Studio Superstar: Chapter 58

There was a bang and the car door closed.

The sultry air outside was cut off. Cool air rushed to his face, instantly easing the restlessness.

Fang Lei sat in the passenger seat and said desperately, “It isn’t that I haven’t imagined what it would be like if you fell in love one day. I just never thought you would be interested in a participant and it is also a man!”

If he already had a subtle intuition in the corridor, then after listening to the conversation between Shen Tingyan and Feng Wei in the dressing room, he was already sure.

He knew Shen Tingyan so well that he could tell whether this man wanted to eat something salty or sweet by the way he snorted.

The man laughed carelessly from the back seat. “It seems quite exciting when hearing you say this.”

“……” Fang Lei was stunned. “Isn’t it exciting? A top celebrity in the entertainment industry with hundreds of millions of fans participates in a talent show as a mentor, only to fall in love with a male participant on the show. It is also an unrequited love—”

Fang Lei recalled the last conversation they had in the car and said in a daze, “It is unrequited love, right? Did your words last time mean that Xue Xiao has no interest in you at all? Does he even… like men?”

Shen Tingyan didn’t reply.

This seemed to be an answer.

Fang Lei suddenly had mixed emotions. He felt that this man was so miserable. He actually fell in love with a straight man for his first love. He was obviously top-notch in appearance, body, career, and family background. He just had to turn on the hard mode when it came to love. Fang Lei felt lucky that these two people didn’t have a double arrow.

He tested it. “Then what I asked last time, do you want to chase him…?”

In the back seat, Shen Tingyan stared out the window silently. It wasn’t known what he was thinking at this moment.

He said calmly, “Go and bend a straight man?”

Fang Lei heard his tone and sighed in relief. “This is indeed not good—”

Shen Tingyan continued, “—It isn’t that I can’t do it.”

Fang Lei: “…???”

The car started, and the driver pretended he didn’t hear anything. He stepped on the accelerator firmly with a solemn and serious expression.

The streetlights outside the window swept into the car and passed over Shen Tingyan’s face.

He stared straight out the window and said softly, “In any case, the horoscope hasn’t been written yet. Why can’t I grab him?”

Fang Lei took a deep breath. He thought of more than a hundred angles of persuasion in his mind, but he felt… against this man, all persuasion was in vain!

He could only remind the other person with difficulty, “…Take it easy. The show isn’t over yet. You are meeting in camp all day and the cameras are recording it!”

…Don’t be tempted to make any big news when the time comes.

“I know.” Shen Tingyan’s expression faded again. “I won’t let myself get in the way of his most important time.”

These words made Fang Lei pause.

He sighed softly.

He couldn’t be clearer about how proud Shen Tingyan was.

To be able to make him say such words… it seemed that Shen Tingyan really fell into trouble this time.

On this day, the third episode of Studio Superstar happened to be launched.

This episode started from the teaching week. The stealing lessons team led by Xue Xiao made netizens call them cute.

However, in view of the fact that the main episode wasn’t suitable for showing too much boring teaching content, the show played the second round of the public competition after 30 minutes. They reminded the audience who wanted to watch the complete class to find the behind-the-scenes.

By the time the participants returned to the dormitory at night, ‘Xue Xiao’s crying scene’ was already at the top of the hot search list. The amount of discussion had exploded. His Weibo fans soared to one million in just half a day!

“Who hasn’t watched Studio Superstar? Who hasn’t watched Spring Garden? I’m going to cry to death [cry][cry].”

‘Xue Xiao’s unshed tear was truly breathtaking… I have never seen such a beautiful crying scene from an actor…”

“Xue Xiao himself makes me feel so beautiful… I don’t do clay sculptures, and I have never used the word ‘beautiful’ to describe a man, but he makes me feel really beautiful. The amazing thing is that Xue Xiao himself has a baby face. He is obviously so cute [crazy].”

“Guan Ruoying’s camera management is amazing. The key is that Xue Xiao can also afford such a close-up!”

“Xue Xiao has improved a lot from the first round to the second round…”

“It is hard to imagine that actors like Xue Xiao and Dou Mingjian just played background roles before and were buried in the film and television city. Meanwhile, Fan Xue and his like became famous all over the Internet and even tried to ban such outstanding actors…”

“Yu Shanhe is so hypocritical. Vomit.”

