Chapter 22

Before he could finish speaking, someone coughed at the door. It was their homeroom teacher, Teacher Meng, entering with a stack of lesson plans in his arms. The students exchanged glances, then sheepishly returned to their seats.

Teacher Meng glanced at Chen Mo and said, "There are less than twenty days until the final exams. You need to study hard. If there's anything you don't understand, ask your teachers right away. Pull yourselves together. You only get one senior year. Tough it out, get into a good university—it'll affect the rest of your lives."

With that, he opened the textbook and began class. During the lesson, he called on Chen Mo several times to answer questions. Only after seeing that Chen Mo had a firm grasp of all the key material did he nod in satisfaction.

After class, Teacher Meng called Chen Mo to his office and handed him a thick stack of papers. "These are mock exams compiled by the school's teachers based on college entrance exam papers from every province over the past ten years, along with some advanced problems. Go through them and see where you stand."

Chen Mo nodded, arms full of papers. As he left the office, he happened to run into his math teacher, Pei Qingjue, in the hallway. After asking about his progress memorizing the study materials, Pei Qingjue said, "There's no rush with the stock trading. We'll talk after the final exams."

Chen Mo could only nod again.

When he returned to the classroom, Zhang Zongming was eating garlic sausage at his desk. Seeing Chen Mo come back carrying a stack of test papers, he immediately said enviously, "You really are winning at life! You're making waves filming shows and appearing at concerts outside school, yet you still get all the perks of a top student when you come back. Seriously, with so much to do every day, don't you ever get tired?"

Chen Mo shot Zhang Zongming a look. "Don't eat garlic sausage in the classroom. It's inhumane."

"Want some?" Zhang Zongming asked, pulling another packet of garlic sausage from his desk and handing it to Chen Mo.

Chen Mo immediately changed his tune. "Yes!"

The surrounding students instantly looked at Chen Mo with utter contempt. Chen Mo spotted a male student seated in front of him lowering his head to fiddle with his phone, and a sense of foreboding suddenly rose in his heart.

Sure enough, just a few minutes later, when Chen Mo searched his own name online, he found a Weibo post titled "Chen Mo Eats Garlic Sausage During Break" pushed onto the trending list.

Chen Mo: "..."

More than twenty days could pass quickly or slowly, but following the usual routine, they were gone in the blink of an eye.

After the three-day final exams ended, students across the school ran out of campus like prisoners released after serving their sentences.

It was amid this uproar that Chen Mo received a call from Yang Qindong, informing him that he was to attend an audition for the film The Three Kingdoms: Eastern Wu.

Over the phone, Yang Qindong discussed sending an assistant to pick him up. Chen Mo checked the time, considered the current traffic conditions within Huajing's Third Ring Road, and said directly, "No need. Send me the audition location on WeChat. I'll head over myself."

After thinking it over, Yang Qindong also felt that sending an assistant by car would waste too much time, so he agreed immediately.

By the time Chen Mo arrived at the audition site, it was already past one in the afternoon. Since the director of The Three Kingdoms: Eastern Wu, Wang Chusheng, liked to use "his own people," there were not many people at the audition.

In such a sparsely attended setting, Chen Mo, dressed in the blue-and-white athletic uniform of Huajing Experimental No. 1 High School and radiating youthful energy, quickly became the center of everyone's attention.

Yang Qindong had arrived even earlier than Chen Mo. When Chen Mo called him, he was chatting with Director Wang Chusheng in the lounge, taking the chance to praise his artist's diligence and talent.

Wang Chusheng was a director who disliked dealing with strangers. This trait made him seem particularly out of place in the entertainment industry, where people claimed friendship upon meeting and offered mutual admiration even without meeting. It also caused no small amount of trouble for Wang Chusheng's career as a director. Some even criticized him for it, claiming that a director unwilling to interact with strangers could never be competent, much less achieve anything worthwhile.

Yet by now, Wang Chusheng's name had become an indispensable part of the history of Chinese arthouse cinema. Whenever Chinese arthouse films were mentioned, people inevitably thought of Wang Chusheng. And the flaw that countless people had once criticized—his "unwillingness to interact with strangers"—had become the "principled persistence" that set Wang Chusheng apart, still discussed with relish by countless people.

As a director unwilling to deal with strangers, Wang Chusheng was also famous within the industry for not being willing to support newcomers—after all, newcomers meant unfamiliar faces too.

However, Chen Mo had been recommended by Zhang Qingzhong, Wang Chusheng's old classmate and longtime friend. No matter how much Wang Chusheng disliked dealing with strangers, when forced into it, he could only grit his teeth and endure it. Especially since this audition involved doing his old friend a favor.

Before he had even met Chen Mo, Wang Chusheng had quietly made up his mind: as long as Chen Mo's acting was not hopelessly bad, the role of Sun Ce would go to him. Wang Chusheng was best at molding actors anyway. As long as someone could withstand the intensity of filming under him, he could carve even a stone into a sculpture.

Otherwise, how could Wang Chusheng have produced so many Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress winners?

That was rather different from what Director Zhang had said before.

Of course, at this point, neither Chen Mo nor Yang Qindong knew what Director Wang was planning. Their minds were entirely occupied with how to better portray Sun Ce.

Yang Qindong was the least confident of all. Although he had praised Chen Mo as highly promising and talented in front of Director Wang Chusheng, potential and talent were not the same as actual ability. Before this, Chen Mo's only acting experience had been in an idol drama. As for the acting standards of actors who came out of idol dramas... forget industry insiders—even audiences knew perfectly well what they were like.

After receiving Chen Mo's call, Yang Qindong greeted Director Wang and took the elevator straight downstairs to pick him up. The moment he saw Chen Mo had actually come wearing his school uniform, Yang Qindong was horrified. He strode over, grabbed Chen Mo by the arm, and demanded, "Why did you come dressed like this? Even if you're naturally good-looking and don't need makeup, this audition is so important. At the very least, you should have changed clothes to show some respect!"

