218: Semifinals

After signing Donnie, Lu Qingyu was in an incredibly good mood all day. He really was an ordinary little genius at saving money.

Signing someone worth $75 million for just $500,000, and with a lifetime contract to boot—it was simply exhilarating.

The day after Donnie was signed, Lu Qingyu threw him into a training camp.

There were many people in the training camp, with different plans tailored to different individuals.

Lu Qingyu had hired retired Dragon Kingdom veterans as their training instructors. Lu Qingyu had given the camp staff a heads-up to give Donnie "special care."

At first, Donnie thought this training would just involve some action drills for the movie itself, but he was wrong.

After the first day, Donnie was exhausted; on the second day, his whole body ached; on the third day, he wanted to go home; on the fourth day, he was caught sneaking a burger and forced to run 5 kilometers; and on the fifth day, he was caught sneaking a beer and penalized with a 10-kilometer run.

Su Jixing paid quite a bit of attention to this side of things, worried that Donnie wouldn't be able to take it and would just quit.

When Lu Qingyu first mentioned putting them in a training camp, Su Jixing hadn't expected it to be a military-style drill that strictly controlled every actor's diet and subjected them to high-intensity training.

Not just Donnie, but even the other actors were struggling. Su Jixing was very worried; he felt Donnie wouldn't last long.

Hearing that Donnie had even had a conflict with the instructors during that time, Su Jixing offered a suggestion to Lu Qingyu:

"Boss, how about giving them one day off a week or treating them to some good food as a reward?"

"With such high-intensity training all the time, I heard that not just Donnie, but others have complaints about the instructors too. I'm afraid they won't be able to hold on."

Su Jixing wanted to balance work and rest so the trainees could persevere longer, but Lu Qingyu flatly rejected the proposal.

"No need. You have to trust the soldiers of the Dragon Kingdom. These foreigners will definitely be whipped into shape by them."

After being rejected by Lu Qingyu, Su Jixing prepared himself for the group to quit, but to his surprise, they actually made it through two weeks safely.

When they met again after two weeks, these people seemed to have completely transformed.

When the executive director of iron man learned that the actor he'd be working with was Donnie, he broke into a cold sweat. He had heard of Donnie's reputation and prepared himself for trouble.

But to his surprise, from the start of filming, Donnie not only never arrived late or left early, but was actually the first to arrive on set every day and the last to leave.

During filming, he was extremely cooperative with the director and even helped the crew clean up props. He was polite to everyone, and combined with his superb acting, the director began to suspect that the rumors he'd heard about Donnie were just lies.

Su Jixing was also incredibly shocked to see Donnie like this.

He curiously asked Lu Qingyu: "Boss, how did you do it?"

Lu Qingyu replied: "The Dragon Kingdom's military will tame every rebel."

Heard that after Donnie woke up every morning, he even had to fold his quilt into a 'tofu block.'

Filming for the movies and TV shows gradually got on track. Meanwhile, Lu Qingyu returned to the Dragon Kingdom to participate in the semi-finals of King of Singers.

In the eighth episode of King of Singers, the semi-finals, half of the eight singers were to be eliminated.

Following Lu Qingyu's victory last time, the show's popularity reached a new high, and everyone had very high expectations for him this time.

With the previous performance as a reference, Levi re-evaluated his opponent. He knew there was only one person in this show who could compete with him for the championship: Lu Qingyu.

This time, Levi no longer looked down on Lu Qingyu. To cater to the Dragon Kingdom's audience, he chose a Chinese song for the semi-finals.

The song was titled "Gone Love," and it was very popular both in the Dragon Kingdom and overseas.

People might not know its name, but as long as they heard the melody, they could certainly hum along to a few lines.

After choosing the song, Levi practiced for an hour every day, and his pronunciation became increasingly authentic.

Since he was even singing a Dragon Kingdom song, he believed he would definitely reclaim first place this time.

During the rehearsal the previous day, Levi kept a sharp eye out, wanting to see what Lu Qingyu's live performance was like. He had even prepared a backup song, planning to ask the Program Production Team for a change if Lu Qingyu's rehearsal was too good. However, he suddenly learned that Lu Qingyu was not attending the rehearsal.

After Levi's rehearsal ended, the live band began to pack up and leave.

Levi: ???

"Isn't Lu Qingyu still left to rehearse?"

The director on-site explained to Levi: "Lu Qingyu's schedule is very busy; he doesn't have time to attend."

Levi couldn't understand. How busy could Lu Qingyu be? As an international singer, he had cleared a month's worth of his schedule just to participate in this show. Although he didn't like the Dragon Kingdom's format of rehearsing in advance, he still cooperated for every performance.

He wanted to gauge Lu Qingyu's level, but the guy didn't even show up!

How could Lu Qingyu not come? Was he that confident in his own performance?

Levi asked: "Then, what song is he going to sing this time?"

Levi wanted to find out so he could go back and listen to it to see if the song posed a threat to him.