Chapter 5: Killed Off

February 19, 2021kaychandra

Chapter 5: Killed Off
Translated and edited by KChandraTL

Even the most powerful heroes had to grow old one day, and even the most ambitious emperor would miss his youth.

The aged emperor sat on the golden dragon throne. At his feet kneeled all the civil servants of the court, and the cry of “long live” seemed indistinct and distant.

Snowflakes, along with the cold wind, blew into the solemn hall. His eyes looked blankly in a certain direction outside the gate, but unfortunately, nothing could be seen but a blanket of white.

“What is the hour?” His voice carried the darkness characteristic of an old man, but even so, he didn’t reveal any semblance of the wretchedness of old age, but rather carried a hint of calmness and elegance.

“Your Majesty, it’s already seven in the morning.” The little eunuch beside him replied in a low voice.

The emperor smiled and sighed with indistinct emotion: “It’s actually this time of the day…”

Sometimes machines were better at capturing small details than people, so close-up shots tended to focus more on eye play. In the monitor, the aging emperor’s eyes were very complex, with longing, confusion, remorse, but ultimately relief.

In the original novel, the third male lead was just a male vase that advanced the plot. Although the adapted script was slightly more focused than the original, it was only because of the impact Gongxi Qiao’s face would have on the ratings, with no thought given to the plausibility of the character’s emotions. Anyway, for this type of drama, the male protagonist and supporting male characters just needed to be explicitly in love, secretly in love, or sadistically in love with the female protagonist.

Whether it fit their identity and nature or not didn’t matter at all.　
Instead, Gongxi Qiao didn’t change his lines, but relied on acting with his eyes to enhance the whole character. It was as if you gave a handful of cabbage to the chef, and he gave you a wonderful fried chicken flavor. How could this not be a surprise?

Director Zhang once also had ambitions of becoming a high profile director and dreamed of making a stunning masterpiece, but after staying in the entertainment industry for a long time, he gradually only valued ratings and attention, and whether he could get more investment money from investors. As to whether the plot of the drama made sense and whether the costumes were authentic, it wasn’t so important. His dreams were the stuff of scorn.

If you see this message this content has been stolen. Please read at KChandraTL [dot] wordpress [dot] com.

Congratulations to Xiao Qiao for your death scene.” He took a red envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Gongxi Qiao, then smilingly said, ” Let’s work together again next time.”

Gongxi Qiao smiled and agreed. After removing his makeup, he took a group photo with the crew before getting on the plane back to the imperial capital. This time, in order to shoot on location, he had been away from home for almost two weeks. His parents were worried every day that he wasn’t eating well or sleeping well and they would have called every hour if they had not been worried about affecting his shooting, so now they were going back early to stop them from worrying.

Because their shooting location was in the countryside, the crew worried that he wouldn’t be able to call a car and specially arranged for someone to drive him and He Peng to the airport.

The driver was a forty-year-old man, and before Gongxi Qiao got out of the car and entered the airport, he took a picture with him and asked for an autographed photo, saying he was taking it home to his daughter.

Gongxi Qiao knew that the other party was just doing him a favor and giving him face. What he said about bringing it home to his daughter was just a pretext. Who would care about the photos of a newcomer who wasn’t famous?

After checking in, he lifted his wrist and looked at the time. “There is still one more hour before we board the plane, let’s go to the waiting room and wait for a while.”

He Peng naturally had no problem with it so the two of them dragged their suitcases and went to the VIP lounge area.

The VIP lounge area wasn’t crowded, and the atmosphere inside was very comfortable. Gongxi Qiao was a little tired from all the continuous shooting in the past few days, so he asked for a glass of sweetened milk and drank a few mouthfuls before leaning back on the sofa for a light nap.

He Peng saw this, took out a blanket from the suitcase to cover him, and sat in silence reading a book.

Half an hour later, a few men passed by the sofa where they were sitting. He looked up and saw that the man in the lead was young, but with an extraordinary aura and could tell that he wasn’t an ordinary person, so he lowered his head and didn’t look more.

“What time is it?” Gongxi Qiao suddenly opened his eyes. Although his face was still tired, the presence of a stranger passing by made him wake up as fast as possible.

“There is still nearly half an hour to go.” He Peng replied in a small voice.

“Oh.” Gongxi Qiao rubbed his temples and got up. “It’s nearly time, let’s go.” He got up and walked a few steps only to find someone in front of him blocking the way ahead, so he said, “Excuse me, excuse me.”

After a few men in front of him looked at him, they silently moved aside, and after he walked past, he politely nodded to them with a smile, “Many thanks.”

He Peng handed the suitcase to the staff and let them arrange the boarding trolley, then… Circled around a half circle to avoid the path taken by the men in front of him and quickly caught up with Gongxi Qiao.

Among the few people that Gongxi Qiao passed by, the man in the lead glanced at him and said to the one behind him, “Go arrange for boarding.”

After boarding the plane, Gongxi Qiao leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. He was sleepy, but couldn’t sleep. He didn’t ask for the airplane meal sent by the flight attendant. He was so sleepy now that he had no appetite for food.

He Peng asked the flight attendant to pour a glass of juice, and he handed it to Gongxi Qiao: “Qiao Shao[1], have a glass of juice.”