“Garbage actors squeezing the living space of excellent actors, garbage show directors stepping on excellent actors to hype up topics, garbage film and television directors using excellent actors as consumables. What has domestic entertainment given us?”

“I really don’t understand domestic entertainment. It is obvious that actors like Xue Xiao and Gu Ling need to have acting skills and good looks. However, those with money just want to praise some actors who are ugly and bad at acting. What do they see the eyes of the audience as?”

“To be honest, before I watched Studio Superstar, I didn’t dare think there could be such an actor in domestic entertainment… I thought this type of actor was extinct in my generation.”

“It isn’t that actors are extinct. It is that the environment has changed.”

The impact of Studio Superstar was huge. It was so big that many people hadn’t expected the reaction of netizens to be so intense.

The entire Internet detailed the negative impact of domestic entertainment fandom culture and capital. They listed their crimes. At the end, the topic ‘What has domestic entertainment brought us’ even made it to the top of the hot search list.

This topic naturally attracted a lot of hatred. At night, when everyone was about to go to bed, another topic related to Xue Xiao appeared on the Internet.

It was a very delicate topic.

“Xue Xiao’s signature.”

The tipping point of this incident came from a behind the scenes clip from this episode of the show.

This episode happened to be the time when they sneaked into Su Shijin’s class and followed everyone to do biographies of the characters.

The audience unexpectedly discovered that Xue Xiao’s handwriting was very beautiful, so they took it to Weibo to discuss it. Suddenly, a netizen found a Weibo post from a publishing house editor a year ago. The netizen took a screenshot saying, “This hand, this pen-holding posture, and this font are too similar…”

There was a photo of the Weibo post in the screenshot.

A beautiful, apparently male hand was signing the title page of the book.

The editor of the publishing house probably just took a random photo, and the text was very simple. “The new book of the new author Yaozhu is about to be released. Everyone, please support it when the time comes [cheers][cheers][cheers].”

Netizens were really good at revealing everyone’s background, and almost every actor who became famous overnight had to undergo such a baptism.

Some actors had a dark history. But Xue Xiao…??

A novel author? Hah? Wasn’t this too ridiculous?

The netizen explained, “I like this book very much, but the author disappeared after publishing it once. I couldn’t find the relevant contact information online, so I have been following his editor. I also got his signature. After reading it a lot, I became sensitive to his font… Of course, it is also possible that I am too sensitive (:з)∠)”

However, netizens took a look with a magnifying glass and found that something was wrong. It didn’t seem that this netizen was too sensitive. Something was really fishy.

Xue Xiao happened to write the character ‘bamboo (竹)’ in the character biography of the tidbit video.

For the hook on the right side of the character, he wrote it very casually and didn’t hook it up. He elegantly drew it out.

Comparing it with the character of ‘bamboo’ in the signature of the book, it was exactly the same.

In addition, Xue Xiao’s pen holding posture was almost exactly the same as the pen holding posture in the photo.

What was even more surprising was that there was a small red mole on the inside of Xue Xiao’s right wrist. The red mole on the inside of the wrist of the hand doing the signing in the photo was also faintly visible.

At this moment, the whole Internet was stunned.

They hurriedly went to the Weibo edited by the publishing house to take a look at ‘People on Earth’, a science fiction novel published a year and a half ago by the author Yaozhu.

They had seen various tidbits before. They knew that Xue Xiao liked to read books, that he wrote diaries, and that he graduated from the Chinese language department of Wencheng College and worked as a Chinese language teacher. His cultural level should be quite high. They just hadn’t expected that it would be high enough to publish a novel.

The male protagonist of an Internet novel had become reality?

Some people couldn’t stand Xue Xiao taking the limelight and started to become angry. “I had long expected him to set up a cultural character, but I hadn’t expected him to be so bold. There is no proof, but fans have already started to market that he has published a novel.”

“It was said that this novel was written by Xue Xiao. Did you get the author’s consent? You started to market it with just a photo…?”

“Huh? Is there a mole on the inside of the wrist in that photo? Am I blind? Why don’t I see anything?”

“Emmmm, after becoming popular, he has started to act like a monster [eat melon].”

