Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Yancheng, October.

The heavy rain had just stopped, and the water on the road reflected the dazzling lights of the commercial plaza.

An LED screen occupying half of the glass curtain wall was playing a sports car advertisement.

The black sports car sped through the night, throwing its pursuers far behind.

After a beautiful drift, the sports car stopped in the wilderness. The scene cut again: a woman in a red long dress leaned against the car. She curled her lips as she looked at the man in front of her, her eyes slightly moving, the upturned tails of her eyes full of charm.

The man’s fingers brushed past the side of her neck. The bent knuckles showed sharp lines. In stark contrast to the force of his movement was the careless smile at the corner of his lips.

Like a hunter stroking the beautiful fur of his prey, full of aggression.

Yet the woman who seemed to be controlled by him revealed a provocative gaze that refused to yield.

“Ahhh my Xing Ye is such an ultimate gu king! Why does an advertisement have to be filmed so desirably? I’m dying, hurry and hold me.”

In front of the plaza, a girl who looked about twenty tightly grabbed her companion’s sleeve.

“Isn’t that too exaggerated? This ad has been running for at least a month. It’s not your first time seeing it.”

“Every time I see it, he kills me once.”

The girl covered her chest with one hand, her tone excited, “I can perform dying and coming back to life for him.”

Her companion weakly said, “But I quite like the female lead in the ad. She’s very pretty, and compared to Xing Ye her aura isn’t weaker. Do you know her name?”

The chattering girl suddenly stalled, and after a few seconds said, “I don’t know, maybe she’s a model.”

At the same time, the open-air café behind them.

Pei Chuzhi held the packaged Americano and turned toward the roadside.

She was dressed low-key today. Her jet-black long hair hung loosely and fluffily, and a long windbreaker outlined her slender waist. When she passed the two chirping girls, her graceful figure looked both beautiful and cool.

If someone turned to take another look, they would realize that this lightly made-up girl was the dazzling woman in the red dress from the advertisement.

Pei Chuzhi raised her hand to hail a car and casually looked up at the LED screen displaying the sports car brand logo.

She had heard the discussion of the two girls just now. If she weren’t afraid of being treated as strange, she really wanted to go up and tell them: she was not a model, but a properly trained actress who graduated from the acting department of a film academy.

Of course, in the eyes of the public, actors like her who walked on the street without a mask and were not recognized all shared a unified title.

Eighteenth-tier little transparent.

·

The taxi stopped outside the community gate.

Pei Chuzhi’s trip this time was to visit the home of her university classmate and good friend, Qiao Na.

Just after getting out of the elevator, she saw Qiao Na already waiting by the door, calling her nickname: “Zhizhi, over here!”

Pei Chuzhi looked over following the sound: “Why did you come out? Aren’t you afraid of running into ill-intentioned fans?”

A few months ago, Qiao Na, who had always been unable to get acting roles, switched careers and became a beauty blogger. Unexpectedly, she became popular overnight.

She rose to fame too quickly, and the streaming platform she signed with didn’t react in time.

Until a few days ago, when she was followed home by an otaku fan, the platform finally realized they should move her to a community with better security measures.

Qiao Na stuck out her tongue. After welcoming Pei Chuzhi inside, she began complaining about all kinds of inconveniences since becoming famous.

After a while, she remembered to ask: “What about you? How have you been recently?”

“Same as usual. Tomorrow I’m going to record a new episode of ‘Who Is the Murderer.’”

Pei Chuzhi tucked the loose strands of hair behind her ear, revealing her delicate facial features.

Qiao Na froze.

“Who Is the Murderer” is an online suspense variety show launched by a video platform. Each episode invites several celebrity guests to participate in solving a case. Because the plot of each episode is tightly arranged and exciting, its click rate has been at the top of the platform’s rankings since it aired. 🎬✨

But the “recording” Pei Chuzhi mentioned was actually playing a plot NPC in the variety show—put plainly, she was just a passerby responsible for providing clues to the celebrities. Occasionally, even staff from the production team could change clothes and go up to make up the numbers.

Qiao Na drank the coffee Pei Chuzhi brought and secretly sized up her friend.

Objectively speaking, even in the entertainment industry full of beauties, Pei Chuzhi’s looks were quite competitive.

During military training when they enrolled four years ago, Pei Chuzhi attracted the attention of all the freshmen with her bare face. Within three days, everyone knew that Class One of the acting department had an outstanding beauty.

The key was that she didn’t have the currently popular pure and soft girl face. Instead, she had the exact opposite—bright and stunning features.

In the words of their professional teacher, Pei Chuzhi could both play a strong female lead and be the unforgettable splash of red in male-dominated dramas. Her bone structure and figure were excellent; such conditions could withstand the harshest scrutiny even on the big screen.

In her junior year, Pei Chuzhi signed with her current agency, Huaxing Entertainment.

At that time, everyone in the class believed that in the future she would definitely be the most dazzling star among them.

Unfortunately, things did not go as hoped.

Pei Chuzhi didn’t know what had happened in the past two years; she always lacked a bit of luck.

She had clearly played supporting roles in several web dramas, but either the male and female leads had such poor acting that the entire internet boycotted the show, or the production was excellent yet it flopped without a sound.

Watching the former top student of their major end up like this, Qiao Na felt very uncomfortable.

“What is your agent thinking, actually arranging this kind of work? You’ve even filmed an ad with Xing Ye. He had just won Best Actor at that time, and his attention was so high. A lot of people online were asking about your name.”