“Thank you,” Gongxi Qiao took a sip of the juice, yawned, and pulled up the blanket covering his body, “You shouldn’t go home later. Go and spend the night at my house, I’m too lazy to be bothered in the middle of the night.”

“I’ll take you up on your offer then.” He Peng also didn’t push back, he lived a little far away, staying in the Gongxi home for one night was fine.

You are reading story Entertainment Industry Acting Emperor at novel35.com

Xi Qing put down the book in his hand, glanced at the two people talking in whispers next to him, and saw one of the youths huddled in a blanket, with a very lazy look.

He twitched his eyebrows and withdrew his gaze to continue reading, and the two youths next to him didn’t speak again.

The bodyguard sitting next to Xi Qing noticed Xi Qing’s eyes and followed his glance. Wasn’t this the youth he met in the lounge just now? He didn’t expect to be on the same flight as them. When the plane landed after a little over an hour, Gongxi Qiao walked out of the security checkpoint and saw his dad standing there waiting for him in a flowery shirt with a gold necklace and gold watch, and there was no one within a two-meter radius around him.

“Son, here.” Once Gongxi Xiong saw Gongxi Qiao, and the serious face suddenly blossomed into a smile as he took a few steps forward, “I told you the days of the crew were hard, look how long it’s been since you went out, you’ve thinned out.”

He Peng behind the two father and son:…

Why didn’t he see where Qiao Shao lost weight? What kind of eyes did the big boss have?

“Have I?” Gongxi Qiao looked down at himself, “I weighed myself the other day in the crew, and I was two pounds heavier.”

“Then there must be something wrong with the scale,” Gongxi Xiong snatched the suitcase from his hand, “Go, go home for dinner, I asked the nanny to cook a delicious meal for you, to make up for it.”

“Xiao He, you come too,” Gongxi Xiong turned his head to He Peng. “It’s been a hard time taking care of our Xiao Qiao.”

“No, no, Qiao Shao is very nice, it’s not hard at all.” When He Peng first met Gongxi Xiong, his heart was still a little scared, but after a period of time together, he found that Gongxi Xiong was a good man who would give way automatically when he saw a child. He was just a little fierce-looking, and his aesthetic was… Slightly harsh.

Because Gongxi Qiao’s role had been killed, he had nothing to do, so in the following days he simply bought a few books about acting to bring back and read. Occasionally, he was invited by some organizations to take his paintings and calligraphy to some exhibitions, and he even sold a few of his works as a result.

After about two months of this leisurely life, he received a call from the crew, saying that the film would be premiering on TV at the end of the month, and the network rights had also been sold. Now the crew wanted to carry out publicity and hoped that he could participate in the publicity work of the crew.

In fact, a newcomer like him had nothing to do with the promotion of the drama, but the director and producer wanted to promote him, so he wouldn’t be left out of this occasion to increase exposure.

Of course, Gongxi Qiao wasn’t as naive and harmless as he appeared to be, so he accepted the crew’s invitation right away and agreed to participate in the recording of the program two days later.

Nowadays, half of the TV series’ ratings depended on quality and half on publicity, and as for how to do it, it depended on the crew’s ability to plan. Whether it was black or white, as long as it didn’t cause a universal boycott, then there was no need to worry about the subject matter, and no one was concerned. When the attention went up, the ratings went up, and the Internet traffic also went up.

For example, Zhou Huaisheng and Chen Wen, the two main actors, started rumors of a relationship two weeks ago. The two occasionally had some small ambiguous interactions on Weibo, but to say that the two were a couple, neither side acknowledged it.

The team also wanted Gongxi Qiao to open a micro-blog in order to facilitate the online aspect of the publicity.

Although Gongxi Qiao didn’t own a financial company and didn’t understand the secret operations of the circle, he was aware of how muddy the water of this circle was after all the scheming and calculations in his past life.

After thinking about it, he registered an account in accordance with the crew’s wishes, with a microblogging name of Gongxi Qiao, and then sent out his first microblog.

Gongxi Qiao: At the request of the company, opening a micro-blog ︿(￣︶￣) ︿ @”Princess of the Closed Moon” official Weibo.

He also followed the other people in the cast before closing the Weibo page, and then chose the most comfortable position to watch a comedy film.

After Chen Wen knew that Gongxi Qiao had opened a Weibo account, she quickly followed him, and also reposted his microblog. The content of her repost was: if you have the ability to open a Weibo page, you have the ability to add photos ah! @GongXiQiao

The female fans of Chen Wen remembered who Gongxi Qiao was and left messages under his Weibo, saying that the goddess should be more reserved. No matter how beautiful the man was you couldn’t destroy your image. Drop the pretty boy and let them have a turn.

T/N:
[1] Qiao Shao: Shao means “Young Master,” the son of a noble family. I’m keeping it as Shao because Qiao Shao is used a lot and it’s much catchier than Young Master Qiao.

You can find story with these keywords: Entertainment Industry Acting Emperor, Read Entertainment Industry Acting Emperor, Entertainment Industry Acting Emperor novel, Entertainment Industry Acting Emperor book, Entertainment Industry Acting Emperor story, Entertainment Industry Acting Emperor full, Entertainment Industry Acting Emperor Latest Chapter