DLWAV CH71

Just as the principals and department heads of Haishi Vocational College of Electronic Technology had expected, as Ao Ruizhe began appearing on campus more and more often, news of his return to school to complete his graduation project also started spreading online.

Xia Ruizhe’s fans were instantly excited.

[No wonder Ruizhe hasn’t really been out doing promotions lately—turns out he went back to school to work on his graduation project.]

[Choosing to return to campus just as his career is about to hit a whole new peak—this is what it means to stay true to your original aspiration, this is what it means to keep your feet on the ground.]

[Wuwuwu, let’s see who still dares call our Ruizhe an academic failure now.]

But almost at the exact same time, news suddenly returned to China that the queer-themed film Shang Tree, starring Xia Lewen and Best Actor Chen, had received three nominations at the Golden Legend Awards—one of the world’s three major film awards—for Best Actor, Best Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor, and had ultimately won Best Screenplay.

Although Xia Lewen was dissatisfied with the result, because in his previous life this film had swept three awards in one go: Best Actor, Best Screenplay, and Best Foreign Film.

Otherwise, why would the very first thing he did after being reborn have been to spend a huge sum of money to force open the doors of the Shang Tree production team and, together with Best Actor Chen, replace the original two male leads to star in the film?

But his fans were once again energized.

[This is one of only three Chinese films shortlisted for the Golden Legend Awards in the past three years, and the only one that actually won anything!]

[As expected of our Lewen!!]

Some passing netizens also chimed in:

[The people of Haishi send congratulations to Best Actor Chen and Xia Lewen!]

[The people of Zhensheng Province send congratulations to Best Actor Chen and Xia Lewen!]

…

[And the most important thing is what? The most important thing is that this is a queer film!!!]

[Our queer circle is finally rising!”

[I now solemnly declare that from today onward, Xia Lewen is my idol—he is the light of our queer circle—]

[That scene at the end where Best Actor Chen and Xia Lewen quietly say goodbye, turn away, and then silently cry—I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.]

[So what if he’s just the light of the queer circle? One day, our Lewen will become the pride of China.]

Up to this point, everything had been perfectly harmonious.

Until someone couldn’t help saying:

[But don’t you all really think that, in the film, Best Actor Chen’s performance and Xia Lewen’s performance felt a little split apart?]

A lot of people immediately agreed.

[I felt that too.]

[Maybe it’s because Xia Lewen’s acting is still a bit worse than Best Actor Chen’s.]

[But anyway, Shang Tree already won an award, so this little flaw doesn’t really matter.]

[A little worse? It’s not just a little—it’s a gap of one hundred and eight thousand li, okay?]

[That final scene where Best Actor Chen and Xia Lewen part ways—forget anything else, if Xia Lewen had put in just a little more force, he would’ve looked like Old Wang from next door catching his wife visiting male prostitutes. And I guarantee you, that scene was filmed at least over a dozen times. When Best Actor Chen turned around, the water in the water dispenser inside the shop behind him was still full. By the time Xia Lewen turned around, there was only a tiny layer of water left in it. When I saw that, I was instantly pulled out of the scene, do you understand?]

[?]

[So I’m telling you right now: if our Ruizhe had acted in this film, he definitely would’ve been ten thousand times better than Xia Lewen and Best Actor Chen.]

Fans of Xia Lewen and Best Actor Chen: “??”

Passersby: “???”

Ao Ruizhe, who had happened to see this comment: “????”

If he were made to act in a queer film, he would definitely bring his wife with him.

So what would they end up turning the film into?

A porno?

Ao Ruizhe: “…”

Logical and well-supported!

And right then, the comment section exploded into chaos.

[Ruizhe fans, do you all have some kind of brain disease?]

[Did we say anything wrong? If our Ruizhe hadn’t gone back to school to do his graduation project, do you think Xia Lewen would’ve had the chance to steal this spotlight?]

[Exactly.]

[Xia Ruizhe’s brain-dead fans really have zero self-awareness.]

[Let’s not even talk about how the film crew originally chose Xia Lewen and Best Actor Chen. Let’s just talk about your Ruizhe going back to school to do his graduation project.

Here’s a fun fact for you: your Ruizhe is just a vocational-college student who only scored a little over 200 on the college entrance exam. Do you really think a vocational student’s graduation project has so much value that it deserves to be taken so seriously?]