“And why didn’t you take the opportunity to hype things up with Xing Ye? With his traffic, even catching a bit of the heat would be enough for you to live off for years.”

Pei Chuzhi froze for a moment: “I remember you’re a fan of Xing Ye, right? What about the principle of ‘no one is allowed to leech off brother’?”

Qiao Na cleared her throat and spoke righteously: “Others can’t, but you’re my sister. I won’t mind.”

Pei Chuzhi laughed at her double standards: “Actually my agent also advised me to ride his popularity, but after thinking about it I still refused.”

“Why?”

Pei Chuzhi blinked, her crow-feather-like long lashes fluttering a few times: “That’s Xing Ye. I’m just a small salted fish. I have roles to act in and money to earn—why bother trying so hard to cling to him and make people dislike me?”

Qiao Na thought for a moment and understood.

Xing Ye’s mother was veteran Best Actress Yu Wan, and his father was the well-known entrepreneur Xing Zhiyuan. From the day he was born, he was destined to stand in the spotlight.

After officially announcing his debut at eighteen, Xing Ye’s popularity grew at a visible speed.

And this year, after sweeping major film festivals with his new work and winning several Best Actor trophies, he had already become the leader among the new generation of male stars—the kind who left everyone behind by a wide margin.

Moreover, everyone in the circle knew that Xing Ye had a temperamental personality. Anyone who dared to hype themselves up with him, regardless of gender, would be personally slapped down by him. He didn’t need fans to charge forward for him at all.

For a bottom-tier actor like Pei Chuzhi who was still struggling, he could probably crush her with a single finger.

Even so, Qiao Na still felt a bit depressed: “What a pity. I saw someone using the ad you two filmed to edit a video recently.”

Pei Chuzhi asked blankly: “What video?”

Qiao Na smiled mysteriously, slapped her phone onto the table with a “pa,” then opened a video site, searched, and handed it to her: “Here, this one.”

As soon as Pei Chuzhi’s gaze swept over the title, she trembled three times.

——【Wildfire Spreading - Xing Ye / Work Edit / Timed Sensual Direction】.

She pointed at two characters and asked: “This ‘sensual’… is it the sensual I’m thinking of?”

Qiao Na nodded: “This uploader is talented. They forcefully edited your ad into one whole car. By the way, your part appears at one minute twenty seconds.”

Pei Chuzhi fell silent, deciding not to ask whether that “car” was the car she was thinking of.

The uploader was called “Running Wild on My Heart.” Just from the name it was obvious she was a fan of Xing Ye. Naturally, the edited video centered on Xing Ye, mixed with many film and television clips he had shot since debut.

Pei Chuzhi pressed play, and low, suppressed breathing sounds started in the background music.

The screen went dark for a moment. When it lit up again, a movie clip Xing Ye filmed five years ago appeared.

The drumbeats were restless. The young man on screen was bare-chested, lowering his eyes and biting the end of a bandage, while the other end wrapped inch by inch through the gaps of his fingers.

Light and shadow vaguely outlined his body. Between half-light and half-darkness, sweat slowly slid down along the smooth lines of his muscles.

Qiao Na leaned her head over: “I got hooked because of this scene back then. Damn, it’s simply too sensual. He had just become an adult at that time. Other male stars at eighteen were still good boys, yet he could already act such a sexually tense role.”

Pei Chuzhi responded with an “mm,” vaguely recalling that when she saw this scene in the cinema back then, she had also shyly covered her eyes.

As the music suddenly stopped, the light focused on the prominent Adam’s apple on the young man’s slender neck.

The Adam’s apple rolled slowly a few times, and Pei Chuzhi’s heart thumped wildly a few times.

She picked up the water glass on the table and took a sip, a little embarrassed to continue carefully appreciating it in front of Qiao Na.

So she simply dragged the video to one minute twenty seconds, and sure enough saw the scene of her and Xing Ye leaning by the car, whispering intimately.

The music gradually turned high and intense. Just as Xing Ye leaned his lips toward her ear to whisper, the uploader used her godlike editing skills to add a layer of noise to the video, while intercutting several frames of messy bedsheets from who-knows-where.

It was presented like a flashback. Even Pei Chuzhi herself, who had personally experienced the advertisement shoot, couldn’t help suspecting that the plot implied some crazy past between the two.

Dense bullet comments quickly covered the figures:

【Help this part is amazing, brother I’m ready, come at me from the front!】

【Wuwuwu Mom I want to marry him!】

【Am I the only one who thinks the lady in the red dress is also quite sexy?】

【Left +1, both have very aggressive looks, want to see them film a movie where a scumbag man and scumbag woman fall in love and fight each other.】

Qiao Na excitedly pointed at the comments: “See, I told you! You two’s appearances really match especially well. It’s a pity you’re not popular yet, otherwise a CP super topic could already be built by now.”

Pei Chuzhi was very self-aware: “Fortunately I’m not popular.”

If a CP super topic were really built, wouldn’t she be chased across thousands of miles by Xing Ye’s girlfriend fans?

Qiao Na was about to say something else when a Weibo push notification suddenly popped up at the top of the screen—“Late-night private meeting with a female star? Xing Ye’s romance suspected to be exposed!”

The living room instantly fell silent.

A few seconds later, Qiao Na let out a miserable scream: “My house has collapsed!”

Pei Chuzhi: “…”

Author’s note: Xing Ye: I’m not, I didn’t, don’t talk nonsense!

Happy Double Eleven, everyone. Updates at 9 PM every night as usual. If there are special circumstances, I’ll ask for leave in the description.

Finally, as an international convention: no prototype, no prototype, no prototype.