Chapter 10

The little assistant standing nearby hurriedly handed over an iced cola she had just taken from the mini fridge. "Calm down, calm down. It's broad daylight—everyone's either working or in school. They must be sneaking in games while slacking off. Running into someone who goes AFK is perfectly normal."

Ao Qingyuan was so furious that he gulped down more than half the bottle of cola in one go. He had no mood to play anymore. Looking around, his gaze swept over Yan Shu's RV, and he raised a brow.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

Wenren Yan, who was hiding in the RV with the air conditioning on while handling work, glanced at the person outside the window and rolled it down.

"Aren't you bored, hiding in the RV all by yourself?" Ao Qingyuan waved the script in his hand. "How about we run some scenes?"

Before filming began, the crew had held a week-long script read-through. But Ao Qingyuan's schedule had been too packed for him to attend. As for Wenren Yan, there was no need to even mention him. Thus, aside from meeting briefly on the morning of the launch press conference, the two people with the most opposing scenes in the drama had never had a chance to rehearse or discuss them. By the industry's unspoken convention, Wenren Yan, as the second male lead, should have been the one approaching Ao Qingyuan to run scenes. Unfortunately, Wenren Yan had no such awareness. Given his unusual status and even more extraordinary background, no one on the crew dared remind him.

Filming was about to start, and Ao Qingyuan felt this would not do. So he simply came to find him himself.

Wenren Yan looked at Ao Qingyuan, who was leaning against the window with an eager expression, and opened the door. "My apologies. That was an oversight on my part. Please come in."

Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Immortal-Demon Duel was the first project Ao Qingyuan took on after returning to China,

the first drama he had taken on. Before that, Ao Qingyuan had neither experience with wire work nor experience acting in front of a green screen. Especially since this was an ancient xianxia drama adapted from a game, many of its lines and settings were complicated, and even the names of the moves were rather awkward to say. Ao Qingyuan had the advantage of having played the game before, so the dialogue was not too difficult for him. Still, he was inevitably a little nervous. He wanted to rehearse with the other actors more before filming officially began.

He had originally thought Yan Shu felt the same way. But the moment he stepped into the RV and saw the retractable coffee table, along with the foreign-language materials and financial data spread across the bed, Ao Qingyuan knew he had been wrong. Yan Shu did not seem to have taken their upcoming rehearsal to heart at all. Worse still, Ao Qingyuan inexplicably felt guilty, as though he had interrupted a top student's studying.

"Have you memorized your lines?"

Wenren Yan glanced at Ao Qingyuan, amusement faintly glimmering in his eyes. "I looked them over once last night."

Ao Qingyuan raised a brow.

Wenren Yan added with a smile, "I have a pretty good memory."

Ao Qingyuan understood immediately. "Photographic memory?"

Wenren Yan nodded.

Ao Qingyuan was instantly green with envy. "That's amazing. Doesn't that mean you never have to worry about memorizing lines?"

Thinking of how he had spent last night memorizing lines until four in the morning, Ao Qingyuan could not help shedding a tear for his own misery. He became even more curious about Yan Shu. "Were you especially good at studying? What school did you attend?"

"Stanford!"

Ao Qingyuan's admiration immediately surged like an endless river. "Then you really are amazing. The best exam score I ever got was 541 on the college entrance exam. That was basically the highest score among the students Yanying admitted in my year."

Wenren Yan smiled. "You're impressive too."

After a pause, Wenren Yan took the initiative to find another topic. "But weren't you a specially recruited student? Do specially recruited students still have to take the college entrance exam?"

Ao Qingyuan explained, "I didn't take the arts entrance exam, but I did take the regular college entrance exam. I'd spent three years in high school, after all. If I hadn't taken it, I would've felt like I was missing out. My agent also said that since I was developing my career in China, I'd definitely need to focus on filming in the future. If I was going to be an actor, more experience was better. Besides, I'd already been specially recruited by Yanying at the time, so I wasn't under much pressure. I overperformed on the college entrance exam... I hadn't scored above 500 on any of my three mock exams before that."

As soon as Ao Qingyuan said that, he suddenly realized he had been talking a little too much. He tossed the topic back to Yan Shu. "So, are you still studying, or have you already graduated?"

"I've graduated."

Ao Qingyuan nodded, his gaze sweeping over the documents on the coffee table. "Did you study finance?"

Wenren Yan smiled. "Yes."

Ao Qingyuan was curious. "Then why did you come into acting?"

Wenren Yan hesitated slightly. Ao Qingyuan asked again, "Were you trading stocks just now?"

Wenren Yan looked at Ao Qingyuan with a gentle smile. He had not expected this kid, who looked so carefree and willful, to actually be so considerate. "I just bought a few casually to keep my hand in. I didn't want to get rusty after too long."

Ao Qingyuan casually pointed at the words "9:23, 12.7" marked beside a K-line chart and asked curiously, "What does that mean?"

Wenren Yan explained, "It means that at 9:23 this morning, this stock will rise to its peak of 12.7. You need to sell it all at that time."

Ao Qingyuan's eyes widened in disbelief. "No way?"

He had seen people trade stocks, but he had never seen anyone trade stocks like this. He had to be kidding, right?

"You don't believe me?" Wenren Yan raised a brow. "It'll be 9:23 soon. You can verify it yourself."

Ao Qingyuan said nothing more. He sat down beside Wenren Yan and stared wide-eyed at the computer screen. He could not actually understand market charts or K-line charts. He simply kept his eyes fixed on the time and the price. When 9:23 arrived, he saw the stock price rise from 12.4 to 12.7. Then, at 9:24, it slowly began to fall back.

"Wow!" Ao Qingyuan was so shocked his eyes went wide. He turned to Wenren Yan, his dark eyes astonishingly bright, filled with incredulous delight and a trace of admiration. "You're incredible."

After sincerely praising him, Ao Qingyuan suddenly remembered that Wenren Yan had said he needed to sell the stock at 9:23. Yet Ao Qingyuan had been sitting beside him and getting in the way, leaving Wenren Yan with no time to act at all. Ao Qingyuan hurriedly moved aside and said apologetically, "Did I stop you from making money?"

"I already instructed the trader to handle it on time," Wenren Yan said with a smile. Yan Feng Capital had recently made a blunder because it was unfamiliar with trading regulations. In order to salvage the company's image and business reputation, Wenren Yan had personally made a series of extreme moves over several days. Aside from showing off his skills, he had indeed restored the confidence of many major clients in Yan Feng Capital. What came next was routine work for the investment department, and Wenren Yan no longer needed to concern himself with it.