Many passersby and netizens also started to calm down. They felt that such a photo couldn’t confirm that Xue Xiao was the author. Fans became too excited before the fact was confirmed. On the contrary, it was like he was taking away the author’s achievements. It was disturbing and didn’t look good.

The direction of the entry started to become strange.

Xue Xiao had planned to lie down and sleep without knowing this. If it wasn’t for Chang Yun on the top bunk suddenly cursing, he would’ve fallen asleep in a daze.

Chang Yun poked his head out from the upper bunk and asked, “Xiao, is what they said true? This novel…”

Xue Xiao looked at the hot search and showed an embarrassed smile.

Chang Yun and Zhao Dong were shocked. Gu Ling was also very surprised.

“D*mn, you really wrote that novel?”

“You were hiding it until now?!”

The entire dormitory instantly lost their sleepiness.

Xue Xiao said, “I didn’t think the novel had anything to do with the show…”

He never thought about going on this show with the label of ‘novel author.’

Chang Yun patted the bedboard excitedly. “Why doesn’t it matter? Of course, it does. People who passed the college entrance examination have to buy hot searches and brag about it. You are so good that you published a science fiction novel. Why can’t you brag about it?”

Zhao Dong also agreed. “Actors can’t do too much hype, but they also shouldn’t be low-key. As long as you are truly talented, why not show it? The more people who pay attention to you and like you, the more opportunities to act you will gain.”

Chang Yun said, “I’m going to dig out my notebook now and ask Xiao to give me a signature. If I don’t get a signature now, I might not be able to get it in the future when you are popular…”

Seeing that Chang Yun actually climbed down, Xue Xiao said in embarrassment, “Brother Chang, you can wait until tomorrow!”

Zhao Dong directly opened the shopping software. “I’m going to place an order for ten copies!”

Xue Xiao hurriedly stopped him. “…Don’t buy so many! If you want to read it, I have a few sample books at home. I can just give them to you!”

Zhao Dong and Chang Yun refused. “How can that be done? I am your brother. I will help you increase your sales!”

Xue Xiao didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Gu Ling frowned slightly. “For the things on the Internet, do you want to come forward and explain?”

Xue Xiao hesitated.

He didn’t blame the netizen who initially caused the incident. This netizen had posted many comments about his book on their Weibo in the past. They were obviously a reader who really liked stories.

In fact, Xue Xiao didn’t particularly care about his pen name being exposed. After all, he wasn’t sure if he would continue writing novels in the future.

He really had no experience in dealing with this type of public opinion incident. He didn’t know if he could just edit a Weibo post and explain the matter.

At this moment, his phone started vibrating.

Xue Xiao looked down.

Everyone should’ve understood what happened.

The brothers at the film and television city sent concerned messages. Old Gao anxiously came to him to confirm the situation, Fang Lei as well…

……

Since the show started airing, Xue Xiao had become the center of a public opinion storm for the second time. It was something that no one would’ve expected at the beginning.

However, the first public opinion storm was caused by someone within the show causing trouble. The second public opinion was just a famous person attracting criticism.

If a person became popular, they easily aroused jealousy and fear.

This time, the people who caused trouble weren’t little shrimps like Zhang Luyang and Fan Xue.

It was really big capital. Some of them were forces that even people like Old Gao found difficult to deal with.

In the middle of the night, Old Goa frowned and stared at his phone, waiting for Xue Xiao’s reply. He was so anxious that he wanted to go to the student dormitory to ask directly, but at this moment, someone took action…

At midnight, Xingyan Pictures, which had only posted a few Weibo posts since its registration but had attracted the attention of millions of fans, suddenly posted a concise and clear official announcement.

“Set sail. Xingyan Pictures will officially start the road of film and television creation, building a future with sincerity and love. In 2024, we will join hands with ‘People on Earth. See you there @Actor Xue Xiao.”

This Weibo post blew up the melon field in the entertainment industry.

Among the countless comments from fans of Shen Tingyan who were screaming, ‘You finally started working;’, some netizens struggling to survive asked cautiously. “…Excuse me, is the person you @ the leading actor…?”

The official Weibo replied cutely, “He is the original author, but he can also be the leading actor [cheers][cheers][cheers].”

The whole Internet: “……”

He was the original author but he could also be the leading role… the leading role…

……

D*mn!

F*ck!!!

This was real!

White Lily

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