Lin Yuan's Pursuit

Seeing the enthusiastic response to the new promotional video, Taylor felt a complicated mix of joy and sorrow.

There was a saying: strangers only cared about how high you flew; only those who cared about you worried about whether you were tired from flying.

On one hand, Taylor was happy for Lin Yuan. His career was becoming more and more stable, and it would not be long before he soared again.

But on the other hand, this was also the first time she had seen the price Lin Yuan paid for his career.

She had first become a fan of Lin Yuan because of the sword dance in the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon trailer. In the video, Lin Yuan wore flowing white robes and seemed like someone from a fairyland.

It was an extraordinary, unworldly image that evoked nothing but pure beauty.

But that beauty was built upon illusion. At its core, it was detached and divorced from reality.

Yet Lin Yuan's next two films revealed his truest side:

That white-robed youth living in tranquil splendor was not the real him. The one risking his life during filming and enduring injuries and pain was.

If you wanted glory before others, you had to suffer behind the scenes.

Who could possibly succeed so easily?

Whenever Taylor saw Lin Yuan crash heavily to the ground in the videos, his eyes bloodshot and red, her nose would sting, and she had to fight hard not to cry.

She would not melodramatically urge Lin Yuan to stop. It was the path he had chosen, and she chose to support him quietly.

What she could do was work even harder in her own daily training, debut as soon as possible, and be of help to Lin Yuan.

Taylor looked at the moon outside the window and could not help wondering, What is Lin Yuan doing right now?

Lin Yuan was looking out at New York's bustling nightscape.

At midnight tomorrow, The Fast and the Furious and Jurassic Park 3 would premiere.

Under the joint marketing campaign, the two films had secured initial screening shares of 15% and 25%, respectively.

Although that was far lower than The Mummy Returns' 40% initial screening share, Lin Yuan was already quite satisfied with such results given the low promotional budgets for the two films.

After all, such screening shares were not top-tier, but they were certainly not low.

And they were only the initial screening shares. They would gradually be adjusted based on word of mouth and attendance.

Lin Yuan had prepared all kinds of contingency plans and was confident that both the box office and screening shares would keep rising.

He believed that with the success of these two films, the next stage of his acting career would broaden, officially setting him on the road to superstardom.

In truth, ever since his rebirth, Lin Yuan had seriously considered many times what kind of life he wanted to live.

Rebirth was a gift from heaven. If he still drifted through life in a muddle, it would truly be the greatest disrespect to life.

Understanding what one truly wanted was not actually that easy.

What did you want most?

For this question, many people's first reaction was: money!

Then an infuriating sentence would immediately pop into their minds:

"I have no interest in money."

That statement was incredibly Versailles and gave people a hypocritical impression.

For the masses struggling to make a living, their first reaction upon hearing it would be furious rage:

You have no interest, but I do!

If you have no interest, why make so much money?

If you have no interest, why not give it to me?

You made all the money, and you still want to put on airs and say pretty things?

Therefore, saying such a thing in public was bound to be unpopular and would only invite ridicule.

But if viewed from another angle, it also proved that he had not been entirely lying:

He was already the richest man. Was there anything more important and worth pursuing than money for him?

Obviously, there was.

When people had no money, they treated money as their foremost pursuit.

But after truly becoming wealthy, the vast majority of people developed pursuits on a higher level.

As a reborn man standing at the forefront of the era's tidal wave, money, fame, women... things ordinary people desperately sought all became easily attainable to him.

Too many choices instead brought confusion and uncertainty.

It was not that money lacked appeal, nor that beautiful women lacked temptation. But once he became lost in them, he would only regret wasting this precious rebirth when old age approached.

He had also read many rebirth novels. Many of the ways their protagonists buried themselves in making money were not suitable for Lin Yuan.

For example, some protagonists, after being reborn, bought Bitcoin and held it for a few years, earning tens of billions of dollars. Was it really that easy?

The world was not that simple. The reason Bitcoin could later rise to that price was not only its indispensable function in anonymous payments, but more importantly because countless forces behind it were pushing hard.

Because once Bitcoin's price was driven up, everyone got a share of the meat, so they all worked together.

If you held too few chips, you would not think the gains were worth much.

But if you swallowed up most of the chips, would those forces behind the scenes still keep pushing? They would only choose to start another game and create something like Litecoin or Ethereum.

And did you have the ability to set up such a game yourself?

Even if you did, as someone reborn, would you spend your effort and advanced knowledge on this?

For example, some protagonists, after being reborn, entered real estate and profited from the era's boom.

Lin Yuan would not choose that path either. Leaving aside real estate's inherently unjust, bloodsucking nature, he also deeply disliked having to spend all day cultivating government connections.

He did not want to trade fake pleasantries and clink glasses with a group of bloated middle-aged men while conducting dirty exchanges of interest. He rejected such things from the bottom of his heart.

Start an internet company? Enter the high-tech industry?

If you wanted to control a company and take the biggest slice of the pie, you had to do it personally. Did you expect to make an early investment and simply wait for it to take off?

Which founding emperor had not won his realm with his own hands?

Without enough strength to claim that slice of the pie, acting as a hands-off boss would only get you sidelined, your shares diluted, and yourself thrown out the door.

And for Lin Yuan, even if he was willing to build a company from the ground up, there would still be a ceiling.

His Chinese heritage allowed him, in certain situations, to benefit from both sides between the two great powers and enjoy many advantages.

But if he wanted to enter fields tied to the lifeblood of the national economy and gain ownership of the means of production, things would immediately become awkward.

Neither side would find it easy to truly regard him as one of their own. And as a Chinese American, what right did he have to hold such a divine weapon?

What other paths were left?

Enter politics? This was America. As a Chinese American, was he trying to fly to heaven?

Fortunately, Lin Yuan had not been blinded by all kinds of desires.

He knew very clearly what he wanted. Compared with money and power, he wanted fame more.

A hundred years from now, his name would still be legendary, and those who came after would still sing his praises.

His achievements would become an immortal monument, admired by countless people.

That was the life Lin Yuan wanted.

To achieve that, he would not only have to reach the pinnacle, but break through it and accomplish things beyond ordinary people's imagination.

Fortunately, with the system's support, this path toward becoming a super action star was feasible.

He would surpass Jackie Chan, surpass Bruce Lee, surpass every superstar in history, and become that one and only, incomparable superstar.

Of Maslow's five levels of needs, the highest was self-actualization. Lin Yuan wholeheartedly agreed.