, S Province. Father: Xie Tingfang, a farmer. Mother: Zhao Xing'er, deceased early in life.

The mouse wheel scrolled, and large blocks of text flashed past the screen. The faces in the few old photographs were blurry, and among them, there was no familiar face.

There was no need to read further. He already understood that this was another fruitless, wishful obsession.

Every August, Huo Mingjun would visit a grave in H Province to pay his respects. He should have accepted this fact long ago; no amount of regret or disbelief mattered before a mound of yellow earth. The dead sleep forever in the cold ground. If there were souls that could be reincarnated, they might even be old enough to run errands by now.

The dead were gone, but after so many years, the living still could not let go.

The phone on the desk buzzed and vibrated. Coincidentally, Huo Zhikuan was also talking about Xie Guan on the phone: "...I heard the talks with his company broke down. Zhang Heshan didn't pursue the matter at the time out of respect for you, but now he's gearing up to crush him... A blacklisting is definitely unavoidable. What should we do? Should we intervene?"

The exhaustion and powerlessness from his dashed hopes made him feel an unreasonable weariness toward the name "Xie Guan." Huo Mingjun pinched the bridge of his nose and said, "Leave it. I got the wrong person."

A week later, Xie Guan was once again summoned to the company by Wang Zhe. The other party's attitude was still cold, but the new version of the termination agreement had removed the clause about docking his pay. They had already torn all pretenses, and Xie Guan knew Xinghui Entertainment would not tolerate him. Perhaps the earlier threat to dock his pay was just to pave the way for this final outcome. He sneered inwardly; not only were these people filthy themselves, but they also assumed others were as dirty as they were. With such a group of executives so loyally dragging it down, it would be hard for Xinghui Entertainment not to go into reverse.

On second thought, he had offended an investor and been kicked out by his old company like a menace. His situation was really no better than Xinghui Entertainment's.

But life had to go on, and he still had to act. Xie Guan moved out of the dormitory, found a small rental to settle in, and after taking stock of all his savings, sat cross-legged on the old double bed, deep in thought about his future. At a certain moment, President Nie's words flashed through his mind.

His looks could at best be described as handsome and clean-cut, but definitely not "an androgynous beauty." He was as far from being "delicate and soft-bodied" as the Earth is from the Moon.

Xie Guan looked down at his abs and decided it was more practical to just bag up the idea of "finding a patron" and throw it out with the trash.

A person should be consistent from beginning to end. Since he had risked offending President Zhang to avoid bowing to the "unspoken rules," thinking about latching onto a powerful person to find a patron now was no different from slapping himself in the face. If he had known it would come to this, why was he in such a hurry to build a monument to his own chastity?

The texts he studied in his childhood said that if you make the right choice, even if you suffer, you will be content in your heart. But the cruelty of real life was that his "ill-timed" persistence had landed him in an even more difficult and helpless situation. He had paid a heavy price, and his only consolation was, "You are a good person with a sense of justice."

After all, people live in a material world; one cannot survive on meditation alone.

Xie Guan hadn't been popular these past few years, and his pay was very low. The salary for The Rising Tides of the Azure Sea, which he had managed to hold onto with great difficulty, was only twelve thousand yuan per episode. He had very little in savings, and this money was only enough to support him for a few months. If he didn't find a job soon, he would have to sleep on the streets.

Xie Guan spent some time redoing his resume and sent nearly a hundred copies to various film and television companies. He also printed many more, prepared some good cigarettes and tea, and went to the hotels next to the film studio complex to knock on the doors of assistant directors one by one. Fortunately, he had worked as an extra for several years before signing with Xinghui Entertainment, so resuming his old trade wasn't as difficult as he had imagined.

After a month, the resumes he sent to the film and television companies were like stones sinking into the sea. Xie Guan did manage to get a few extra roles with some crews, but the pay was pitifully low. Later, someone heard that President Zhang was going to blacklist a certain eighteenth-tier artist and recognized Xie Guan. As the news gradually spread, no crew dared to hire him anymore.

When Xie Guan returned to his place in the city from the film studio complex, he had lost nearly ten jin. He was already thin, and now he looked almost haggard. He put his large backpack in the corner, washed his face, and threw himself heavily onto the bed.

There was no response to the resumes he sent out, and no film crew was willing to risk offending President Zhang to give him a chance... Although President Zhang was an investor, he was just one among many. He wasn't powerful enough to cover the sky with one hand in the industry, nor could he command universal response. Yet, this lecherous old man, whom other artists might be able to handle with just a glass of wine, had become an insurmountable Southern Heavenly Gate for Xie Guan.

He closed his eyes tightly in the darkness and silently asked his heart, "Do I really want to continue down this path?"

Just as he was on the verge of complete despair, things finally took a turn for the better.

Xie Guan received an email from Hong Kong. It was from a small film company. The email stated that they were preparing a film project and that Xie Guan's qualifications happened to fit the requirements for the third male lead. Therefore, they hoped he could come to Hong Kong for an audition and attached the casting director's contact information.

This glimmer of hope in a desperate situation was such a pleasant surprise that Xie Guan shot up as if he'd been injected with chicken blood. Hong Kong and the mainland were on two different development tracks; President Zhang's reach didn't extend there. He wasn't familiar with Hong Kong before and had never considered developing his career there. This could very well be an opportunity for a change.

Xie Guan's hands trembled so much as he replied to the email that he made several typos. He carefully saved the director's contact information and called at a suitable time. The person on the other end spoke with a thick, hard-to-understand Hong Kong Mandarin accent, and Xie Guan had to guess and piece things together to grasp the general meaning. It was a low-budget film, and the actors' pay was lower than the industry standard. It was precisely because of their tight budget that they wanted to use an actor like Xie Guan, who had come to them of his own initiative.

As long as he had a role to play, Xie Guan didn't mind compromising on the pay, and the two sides hit it off immediately. Two days later, Xie Guan packed a simple bag, gave up his rented room, and embarked on the journey south alone.