Chapter 3: Green Tea Traits Maxed Out (Requesting Recommendation Votes)

That night / you didn’t refuse me / that night / I hurt you / that night / your face was streaked with tears…

Distant, vulgar singing drifted over, bringing unbidden tears to the eyes.

Deng Zhao squeezed the car key in his hand.

He knew hitting someone and killing them was illegal…

“Hey, Hao Ge!” Wang Baoqiang beamed at Qi Hao with a simple, earnest smile.

He and Qi Hao both started in the industry as extras.

Qi Hao had gotten started much earlier than him.

When he came to the capital to work as an extra, Qi Hao had taken care of him.

When he had no money at all, Qi Hao was one of the few in the entertainment circle who lent him cash.

“Come here, I’ve got something to ask you!” Qi Hao nodded to Wang Yanhui standing beside Wang Baoqiang, then pulled Wang Baoqiang aside to a quiet spot.

“Tell me, was it you spreading rumors that I went singing with Gao Yuanyuan?”

Seeing Wang Baoqiang, Qi Hao showed no good expression—he’d actually thought the guy was simple-minded, had lent him money, and even introduced him to plenty of girlfriends.

“Ah, no, I didn’t,” Wang Baoqiang said, confused. “You really did go.”

“Damn it, I wasn’t the only one there! Look at how the media wrote it—they said I was intimately hanging out with Gao Yuanyuan. Intimate? What intimate? The whole private room was packed. What was I supposed to be intimate with?”

Just thinking about it gave Qi Hao a stomachache.

Most of his gossip scandals were made up out of thin air.

They claimed he was the third party who broke up Nie Yuan and Huang Yi.

But in reality, Huang Yi and Nie Yuan had just broken up while they were filming “Wrong Wedding, Right Husband.”

What did that have to do with him?

They claimed he and Sun Li read scripts together in his room, and Sun Li screamed loudly.

Why don’t they say the director brought people into his room for a script reading?

They claimed he and An Feng had already met each other’s parents.

Come on, during the filming of “The Legend of the Condor Heroes,” An Feng’s mom was at the set every single day—it was impossible not to meet her.

They claimed he and Fan Xuexue wore matching outfits.

That photo was obviously fake; no one knew how it got tied to him and Fan Xuexue.

And now this business with Gao Yuanyuan going singing.

There were so many people there, yet they only framed him and Gao Yuanyuan—clearly a deliberate distortion of the facts.

“I explained it to the media, but they wouldn’t listen!”

Wang Baoqiang was innocent—he’d told the truth the whole time.

“When the media asked you what happened after singing, what did you say?” Qi Hao wanted to kill this guy.

“I said I didn’t know—I left early, I really didn’t know what happened after.”

Wang Baoqiang thought back.

“Damn, after singing, everyone just went home! Would it kill you to say everyone just scattered after the show?”

If Qi Hao hadn’t known Wang Baoqiang was genuinely clueless, he’d have suspected the guy had maxed out his green tea traits.

“I… oh wow, you’re right!”

Wang Baoqiang slapped his own forehead—hard enough to almost knock himself out.

“Don’t smear me again—I seriously think you’re my number-one black fan!”

“Don’t worry, Hao Ge!”

Wang Baoqiang swore.

What could Qi Hao do? He forgave him.

“Have you two finished chatting? Shouldn’t we start filming?”

Deng Zhao twisted his keychain, looking eager.

Though he was almost certainly not a fellow cultivator, facing a man who’d been linked to his girlfriend, he couldn’t possibly remain calm.

He finally understood how Chen Yixun felt when he drove and smashed into Wu Bai.

Awesome!

“Alright, get ready—let’s nail it in one take, and let Qi Hao see our skills!” Cao Baoping, seeing the set was ready, called everyone to begin filming.

He’d watched the movie “The Heavenly Dog.”

Qi Hao was willing to go all out for his role to win Best Actor, and his acting was truly excellent.

But he still wanted to see more.

Qiu Shuitian and Qiu Huogui took Li Mi’s car, stole her magazine—including the photos inside—and rushed to the riverside to meet the “contact person” for money and escape.

And Qi Hao played the contact person who was mistakenly thought to be the contact person.

In truth, he was a literary youth planning to jump off a bridge to kill himself.

Though it was just a small role, Qi Hao still gave it his all, rehearsing his lines over and over.

