Huang Min is a college student. Not only that, but her college is located thousands of miles away from her hometown.
With the arrival of summer vacation, Huang Min returned home after a semester's break and enjoyed a few days of imperial life, pampered and spoiled by her parents, with everything done for her. However, her parents soon grew tired of her, and Huang Min once again plummeted from imperial status back to the lowly laborer of the Imperial Laundry.
Besides being her parents' daughter and a student, Huang Min has another identity: a big fan of Luan Qing, one of the top celebrities in the entertainment industry today (in the fans' mouths, this "one of" can be removed).
Luan Qing had an effeminate appearance, a slender figure, and fair skin, looking so delicate that a gust of wind could knock him over. Huang Min felt her heart flutter the moment she saw him, and then became hopelessly infatuated. From junior high school until now, she has been following Luan Qing for six or seven years.
Today is the premiere of Luan Qing's new drama "Bai Fa Xiang Jun".
The drama "The White-Haired Xiangjun" is something Huang Min both loves and hates. Filming began in 2011, a time when time-travel dramas were incredibly popular, and several actors rose to fame through them. The genre suddenly became highly sought after. Overnight, countless time-travel dramas flooded the market, and "The White-Haired Xiangjun" was one of them.
At the time, Luan Qing was still a second-tier actor when he was fortunate enough to land the role of the male lead in "The White-Haired Xiangjun." Huang Min, who was a new fan at the time, was overjoyed and cried with a group of fans on the online forum. Everyone thought that Luan Qing's rise to fame was just around the corner, and that as long as the drama was filmed and broadcast, he would quickly rise to stardom and become a top star who could crush his rivals.
Luan Qing spent over 300 days on set for this drama, and including promotion and hype, she dedicated more than a year to the production of "The White-Haired Xiangjun." However, just two days after filming wrapped, before the permits were even issued, a document came down from above—"restricting period dramas that use time travel as a gimmick." Luan Qing's year-long efforts went down the drain.
From then on, "The White-Haired Xiangjun" was completely shelved. Luan Qing's path to stardom also suffered a major setback, and it took her two full years to recover.
Fortunately, since the beginning of this year, the authorities seem to have relaxed some of the censorship of film and television. Major film and television companies in the entertainment industry are overjoyed, and have been re-editing, dubbing, and repackaging their backlog of old time-travel dramas, historical fiction dramas, and fantasy dramas, and quietly releasing them. This naturally includes Luan Qing's "The White-Haired Xiangjun."
The hatred stems from the fact that this drama wasted more than a year of Luan Qing's life; the love comes from the fact that in this drama, one can see the naive and inexperienced Luan Qing from five years ago.
"The White-Haired Xiangjun" adopted a combination of live television broadcast and online streaming. Luan Qing's audience has always been primarily teenage women, while the main users of television remote controls nationwide have historically been middle-aged and elderly people. The fan community knew that they couldn't rely on live television viewership. Therefore, the "Qingque Sisters" (Luan Qing's fans) had already decided to focus all their efforts on boosting online viewership.
Early in the morning, Huang Min turned on her two mobile phones, a computer, and a tablet, connecting them to mobile data, her own Wi-Fi, her neighbor's Wi-Fi, and even the Wi-Fi of the breakfast shop downstairs, and then logged into Holo Video with different accounts.
The premiere of "The White-Haired Xiangjun" was synchronized with the television broadcast at 7:35 PM. Even though there were still a few minutes until the official premiere, the comment section on the video website was already flooded with comments from viewers, constantly pushing the show's popularity.
Huang Min moved swiftly, skillfully copying and pasting fifty comments using four accounts, when suddenly she remembered something.
Huang Min jumped up from her desk and ran towards the living room. After a couple of steps, she remembered something and turned back to her desk.
I almost forgot to turn the volume up to over 30% on all four machines. These days, video websites are so cunning; they can manipulate the playback volume in the background. According to the experienced Qingque (a popular video streaming platform), if the volume is below 30% during playback, it won't be counted as valid views.
After doing all this, Huang Min jumped into the living room to stop her parents.
Today is not only the premiere day of Luan Qing's "Bai Fa Xiang Jun", but also the premiere day of that bastard Shi Shan's "Tian Ban"!
Shi Shan is the artist Huang Min dislikes the most in the entertainment industry, even more so than those actresses who have worked with Luan Qing and tried to piggyback on her fame.
Shi Shan and Luan Qing are both artists under Tianding Entertainment. They were born in the same year, are the same age, and the same gender, and even entered the entertainment industry around the same time. This combination destined them to be mortal enemies from the very beginning. From resource allocation to agent arrangements, there are opportunities to fight at every turn.
It's quite a coincidence that, although Shi Shan and Luan Qing are very different in appearance, physique, and style, their acting careers surprisingly overlap to a great extent. Luan Qing acts in idol dramas, and so does Shi Shan; Luan Qing acts in art films, and so does Shi Shan; Luan Qing transitions to commercial films, and so does Shi Shan… In the entertainment industry, where there are far more actors than roles, such a high degree of overlap in acting careers inevitably leads to friction.
