The usual content warnings: first, this is a dual-male-lead romance. Sweeties who wandered in by mistake can leave now.
Second, I don't usually follow celebrities, and my understanding of the entertainment industry isn't particularly deep-it's only surface-level. I did look into it over the past few days, but last-minute cramming is still very limited. If anything doesn't make sense, please go easy on me, sweeties.
Third, every character in this story is fictional, with no real-life model. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. (Because I've seen some authors writing similar entertainment-industry stories get asked whether their characters were based on anyone.)
Fourth, both leads are romantically and sexually inexperienced. Apart from a tiny bit about other characters' relationships where necessary to maintain the protagonist's matchmaker characterization, the main story won't feature side couples. Sweeties who dislike this should consider whether to read on. If you can't tolerate even a little of that, you can choose to drop the story.
Fifth: since this involves livestreaming, bullet comments will appear, and there probably won't be very few of them. Before the shou appears, there will be more description of the gong, but this isn't a gong-centric story.
Sixth, um... the author is leaving her brain at the door...
Gong: Pei Yubai (Yu pronounced "yù")
Shou: Qiguan Yuan (Qi pronounced "qí")
The main story begins:
The day Travel to Those Little-Known Places made its official announcement happened to be a Thursday.
It wasn't any special occasion.
Two in the afternoon on a Thursday was usually the quietest time in the entertainment industry.
Any juicy gossip had already broken on Monday, and the sweet shipping moments wouldn't come until the weekend.
Making an official announcement at that hour was much like throwing a stone into the sea in the middle of the night. You wouldn't even hear a splash.
The production team's official Weibo account was called "Travel to Those Little-Known Places." It had fewer than twenty thousand followers, and its profile picture was a mountain landscape pilfered from who knew where.
Over the previous six months, it had posted only three times, all seeking sponsors, with fewer than a thousand views combined.
Yet at precisely two in the afternoon on September 19, this very account posted an official announcement that changed everything.
The text wasn't long. It was even a little perfunctory.
"Travel to Those Little-Known Places": Season one begins filming in October.
Six regular guests, six little-known places, and perhaps six little-known stories.
This time, we'll visit corners you can't find on a map and meet people who have never appeared on camera.
The guest lineup will be revealed in stages.
First stop: Cloud-Hidden Town. Stay tuned.
The attached image was a poster.
Green mountains, mist, and a winding stone-paved path leading into the distance.
The second Weibo post, immediately below it, presented the regular guest list outright, with a half-length photo of each person against a scenic silhouette of the place they would be visiting.
The list went like this:
Ji Shiyu, twenty-seven, had started as a singer, debuting through a talent competition, and had remained neither hot nor cold after transitioning to acting.
With delicate features and a gentle disposition, Ji Shiyu was famously good-tempered within the industry.
Although there hadn't been any major hit projects in recent years, steady progress had earned Ji Shiyu a reasonably good reputation among the general public.
Cheng Yanqiu, twenty-four, was a rising young actress who had just won a newcomer award the year before.
She had striking looks and a straightforward personality, and the few variety shows she'd appeared on had all been well received.
She had a refusal to admit defeat that had earned her the fan nickname "Cheng Iron Hammer," because she never hid anything and spoke very directly.
But her decision to take this variety show left quite a few people puzzled. With her standing, she could easily have gone on a more popular program.
Jiang Wantang, twenty-nine, had started as a dancer before transitioning to theater acting. She wasn't particularly famous in the entertainment industry, but she carried considerable weight in artistic circles.
Her looks had a cool elegance, and she wasn't much of a talker. Just standing there, she had an air of being above worldly competition. Supposedly, she'd agreed to come because the place the production team had promised to take her happened to be her maternal grandmother's hometown.
She was the biggest blank slate of the six, with pitifully little information about her online.
Shen Yuzhou, twenty-two, was a boy-band member and a currently popular idol. After his group disbanded the year before, he'd gone solo and released a single that had performed well.
He was the sort of person born for this line of work-good-looking, with a fresh, clean smile and a lethal allure onstage.
But in private, his personality was supposedly the complete opposite of his public image: talkative, noisy, a real chatterbox.
Lin Yanru, thirty-one, was the oldest of the six.
