IPCFS: Chapter 34 Part 1

It was the first day of the start-up so the crew’s shooting schedule was arranged very easily.

Cai Yishu casually finished filming his own scenes and returned to the hotel after finishing work.

“This ghostly place doesn’t even have a star rated hotel? How did the crew find these rooms? They are too small.” Cai Yishu looked around the layout of the suite with disgust.

His assistant walked in with big and small bags and said with a smile, “Brother, this is already the best hotel in the area. Just put up with it for a month. I’ve already brought all of the daily necessities and will change them for you.”

The movie would be filmed in Shuoyang Town for a month before returning to Shanghai to film the remaining scenes for a month. Then it would be ready for completion.

Cai Yishu heard this and barely suppressed his displeasure.

He sat on the leather sofa and glanced at You Meng, who was still at the door. “Sister You, have the marketing articles been arranged? The start of the movie today will give me a lot of momentum.”

Cai Yishu’s real popularity was weak and there weren’t many fans who were willing to run around offline.

Among the fans who came today, many were paid to take pictures. Even entertainment accounts were found by their company…for the purpose of promoting his first movie as the male lead.

“Don’t worry. Do you still need me to explain this?” You Meng walked in.

“The marketing accounts under the company have already been arranged and your fan station has already sent out today’s photos. The evening traffic is high and it shouldn’t take long for the topic to ferment.”

Cai Yishu nodded in satisfaction and got up to go to the bathroom.

Half an hour later, he finished washing up and leaned on the redecorated bed to log in to his Weibo side account.

Cai Yishu casually searched for his name. Soon, a lot of similar marketing content popped up.

–Cai Yishu’s new movie is starting. He is playing the male protagonist Cheng Yu. Watch a handsome man acting in a youth movie, I can! What do you think?

The start-up photos were carefully selected by their team. Apart from one photo that was a group photo, he was the core character in each one of them.

–Okay, okay, I am really looking forward to Cheng Yu!

-Brother, here I come! The new drama is starting! Good luck!

–This is the first time my brother is the male protagonist of a movie. He seems to be in a very good state! Jiayou.

Fans rushed in. In addition, the team secretly bought ‘likes’ so these comments stayed highly ranked on the top comments.

Cai Yishu scrolled down again. Then his eyes saw a comment and the curved up corners of his mouth froze.

–Ahhhhh, I saw the big group photo. Is the cutie on the end Ji Li? Is it Ji Li? Is it Ji Li?

The likes on this comment were very high and the replies underneath had exceeded 100. The comment just didn’t make it to the top due to the comments that were bought.

–It is him, it is him! Our Ji Li!

-Who has the HD start-up photo? Who is my brother playing in this movie? Our Ji Li fans have no internal information?

-Sisters, let’s stop chatting in the Cai family’s territory. Go search for Ji Li’s name. There is a kind blogger who sent his start-up photo (P.S. Cai Yishu is also very handsome. I wish the two brothers a happy happy cooperation!).

–I saw it. Ji Li is super milky, super delicate! It is a completely different feeling from Xie Yan. Go!

……

Cai Yishu’s eyes turned cold when he saw the series of comments.

He searched for Ji Li’s name as instructed in the comments and a popular Weibo post popped up.

–Today, I took a photo of a handsome guy. I don’t know what his name is so I’ll send it out to everyone for free to see~ It is also a raw photo with no editing! I have photographed so many stars and this person is the most handsome one to the naked eye!

This blogger only had 300 Weibo followers, but the comments on their post had exceeded 5,000 and the number of likes had already broken through 80,000.

–Thank you blogger for sharing the Ji Li photo! Good people will live a peaceful life!

–Ahhhhh wu wu wu. Brother has no makeup on? How good is his skin?!

–Help, this mother fan is covering her heart and going crazy. Our Ji Li cub is so good-looking!

–The no makeup milky skin explodes! Thank you Ji Li for letting me avoid pregnancy and childbirth and directly becoming a mother with no pain. Kiss~

–Ahhhh add me to the list of mothers! Our Ji Li cub is going to grow up healthy and strong.

–I feel that the role of little brother Ji Li is very malleable. There is no shadow of Xie Yan at all? I’m looking forward to the new movie.

Among the many fan comments, there was one comment that caught Cai Yishu’s attention: I am a passerby. This blogger’s Weibo also posted Cai Yishu’s start-up photo. Is it a professional star photographer?

Cai Yishu saw this comment and immediately clicked on the original Weibo.

Sure enough, this blogger had posted his start-up photo an hour ago. It was just that there were only around 100 comments. It was simply the difference between the sky and the ground when compared to the Weibo data of Ji Li’s photo.

Fans didn’t care about controlling the comments on this side. Cai Yishu’s black fans came running and directly made mocking comments.

“Hahaha, look at what I found! Cai Yishu’s fans spent money to have this blogger take photos of their idol. As a result, Cai Yishu’s popularity isn’t as high as Ji Li, whose photo was taken casually?”

