Chapter 329: The Mistake Every Woman in the World Makes

At night, Beijing's neon lights flickered, and cars zipped through the streets like brilliant shooting stars, dazzling to the eye.

Fang Hong drove in silence, his mind still on the scene from earlier. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and he raised his hand to sniff under his nose—the hand that had touched her.

There was no scent on it, but he seemed to catch Liu Tianxian's distinctive fragrance.

Only because there had been no barrier—no clothing, nothing between them at all—soft, silky, smooth and supple, beyond words.

Just a bit small, what a shame!

"Beep beep beep!"

Just then the phone suddenly rang, snapping Fang Hong's thoughts back at once.

Fang Hong put on his earphones to answer—there were no Bluetooth earpieces yet, so he had to use a wired headset for calls.

"Hello, have you arrived yet?" Liu Tianxian's soft little voice came through the phone.

"Not yet, how could I be that fast."

Fang Hong had also just left the house. He asked, puzzled: "You got away that fast? Your mom didn't give you a hard time?"

"Why would she give me a hard time? I didn't do anything wrong. Even if I did, I only made the mistake every woman in the world makes." Liu Tianxian seemed to be in a great mood, even quoting the classics.

The moment she went upstairs and got back to her room, she called Fang Hong. Right now she was in the walk-in closet, holding the phone between her neck and shoulder, rummaging through clothes.

"A real daughter gets treated so differently. I'm the one who's done for. Your mom must have a way worse impression of me now. It's all your fault, you've killed me." Fang Hong complained.

"You were the one kissing and touching, I was just cooperating. How can you blame me?" Liu Tianxian picked up her change of clothes and headed for the bathroom.

"You said your mom wasn't home!" Fang Hong said.

"When did I ever say that? I never said it. You're the one who assumed." Liu Tianxian wouldn't admit it.

"You're turning your back on your own words now—you clearly said your mom wasn't home." Fang Hong was indignant.

"What I said was, 'not home, right?'—a question. Do you even know how to listen? You're not satisfied, so now you're blaming me, right? Can't take a dump and you blame Earth's gravity—how ridiculous." Liu Tianxian's little mouth rattled on and on.

Fang Hong was left feeling both sulky and worried. He sighed: "Sigh, I wonder how your mom sees me now? She's bound to think I'm some kind of pervert."

"Aren't you?" Liu Tianxian teased with a grin.

"Yes, yes, yes, I'm a pervert." Fang Hong was utterly speechless.

"Hehehe."

Liu Tianxian laughed happily, put her change of clothes in the laundry basket, then ran water into the bathtub, and comforted him: "It's fine. My mom didn't say anything about you, she wasn't angry. She probably just couldn't process it in the moment and spoke a bit harshly. Once she thinks it through, it'll be fine. Don't take it to heart."

Her mom was a fierce woman—if she were truly angry and fired up, she wouldn't have looked like that. She would have walked right up and slapped someone twice.

She had once seen with her own eyes her mom slap someone else on her behalf.

"Oh, that's good then." Fang Hong was slightly relieved. He'd wait a while, then go check on Liu Xiaoli's attitude.

He heard the sound of water: "What are you doing?"

"Running a bath." Liu Tianxian said.

Fang Hong asked again: "So you've already taken your clothes off?"

"No, why?" Liu Tianxian was puzzled.

"I wanted to let you check whether my Dragon Claw Hand left you red. I was pretty rough just now." Fang Hong said with a grin.

"Get lost, you have no sense of decency."

Liu Tianxian scolded him, then said: "Send me a message when you get home. I'm going to take a shower first."

"Hey hey, wait a sec." Fang Hong said.

"What now?" Liu Tianxian said.

"Give me a kiss!"

"Muah!"

"."

The two hung up. Liu Tianxian's face was bright with joy. She set her phone aside, took off her top and bra, and looked down at her chest.

No red marks in sight—fair, smooth, and tender.

When that man had grabbed her just now, she hadn't felt him being rough at all; on the contrary, he'd been quite gentle.

Just loves making stuff up to trick people.

The Yutu Digital Film and Television Base was reported on by official media the very next day.

It was written like this: "On April 15, 2013, with salvos firing and drums thundering, amid a grand and jubilant atmosphere, the groundbreaking ceremony for the Yutu Film and Television project was successfully held in Huairou, Beijing."

"The groundbreaking of this project is not only a major milestone for Yutu Group, but also a powerful driver for industrial upgrading in Huairou."

"The Director of the Film Bureau, leaders of Beijing Film Academy, the Chairman of the Film Association, district chiefs, and guests from all walks of life gathered to witness this thrilling moment!"

"."

See how beautifully the official media writes it? Social media journalists could never produce such a flowery piece.

They only know how to write: some film and television group held a groundbreaking, Liu Tianxian showed up and did such-and-such, then gossip a bit, and skip every other leader.

Because there's no traffic in it—no traffic means writing it is pointless, and the whole tone drops a notch.

This news was reported by Beijing Daily and reprinted by other media.

CCTV-6 also covered the news, with on-site footage—of course edited, selectively released. The video showed leaders from all sides chatting together in perfect harmony.

The host's narration said they were discussing grand plans for China's film industry.

But no sound of their conversation was released. Whatever the host said was made up; in reality they hadn't been talking about anything—just shooting the breeze.

They also released clips of the ribbon-cutting and the groundbreaking, the scenes harmonious, full of thriving prosperity. News like this couldn't pique the interest of netizens outside the industry. They'd grown numb to it and couldn't make sense of what it was even about, so there was no buzz. But people inside the circle were plenty jealous.

Damn it, Yutu is developing way too fast.

