The smile on Gu Yuning’s lips suddenly froze, almost unable to control the shock and hatred in his eyes.

He stared fixedly at the announcement card in Jiang An’s hand.

How is this possible? He clearly bought so many marketing accounts to intervene, and hired a water army to buy so many votes. How could he possibly be suppressed by Gu Qichi?!

His cleanly trimmed nails dug into his palms. Gu Yuning forced out a smile, looking at Gu Qichi at the end of everyone’s line of sight.

Under the spotlight, Gu Qichi remained as calm as ever, as if the name read by Jiang An above wasn’t his.

His peach blossom eyes were slightly lowered, his nose bridge elegant and straight. The falling light cast shadows across his brows and eyes, making his features appear deeper and his face more magnificent.

Gu Qichi clearly did nothing, yet he only needed to sit there to harvest everyone’s gaze.

Gu Yuning was unwilling to accept this.

The camera aimed at the big screen focused on Gu Qichi, projecting his face onto it.

Sometimes, not every actor wanted to be on such a big screen.

Undoubtedly, the lens would widen a person’s face and figure.

A 7:3 ratio becoming 5:5, a narrow long face becoming a square round face, even a thin paper-like person becoming a slightly chubby strong man were common occurrences.

As the saying goes, “True beauty lies in the bone, not the skin.” This saying becomes an unbreakable truth when placed on the big screen.

Without that superior bone structure, wanting to withstand the demon-revealing mirror of the big screen was truly a joke.

Everyone’s face deformed slightly on it, not to mention a certain male star who had plastic surgery, looking like a leavened steamed bun, swollen and unsightly.

Gu Qichi was located in the very center of the screen, his expression relaxed and lazy, his posture unconstrained. His face not only didn’t deform on the screen but appeared even more exquisite, extremely full of storytelling.

The height of his brow bone was just right, the bridge of his nose connecting to the space between his eyebrows, spreading out vertically and horizontally. The superior T-zone supported the tight flesh, and the superior beauty of his bone structure became clearer in the lens. The lines were elegant, carrying a noble coldness.

He was like a piece of beautiful jade buried in vast snowy mountains, solitary and coldly proud, yet naturally formed, exquisite and translucent, without a single flaw.

Getting first place, although Gu Qichi was surprised, he didn’t show much expression on his face. He just glanced faintly at the center when the camera swept over. The upturned end of his eye swept an arc of light from the inner corner, inexplicably giving people an illusion of deep affection and tenderness.

Even Jiang An froze for a moment.

The staff below the stage were bewitched into screaming.

Help! Gu Qichi’s beauty is killing people online!

The second place hadn’t been revealed yet, but everyone knew clearly who it was.

“Second place, 981,648 votes, Gu Yuning.”

“Congratulations.”

People around him congratulated him. Gu Yuning smiled stiffly, unable to say a word.

Immediately after, the host went on stage and began to announce the last spot that could stay.

Xiao Meng knew clearly about her staying or leaving and didn’t hold any hope, so she started to have some leisure to observe Gu Yuning and Gu Qichi’s expressions.

She didn’t know why, but from the first day of recording, she felt the atmosphere between Gu Yuning and Gu Qichi wasn’t quite right. A woman’s sixth sense told her there must be something hidden between them.

“Thirteenth place, 159,673 votes, congratulations xxx.”

The one who stayed was an amateur college student, also a current student of Dongcheng Film Academy. Hearing this, he quickly breathed a sigh of relief.

The following process went very quickly. The host released four classic film and television clips. Unlike the Jianghu swordsman theme last time, this time “Strive! Actor!” followed a youth campus style.

It had to be said that the program team’s planning really had something.

Gu Qichi glanced roughly and saw a film directed by Lin Shuangyi inside.

If he remembered correctly, Lin Shuangyi won the Best New Director Award with this film.

“Pale Moonlight” sounded artistic, but the content was extremely melodramatic (dog-blood). It told the tragic life of the protagonist who was abducted from his wealthy family since childhood and subsequently suffered domestic violence and school bullying.

The protagonist Xia You originally held hope, looking forward to finding his parents and reuniting the family. However, at the age of sixteen, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer and didn’t have long to live.

He worked desperately to earn money for his treatment, but was tortured by school bullying until life was worse than death, struggling bitterly without glimpsing a trace of light.

At the end of the film, Xia You died under the double torture of school bullying and stomach cancer. And on the day he died, the family whose son bullied him in school realized that Xia You was their son who had been lost for sixteen years, but everything was too late.