“Hahahaha it is shameful. I knew that Cai Yishu’s popularity was inflated. The male protagonist of the movie is the wrong person!”

“Who doesn’t know that Cai Yishu is shoddy goods?”

The words of the black fans were harsh. Cai Yishu clutched his mobile phone and his knuckles were white.

The door of the room opened and You Meng and his assistant walked in with a fruit salad. “Cai Cai, are you hungry? Why don’t you eat something?”

“How did you find the proxy photographer? Didn’t you pay enough money? You told them to post my photos and look at what they have done!” Cai Yishu snapped at them angrily.

You Meng was confused for a few seconds before becoming a bit angry. “Doing this for no reason, what is the matter with you?”

Cai Yishu didn’t explain and just threw his phone toward the end of the bed.

This group of photographers had no professional ethics!

They received money from his team to come to the set but turned out to be double-minded, taking photos of the rest of the crew to post to Weibo?

What was this?

You Meng understood what he meant and simply picked up the phone to check it. It didn’t take long for her anger to turn into surprise.

Cai Yishu’s meticulously edited start-up photos weren’t as good as Ji Li’s unedited photo?

The most incomprehensible thing was that Ji Li only had a million fans.  Even so, the discussion about him being in the movie was higher than that of Cai Yishu’s?

Moreover, most of the comments were from real passersby.

They had spent a lot of money to promote the movie and character. As a result, Ji Li didn’t do anything yet he gained popularity and expanded the discussion…

No wonder Cai Yishu was angry.

This was taking their money to build a road for others for free.

You Meng shook her head while feeling uncomfortable. “I didn’t realize that Ji Li had such a good impression with passersby?”

She was Cai Yishu’s agent and Ji Li was an artist being looked after by Yu Fuya. Not only was there a comparison between artists but there was also an invisible war between agents.

The assistant opened his phone secretly and searched for the start-up photos of the two people.

In the photo, Ji Li was wearing a clean white shirt. His black and smooth hair was hanging down and there was a faint smile on his face.

Ji Li’s skin was very white and the pure state of no makeup added an indescribable milky feeling to him which was very sweet.

There was another photo.

Ji Li’s entire body was enveloped in sunlight and his natural appearance became bright and vivid. If one zoomed in on the photo, it seemed that they could see the velvety glow of his fair skin and the mole on the bridge of his nose that bewitched people’s hearts.

The point was that these photos were unedited!

Simply divine!

On the other hand, look at Cai Yishu’s edited photos. Apart from being white, his facial features weren’t three dimensional. In addition, he was wearing black leather clothes and sunglasses. Where did it look like he was acting in a youth movie?

How could this be compared?

There was no way to compare!

The assistant huddled in the corner and didn’t dare to say his true thoughts. If he was a passerby, he would also be willing to look at Ji Li more.

Cai Yishu leaned against the headboard with a gloomy expression. It wasn’t known what he was thinking.

A long time passed before he gritted his teeth and said, “Let Wang Yongwei change all of Ji Li’s remaining scenes! Change him into a clown, the worse the better! Let’s see how he can grab fans when the time comes!”

You Meng considered it. “His scenes are already being deleted by you. Just accept this. The investor is Yuexing after all. You still need to be measured when doing things.”

Under the instigation of Cai Yishu, Wang Yongwei went crazy deleting Ji Li’s scenes.

In order to cooperate with the male protagonist, the crew hid it from the investor and didn’t say it explicitly.

It would be difficult to deal with the trouble if things became too big and it was detected on Qin Yue’s side.

“What are you afraid of? Fool the investors with a yin-yang script. The movie will take two months to make at most. Once there is a finished product, can they overthrow it and remake it?” (TL: Probably similar to yin-yang contracts where one contract states the real payment to a celebrity while the other contract submitted to the tax department states a significantly lower salary)

Cai Yishu declared, “The movie is about the male and female protagonist, followed by the male and female supporting roles. As long as our roles are stable and aren’t changed much, what big problem can there be?”

You Meng hesitated and didn’t agree.

“Sister You, don’t worry. It is just a youth movie and Qin Yue won’t bother paying attention to it. Besides, the company’s President Jin and Brother Xusheng have already guaranteed that even if the box office isn’t strong after the movie is released, they will help me buy tickets!”

Cai Yishu was an artist supported by Jincheng and the company had a lot of money. They first falsely increased his popularity and the next step was to find work for him.

Time Lobbyist was invested in by Yuexing. As long as it was a bit popular and the box office was stable, this false reputation could also rise.

Would Yuexing care about a small supporting role as long as they made money?

Besides, he wasn’t easy to defeat either. There was Jincheng Pictures behind him. Even if Qin Yue knew about it, he wouldn’t dare to easily take away the male lead role.

Cai Yishu saw that You Meng still wasn’t convinced and used his killer weapon. “Then do you want to watch Ji Li with Yu Fuya suppress me?”