At that moment, Yang Qindong regretted it so badly his guts turned green. He regretted listening to Chen Mo and not sending an assistant over just to save that little bit of time. Otherwise, he would not be facing such an awkward situation.

Chen Mo unconcernedly looked down at his uniform and raised a brow. "What misunderstanding do you have about my school uniform? It may look ordinary, but it is the uniform of Huajing Experimental No. 1 High School. Our country has six billion people, and the world has ten billion. Fewer than three thousand people qualify to wear this uniform each year. That makes it rarer than any limited edition from an international luxury brand. At the same time, this uniform is a symbol of youth and excellence... so are you seriously looking down on me for wearing it to an audition?"

Yang Qindong: "..." He made so much sense that I have absolutely nothing to say. What now?

Chen Mo glanced at Yang Qindong and added, "Besides, the audition was scheduled so tightly. To get here on time, I didn't even eat lunch. I only bought a bag of bread and a sausage at the school supermarket... With dedication like mine, you still have the nerve to criticize me for not changing clothes before coming?"

Yang Qindong did not catch Chen Mo's last remark. When he heard that Chen Mo had eaten bread and sausage on the way over, something suddenly occurred to him. He leaned closer and asked cautiously, "The sausage you bought... was it garlic sausage?"

Chen Mo: "..."

After a brief joke, the two of them hurried into the elevator, worried that Director Wang might have been waiting too long. Along the way, Yang Qindong anxiously asked how Chen Mo's audition preparations were going, and Chen Mo gave him a firm answer.

In Chen Mo's view, although he had not gotten hold of the script for The Three Kingdoms: Eastern Wu, he had consulted plenty of fictional portrayals of Sun Ce in the system space. Some of those depictions were inevitably rather out of character, but overall, there was still much worth learning from. Having been steeped in every kind of Sun Ce—from serious historical dramas to Mary Sue versions and male-power-fantasy versions—Chen Mo felt that unless the real historical Sun Ce himself showed up, no one could possibly play the role better than he could.

Brimming with confidence, Chen Mo failed to notice that the moment his blue-and-white-uniformed figure stepped out of the elevator, he immediately captured the full attention of a woman at the far end of the hallway.

The woman studied Chen Mo closely for quite some time. Only after Chen Mo and Yang Qindong disappeared around the corner did she ask her assistant, "That boy who just passed by should be Chen Mo, the one who's been all over the internet lately, right? Is he here to audition for our male lead too? Why didn't I know about this?"

The assistant was a little confused as well. Hearing the director's question, she immediately replied, "I didn't receive any notice either. It was probably a last-minute decision by the investors. Otherwise, he wouldn't have come to a place like this dressed that way, would he?"

What did she mean by "dressed that way at a place like this"?

The female director, who had a somewhat artistic temperament, looked at her assistant with an expression of distaste. "But Chen Mo's age, temperament, and background do fit the image of the male lead, Zhao Yan, quite well. If the investors recommended Chen Mo for the male lead this time... it wouldn't necessarily be a bad choice."

He was good-looking, talented, suited the role, and drew public attention. If an actor who was truly a top student in real life played the male god in the novel, the original author and the novel's fans would probably be satisfied too, wouldn't they?

No matter what, Chen Mo was far more reliable than those useless connections the investors had recommended before!

The assistant strongly agreed with the female director. She looked again toward the corner where Chen Mo and Yang Qindong had disappeared, then suddenly sensed something was wrong and said hesitantly, "But... if they're here to audition for the male lead, why did they stop on this floor? Shouldn't they have gone straight up to the twenty-second floor?"

The female director froze too. She instinctively looked toward where Chen Mo had disappeared and suddenly said, "Come on. Let's go over and take a look!"

"Huh?" The assistant blinked in confusion. Watching the female director already stride ahead, she could only clutch the materials and jog after her.

When Chen Mo pushed open the door to the audition room and saw the scene inside, he had to admit that he was somewhat surprised.

The empty room was around a hundred square meters. There was no furniture or decoration inside, only several long tables by the windows. Four or five people sat behind them, with bottled water, phones, and several white-covered scripts laid out on the tables. A chair stood in front of the tables, while a camera had been set up in a corner a little farther away.

With a setup like this... if the director seated in the middle had not been wearing Wang Chusheng's face, and if the particularly handsome man beside him had not been a familiar face from the big screen, Chen Mo would not have believed this was an audition for a film crew—this was less professional than those shell companies that scammed people out of money and sex, all right?

Noticing Chen Mo's utterly bewildered expression, Wang Chusheng smiled and pointed to the chair in front of the table. "You're Chen Mo? Have a seat."

Chen Mo raised a brow. First, he smiled at Wang Chusheng, but instead of sitting as Wang Chusheng had instructed, he stepped several paces back. Then he turned around, made a sweeping gesture as though flinging out wide sleeves, and smoothly lowered himself to his knees.

Because the table in front of Wang Chusheng was rather high, Chen Mo deliberately chose a position farther back when he knelt. This distance not only allowed him to keep his gaze as level as possible with the examiners, but also let everyone clearly see his posture—it was a proper formal kneel, with his buttocks resting on his heels and his upper body held straight. This was the only posture recognized by strict ritual etiquette in formal settings from the Xia and Shang dynasties through Qin, Han, Wei, and Jin, yet it had gradually been forgotten after tall furniture appeared during the Song and Ming dynasties. By the present, even more noisy and restless age, no one studied it anymore. At least before Chen Mo, Wang Chusheng had never seen anyone perform a formal kneeling sit so cleanly and beautifully.