Make Money with Your Clothes On!

Shen Qi listened to the people around him brag for a while. One claimed he had sold a Judgment he found in Legend for a thousand yuan; another boasted about sleeping with a virgin he had met through Fantasy Westward Journey...

Internet cafes were always full of stories like these. Some featured Legend or Fantasy Westward Journey; others involved The Legend of the Condor Heroes, MapleStory, or Lineage.

After wandering around until ten, Shen Qi finally got a computer.

He entered his card number and password. The main screen opened, packed with game icons.

First, he logged into QQ.

Then he opened his music player and set it to shuffle.

A driving beat filled his headphones.

Shen Qi couldn't remember whether the track was called Dancing Phoenix Nine Heavens or Ice Age. Either way, it made his leg bounce along.

A cough-like notification sounded, and the QQ icon in the bottom-right corner began flashing.

He clicked it and saw another "You there?" from his college roommate, Wei Jianguo.

Wei sent him that message almost every day.

After a moment's hesitation, Shen Qi replied, "Yeah."

[Lonely Wolf]: Holy shit! My man, you finally answered! Are you okay?!

Shen Qi could practically feel Wei's relief through the screen.

[One Meter of Sunshine]: What do you want? I really don't want to work at that damned place of yours. Push me again and we're done!

Shen Qi wasn't touched.

If anything, he was annoyed.

Of course he was. Who would be happy about being talked into becoming a male escort?

Did I work my way through college just to become king of the escorts?

[Lonely Wolf]: Fuck, not becoming an escort would be such a waste of your looks! Our boss said you can pick your own clients. If you don't want to serve someone, you can turn her down... My man, what more could you want?

Wei couldn't help it either.

Ever since his boss had met Shen Qi, he couldn't get him out of his head. After years of running male escorts, he was convinced Shen Qi had everything it took to be a star.

That raw masculinity would leave rich women breathless.

They'd book him again and again!

And keep paying for extra time!

[One Meter of Sunshine]: Jianguo, remember when you wanted to be a scientist as a kid?

Even if you studied sports instead and couldn't become a scientist, you could still teach PE and help raise future scientists.

But a male escort? What the hell?

[Lonely Wolf]: Gynecology is a science too! My man, all I know is that the world looks down on poverty, not prostitution. I made six thousand yuan last night. How long would that take you as a teacher?

Unfortunately, Shen Qi remained "stubborn."

That was why Wei Jianguo kept trying so earnestly to persuade him.

[One Meter of Sunshine]: Get lost! I'd rather starve than sell my body!

Shen Qi closed the chat window.

Fuck. In college, we were close enough to share underwear. Now that we've graduated, you're trying to pimp me out!

Is that how you repay me?

Truth be told, Shen Qi was only putting up a brave front. He had nearly agreed to it before.

A sick father, a frail mother, a younger sister still in school, and Shen Qi himself barely holding together...

Sometimes reality was crueler than fiction.

When Shen Qi was in high school, disaster struck his family. His father, their breadwinner, fell seriously ill, leaving the farm work to his frail mother.

After getting into college, Shen Qi worked several jobs a day and took out student loans.

He endured it all until graduation.

He had thought he could finally make something of himself and ease the burden on his family.

Instead, things got worse.

He finally managed to land a job teaching PE at a high school, but they kept putting him on sick leave. He barely taught any classes that semester!

The principal fired him because too many students had written him love letters.

One of those students was the principal's daughter.

After leaving the school, Shen Qi didn't look for another teaching job.

He took a job at a gym and worked his heart out...

Before he'd even completed a month, complaints from clients' husbands and wives cost him that job too.

That stretch had been bleak.

Several times, he had come close to agreeing to become an escort.

Then, by chance, he saw a promotional flyer for Hengdian.

An actor?

Right. Why not try show business?

Who the hell would become an escort if he could be a star?

Show business doesn't discriminate against handsome men!

If anything, good looks make it easier to get famous.

Shen Qi had thought his fortunes were finally about to change.

Life wouldn't force him into escort work after all.

He could make money with his clothes on!

But he soon realized he'd been naive.

It wasn't as if escorts had chosen that work because they didn't want to be stars.

Being handsome was no use at all. Sometimes casting agents even excluded him because of it.

He didn't know whether they feared he'd upstage the leads or were simply jealous themselves.

Even when he found extra work, it paid only twenty or thirty yuan for a full day.

And in his first week in Hengdian, he'd worked only three out of seven days!

At that rate, he would be lucky to work half the month and earn four or five hundred yuan.

