Page 7

They had probably been hoping to use a dead horse as if it were alive.

But now, it truly seemed there was no road without a way out. Perhaps the chance for Huaxia Imperial Entertainment to rise again really lay with this show. At that thought, everyone in the company could not help but grow excited.

Lu Heng did not care how Huaxia Imperial Entertainment and Exchanging Lives planned to promote themselves. When he had filmed the show in his previous life, he had not known about the feud between Huaxia Imperial Entertainment and Star Entertainment. Only after learning about it later did he understand why people had called him ungrateful for merely signing a contract. By then, though, it was too late.

After being reborn and seizing the initiative in this life, he had unintentionally helped the police crack a major human trafficking case. Lu Heng remembered that, when he had seen reports of the case being solved in his previous life, far more women and children had been rescued than this time. It seemed that by recognizing those criminals ten years early, he had invisibly saved many people from their fates.

Every boy harbored a dream of becoming a hero, and Lu Heng was no exception. In his previous life, though, he had mostly played heroes on the big screen. This was the first time in both his lives that he had performed a truly brave deed in reality.

In the eyes of outsiders, Lu Heng, who had just become a little hero, showed no excitement or delight whatsoever. During the days he had been forced to remain in J City, his attitude had been exceptionally composed. He asked the guesthouse staff for quite a few recent gossip newspapers and weekly magazines, then carefully read through them one by one as though studying in earnest. He even took notes while reading.

Just as everyone was wondering what Lu Heng intended to do, Lu Zhenjun and his wife, having learned of their son's situation from the police, arrived from Lu Family Village on a tractor.

The moment they reached the guesthouse, they gave Lu Heng a furious scolding from head to toe!

Father and Mother Lu did not oppose Lu Heng being a hero, but when they thought of their fourteen-year-old child confronting seven or eight criminals, criminals with knives and guns, with a gun even having been pointed at their son, cold sweat broke out all over them. They had rushed over from the village overnight. When they saw Lu Heng staying at the guesthouse with the leisure to read gossip papers and take notes, their anger shot straight to their heads.

The Lu family had never made a habit of hitting children. Terrified out of his wits, Father Lu stood in the room, loudly lecturing Lu Heng while slapping the table to vent his frustration. His palm struck the wooden table again and again, making it thunderously shake. In the end, the poor table could not withstand Father Lu's violence and collapsed with a crash. The teapot and cups on top fell to the floor, and the production crew members hiding outside the door to listen were all shaken with lingering fear.

So that was where Lu Heng's skills had come from!

Wei Linxuan, who had arrived together with Lu Zhenjun and his wife, was also intensely curious about Lu Heng. As the planner of the reality show Exchanging Lives, Wei Linxuan had chosen this program to demonstrate his abilities for many reasons.

As the only son of Huaxia Imperial Entertainment's chairman, fifteen-year-old Wei Linxuan enjoyed not only material abundance but also all manner of temptations from within the entertainment industry. More troublesome still were the ulterior motives of his own family members.

Teenagers of fifteen or sixteen were at a stage of growth, always full of all kinds of fantasies about the opposite sex. Hormones made them restless, and with deliberate seduction from people with ulterior motives, fighting over women became commonplace among men.

Back then, Wei Linxuan had heard from one of his lackeys that his aspiring actress girlfriend had hooked up with a male actor from the same production. In a moment of impulse, he had gone to duel him. Outmatched, he had been beaten into the hospital, and when he woke up, there was an extra set of memories in his mind.

He was still himself, yet it was as if part of his soul had crossed time and space without his noticing, lived for many years in another world, and then safely returned by taking advantage of this beating. His previously muddled mind had also become clear.

Before he could even sort out his thoughts, his biological father, Wei Zhanjie, came rushing over in a fury.

Father Wei had received a call from one of Wei Linxuan's classmates while attending a meeting at the company. Learning from the classmate that his son had been beaten into the hospital by some minor actor over a romantic rivalry, Wei Zhanjie flew into a rage. He immediately canceled the meeting and rushed to the hospital. Naturally, those who received the news and hurried over also included Grandpa Wei, Grandma Wei, Mother Wei, and even Wei Linxuan's eldest uncle's entire family.

The Wei family was considered a large clan. Wei Linxuan's grandfather, Wei Xiaoyun, had started out as an apprentice and built the Wei family fortune from nothing. As he grew older, he handed the family businesses over to his two sons. The eldest son—Wei Linxuan's eldest uncle, Wei Renjie—was steady and skilled at socializing, so he took over the real estate and other industrial businesses. The second son—Wei Linxuan's father, Wei Zhanjie—took over the entertainment company.

This arrangement had originally caused no trouble. However, due to the country's macroeconomic controls, the real estate industry had seen little improvement in recent years. Although Wei Renjie was highly capable and possessed sharp judgment, he could only keep the business going at a middling pace, neither gaining nor losing much.

Wei Zhanjie, on the other hand, seemed to take to the entertainment company like a fish to water after taking it over, whether because of his personality or some other reason. He successively produced several television dramas with high ratings and good reputations, elevated the company's top male and female stars, and cultivated many immensely popular and promising second-tier artists. He had even boldly ventured into the film industry, where even the old master had once suffered defeat. The Rookie Thief, made with an investment of three million, actually raked in thirty-two million at the box office by the time it left theaters, leaping to second place on that year's box office rankings. It instantly shocked countless people both inside and outside the industry.

This stood in stark contrast to the Wei family's eldest son, whose career remained lukewarm.

Many people praised Wei Zhanjie before the old master, saying he had brains and vision and had surpassed his predecessors. In addition, Old Master Wei followed old customs: he had always been strict with his eldest son while indulging his youngest in every possible way. Even Wei Zhanjie's son, Wei Linxuan, was more favored than the Wei family's eldest grandson, Wei Hongxuan, who had returned from studying abroad, simply because Wei Linxuan had grown up under the old master's watchful eye. Rumors thus spread both inside and outside the group that the old master intended to change the heir.

Even if Eldest Uncle Wei had been broad-minded, hearing such rumors repeatedly would inevitably have made him uneasy. Besides, Eldest Uncle Wei had never been broad-minded to begin with, and his highly educated son who had returned from studying abroad was even more indignant.

In Wei Hongxuan's eyes, he was far superior to his cousin in both academic performance and competence. Yet his grandfather would rather favor a worthless wastrel who attended the best high school in the city yet failed every subject, who only knew how to flatter and sweet-talk the elders, than value him. It was simply unreasonable.