A veteran host, she had hosted several nationally popular variety shows before branching out on her own as a producer.
She had supposedly joined this program because she'd grown tired of studio recordings and wanted to get out and about.
Lin Yanru had high emotional intelligence and a strong ability to keep things under control. The production team probably intended for her to be the group's "parent."
The last one was-
Pei Yubai.
The list gave only his name. No photograph, no introduction, no additional information whatsoever.
Yet that name alone blew up the entire internet.
Because no one was unaware of what the name Pei Yubai meant in the entertainment industry.
First, a little about Pei Yubai himself.
Twenty-six years old, a grand-slam best actor winner. In six years in the industry, he'd taken home three Best Actor trophies.
The last person to achieve that had been ten years older than him.
He'd graduated from film school at twenty, and his very first role had been the second male lead in an art-house film by a major director.
After filming wrapped, the director's exact words had been, "This man was born for this work. I didn't have to teach him how to act on set. He taught other people how to act."
That film had won Best Picture that year. Although Pei Yubai had only played a supporting role, his acting had won unanimous recognition within the industry.
Some said he'd been lucky to encounter a good director and a good script on his first film. But for his second, he'd personally chosen a low-budget suspense film, playing a psychologically twisted serial killer.
The film had cost less than five million to make, and its box office had exceeded two hundred million after release.
In it, Pei Yubai had performed a three-minute monologue without a single line, conveying the character's breakdown and madness entirely through his eyes and microexpressions.
That performance had later been included in film-school teaching materials, required viewing for every class of acting students.
With his third film, he won his first Best Actor award.
He was twenty-two that year, the youngest Best Actor winner in the history of the Golden Parasol Tree Award.
At the awards ceremony, Pei Yubai had gone onstage in a black suit, accepted the trophy, glanced at it, and smiled.
He'd said, "Thank you to the judges, the director, and everyone on the crew. I thought I'd have to wait until twenty-five to win this award. Looks like I'm a little better than I expected."
The whole room had laughed, but no one thought he was joking.
Because he really was that good.
Over the next two years, he'd won two more Best Actor trophies, completing a grand slam.
He'd won every domestic film award available. The word industry insiders used most when discussing him was "talent."
His acting had a natural perfection beyond his years, as though he hadn't needed to learn it and had simply been born knowing how.
But what made industry insiders even warier was the family background exposed when he was twenty-two.
Pei Yubai's popularity had already reached its peak that year. The media had combed through every piece of information they could find and uncovered his parents' identities.
His father, Pei Zhongkang, was chairman of Huateng Group. The group's businesses spanned real estate, hotels, film and television investment, and several other sectors, with total assets in the hundreds of billions.
His mother, Shen Lingyi, came from a family of artists. His maternal grandfather was a nationally renowned oil painter, and his maternal uncle was the dean of an art academy.
The crown prince of Beijing's elite circles.
Once that term had first been applied to Pei Yubai, it had never come off.
Because the circles the Pei family moved in in Beijing really were beyond the reach of ordinary people.
Pei Yubai had grown up in a traditional courtyard residence, attended international schools, and spent his childhood with the princes and princesses of various industries.
If he hadn't entered the entertainment industry, he probably would have finished school, taken a nominal position at Huateng Group, and then waited to inherit the family fortune.
But he just wouldn't.
He'd gone off to act instead, and had even become the youngest Best Actor winner.
Someone had asked why he didn't go home and inherit the family fortune. He'd said, "It's not like I can't make money. Why would I go home and let people boss me around?"
That later became a meme.
"If Pei Yubai doesn't act, he has to go home and inherit hundreds of billions."
Fans loved bringing it up.
Pei Yubai himself, however, was quite disdainful of the title "crown prince of Beijing's elite circles."
During one interview, a reporter had asked what he thought of that label. Leaning back in his chair, he'd said lazily, "Crown prince? That was a Qing dynasty thing. We don't do that anymore. Just call me Pei Yubai."
But industry insiders knew that the title represented more than his family background. It meant resources, connections, and influence. Pei Yubai could take whichever acting projects he wanted without having to defer to anyone.
He could turn down whichever engagements he wanted, and no one dared force him.
Because he didn't depend on this industry for his livelihood. This industry depended on him.
That was Pei Yubai's standing in the entertainment industry.