Chapter 110

Although he grumbled, Wei Sheng knew full well that the reason he and Zhou Mingxing had gotten out of trouble so quickly wasn’t just because the procedures were all legal—having the station leadership backing them had also played a huge part.

Whether it was because he and Zhou Mingxing were moneymakers for the station or for some other reason, the bottom line was, they owed the station a huge favor this time. How could they dare turn down these “mandatory assignments” being shoved their way?

Still, this whole ordeal taught Wei Sheng an important workplace lesson: no matter the reason, even if you’re doing good deeds, never be too high-profile about it.

This world is full of petty, malicious people who don’t want to do good themselves and can’t stand seeing others do good either. They don’t want to take the righteous path and can’t stand watching others walk it, wishing they could drag everyone down into the mud, so they can trample everyone with their selfishness and shamelessness.

Wei Sheng had actually been preparing for this year’s provincial civil service exam, but after this incident, he suddenly realized that his personality probably wasn’t suited for government work.

Coincidentally, Zhou Mingxing had just dumped a mountain of work on him. It was clear—fate didn’t want him taking the civil service exam this year! Better to focus on his actual job first. As for the exam, he’d leave it up to fate. As long as he studied half-heartedly, he was sure to fail the written test. If his mom asked about it, he could just say work had been too busy to prepare…

With his mindset adjusted, even this pile of work looked more adorable than the exam prep materials.

There were about a dozen assignments handed over from Zhou Mingxing. The smaller ones, like making appearances at a few station-organized events and galas, or prepping a couple of performances, were barely worth mentioning.

But the two major tasks were a lot trickier.

The first was a sweet campus romance drama funded by the station. These low-budget sweet romance dramas had been yielding huge returns lately, so J Province TV Station jumped on the bandwagon, buying up several scripts in this genre. Naturally, when it came time to fill the cast, all the in-house artists got assigned roles like drawing lots. The older ones got to play parents, aunts, and other elders, while pretty boys like Wei Sheng were stuck with male lead or second lead roles. Those with weaker looks didn’t even qualify to play villains—because in these dramas, the villain was often even more handsome than the male lead… They’d get stuck playing classmates or cousins at best.

In short, every single role was filled by the station’s own artists. Save on talent fees, slash production costs—well, that’s how the profit margin went up, right?

That’s exactly how Wei Sheng and Shen Yi had earned their reputation as “resource artists”… Sigh! Bitter as it was, he couldn’t say a word.

This time, Wei Sheng was assigned the role of the passionate and devilishly charming second male lead who fights the male lead for the heroine’s love. Just seeing the words “passionate and devilishly charming” made Wei Sheng feel sick.

Quickly flipping to the next assignment.

Compared to the first, the second task felt a little more normal. It was a music talent show the station was putting together to celebrate the anniversary of the Communist Youth League. The name was full of positive energy: “Youngsters Sing to the Motherland.”

Unlike traditional children’s singing contests, this one had an elimination system more like today’s popular talent shows. The station was clearly planning to use the competition to scout fresh new talent for its entertainment company.

“Oh? So we’re getting a whole batch of new junior colleagues?” Wei Sheng quickly caught on.

“Yeah! And once the rookies rise, you old guys can get ready to be cast aside and forgotten!” Zhou Mingxing retorted sourly.

“Then this is the one I’ll pick! No way I’m doing the sweet romance drama. Old Zhou, you know my acting skills—I’ve never even been in a proper relationship, and I’m definitely no rich playboy. I couldn’t pull off ‘devilishly charming’ even if I tried.”

Before he finished, Zhou Mingxing had already shooed him back to the office to review program materials.

Other actors couldn’t wait to try new roles to “expand their range.” Meanwhile, his bunch of precious artists were all about sticking to one trick for life, milking it until retirement!

He couldn’t understand it. In an industry as cutthroat as entertainment, how had he ended up with the most laid-back group of people? Did they even want to be Best Actor or Best Actress?

“Heh~ I don’t care at all. The tall poppy gets cut first. As long as I’ve got enough to spend, who needs awards like Best Actor? Too much pressure.” Wei Sheng was very zen about it. After the program was confirmed, he got the meeting notice the very next day.

The director of “Youngsters Sing to the Motherland,” Chen Shu, was a veteran of the station’s children’s channel. Rumor had it he’d been with the station for nearly a decade. Probably from years of brain-straining creative work, his hair was nearly all gone, so he just shaved it clean. Chubby and round, he looked incredibly kind and approachable.

Definitely someone who’d worked in children’s programming for years.

The production team had lined up four judges. The other three were all pricey big names, and the reason Wei Sheng was suddenly thrown in was mainly that the director had blown the budget and had no money left to hire outside celebrities. They had to scrape together some “cheap labor” from inside the station.

Wei Sheng: “…”

Cheap labor… yep, sounds like me, a classic corporate peon.

According to the show script, during the preliminary rounds, the four judges would head out to different locations to find the “hidden nightingales among the people.” Wei Sheng was assigned to the famous impoverished mountainous region of Langshan.

Just how poor was Langshan? Let’s put it this way: Wei Sheng had previously done poverty relief work in Houzhai Village, which he already considered extremely underdeveloped, but even there, the standard of living was far ahead of Langshan.