You Meng’s eyes changed and she told him, “Forget it. You can talk about it with Wang Yongwei yourself.”

---

The next evening, Ji Li finished his makeup and was waiting in the lounge.

The crew’s schedule showed that he had a small scene today. The content was from the original script and it was acceptable.

The original screenwriter had gone to Shanghai to find someone. It would take a day or two so he could only temporarily stay in the crew.

Baozi paid attention to Ji Li’s online data and was overjoyed. “Brother Ji, your Weibo followers have increased quite well yesterday and your start-up photo is still attracting face fans.”

The script was edited too much so Ji Li and Yu Fuya temporarily canceled their original start-up publicity. They didn’t want to bring free popularity to the producer.

Baozi originally thought that Ji Li’s movie start-up news would pass quietly. He hadn’t expected that Cai Yishu’s marketing department would accidentally drive data to them.

He was a person who was half mixed in with the marketing circle and naturally understood how much money Cai Yishu had spent yesterday.

Ji Li’s popularity came suddenly and it was completely free…Baozi had been secretly enjoying himself and telling Ji Li several times.

He had just finished speaking when Yu Fuya walked in aggressively. “Ji Li, don’t act and let’s go! I’ll let the company go sue the producers now and let’s see who is tougher than whom!”

Ji Li and Baozi stood up in unison. “Sister Yu, what’s wrong?”

“I just received the latest version of the script. Do you see what the character of Mu Suian has been changed to? A good, introverted child has been changed to a street scoundrel. They were even kind enough to tell me that this is to give you more scenes and increase the tension of the role.”

“Look!” Yu Fuya handed the pages of the latest script over to Ji Li to see. “It is a completely different plot. What a messy screenwriter!”

Ji Li read a few lines and his eyes completely sank.

He was willing to take the role of the third male lead because he liked and attached great importance to this role. In particular, his feelings for this third male lead had become more three-dimensional after meeting Mu Suian.

As a result, Cai Yishu occupied the name of male lead and screenwriter and wantonly played with these precious memories.

What was this?

Ji Li’s face was tense and he rushed out the door.

Yu Fuya and Baozi looked at each other and quickly followed.

---

In a more comfortable lounge, Cai Yishu was having his makeup applied by the makeup team.

Guo Minsheng scanned the pages with the changes to the third male lead and looked at Wang Yongwei with an embarrassed expression.

“Screenwriter Wang, this can’t be done. The design has completely changed and the logic chain isn’t right. I’m afraid it will be more difficult to come back to the male and female protagonists.”

“Director Guo, don’t worry.” Wang Yongwei patted him on the shoulder and said wildly, “Since I wrote this, I naturally have a way to link it back. I promise you, it will be better than the original script!”

This time, there was no so-called chief screenwriter in the crew to suppress him. Wang Yongwei could change the script as he wanted and he was very arrogant.

Guo Minsheng still wanted to say something but in the next second, the door of the closed lounge was kicked open.

The huge movement startled everyone. Wang Yongwei was the first to look over and found Ji Li standing at the door.

Ji Li’s face was very pale and there was a bit of elusive coldness on it. He looked around the room and the aggressiveness in his eyes grew little by little.

Finally, his gaze was ice-cold.

Wang Yongwei saw these sharp eyes and his heart jumped.

“Ji Li, what are you doing here? You trespassed into a different lounge and even kicked the door. Don’t you know how to be polite?” Cai Yishu accused.

The popularity of last night’s topic made him very happy and he was trying to find a reason to deal with Ji Li.

Ji Li glared at him and asked coldly, “Due to your own selfishness, you changed the original script that others have worked so hard on so that it is completely unrecognizable. Do you think you are polite?”

“I would like to advise you that if you walk too much at night, you will always encounter ghosts. If you add more scenes, you will be overturned.”

“You!”

Cai Yishu stood up angrily and swung his fist.

The next second, Ji Li forcefully blocked his attack and folded back his hand.

Ji Li was thin, but the strength of his hand was surprisingly high. Cai Yishu couldn’t gain an advantage. He was in pain and he almost couldn’t control his expression.

Ji Li quickly threw him away and took half a step back while warning him, “Don’t think you can act recklessly just because you have your company as a backer.”

Wang Yongwei pushed up his black-rimmed glasses and walked forward with a hypocritical smile. “Ji Li, there is no need to be rude, right? Didn’t I add more scenes for the third male lead according to your request?”

“I deleted scenes and there were too few. I added scenes and you came to make trouble. If you don’t want to act…”

Wang Yongwei glanced at Cai Yishu. It wasn’t known where his confidence came from but his words became sharp. “Just get out of this crew!”

It was just a supporting role. Did he need to be afraid that he wouldn’t be able to find other actors?

Presumably, these were also Cai Yishu’s real thoughts.

The moment he finished speaking, a low male voice was heard at the door. “Mr Wang, you are the one who should get lost.”

Proofreader: Azure