I should live on campus once the semester starts. Renting a place outside really is too expensive. A dorm only costs a little over a thousand a year, who knows how many times cheaper than this lousy rental.
Speaking of the new semester, he suddenly thought of a question he had completely overlooked.
What was the original owner's major again?
He opened his phone's photo album, found a screenshot of his student records, and zoomed in. Energy Storage Science and Engineering. New energy! Engineering!
He scrolled down to the transcript. Top three in his major, and he had even won a scholarship last year.
Song Shi'an's smile froze on his face.
He had studied humanities. In three years of college, he had never even touched the cover of a calculus textbook, and now he was supposed to research new energy.
He set his phone facedown on the bed and tipped his head back to stare at the crack in the ceiling.
The electric fan hummed as it spun, making the takeout flyers on the table rustle.
The guy next door was unusually quiet tonight. He probably had not finished work yet.
[Host need not be overly anxious. The system shop offers skill assistance functions, redeemable with Affection Points.]
Song Shi'an abruptly sat up. "What are Affection Points? How many do I need?"
[Affection Points represent the degree of human affection toward the host. Each person can provide a maximum of one hundred points. Basic academic knowledge assistance costs one hundred thousand Affection Points and covers all undergraduate major courses.]
Song Shi'an flopped straight back down. One hundred thousand. He had not even seen what Affection Points looked like yet, and it was already asking for a hundred thousand.
"How many Affection Points do I have right now?" he asked weakly.
[Sixty-eight thousand three hundred and twenty-three points.]
Song Shi'an bolted upright from his deathbed, his back springing up faster than it had while he was on wires today.
"What the hell? Where did over sixty thousand come from?"
[The system does not make errors. Detection indicates that the host has attracted a small amount of attention on an online platform and has received Affection Points from twelve thousand four hundred people.]
Song Shi'an looked utterly bewildered. What did I do? How did I attract any attention?
He tapped the Weibo icon that had served as nothing more than decoration on his phone screen. If there was anywhere he could have attracted attention, it was probably only the drama Aspiration to Reach the Clouds.
The original owner had previously been kept under wraps by his agency and had no work to his name. The ways he could have crossed paths with the internet could be counted on one hand.
He searched for Aspiration to Reach the Clouds. The first result was a very popular post with a nine-image grid, and the first picture was the one of him leaning against the wall, gazing up at the sky.
Song Shi'an stared at the photo for a while. Actually, it looks pretty good. Did the production team hire someone to promote it?
He opened the comments and scrolled down from the top.
"Who even is this guy! Why is he riding the hype? This has to be photoshopped. Who could look like that? Shouldn't this drama be promoting Xu Che more!"
"We don't even know who he's playing. He's not even in the cast list. The money men are trying to push someone again, huh?"
There were plenty of similar comments. Most people firmly believed the image had been heavily photoshopped, on the grounds that "no one could have such perfect bone structure from this angle."
Someone in the comments had even written a detailed explainer, analyzing the lighting and shadows to show where the image had been faked and what did not make sense. Quite a few people agreed underneath.
Song Shi'an's vision darkened again and again as he read. Thank goodness I wore a mask. If someone dug up my real face, wouldn't they blast me full of holes?
But looking at it the other way, the Affection Point figures also indirectly showed that plenty of people liked him.
He opened his own Weibo profile and froze again when he saw his follower count. One hundred thousand followers.
They were probably bot followers his old agency had bought him. His profile was completely empty, without a single post.
After showering that evening, Song Shi'an dried his hair and prepared to turn in early. He still had to make food deliveries first thing tomorrow morning. With no scenes to film over the next few days, he could squeeze in a few more orders. Every little bit he saved counted.
His phone vibrated on the bed.
He picked it up and saw a new WeChat message from Get-Rich-Quick Pretty Girl, whose avatar was an orange cat hugging a gold ingot.
"Hey there, want to go to an audition for a big production tomorrow?"
Song Shi'an paused before realizing that this was the girl who played the prime minister's daughter, whom he had just added that evening.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and typed with the towel draped around his neck.
"Hi, what role is the audition for?"
She replied instantly, then sent over a link.
"An audition for an S+ costume drama. The director wants to use newcomers this time. The male and female leads are already set, but all the other roles will be cast through in-person auditions. There are tons of opportunities. I'll send you the audition excerpts for the roles. Just memorize the lines for whichever one you want to try tomorrow."
"Thank you."
He opened the link, and the list of roles instantly filled his screen.
The male lead's character profile took up a large section at the top. He scrolled straight past it.
The second and third male leads came right after: "a prince of a different surname, gentle and lustrous as jade" and "a martial alliance leader who walked the line between good and evil." Their applicant counts both had several zeroes after them.
He kept scrolling and stopped near the bottom of the list.
Eunuch, chief palace steward, Meng Zhen.
The sort of character who stood beside the male lead and called out, "Court is dismissed" and "His Majesty arrives."
Few lines, not much screen time, mostly standing in place. Song Shi'an felt the role was a good fit and scrolled farther down to read the character biography.
Meng Zhen had been selected to enter the palace at eight, personally chosen by the old emperor-not to attend to his daily needs, but to be cultivated into a blade for the future emperor.
He had lived with his head tucked into his waistband since childhood. Surviving the man-eating inner palace until the new emperor's accession had taken a sharper eye and more ruthless methods than anyone else's.
After the new emperor took the throne, Meng Zhen, as the person the male lead trusted most, did plenty of dirty work for him.
Later, the plot took a sharp turn. The throne changed hands, and Meng Zhen switched to assisting the villain, chilling the male lead's heart to the core.
In his final scene, the male lead ended his life with his own hands. He knelt on the ground, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, yet when he looked up at the male lead, there was actually a trace of a smile in his eyes.
Song Shi'an fell silent for a few seconds after reading it.
He's pretty pitiful. Raised like a dog from childhood, brainwashed and fed loyalty, with no one ever teaching him right from wrong.
But the role really has bite. Not many lines, but every scene is a highlight. Played well, he could outshine even the male lead.
That deranged, dank loyal-dog quality-wagging his tail for whoever sat on the throne, his bones bent, his spine broken.
No wonder more than four hundred people had applied.
He closed the page and knocked on the system in his mind. "System, does this count as cannon fodder?"
[Assessment confirms that this meets the requirements for a cannon fodder role. Screen time does not exceed the permitted range.]
Song Shi'an lay down and stared at the ceiling. He seemed to have discovered one hell of a bug.
The system judged cannon fodder solely by screen time, not character depth. As long as the role's screen time did not exceed one-twentieth of the lead's, it counted as cannon fodder, no matter how outstanding the role or how complex the characterization.
He filled in the application, still using his old ID photo as his profile picture. Among a sea of professional actors' audition photos, it looked particularly plain.