[Don’t make me laugh.]

[So your Ruizhe isn’t some example of staying true to his roots. I’d bet this is probably just another publicity stunt.]

[A vocational student trying to build an image as someone who loves learning—this is killing me.]

[And I guarantee that in the end, the graduation project he hands in will be an absolutely perfect one, with academic value even higher than the work of graduates from China’s top ten key universities. Otherwise, how is he supposed to keep selling that image of feeling ashamed and then becoming a top student through hard work?]

[So you mean Xia Ruizhe has probably already bought himself a graduation project?]

[That’s absolutely what happened. And the thesis he bought is definitely about phone screens; otherwise, why would he have specifically pressured the school to change his topic?]

[When you put it that way, it really does sound plausible.]

Haishi Vocational College of Electronic Technology had long since prepared for this. Before those netizens could go too far, the school directly posted the exam papers Ao Ruizhe had completed on Weibo and stated that they had only agreed to his request to change topics after he passed their assessment, and that the school had not opened any back door for him.

But they had clearly underestimated both the netizens’ imagination and their righteous fury.

[Hah. Do you even believe that yourselves?]

[A failing student who usually barely scrapes by suddenly takes an independent admissions exam from Jingcheng University and scores over 148?]

[Grateful to Haishi Vocational College of Electronic Technology. They clearly could’ve just given Xia Ruizhe a perfect score outright, but to fool us they gritted their teeth and deducted two points.]

Seeing this, in the Xia family villa in Qianshi, Xia Lewen couldn’t help laughing.

Trying to fight him? Xia Ruizhe was still far too green.

Then he put his phone back into his pocket and prepared to go downstairs for dinner.

The head of the Xia family had already returned.

Xia Lewen immediately greeted him respectfully. “Father.”

The head of the Xia family was even thinner and more gaunt-looking than Xia Lewen, but no one had ever dared underestimate him.

He nodded. “Well done.”

No need to guess—what he meant was the fact that Xia Lewen had gained a firm foothold in the entertainment industry without relying on the Xia family’s power.

As for whether Xia Ruizhe lived or died, the Xia patriarch had not put it in his heart at all.

“Yes, I’ll continue to work hard.”

That was what he said, but Xia Lewen still couldn’t help smiling.

Once the heat from this matter started to fade, he would release the news that Xia Ruizhe had bullied members of the Xia family in the past, stir the topic back up again, and then combine it with the two TV dramas of his that were about to air next month…

If nothing unexpected happened, by the end of next year, he would smoothly become a phenomenon-level celebrity in China.

And after that, he could directly retire from entertainment and charge into the Xia Corporation…

Who would have thought that the very next second, his phone rang?

Xia Lewen gave a slight nod of courtesy to the Xia patriarch before answering the call.

It was from his manager.

He was panting. “Lewen, something’s happened—”

Just two minutes earlier, Ao Ruizhe had posted a Weibo update. He wrote:

“Forget about asking me to take over in Shang Tree—after all, this isn’t exactly the right kind of role for a ‘top,’ is it? Most importantly, I’m nowhere near as good an actor as these two are.
#video#”

Everyone instinctively clicked on the video.

And then they froze.

Because what the video showed was none other than that exact scene from Shang Tree where the two male leads go through love at first sight, growing affection, parental opposition… and in the end are forced to compromise with reality and society, softly say goodbye, turn away, and silently cry.

Only, in the video, the two male leads had unfamiliar faces.

They were not particularly handsome. One of them even had faint wrinkles already beginning to show on his forehead.

But when they smiled and said goodbye to each other, then slowly turned away, even though the smiles remained on their faces, the audience’s eyes had already reddened first.

In the same scene, if Best Actor Chen and Xia Lewen had performed helplessness and sorrow to the fullest, then these two men’s performance made people truly understand what it meant for “the body to still be alive while the heart has already died.”

[…Can I say that after watching this clip, I suddenly feel like this film was actually held back by Best Actor Chen and Xia Lewen?]

[+1]

[So who exactly are these two actors? I need their full information right now.]

Immediately after that, Ao Ruizhe’s second Weibo post went up.

[The two gentlemen in the video, @DongXu and @ActorYuZhengchu, were in fact the original male leads of Shang Tree.

At this point, many netizens may be wondering what I mean by saying they were the original male leads of Shang Tree.