"Bro, they're building a film and television base, so we'll build one too. We'll invest ten billion in Yucheng to build a cultural city, and to the outside world we'll say it's a new Hengdian, to crush those bastards." Xiao Wang was also getting fierce.

Now they had money—the stock market was in a phase of frenzied rise.

"I have no objections." Da Wang agreed.

Anyway, doing film and television culture was fake; doing real estate was real. Now real estate is starting to heat up—this is the time to make money.

In his previous life, they really did have such a project, and they made a big fuss about it, even making it onto the People's Daily.

They even pulled in Xing Ye to hype it up, investing 17 billion to build a film and television culture city.

In any case, Fang Hong lived several decades and never saw where their film and television culture city was—instead, it was a complete mess.

A film and television culture city? Don't be ridiculous. Without enough production volume every year, you simply can't sustain it—it requires maintenance.

The cleaning aunties, the weeding workers, the doormen, the painters—they all need money to keep them on!

Enlighten Media's Wang Zhangtian also saw this, but he was more rational. He now needed to find a way out for films, otherwise he'd be squeezed to death by the Principal.

No directors, and the ability to cultivate directors wasn't there either. The cutting-edge directors were all running to Yutu. The Hong Kong folks' box office wasn't good either, and they were hard to control. So Enlighten Media had now entered a bind.

No works, no directors, no good projects.

No other reason—just that Yutu snatched all the projects that Enlighten Media had risen on, like "Lost in Thailand," "Partners," and so on. They originally belonged to Enlighten, but now they're all at Yutu.

So Enlighten Media's light seemed dim.

Although Enlighten Media's stock price was soaring now, in terms of production capability and team, it was still second-tier.

Those two brothers played the financial game; he still wanted to run things properly, but running things properly had no way out—the share had been squeezed away by Yutu.

Bona's Yu Fatty could only look on with envy and jealousy. No money meant everything was off the table.

Time passed. "Partners" entered its promotion phase. Lead actors Zhang Songwen, Deng Chao, Tong Dawei, Jing Tian, and others appeared on major Variety shows and event programs.

The promotional work for this film began.

On the exclusive interview show "A Date with Luyu," Luyu dug a pit and asked: "Excuse me, Deng Chao, you're clearly already so popular, yet you played a supporting role to Zhang Songwen. Don't you feel there's something wrong with that?"

"I don't feel anything's wrong. We're all leads." Deng Chao playfully gestured toward Tong Dawei and Jing Tian.

The meaning was that everyone was a lead, no distinction between primary and supporting—this avoided competition and stepping on each other, being used by people to drive wedges and say they were at odds.

The others also nodded in agreement and chimed in.

Actually, the first lead of this film was Zhang Songwen. Deng Chao was slightly behind and wouldn't be submitted for awards either.

Then Deng Chao added: "I think actors serve the work. In the film, Song Wen suited that role better than me, and I suited my role better. There's no need to draw such clear distinctions.

If I played his role, I wouldn't play it well, and if he played my role, he wouldn't play it well either."

This person's emotional intelligence was still quite high.

"In the film we're partners, outside the film we're also partners." Zhang Songwen added.

Seeing these two were watertight, Luyu turned to Jing Tian: "Why did you take on such a role at the time?"

"Someone recommended me for it." Jing Tian said.

"Oh, who was it?" Luyu asked, riding the momentum.

"I can't say that. At the time, the Principal gave me the script and told me about the character in the film. I thought it was pretty good, so I took it." Jing Tian's smile was very sweet.

At the time, Fang Hong hadn't really analyzed the character for her—he just painted a rosy picture, saying if she wanted to break through, she should take it.

Jing Tian certainly remembered the scene and conversation at the time, but she couldn't say what the Principal was like, nor could she speak of his intentions—she could only bury it in her heart.

"Tell us about the scene when you met. Was it at a café, or at a restaurant?" Luyu was quite interested, wanting to dig deep for gossip.

"Neither. We were just at a very ordinary place. He gave me the script, we chatted casually for a couple of lines, then parted ways. Nothing special." Jing Tian said it calmly.

This left Luyu quite disappointed.

"The Principal is someone very serious about his work. He meets people in public settings." Zhang Songwen vouched for the two and helped them out.

"Oh, how do you know him so well?" Luyu was quite annoying.

"I've been at Yutu for so long—I can say I'm Yutu's first artist. Not to say I know him well, but at least I know him better than you do." Zhang Songwen fired back.

The others felt quite awkward, but Luyu seemed not to know what awkward was—her expression was as usual. Still, she didn't press further, knowing she'd already made people angry.

This person actually just wanted to stir things up, create some news, make the show more famous—otherwise "A Date with Luyu" wouldn't be very well-known.

If you say she has no real substance, she definitely does.

If she didn't, Lao Wang wouldn't have invited her to tour his Villa and show her his treasured paintings.

"Partners" was promoted step by step as usual. Chen Zhixi didn't play any tricks on "Iron Man 3" either—everything seemed perfectly normal.

The global opening-week box office for "The Shallows" came out: 31.65 million US dollars.

Of which, France 1.32 million US dollars, Mexico 1.152 million US dollars, Russia 1.0016 million US dollars, United Kingdom 930,000 US dollars, South Korea 892,000 US dollars, Japan 502,400 US dollars.

The best box office performance was in North America, with an opening-week box office reaching 16.79 million US dollars.

This box office performance didn't make money yet—it still depended on next week's situation. However, this film wasn't like "Fifty Shades of Grey," which only exploded in the first week or two and then fell apart afterward.

That was because its fame was too strong, while the plot was too terrible!

"The Shallows" had no fame to speak of and was a low-budget film—looking at its performance, its staying power was still quite strong.

(End of this chapter)