68: Scheming

"What about you? Do you have any work scheduled for this year?" Jiang Xin asked Liu Yifei, her gaze flickering toward Li Xiuwu.

Liu Yifei, dizzy with the praise she'd received, didn't notice.

"Not yet. I haven't received any good scripts," Liu Yifei said, sounding a bit dejected.

"Don't worry. You have good acting skills and you're beautiful. Once demi-gods and semi-devils airs, you're bound to become a huge hit. You won't be short of scripts then," Jiang Xin comforted her.

"My teacher says my acting foundation is poor, so if I'm not filming, I should stay at school and study hard." Liu Yifei actually had a good mindset; she wasn't in a rush at all.

"Where are you going?" After finishing their meal, Li Xiuwu asked Jiang Xin.

"Sister Xinxin, do you have any other work today?" Before Jiang Xin could answer, Liu Yifei asked her first.

"No," Jiang Xin replied.

"Would you like to come take a walk around our school?" Liu Yifei invited her.

"Sure," Jiang Xin agreed, then added immediately, "I actually applied to the Beijing Film Academy once, but unfortunately, I didn't get in."

"Ah, Sister Xinxin applied to BFA but wasn't accepted? Was that invigilating teacher blind?"

"Talent being overlooked in the countryside is inevitable. Even Jiang Wen didn't get into BFA when he applied," Li Xiuwu chimed in.

"Don't talk," Liu Yifei said to Li Xiuwu, who was driving.

Li Xiuwu shut his mouth and continued driving.

"What was the reason for rejecting you?" Liu Yifei asked Jiang Xin curiously.

"They said I wasn't feminine enough," Jiang Xin said with a hint of dissatisfaction in her voice.

She thought to herself: 'Where is this lady not feminine? I'm incredibly beautiful.'

"The invigilator must have been blind. Sister Xinxin is so pretty, prettier than quite a few girls in our class."

Once they reached the school, Liu Yifei dragged Jiang Xin away to tour the BFA she never got to attend. Li Xiuwu did not follow.

Suddenly, he spotted an acquaintance. Huang Bai was bowing and scraping toward a tree, though it was unclear what he was doing.

Curious, Li Xiuwu got out of the car and walked over with light steps, coming up behind Huang Bai.

"I want to say I... I really can't save Xiao Bao on my own." Huang Bai's voice trembled slightly.

After speaking, he stopped.

"I want to say I... I really can't save Xiao Bao on my own. Xiao Bao is only six years old."

It seemed he was practicing lines, repeating them over and over to this tree in the corner.

"When a peasant is driven to a dead end, they either kneel or kill," Li Xiuwu said from behind him.

"Ah!" Huang Bai jumped in fright and spun around.

His eyes were bloodshot. He was a bit surprised to see it was Li Xiuwu.

"Sorry to disturb you," he answered subconsciously, his mindset still immersed in the character—a weak migrant worker.

"You've hidden yourself in the furthest corner of BFA, yet you still managed to disturb me?" Li Xiuwu said with a smile.

Huang Bai also laughed, reaching up to scratch his hair.

"What's up? Did you land a role?"

"I got a role as a migrant worker. I thought I'd practice the lines first."

"Do you mind if I watch?"

"It's fine, go ahead. You can give me some feedback too," Huang Bai said nonchalantly.

This time he faced Li Xiuwu, first building up his emotions.

His eyes grew bloodshot, shimmering with tears.

"I want to say I..." His mouth opened slightly, his lips trembling. "I really can't save Xiao Bao on my own."

He suddenly dropped to his knees without any warning, which startled Li Xiuwu, who quickly dodged to the side.

Even though Huang Bai was rehearsing a scene, Li Xiuwu couldn't just stand there and take it as if it were natural.

"Big brothers, big sisters, please save Xiao Bao, he's only six." Huang Bai wasn't affected by Li Xiuwu; he lay prostrate on the ground, tears streaming down as his voice shook.

He had projected himself into the role, bringing a helpless and desperate migrant worker to life.

"Cut," Li Xiuwu called out from the side.

Huang Bai stood up and wiped his tears, looking slightly embarrassed. "I didn't scare you, did I?"

"How could you?" Li Xiuwu began to applaud. "That was an outstanding performance."

"You flatter me." He began to smile.

"Someone just said the BFA teachers were blind, and I refuted it. But you've just slapped my face—how could a talent like you not have entered the acting department?"

Huang Bai's acting just now had truly stunned him.

"You shouldn't say that." Huang Bai was startled; they were still at BFA, after all. If the teachers found out they were gossiping behind their backs...

"What's there to be afraid of? Jiang Wen says it all the time."

"I'm not a fresh high school graduate anyway." Huang Bai shook his head. He was different from normal candidates; even if he went to the Central Academy of Drama, he wouldn't get in.

"Let's not talk about that." Huang Bai changed the subject, not wanting to discuss it further. Li Xiuwu wasn't afraid of offending BFA teachers, but he was.

"Was there anything wrong with my performance just now?"

"It was very good. To me, you looked exactly like a simple old peasant." Li Xiuwu looked at Huang Bai, especially his hair.

Huang Bai's side-parted hair clearly hadn't been washed for days, giving him the look of a bottom-tier migrant worker.

This wasn't to belittle migrant workers. In this era, when migrant workers came to the city for work, especially on construction sites, they lived in temporary shacks. Shacks made of boards were considered good.

In many places, they just used straw mats for cover, living in drafty, leaky conditions. Washing hair or bathing was fine in summer, but once it got a bit cold, it was out of the question. A dozen people living in one shack created a terrible stench.

It wasn't that migrant workers didn't love cleanliness; they simply didn't have the facilities. If they lived in buildings with bathrooms and hot water, they would wash themselves clean too.

In Huang Bai's case, he likely hadn't washed his hair on purpose. The roles he could find now were all of this type; if he washed his hair, his chances would be cut in half.

"Can I take a look at your script?" Li Xiuwu asked Huang Bai.

Often, scripts were not allowed to be leaked. For example, with 'The Promise', very few people besides the actors knew anything, and even actors had to sign contracts before seeing the script.

But for some production crews, if the level of attention was low, it didn't matter.

For instance, the one Huang Bai had taken hadn't even been officially greenlit, yet the script was already in his hands.

"Go ahead." Huang Bai didn't refuse. Given the image he was portraying, he didn't believe Li Xiuwu would try to snatch the role from him.

Li Xiuwu picked up the script and flipped through it. Huang Bai began to ponder the script, walking to another tree to practice his lines and acting, figuring out how to play the part.

This script was a play about the survival of migrant workers, telling the difficult story of their lives working in the city.

It mainly talked about how migrant workers in this era had very low resilience against risks.

Li Xiuwu felt the script was excellent and very poignant for the times.

It was a portrayal of the image of migrant workers in this era.

Among them was a sharp-tongued foreman who seemed heartless, kicking Huang Bai's character off the site, yet the foreman still gave him a temporary place to stay.

When Xiao Bao needed 20,000 yuan for medical treatment, the foreman donated 2,000.

Later in the plot, curing Xiao Bao required nearly a million. The big entrepreneur in the play, whom Huang Bai's character knelt to for help, only donated 100,000 for the sake of putting on a show for the cameras.

On the other side, Liu Yifei, having finished a loop with Jiang Xin, returned to the car but didn't see Li Xiuwu.

"Over there," Jiang Xin pointed into the distance.

Liu Yifei looked over. Li Xiuwu was leaning against a tree with a script in his hand. Not far away, by another tree, a person was muttering to themselves.

She recognized him as Huang Bai.

"Let's go over."