Page 41

"Did you think you could deceive everyone? Modern technology is so advanced. All I need is a paternity test to expose you as the impostor you are. Do you really take all of us for fools?"

"You lowborn bastard spawned by a drunkard and a whore, you actually dared to impersonate my son. I'll make you pay for your greed!"

According to Yu Mingze's original plot, Gu Mingchao's parents and Fu Shen, played by Ye Mingzhao, erupted into a fierce conflict after the truth was exposed. Upon suddenly learning Fu Shen's identity, Gu Mingchao's parents simply could not accept the fact. They humiliated Fu Shen with the most vicious and cutting words imaginable. Deeply provoked, Fu Shen tore off his usual disguise and revealed his greedy, ruthless side.

To establish the villain as more vivid and multifaceted—treacherous, ruthless, and utterly vicious—Yu Mingze had also designed a five-minute monologue for Fu Shen. He had Ye Mingzhao, from Fu Shen's perspective, go on at length about Fu Shen's life from childhood to adulthood and why he had clawed his way upward by any means necessary. The two sides clashed violently due to their differing values and positions, and Fu Shen, played by Ye Mingzhao, became so agitated that he accidentally killed the Gu family elders.

But during the filming just now, Ye Mingzhao had abandoned that lengthy monologue. After hearing Chairman Gu's utterly undignified insults, he merely gave a contemptuous smile. "That's just what you think. It doesn't matter to me."

After saying that, he picked up a bottle of red wine and swung it at Chairman Gu's head. The unprepared Chairman Gu was struck on the spot and collapsed unconscious. Gu Mingchao's mother screamed in terror, only to be knocked unconscious by Fu Shen with the wine bottle as well.

The cameraman responsible for filming Ye Mingzhao instinctively pushed the camera closer, finally freezing on Fu Shen's eyes.

At the joint signal of director Li Zhengzheng and screenwriter Yu Mingze, the makeup artist stepped forward to touch up Ye Mingzhao's makeup. What finally appeared on the monitor was an extreme low-angle close-up of Fu Shen's face—

Deep-blue light shone down from overhead. His neatly slicked-back hair had become disheveled, falling over his smooth forehead. A streak of blood had splattered across Fu Shen's young, handsome face, and a bright-red drop had landed in his right eye. His pitch-black pupil instantly turned crimson. The drop of blood trailed down from his right eye, leaving a shocking bloody tear across his fair face. Yet Fu Shen's gaze, fixed directly on the camera, was utterly calm, utterly profound, utterly mad.

Like a tranquil sea concealing a thunderstorm, placid on the surface yet capable of stirring up hurricane-force waves in an instant.

The moment Ye Mingzhao raised his eyes toward the camera, the entire set was stunned.

No one spoke for a long while.

In the script's original setup, Yu Mingze had intended for Fu Shen to accidentally kill someone during the argument. But under Ye Mingzhao's interpretation, it became Fu Shen erupting into violence and killing them outright after learning that his identity had been exposed.

And the line he had delivered with utter disdain before acting—"That's just what you think. It doesn't matter to me."—more directly and nakedly revealed Fu Shen's brutality, ruthlessness, arrogance, and conceit.

He had not even been enraged by Chairman Gu's vicious and venomous words. He had simply killed to keep the secret, cleanly and decisively. And the reason he had remained unmoved by Chairman Gu's malicious curses was not because he was broad-minded or capable of enduring what ordinary people could not; it was because, in Fu Shen's eyes, Chairman Gu was already dead.

A dead man's curses and abuse before his death were nothing more than the roar of the weak. He would never take them to heart.

Thus, a villain greedy and ruthless, selfish and self-serving, capable of every evil, willing to stop at nothing to climb higher, and treating human life as worthless leaped vividly onto the screen.

The crew members watching nearby sucked in a breath of cold air. For a moment, they were even somewhat afraid to meet Ye Mingzhao's eyes.

Even Yu Mingze had not expected that under Ye Mingzhao's interpretation, the villain Fu Shen could be brought to such a level.

Mad, brutal, twisted, revolting—and a complete sociopath.