That’s right. Shang Tree had already been filmed one-third of the way through when Xia Lewen saw its potential value, paid five million, and became the biggest investor in the project. The condition he proposed was that he would replace Dong Xu and Yu Zhengchu as the male lead.

Director @HouWu, blinded by money, directly agreed to his demand.

Most importantly, the original script for Shang Tree was extremely rough. It was only because Dong Xu and Yu Zhengchu gradually helped director Hou Wu refine the script during filming that the Shang Tree everyone sees today came into being.

And in the end, all they got was one hundred thousand yuan in liquidated damages.]

At this point, the internet completely exploded.

[Is this real?”

[So Xia Lewen got to star in Shang Tree not because the production team and director chose him, but because he used the power of capital to steal someone else’s role?”

[And only one hundred thousand yuan to steal someone else’s future and career—our Young Master Xia really is generous with his money.]

[So in the end, the capitalist who seized everything by force and the treacherous villain both walked away with fame and profit, while the real contributors remained unknown—you wouldn’t believe this, but Dong Xu and Yu Zhengchu’s Weibo follower counts combined still haven’t even broken ten thousand, and they’re still renting apartments.]

In a rented room, looking at Weibo as their follower count shot up by twenty thousand in barely over ten minutes, Dong Xu sat in silence for a long while before finally turning to Yu Zhengchu.

His eyes red, he said word by word, “Zhengchu, maybe there really is still justice in this world.”

Yu Zhengchu also came back to himself and immediately pulled out his phone. “I’m uploading all the evidence I have right now.”

He had plenty of evidence, including their chat records with director Hou Wu discussing plot revisions, as well as the contract for their termination with the Shang Tree production team.

At that same time, Ao Ruizhe was testing a sample he had just prepared together with Professor Liu. After learning that the money in his account had run out again, Ao Ruizhe skillfully opened WeChat and sent Qin Xiuyan a message:

President Qin, I’ve run out of money again. Could you lend me another two million?

Only then did he see all those comments.

Ao Ruizhe broke into a smile.

He had no interest in waiting for someone to slap him first and only then slapping back.

So since he already knew what Xia Lewen was about to do next, why couldn’t he simply strike first?

Thus, before the netizens had even had time to react, Ao Ruizhe’s third, fourth, and fifth Weibo posts followed one after another.

“I hereby solemnly apologize to Mr. Xia Qiao, Ms. Xia Mingzhu, Mr. Xia Cheng, and the others for the bullying I carried out against you back then.

But I must explain that I did not know at the time that you were actually the ones being bullied. It was Xia Lewen who told me that you were bullying classmates, and that was why I stepped in.”

“I hereby officially sever ties with Ms. Su Yiyue, Mr. Xia Yuanzheng, and Mr. Xia Lewen. After all, the happy little family life of the three of you has nothing to do with an outsider like me.”

“As for the fact that the Xia family once raised me for nine years—

When Ms. Su Yiyue married my father, she concealed the fact that she was already pregnant with Mr. Xia Yuanzheng’s child, and she also accepted eight thousand yuan in bride price from my father. By all reason and principle, this counts as marriage fraud, which means the marriage between Ms. Su Yiyue and my father should have been invalid from the beginning.

When my father passed away, all he left behind was an old house. But that old house was demolished eighteen years later, and the government paid out three million yuan in compensation.

Given that Mr. Xia Lewen is the illegitimate child of Ms. Su Yiyue and Mr. Xia Yuanzheng, and not my father’s biological son, that entire compensation sum should have belonged solely to me.

But in reality, all of that money was taken by Ms. Su Yiyue.

Also, after I came of age, although the Xia family gave me twenty thousand yuan a month in allowance, most of that money was actually spent buying gifts for Ms. Su Yiyue and Mr. Xia Yuanzheng.

So even though the Xia family raised me for nine years and even sent me to a private elite school for several years, I do not owe the Xia family anything. I hope the Xia family will take note.
#bills#
#paternity test report#”

Seeing this, the netizens all went:

[…]

[Ruizhe, slow down a little. We can’t keep up with all this gossip.”

[Oh, you’re already done.]

[Then let me digest this first. Right—Xia Lewen, you may begin your performance now.]

[Wait, it looks like Xia Ruizhe already said everything that needed to be said.]

[So then, Xia Lewen—are you ready to endure our mockery?]

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