Melodramatic and cliché, with baffling self-redemption.

Gu Qichi glanced idly at the finale, a scoff escaping his throat.

His sound wasn’t loud, but Gu Yuning’s current mental state was highly tense, like a frightened bird, stiffly straightening his spine.

Others might not see anything wrong with this film, but how could he and Gu Qichi not see it.

If not for the fact that this variety show was personally invested in by Gu Yuanan, Gu Yuning would have almost thought Gu Qichi united with Bo Yu specifically to fix him.

How ironic. A biological child bullied in school by the adopted child, driven to suicide, and the first reaction of the adopted child’s parents before learning the truth was to use money to hide the truth and protect their adopted son.

This film was undoubtedly the best portrayal of Gu Qichi and Gu Yuning.

Gu Yuning’s heart beat fast, swallowing involuntarily, feeling that something would happen today.

Gu Yuning’s reaction was too obvious, hard to ignore. Gu Qichi adjusted his sitting posture, inadvertently catching a glimpse of the other’s trembling hands and ashen face, and scratched his chin with interest.

Why is Gu Yuning so nervous?

There will be plenty of times for him to break down in the future.

No rush.

After playing the other three film clips, the right to choose was first given to the mentors.

They would choose the film they wanted to direct as their first preference.

Then the actors would choose the directors in reverse. The more votes an actor received, the more favorable it was for the chosen director. The mentor who obtained the actor with the highest votes would get their first preference film.

Today’s recording process was exceptionally smooth. Not only was the staff’s attitude very good, even the newly appointed director became much kinder, and endorsements were doubled.

During the waiting interval, Gu Qichi casually picked up the drinking water beside him. The packaging had long been removed to prevent infringement, but Gu Qichi recognized it as a famous foreign brand.

Because Bo Yu usually drank this kind at home. One bottle cost nearly four figures. It was said to be some natural glacial water containing various rich mineral elements capable of supplementing the body’s nutrition.

Gu Qichi once couldn’t understand this.

But Bo Yu liked to drink it, and he had no reason to stop him.

He could only lament that true capitalists aren’t human.

Everyone else held a different kind of drinking water. Gu Qichi knew clearly who had privately abused their power to order this.

Only he didn’t know that Gu Qichi’s identity was considered public among the higher-level directors and producers.

After all, as soon as it was announced that day, the previous executive directors and producers were immediately taken away by the subordinates of the one at the very top. The dirty things they did in private over these years were investigated thoroughly. Let alone things like cooking books and accepting bribes, that person even found out exactly how many lovers the chief director slept with and how many times he visited prostitutes without a single error.

Before the next day, those few were sent to the police station for various crimes. At that time, the program team’s editors were working so fast their hands almost flew off, afraid that the next one to experience life inside would be themselves.

And when CEO Bo’s personal assistant came to explain new precautions, although he didn’t say it explicitly, who in the program team wasn’t shrewd? The tragic end of those few directors and producers, coupled with the Bo Group’s official Weibo personally stepping in to defend Gu Qichi, meant the relationship between Bo Yu and Gu Qichi was practically announced to the world.

The chief director immediately understood. This Gu Qichi was the legendary figure in the Bo Group building—the wife Bo Yu placed at the tip of his heart.

He immediately gave orders that no one could provoke Gu Qichi, no matter what.

But not everyone was shrewd; occasionally there would be a few unreasonable idiots.

The newly appointed Producer Wang was such a fool. To avoid repeating the mistakes of the people above, he spent a lot of money early on to ask people to inquire about matters around Bo Yu.

This inquiry was incredible. Producer Wang finally found out through eighteen layers of connections that Bo Yu was married to the young master of the Gu family, and they were extremely loving.

This young master of the Gu family… besides Gu Yuning, a second person couldn’t be found.

Then this Gu Qichi…

Producer Wang sized up Gu Qichi calmly, then carefully glanced at Gu Yuning, sighing.

Truth be told, no wonder Gu Qichi was so arrogant. Having caught a sugar daddy like Bo Yu, if it were anyone else, their tail would be up in the sky.

It’s just that these rich people really know how to play, putting his main wife and little lover in one program, and even openly standing up for the little lover. Don’t know what he’s thinking.

Director Wang shook his head. This kind of thing wasn’t for workers like them with a monthly salary of three thousand to worry about.