Especially when the makeup artist was styling him.

He didn’t just have to memorize them—he had to speak in Yunnan dialect. Delivering such a long monologue in dialect in one breath was extremely difficult.

The system mentioned some kind of training system, but he had no idea how to use it.

But clearly, there was no way to operate it now.

“Places everyone! Camera push in! Three, two, one, action!”

Cao Baoping announced the start of filming.

Wide shot: in the frame, Qi Hao leaned against the overpass railing. When Qiu Shuitian and Qiu Huogui approached, he sat on the railing.

He smiled at Qiu Shuitian and Qiu Huogui.

Seeing him smile, Qiu Shuitian and Qiu Huogui assumed he was the contact person and walked up to greet him.

Qi Hao looked at them, pushing his sunglasses down to the bridge of his nose.

Ignoring their self-introductions, he began reciting the poem calmly.

“The lake bottom is bottomless to itself, the shore shoreless to itself; its water is neither wet nor dry to itself, its waves neither singular nor individual; these waves around the stones neither too big nor too small, whispering softly to themselves, softly…”

Finally, he leaned back, completing his first shot.

The safety line held his body tightly, suspending him midair—behind him lay the next scene: falling onto Deng Zhao’s car hood.

Crew members quickly prepared the next setup.

Deng Zhao would soon drive in, and then he could enact his revenge for the stolen wife—even though if Qi Hao and Sun Li had an affair, it was he who’d taken Sun Li away from Qi Hao.

Qi Hao gripped the railing to rest.

When everything was ready, he let go, and under the wire’s pull, he crashed toward the slowly approaching car.

At the moment of impact, Qi Hao was pulled and rolled off the car.

His wig even flew off.

Cao Baoping carefully checked everything, confirmed no issues, and declared Qi Hao’s scenes finished.

No retakes—every shot was a single take.

As Cao Baoping announced it, Qi Hao received a notification from the Big Star System.

Task completed!

【Task One completed, reward: Acting +10, Script “That Mountain, That Man, That Dog”】

【Task completed, training opportunity granted】

【Training NPC: choose one—Deng Zhao / Zhou Xun / Wang Baoqiang】

【New task now released】

【Task Two: Star in a Spicy Strip commercial, difficulty: 3 stars, deadline: 15 days】

【Reward for completion: Stamina +10, Script “Wrong Wedding, Right Husband (original by Xi Juan)”】

【Penalty for failure: Three electric shocks】

Spicy… spicy… strip?

Though he knew the new task would be absurd, only now did he understand what “absurdity knocking on absurdity’s door” really meant.

Currently, Qi Hao had few endorsements.

But they were almost all top-tier: mobile phones, luxury clothing, cars, high-end watches.

He’d long stopped endorsing things like spicy strips.

Endorsing spicy strips was worse than endorsing a mop.

And endorsements weren’t chosen lightly—they defined a star’s commercial positioning.

If you endorse high-end products, more high-end brands will come to you.

If you endorse low-class products, high-end brands will avoid you to protect their own image.

As for the reward, it was as ridiculous as ever.

“Wrong Wedding, Right Husband” was already the movie Qi Hao starred in, and he’d been linked to Huang Yi—he’d earned his first-ever title as the “third party.”

Only the Stamina +10 was somewhat interesting.

The new task was another headache.

But he couldn’t refuse it.

If at the beginning, Qi Hao had gritted his teeth and let the system shock him once, he might have learned the shock’s power.

But in the end, he’d just been a coward.

Now that he had matched the system's rhythm, he could no longer muster the courage to resist.

So he could only think of ways to endorse spicy strips.

Besides the new task, there was also the reward from the previous task.

Forget the screenplay.

The 1999 film That Mountain, That Man, That Dog—now it’s 2007; what use is this screenplay?

Acting +10 might help, but he didn’t know how much it would help.

The system didn’t say how many acting points he currently had.

Surprisingly, the daily training function unlocked after completing the task allowed him to select training NPCs.

Wang Baoqiang was a friend, always available to talk to—first eliminated.

Deng Zhao’s skill level was decent, but since Qi Hao had already won the Golden Rooster Award, he looked down on him.

So the only one left to choose seemed to be Zhou Xun.

The so-called daily training unfolded in the form of a dream, requiring sleep to proceed.

Qi Hao planned to try with Zhou Xun during his sleep that night.