Furthermore, there are numerous rumors circulating that many projects and directors originally favored Luan Qing, but were snatched away by Shi Shan, whose family background and connections were even stronger. Luan Qing's current predicament of repeatedly failing to gain entry into the film industry is partly attributed to Shi Shan's competition for resources. On Shi Shan's side, similar rumors are also prevalent. Therefore, Shi Shan's fan group, "Climbing Tiger Sister," and Luan Qing's fan group, "Blue Sparrow Sister," are already irreconcilably opposed within the industry. Every time they meet, a fierce battle ensues within a few words.
This war dragged on for a long time, and over time, even passersby gained considerable insight. Among the topics related to Shi Shan and Luan Qing, several enduringly amusing anecdotes emerged—
"Sister Bird and Sister Blur are at it again."
"Sister Hu and Sister Niao are about to arrive on the battlefield."
"Sister Hu and Sister Niao came as soon as they smelled it."
"Sister Bird and Sister Hu are attacking, I'm running first."
And, "I'm starting to really like Hu Jie and Niao Jie."
Regardless of which of these rumors are true or false, in Huang Min's heart, Shi Shan is already the number one enemy. She is willing to exchange the lifespan of all those despicable people from the Climbing Ivy gang for Shi Shan's violent death on the street and his inability to recover!
Shi Shan recently cast a struggling actress as the second lead in some kind of spy drama. Huang Min felt a mix of joy and worry, her emotions were incredibly complex.
The joy, of course, stemmed from the fact that Shi Shan had been relegated to second lead, a role that naturally overshadowed the leading man, Luan Qing. This was enough to make Qingque (a popular online figure) a laughingstock for three years. Upon learning this, Huang Min was overjoyed, posting over a hundred "hahaha"s on Weibo, which were then retweeted hundreds of times by Qingque's followers. Huang Min even secretly thanked the actress named Ye Chu—regardless of her background, as long as it brought misfortune to Shi Shan and the unpopular actress, she was happy.
The concern stems from the subject matter. Spy dramas are the most serious of serious dramas; serious dramas are superior to idol dramas, and spy dramas are superior to time-travel dramas—this is an indisputable ironclad rule. Although Shi Shan is the second lead, his name is still listed as a leading actor. Spy dramas have a high standard, so even a casual broadcast will yield good results. If "Tianban" surpasses "Baifa Xiangjun" in performance, then Qingque's mockery of Climbing Tiger will become a boomerang.
Huang Min slipped into the living room. The news and weather forecast had just finished, and Huang Min's mother was changing the channel with the remote. Huang Min silently stood behind her mother, held her breath, and prayed fervently: "Please don't let it be Ru Guan, please don't let it be Ru Guan..."
The image on the giant LCD screen stopped. Huang Min stared at the two strong and weathered characters on the station logo—"Ru Guan"—and then everything went black.
Just what I feared most has come to pass!
Ruguan TV's setup was quite lavish. Along the edge of the advertisement, two huge, bold, ink-wash characters, "Tianban," were prominently displayed. The characters were powerful and vigorous, appearing to be from the same hand as the characters on the Ruguan TV logo, easily drawing attention. Below the ink-wash characters hung a timer shaped like a simple pocket watch, next to which was a line of smaller text: [132 seconds until the premiere of "Tianban"].
The moment Huang Min's gaze fell upon it, "132" jumped to "131".
Anyone with eyes can tell what this TV station is going to broadcast next. Ru Guan TV is really something else, insisting the whole world know their show is about to premiere?
"Mom," Huang Min forced a smile, pretending to be blind, "what do you want to see?"
“You’re reading ‘Halfway to the Sky’?” It was Mr. Huang who answered. “Do you know ‘Halfway to the Sky’? It’s a wonderful poem! — ‘The smoke and dust roll in from halfway to the sky. Awakening millions of workers and peasants, let them unite as one…’”
Mr. Huang began reciting poetry, swaying his head. Huang Min, who neither understood nor was interested in it, impatiently interrupted her father: "What's so interesting about 'Tianban'? Fengyang is airing 'Feihua Zhuyue Ling' today, I want to watch that."
Huang Min's parents didn't like Luan Qing, so Huang Min didn't dare to directly recommend "The White-Haired Xiangjun" to them. She could only take a roundabout approach. It didn't matter whether they watched "Flying Flowers Chasing the Moon" or the weather forecast, as long as the ratings didn't skyrocket.
"Go ahead and watch if you want," said Mrs. Huang, puzzled. "Don't you have a computer in your room?"
Huang Min snuggled up to her mother and said, "I want to watch it with you!"
Mrs. Huang wasn't buying it: "Then I'll watch it with you tomorrow. I want to watch 'Half of Heaven' tonight. That 'Flower Moon' thing, the characters in it are drawn like neither human nor ghost, it's scary to watch at night."
Mr. Huang chimed in, "You should watch TV dramas that are beneficial! Learn new things!"
Mr. Huang was always fond of lecturing, so Huang Min retorted without hesitation: "I'm already in college, why would I need to learn from TV dramas? Don't I listen in class?"
Mr. Huang's eyes narrowed: "How dare you talk to your father like that?"
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