Chapter 755: Chapter Twenty: Different Dao

Sure enough, Bai Lang arrived first; this guy was impressive, heading straight to the nearby McDonald's to have breakfast, and the cameraman and others followed him inside. 'Hey, want something to eat? Let's eat together, I'll treat.' Bai Lang remained friendly. 'Who knows when they'll show up? You guys have phones, right? Ask the cameraman over there.' Bai Lang spoke while stuffing a burger into his mouth, three bites at a time, completely the picture of extreme down-to-earthness.

Whether the other side showed up or not actually didn't matter to Bai Lang; anyway, they had to film the show today, and if anyone was late it would be Liu Na who'd suffer. Sure enough, not long after, a black business car pulled up, and out stepped Liu Na, meticulously dressed and styled by professionals. By rights Bai Lang shouldn't be able to compare with her, yet his overwhelming presence suppressed everything.

As long as Bai Lang wanted, he was the central figure. The date also had a script: first go shopping, then interact with the other few 'couples'—mainly playing games. Bai Lang had read the script; it was more like an urban adventure where you complete tasks to gather intel, and after collecting all the intel you get the final reward, with the first team to finish winning a surprise. So let's go shopping, though I'm not really used to it—the key point is that this is a 'performance', with two camera crews following along, fortunately the host has already been dismissed.

This made Bai Lang uncomfortable—he wasn't a formally trained performer, nor an old hand in this line of work—but he quickly adjusted, thinking, 'Just treat them as a pile of severed heads.' He immediately returned to normal, unaffected. Severed heads were nothing; he'd chopped off plenty, and the piles of skulls he'd stacked were numerous. Thinking of that, Bai Lang felt nothing, but the people around him—including Liu Na from the camera crew and nearby passersby, among whom were curious onlookers—all felt their hearts race and their bodies turn cold.

This was a trace of killing intent that Bai Lang unintentionally leaked; to him it was nothing, but to these people it was quite serious—someone with a bad heart might even suffer a myocardial infarction. Bai Lang noticed this, immediately restrained his spirit, and the surroundings returned to normal. Coincidentally, they walked past a movie theater; the poster was still for the epic about the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. Bai Lang glanced at it, and the camera crew also caught the poster on film.

Liu Na casually remarked that the movie had been doing okay lately, 'Just came out, it's got the highest screening ratio.' This girl said, 'Movies made by people with ulterior motives—if it were up to me, I'd send those directors straight to jail to be beaten to death. If you want to oppose something, do it openly; hiding subversive messages in this mainstream film, do you really think everyone's an idiot? Oh, the old official in charge of reviewing is probably really stupid.' Bai Lang gave a cold snort, 'The Chairman already said the Bureau of Talented Beauties and Foreign Dead Persons, and using film to counter—now that's a brilliant invention.'

Bai Lang then looked at the camera crew with a half-smile, 'This, what I said will be cut out in editing, right? It'll definitely be cut—after all, it's just one segment.' He chuckled through his nose twice. Liu Na looked at Bai Lang, her expression a bit odd, as if she didn't quite agree with his viewpoint—quite normal, her demeanor didn't seem to share Bai Lang's worldview. 'Too bad,' Bai Lang thought.

After that it was just performance; Bai Lang felt the phrase 'appearance united, spirit divided' described it best. 'A very refined girl.' Bai Lang thought, 'Just a beautiful skin.' Although this girl could play several instruments, sing and dance at a decent level, and maybe even act better than Bai Lang, he knew Liu Na and he were on completely different paths, and she was far behind him. Girls like her can at most go with the flow, while Bai Lang is a hero capable of driving out the barbarians.

During the interaction, Bai Lang saw the other three groups seemed fine too; it appeared men and women got along fairly well, and as for whether it was genuine, just listening to their heartbeats made it obvious they were acting. The interaction was full of laughter, and there were also some physical interactions—the simplest being rock climbing, indoor rock climbing. Those three might be pretty boys, but their muscle strength and stamina were still greater than the average otaku's—after all, they have to practice singing and dancing, and without some stamina they really couldn't manage.

Bai Lang grabbed with his hand and tapped with his toe, already reaching the top to take down the clue; he casually tore open the note, glanced at it, and handed it to Liu Na. At that moment Bai Lang saw a sloppy middle-aged man watching the excitement from the side; although he wasn't wearing a Daoist robe, his plaid shirt and loose pants were indeed—moreover, he held a bottle of cola in his hand, with a small gourd hanging from his belt, a typical middle-aged outfit.

Zhou Xianda was outside watching the fun, and Bai Lang also smiled at him. Qianshan Zhenren flicked his thumb, Bai Lang reached out to grab, but it was a round, smooth pill. Seeing vapor rise from his palm, Bai Lang didn't think twice and swallowed the pill in one gulp—otherwise he'd really have to manifest his powers in front of people. After barely making it through one episode of the show, Bai Lang and Liu Na each said goodbye and went their separate ways; this girl knew she and Bai Lang were utterly incompatible, and in fact she hadn't even taken a liking to this man.

In the TV drama currently airing, Bai Lang counts as a leading villain, but after the series aired, criticism never ceased while the ratings remained quite good; many viewers watched while cursing, then after finishing wrote reviews and kept cursing, saying if they watched again they'd be idiots and would continue to be idiots at night...... Bai Lang is likewise one of those drawing torrents of negative reviews, with critics saying that aside from his appearance, temperament, and fight scenes, he has no redeeming qualities.

'He simply can't act! Look at that frozen expression, look at that weird narration—what is this?' Someone wrote that in the reviews; Bai Lang reading it felt a deep kinship, 'Exactly, stiff acting, muffled narration—he really isn't material for acting.' Below there was a rebuttal saying this villainous role is currently the second-best acting among the actors on stage, the best being naturally the male lead from Hong Kong, and then it would be Bai Lang's turn.

Others' performances were even worse—not just stiff lines, they couldn't even get basic expressions right, their deadpan faces were inferior. This is the distorted reality; thanks to Bai Lang's fierce fight scenes in the drama—his fights can be done in a single shot, even with a close-up—this shows he doesn't need a stunt double, he performs all of it himself. For a while there were rumors that Bai Lang truly had martial arts skills, a clamor that rose to the heavens.

The production team of the so-called couples show also called, hoping Bai Lang would emphasize his martial arts skills more, and they would adjust in later episodes. And in the second episode that aired, Bai Lang's movie commentary was indeed gone, simply cut out.