Looking at the background info, the local “nightingale” from this mountain village was an eight-year-old girl named Jiang Cancan, recommended by the Langshan County Bureau of Education and Sports as their children’s singing champion.

Jiang Cancan’s mother had passed away early. Her selfish, cold father had traded off his elder daughter’s marriage for a sum of money to remarry a divorced woman, then moved to the city with his new wife to work, completely ignoring the elderly and children left behind at home. Jiang Cancan, living with her visually impaired grandmother, had to care for her younger sister, farm, forage for pig grass, pick mushrooms, collect wild vegetables—doing everything she could to earn money to support the family—all while attending school…

Wei Sheng couldn’t even imagine how an eight-year-old could earn enough to feed a whole household!

But maybe this was heaven’s way of compensating a poor, ill-fated child. Without ever taking a single vocal lesson, Jiang Cancan had a naturally gifted voice. According to the file, since starting elementary school, she’d been winning prizes in town and county singing contests every year. Wei Sheng could already guess how she’d been supporting her grandmother and sister.

The departure was scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. With nothing else to do, Wei Sheng went online to look up information about Langshan. The first few pages on Baidu were almost all news reports about poverty alleviation efforts there. When he opened the short video app and searched for Langshan, the first results that popped up were from an official account called Langshan Primary School and another influencer named “Rural Xiaomange.”

Thinking that Jiang Cancan probably attended Langshan Primary School, Wei Sheng clicked on that account first. He saw that the school had gone from dirt poor—where even using a bit of lard for cooking was considered a luxury—to gradually being able to eat meat, make a batch of buns as snacks in the afternoon, and provide each child with an apple and a bag of milk every day. Their tattered clothes had been replaced with donations from kind-hearted people. Wei Sheng’s eyes grew moist, and his instinct for poverty alleviation stirred restlessly.

As long as he could get Jiang Cancan to participate in the competition, she didn’t necessarily have to make it to the finals to benefit from it.

Despite all his tough talk to Zhou Mingxing about never being softhearted again during future shows, when it came down to it, he couldn’t help but start scheming ways to help this poor little girl.

Coincidentally, Wang Qun’s team hadn’t finalized the target area for the next season of “Retracing the Path of Poverty Alleviation.” If Jiang Cancan’s hometown met the program’s criteria, it shouldn’t be too hard for Wei Sheng to pull some strings and help Langshan secure a spot as a targeted beneficiary.

After all, according to Zhou Mingxing’s data, nearly half of the sponsors for the second season of “Retracing the Path of Poverty Alleviation” had signed on just for him. Even just for the sake of pleasing the sponsors, Director Wang would probably give him this favor.

And even if he didn’t, there was always Jin Yannan’s side to fall back on. Ahem… worst case, he still had a Plan B: borrow some people from the Haitangyuan Subdistrict Office and bring the “Sunset Red Live Streaming Group” straight to Langshan for a live e-commerce broadcast. Maybe they could squeeze a little more sponsorship money out of the corporate backers.

Wei Sheng thought he had already mentally prepared himself, but still, he was shocked by the level of poverty in Langshan.

It was hard to imagine that in this day and age, there were still people who couldn’t afford plain white rice and had to chop up potatoes and sweet potatoes, mix them with brown rice and wild vegetables, and cook them all together. The locals called this “vegetable rice”—a way to fill everyone’s stomachs with minimal expense.

Because of the steep mountain terrain, almost no one in Langshan grew rice. They had to buy every grain of it. Jiang Cancan’s family was even poorer than most villagers. They couldn’t afford to buy rice in bulk, and she probably didn’t eat much herself on a daily basis. The little rice they had was kept in a plastic bag, hidden inside a large jar used for storing corn kernels. Just to entertain Wei Sheng and the crew, she had carefully scooped out a bowl.

There wasn’t even a proper cooking pot at home. Their only pot had broken, so they had to use a few eight-treasure porridge cans, put in some rice and sweet potato chunks, and boil sweet potato porridge for them.

Looking at Jiang Cancan’s bright, sparkling eyes and her small, weather-beaten hands, Wei Sheng cursed under his breath, furious enough to want to strangle Jiang Cancan’s selfish, heartless father.

That bastard couldn’t handle the hardships of farming, ran off with his remarried wife, and didn’t even bother to leave the minimum living allowance money for the old and young left behind. Not even that tiny bit of money? Was he planning to starve his own mother and daughters to death? Refusing to take any responsibility for their care?

Wei Sheng had thought Wei Zhiyong was already scummy enough. But now, it seemed that when it came to being scum, there really was no bottom line. As bad as Wei Zhiyong was, at least he still sent his mother a thousand yuan a month for living expenses. But Jiang Cancan’s biological father? Not only did he not send a penny, he even took away the family’s subsistence allowance money. This wasn’t just scummy—it was inhuman!

Still, the one bright spot of this Langshan trip was that Wei Sheng met an amazing new friend—the internet-famous, handsome guy with the screen name “Rural Xiaomange,” Jiang Xiaoman.

No team, no technical support—armed with just a smartphone and a few secondhand gadgets scavenged from night markets, Jiang Xiaoman had managed to build up both the Langshan Primary School account and the “Rural Xiaomange” social media account! And their follower counts were rising fast!

Thinking about the online company they had just set up, Wei Sheng suddenly had a new idea…

(End of Chapter)