Misfortune always seemed to find those least able to bear it.

Then, while he was online, someone stole his phone.

Fuck!

The weight of it all nearly crushed him. He felt it was only a matter of time before he gave in.

During that miserable stretch, he got onto the set of Lotus Lantern and picked up the Magic Book.

Now he had finally collected five pages of performances!

He had already decided how to use it.

Based on what happened when he recorded and used Howling Celestial Dog's performance, he had a rough idea of how the Magic Book worked.

After using it, he could feel the acting techniques Howling Celestial Dog had used in that scene.

It was as though he had become Howling Celestial Dog himself.

The feeling gradually faded with time.

Even so, he had learned a great deal from it.

If that was how it worked, he could use the performances recorded in the Magic Book during auditions or actual shoots.

He wasn't sure how well it would work.

But it had to be better than remaining an extra.

An extra making it big?

Next to impossible!

Directors already had lists of actors in their phones, not to mention recommendations from friends in the industry.

Any role with even a little screen time was snapped up before auditions began.

Now that Shen Qi had the Magic Book, all he needed to do was wait.

Wait for an opportunity!

A chance to gain a foothold in show business.

At the very least, he wanted enough recognition that he wouldn't have to keep taking extra roles with his face hidden!

He wouldn't have to scrape by on rice mixed with soy sauce!

He wouldn't have to curl his six-foot-one frame into a cheap internet cafe chair to sleep!

And he wouldn't have to breathe in cigarette after cigarette from the guy next to him.

Surrounded by smoke, Shen Qi fell fast asleep.

Somewhere between dreaming and waking, he found himself surrounded by a dozen or so wealthy women draped in gold and jewelry.

Every one of them looked like the "beauties" in Forbidden City Cop, each harder to look at than the last!

Worse, none of them intended to pay.

Shen Qi tried to escape, only to find that the room had no door.

Suddenly—

The women's arms turned slick as octopus tentacles and writhed toward him.

He jolted awake...

It was just a nightmare!

Sleeping in a chair was uncomfortable after all. Shen Qi wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and was about to get up and stretch.

Then he caught sight of something that made his blood boil:

Holy shit, a thief!

He's stealing a phone!

By the small hours, most of the cafe's lights were off, and many of the all-night customers were nodding off.

Games might keep people wired, but even that couldn't sustain players who had been grinding since morning.

Of those still awake, quite a few were engrossed in porn.

CS in the first half of the night; Vagaa, PP Point-to-Point, and eMule in the second...

The hard drives at Heart's Rendezvous Internet Cafe were loaded. No one had to search hard to find videos from Europe, America, Japan, Korea, or Hong Kong.

And right beside the balding man the thief had targeted, someone was watching a Japanese video.

He can sleep through that? Don't tell me the guy...

Passed out from pleasure?

The yellow-haired thief was clearly an old hand. He even stood behind the porn watcher and leisurely watched three performers going at it for a while.

Only then did he bend down and reach into the balding man's pocket.

His movements were light and practiced!

Even after he had slipped out a wallet and phone, the balding man kept snoring.

"Thief!"

Shen Qi lunged in with a kick.

The yellow-haired thief went down, crashing between the balding man and the porn watcher and slamming into the computer desk with a bang.

The balding man woke instantly!

As for the man beside him watching porn... hopefully it wouldn't scar him for life.

Shen Qi wasn't an impulsive man. He had only just graduated, but enough had happened over the years for society to wear away his rough edges.

The thing was, on his first day in Hengdian, someone had stolen his phone soon after he arrived at this very cafe.

His already tight finances had taken another hit.

Whether or not this yellow-haired guy had stolen that phone, the sight of him made Shen Qi see red!

"Motherfucker!"

The kick had left the thief stunned.

Why did he hit me!?

But before he could get up and fight back, he realized he was in serious trouble:

Every eye in the cafe swung toward him like a searchlight!

He had become the center of attention.

Shen Qi's cry of "Thief!" hit the room like a drop of water in boiling oil.

Everyone's first instinct was to check their pockets.

The balding man's face changed:

"Fuck me! Where's my wallet and phone?! You bastard, you stole them?!"

He grabbed the thief by the collar. Beneath his prematurely aged appearance was astonishing strength; with one hand, he lifted the thief clear off the floor.

Then two more people cried out that they'd been robbed. Clearly, this wasn't the yellow-haired thief's first theft tonight.

Shen Qi had nothing more to do.

The victims and a few keyboard warriors eager to step in swarmed the thief, raining punches and slaps down on him.

Back then, no one needed convincing to beat up a thief!