Chapter 216

Upon learning that contestants who broke into the top eight would not only receive generous prize money but also a promising job offer, public attention for the program The Way of Shennong instantly soared to an all-time high.

In this day and age, even if you don’t have children of your own, your relatives and friends certainly do. Not every child can successfully cross the single-plank bridge of the college entrance exam to enter university; there are always those who simply aren’t cut out for academic study.

In the past, if a child couldn’t get into a four-year university, they could only spend money to attend a vocational college and find a random job after graduation. Some children from poorer families couldn’t even afford vocational school. What else could they do? They went out to find manual labor.

But now, the rules of The Way of Shennong provided many people with a new inspiration.

Exactly, did certain jobs really require a university degree to perform?

Especially for technical positions, rather than studying dead books in school and slowly accumulating experience after graduation, it was better to recruit a group of people from the start. Just like Yuanxi Biotech, they could provide targeted training for the talent they needed, allowing them to start working immediately once trained.

For the employees, their families could save tens or even hundreds of thousands of yuan in tuition.

Furthermore, it benefited the enterprise.

Just looking at labor costs, who costs more: a junior high school dropout or a graduate from a prestigious university? Even someone who has never worked in HR knows the answer.

Moreover, once a Management Trainee agreement is signed, the breach of contract penalties ensure that the company doesn’t have to worry about the trained talent jumping ship in the short term.

Taking a step back, even if the hard-earned talent decides to resign when their contract expires, as long as Yuanxi Biotech maintains this talent reserve plan, they won’t have to worry about a lack of personnel for technical positions.

From this perspective, the enterprise certainly gets the better deal, but in the long run, parents were eager for more variety shows like The Way of Shennong. It served as an alternative path for children who couldn’t get into university.

Because of this, the comment section under Guagua Video’s official social media account had seen a surge in activity recently. Many people were asking if Guagua Video would launch more competitive variety shows of the same type, especially those suitable for teenagers who didn’t make it into high school.

Every parent hopes their child will be successful, but if a child truly lacks a talent for studying, you can’t exactly beat them to death, can you? If they can’t get into university, the only hope left is for the child to find a stable job with a future.

the “cross-border cooperation” between The Way of Shennong and Yuanxi Biotech gave these parents a glimmer of hope.

Guagua Video was indeed tempted. However, they were decent enough to have CEO Yao specifically ask Wei Sheng for his thoughts before planning any new shows. If Wei Sheng was willing to participate, they were more than happy to have this God of Wealth give them some guidance again.

Unfortunately, besides being a boss, Boss Wei was also an artist. How could he have the time to keep playing around with variety shows?

Just as The Way of Shennong entered the semi-finals, Wei Sheng joined Zhou Mingxing to enter a film set for shooting.

Seeing that the artist under his wing had built a business empire even larger than his own as the boss, Zhou Mingxing was utterly speechless.

He wanted to tell Boss Wei that he might as well just quit the industry and focus on business, but he couldn’t. Currently, the most profitable artist in the company was Wei Sheng. If this ancestor retired, the company’s performance would be cut in half.

Hearing that Wei Sheng was finally entering a film set to act, other TV stations and video platforms breathed a collective sigh of relief.

How should one put it? Happiness is found through comparison.

Previously, everyone was on the same track. To prevent Wei Sheng from rising too quickly and snatching resources from their own newcomers, they naturally banded together to “block” him. They tried their hardest to trip Wei Sheng up, wishing for him to get zero resources in the Domestic Entertainment Circle and quit of his own accord.

Looking back on what happened next, it was nothing but tears!

Everyone exerted their strength together and indeed squeezed Wei Sheng out until he couldn’t survive in the entertainment circle. But who could have guessed? The kid really stopped acting, but he went off to invest in variety shows and became a boss instead!

The worst part was that Wei Sheng seemed like the reincarnation of the God of Wealth; every show he invested in became a massive hit.

Now, things had changed. They had squeezed Wei Sheng until he couldn’t survive in the entertainment circle, and in return, Wei Sheng was squeezing their companies until they were on the brink of bankruptcy.

Sigh! Thinking about it this way, it was better to let the kid hurry back to acting.

As for resources, losing a few wasn’t a big deal. Wei Sheng was just one person, not a three-headed, six-armed deity. Even if he went from one set to the next without a break, how many movies could he film in a year? At most, they would just yield some resources to him.

Letting the kid focus on acting in a film crew was much better than him getting bored and coming out to invest in variety shows, which squeezed the life out of the programs produced by other companies.

Inexplicably, Wei Sheng’s resources in the entertainment circle suddenly improved.

The resource Zhou Mingxing accepted for Wei Sheng this time wasn’t something they had fought for, but an olive branch actively extended by the other party.

This movie was said to be the “final masterpiece” of the famous domestic director, Zhang Gaojun. It was heard that to snatch this resource, every artist in the Domestic Entertainment Circle with even a bit of a name had used every connection possible to “lobby” Director Zhang.

Strangely, the male and female leads had been decided early on, as had the second and third female leads. There was only the second male lead left. Zhang Gaojun had interviewed dozens of people but hadn’t found a single suitable candidate.

According to the insider information Zhou Mingxing gathered, when Director Zhang created the character of the second male lead, he had projected his younger self into the role.

When Director Zhang was young, in order to realize his dream of becoming a director, he had not only played minor roles but also performed cross-talk and sold fish in the wet market… In his own words, the first half of his life was more exciting than any character under his lens.