What he could do was to serve Gu Qichi and Gu Yuning well with peace of mind, to prevent either party from being wronged. If some conflict happened between the two in the program group, it would be bad.

However, what Producer Wang didn’t expect was that whatever one worried about would happen.

On stage, Jiang An hesitated among the four films and finally selected “Pale Moonlight” directed by Lin Shuangyi.

Although the plot was melodramatic, Xia You’s character image was full and the setting rich. If he met an actor with explosive power, the final presented effect would absolutely be surprisingly outstanding.

Moreover, Jiang An had long decided in his heart on the actor who could play Xia You.

His gaze fell on Gu Qichi in the center below the stage. Gu Qichi had nothing to do and didn’t care who chose what, playing with the tassels on his clothes in boredom.

He had always been particularly interested in such fragmentary and elegant things.

Gu Qichi’s fingers were slender and very flexible. After a while, several small Chinese knots hung on his body.

Only except for Jiang An, no one paid attention to him, so his hand speed became faster and faster.

When the host on stage called Gu Qichi’s name, he was dismantling a not-so-successful Chinese knot and didn’t hear the other party call him at all.

It was Wen Che who leaned over and nudged him before he came back to his senses.

“It seems Qichi is thinking about his choice, so engrossed.”

The host smiled warmly and asked gently: “Then next, please walk onto the stage and choose your favorite mentor and film—”

Actually, there was no need to guess. The previous few actors would definitely choose Director Jiang An. After all, his fame was there, and Lin Shuangyi’s “Pale Moonlight” was a film that had won international awards. Choosing Jiang An basically made it clear one wanted to take first place.

Even Jiang An unconsciously looked at Gu Qichi a few more times, waiting for him to read his name.

Gu Qichi straightened up, lifted his eyelids, swept his gaze over the options on stage, and spoke neatly: “My choice is—”

“Director Han Hao and ‘Yearning’.”

“…”

“?”

Almost instantly, a lot of whispering arose around, mostly surprise and doubt. After all, no one could refuse Jiang An.

That was Jiang An!

Gu Qichi possessed the first right of choice, yet he didn’t choose Jiang An!

Truly lived long enough to see anything!

Even the host was stunned for a moment. Fortunately, professional ethics allowed him to react quickly, withdrawing the surprised expression on his face. Just as he was about to ask Gu Qichi to walk to Film Emperor Han Hao’s camp, he was interrupted by Jiang An.

Jiang An: “Gu Qichi, can you give me a reason for not choosing ‘Pale Moonlight’?”

“I think Xia You is most suitable for you.”

Jiang An’s words were no different from open robbery, almost writing “Gu Qichi, I’ll give you another chance, come back and choose me quickly” on his face.

There was silence below the stage. The other three on stage looked at Gu Qichi with interest.

Han Hao didn’t have the angry reaction of Jiang An stealing his contestant. After all, he didn’t expect Gu Qichi to choose him either. Actually, compared to Gu Qichi coming to his camp, he was more curious why Gu Qichi rejected Jiang An.

Could it be because in the last episode, Jiang An said Gu Qichi was like a useless vase?

But that shouldn’t be it.

Even Han Hao couldn’t help but want to say, that is Jiang An. Getting on Jiang An’s big ship was directly achieving negative distance with the domestic Three Gold Film Awards, and only one step away from the International Film Emperor.

Gu Qichi stood in front of Jiang An, looking straight into his eyes.

Gazes from all directions fell on him—inquiring, doubtful, sneering, jealous—none were missing.

He pursed his lips, raised his eyes, his gaze still calm. His amber pupils were like solidified pine resin, clear and transparent.

“Director Jiang, I don’t think I am suitable for Xia You. I think my life experience will give me some PTSD towards this role.”

The scene was dumbfounded. They really didn’t expect Gu Qichi’s reason to be this.

What was Xia You’s life experience—

Abduction, domestic violence, separation from biological parents, being bullied in school…

Experiencing any one of these was a pain ordinary people couldn’t empathize with.

Moreover, if there was huge trauma left in the heart, experiencing such things immersively again could easily produce a stress reaction.

Jiang An’s words to keep him were stuck in his throat.

But immediately after, Gu Qichi smiled again. His peach blossom eyes curved slightly, the tail lines carrying a sharp upward arc.

“However, I think Gu Yuning would be very suitable for Ye Zhong.”

Ye Zhong was the person who implemented school bullying on Xia You.

“After all, he is accustomed to doing this kind of thing with ease.”

Gu Qichi added slowly.