If Fu Shen had previously still inspired pity because of his tragic childhood, then at this moment, anyone with normal values would never feel sympathy for such a deranged villain.

"How did you come up with that scene?" Yu Mingze looked at Ye Mingzhao in utter confusion. After so many years as a screenwriter, he had never created such a twisted character.

Ye Mingzhao frowned slightly. "It just came to me in a flash while we were filming, as though I'd been possessed by the character. Even I don't know why I said that line at the time."

Understanding dawned on Yu Mingze, and he immediately explained it to Ye Mingzhao himself. "Don't be afraid. You got into character. A lot of actors perform like that after they immerse themselves in a role. Usually, this kind of improvisation becomes the finishing touch of an entire production. You know so-and-so, right..."

As Yu Mingze spoke, he began giving Ye Mingzhao examples. After listing several well-known cases from the industry, Yu Mingze smiled and reassured him, "This is a good thing. A mature actor with ideas will always have flashes of inspiration and improvise during a performance. Otherwise, they're just puppets who can only follow the script word for word. People like that may also be called actors, but they'll never achieve mastery!"

"There are a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand people. As an actor, if you devote yourself wholeheartedly to a character and immerse yourself in tasting the character's past life, how could you possibly have no thoughts of your own?"

At that, Yu Mingze patted Ye Mingzhao on the shoulder. "So I firmly believe that you'll become an incredible master of acting. You're simply a born actor."

"That's right." Director Li Zhengzheng, seated nearby, along with the veteran actors acting opposite Ye Mingzhao, also nodded in agreement. "You really do have a talent for acting."

"Really?" Ye Mingzhao looked at everyone with watery eyes sparkling brightly, clearly touched by their heartfelt encouragement.

As they spoke, a sudden commotion broke out outside the set. The noisy crowd and the assistant director's efforts to maintain order mingled together like a kettle coming to a boil.

"Everyone, please quiet down. Please don't interfere with the crew's normal filming—"

At the filming site of Beggar Prince, the assistant director in charge of maintaining order stood in a line with several stagehands, doing everything they could to block the swarm of media reporters rushing in. Unfortunately, it had little effect.

"Could you let Young Master Ye Mingzhao come out and accept our interview?"

"We received a tip from an online user claiming to know clues about Ye Mingzhao's biological parents. They even directly revealed the name and identity of Ye Mingzhao's biological mother. What are Mr. Ye Mingzhao's thoughts on this matter?"

"There are rumors that Mr. Ye Linyuan, chairman of Ye Group, recently transferred one percent of his Ye Group shares to his adopted son, Ye Mingzhao. Will this affect Mr. Ye Mingzhao's reunion with his biological parents?"

The reporters' piercing questions entered the set through microphones. Everyone exchanged looks before instinctively turning toward Ye Mingzhao.

Ye Mingzhao still wore his harmless smile, but for some reason, everyone felt that beneath the tenderness in his eyes and brows, there was now a faint edge of sharpness.

"Let them in." Ye Mingzhao nodded to Director Li and Yu Mingze.

Yu Mingze looked at Ye Mingzhao with deep concern. He had seen the gossip news exposing Ye Mingzhao's biological parents early that morning and had immediately notified Ye Mingzhao, intending to speak out for him in the name of the crew. But Ye Mingzhao had insisted on ignoring it and continued filming as usual.

Now that the reporters had come knocking, judging by their aggressive manner, they probably could not simply be brushed off.

Yu Mingze was worried, but Ye Mingzhao remained completely unfazed.

After all, in the original novel, he had studied similar scenes word by word, over and over again. Just as Yu Mingze had said, a mature actor always had to learn to improvise. He might not be the male lead and did not have any so-called protagonist's halo, but he could choose the right moment to give things a push and steer events in a direction favorable to himself.

Just as now, the person behind the scenes who was eager to find Ye Mingzhao's biological parents was not Chu Hengyi, the male lead, but Zhou Yueze, whom Ye Mingzhao had forced into a corner. And the timing of his biological mother's grand entrance as an important character was clearly not on Ye Mingzhao's twenty-second birthday, but more than two months earlier than in the original novel.