Because he had projected himself into the role, during the interviews, Director Zhang wanted to scream “throw them out” whenever he saw male actors with exaggerated acting or those putting on a deep, brooding facade.

How could he let such people play himself?

After picking and choosing, he somehow took a liking to Wei Sheng. He didn’t even make him come for an interview. If Zhou Mingxing hadn’t sworn an oath that he would make sure Wei Sheng joined the set on time, Zhang Gaojun would have personally come to drag Wei Sheng back.

Regarding this, Wei Sheng only wanted to pose a soul-searching question to Director Zhang: What exactly do you see in me? Can’t I just change whatever it is?

He truly did not want to play the role of the second male lead, even if it was the final masterpiece of a renowned director.

How should he put it? Wei Sheng had read the script. It wasn’t that the story was bad; on the contrary, the story was excellent. Even he couldn’t help but sigh with emotion for a long time after reading it.

However, the character setting for the second male lead gave him a powerful urge to complain.

The story took place in the era when the country had just opened its doors. The second male lead and the female protagonist grew up together as childhood sweethearts. The girl was smart, bold, and feisty. She broke free from the shackles of her feudal family and went to the big city to make a living alone with the second male lead.

The villagers all thought the two had eloped. No one knew that from beginning to end, it was only the second male lead providing silent support and waiting without regret.

When the female lead wanted to break free from her old-fashioned family, he dropped everything to accompany her to the big city to struggle. During their most destitute times, the two slept under bridge tunnels, picked discarded vegetable leaves from the roadside to cook plain noodles, sold fish at the market, and sold roasted corn and sweet potatoes at night markets.

When the female lead wanted to get into the more profitable electronics business, the second male lead risked his life to accompany her in dealing with a group of smugglers, nearly dying at sea several times.

Unfortunately, the “White Moonlight^[1]” of pure first love could never withstand the fatal attraction of the “Cinnabar Mole^[2]” of passion. After their business took a heavy hit, the second male lead took the fall for all the charges to protect the female lead and was thrown into prison.

The female lead did not give up on him. She ran around everywhere trying to overturn the case and clear his name. It was during this process that she met and fell in love with the first male lead.

The miserable second male lead was lucky enough to have his name cleared through the female lead’s various efforts and was released from prison early.

But he was unlucky enough to lose his love the very moment he stepped out of prison.

Director Zhang’s movie did not have romance as its primary plotline. Instead, it aimed to showcase the younger generation’s persistence in their dreams and the exploration of human nature against the backdrop of an era of great change. In short, it focused on the career arc, with the romance being merely a decoration.

To put it bluntly, on the surface, the first male lead and the female lead did end up together, but the male lead’s main function was actually that of an NPC, responsible for helping the female lead expand her business empire into the international market.

As for the miserable second male lead, he was naturally the “White Moonlight” in the female lead’s heart.

Later in the story, as the female lead and the first male lead developed their careers, their disagreements grew larger and larger, and their marriage eventually came to an end.

At the end of the story, the female lead returned to this land as a foreign investor. At a dinner hosted by the local government for foreign businessmen, she reunited with the second male lead, who had already become a wealthy businessman himself.

In the movie, Director Zhang set an open ending. The second male lead and the female lead moved through the crowd, and their slightly aged hands clasped tightly together, just as they had thirty years ago when the second male lead took her hand and resolutely left their hometown.

However, while the people remained, things had changed. Time could never go back, and they could never return to the past.

It had to be said that Zhou Mingxing had a good eye. He insisted that Wei Sheng take this role because the second male lead’s character was truly likable. Specifically, the setting of a devoted, regret-free “White Moonlight” was exactly what female audiences adored.

Most importantly-

“You’ve already had too many ‘representative works’ playing idiotic characters. It’s time to take on a few normal roles,” Zhou Mingxing glared at him, teeth clenched.

In all his years in the industry, this was the first time Zhou Mingxing had seen an artist as unmotivated as Wei Sheng.

If it were an unpopular artist who couldn’t get other charming roles to improve themselves, there would be no choice but to repeatedly play the same type of character to make ends meet. After all, artists are human too and need to support their families.

But the problem was that Wei Sheng wasn’t unpopular. The guy was so famous he had broken out of his niche. Even when he was being “blacklisted” by several rivals joining forces, he never lacked scripts.

But this brat Wei Sheng! He just loved taking those silly, comedic, and goofy roles. It had reached the point where some new fans were asking old fans everywhere if Brother Wei used to be a cross-talk comedian before his debut. Zhou Mingxing’s eyes rolled back whenever he heard it.

Now that there was finally a somewhat normal role, Zhou Mingxing wanted nothing more than to force Wei Sheng’s head down and make him join the crew immediately. As soon as the movie was released, he would immediately spend money to buy trending searches and announce to the world: Actor Wei Sheng finally has his first romance movie!

What? You say the second male lead is just a simple unrequited crush and doesn’t even have a kiss scene with the female lead?

How vulgar. Who says true love must have kiss scenes or bed scenes? That’s too vulgar! True love should be a soul-deep, mutual journey.

Isn’t loving someone you can’t have more heartbreaking for the audience than a gut-wrenching romance?

Before the filming had even started, Zhou Mingxing had already firmly raised the flag for the female lead and second male lead ship.

This dedicated manager had finally been driven mad by his own slacking artist.

(End of Chapter)