Chapter 6: Stunned
When marketing accounts compared screenshots, it was clear that Lu Xu had completely cleared his list of followed accounts from his time in Verse.
He hadn’t followed many people to begin with, but now, after deleting and adding anew, only the official account of My Baby Prince and two people—Yang Shu and Xia Xuewen—remained on his list.
[…I’m really speechless. He was already the weakest link in Verse. Didn’t Xie Qingyang and the others suffer enough because of him? I got into Verse because of Xie Qingyang, and I can’t stand the thought of Verse being a blemish on Xie Qingyang’s idol career.]
[Can’t he be a bit more dignified? It should’ve been Xie Qingyang, Gu Sinian, and Meng Qin unfollowing him first!]
[Unfollowing his former teammates is one thing, but who are these new people? Yang Shu, Xia Xuewen… I’m dying of laughter. They’re the leads from that awful web drama of his.]
[Am I the only one who noticed Lu Xu’s profile bio? He actually calls himself ‘Actor Lu Xu.’ Unbelievable.]
[His shamelessness is off the charts. My poor bias.]
Shortly after Lu Xu followed Yang Shu and Xia Xuewen, his inbox exploded with private messages again. Without even opening them, he knew they were filled with insults and malicious images.
It hadn’t been long since Lu Xu had transmigrated into the original owner’s body, yet even in this short time, he had already seen tens of thousands of such comments. He could only imagine how much more vicious the storm must have been when Verse disbanded.
Lu Xu couldn’t understand it. When he followed Verse-related accounts, people accused him of clout-chasing. Now that he unfollowed them, they still accused him of clout-chasing. Was there no end to this?
Before joining Verse, the original owner had harbored dreams of becoming an idol. Xie Qingyang, Meng Qin, and Gu Sinian had been signed to Lin Ge Entertainment for a long time. Initially, the company had planned for Verse to debut as a three-member group. However, during that period, boy groups were being heavily promoted by various agencies, and competition between them was fierce.
If the three had debuted with their initial image, they wouldn’t have stood out among the many boy groups with equally strong looks and abilities.
That’s why Lin Ge Entertainment brought in Lu Xu.
Though Lu Xu was indeed the weakest link in Verse in terms of ability, and his talent wasn’t particularly outstanding, the group’s debut was followed by a relentless schedule of activities. The original owner barely had time to rest, let alone improve his stage skills.
Lin Ge Entertainment’s primary goal was to make the other three popular. Whether the original owner became famous or not didn’t matter; he wasn’t a protégé of any of the company’s managers.
In Lu Xu’s view, the original owner’s abilities were indeed Verse’s weakest point. However, the abuse and humiliation he faced were entirely disproportionate to any mistakes he had made.
While scrolling through Weibo, Lu Xu noticed that the post about “Yao Yuan repaying his debts” was still pinned to his homepage. Since he had unfollowed the other three members of Verse, the comment count under the post had skyrocketed.
The insults were repetitive, with the same points recycled over and over again. Lu Xu had practically memorized them by now.
However, as he continued scrolling, he suddenly realized that the tone in the comments section had shifted.
[Do you even deserve Gu Sinian?]
[Poor Gu Sinian. He clearly cherished Verse the most.]
[Sigh, since Verse disbanded, Gu Sinian has never said a single bad word about Lu Xu. How far are you planning to hurt him, Lu Xu? Can’t you just let Gu Sinian quietly pursue his acting career?]
[Wahhh, the best Gu Sinian, the one who loved Verse the most. Boohoo.]
As Lu Xu puzzled over what he had supposedly done to Gu Sinian, the trending topics on Weibo provided the answer:
#GuSinianForeverLovesVerse#
Shortly after Lu Xu unfollowed Xie Qingyang and the other two, Gu Sinian unexpectedly posted a Weibo update.
Ever since pursuing an acting career, Gu Sinian’s page had been strictly for promoting his dramas. It had been ages since he posted anything personal.
The new post, however, consisted of just two emojis: a musical note and a teardrop.
The word Verse itself represents a part of a song, and ever since the group debuted as a four-member act, the musical note had always been a symbol of the group.
Since Verse disbanded, Gu Sinian had repeatedly emphasized how much he missed the group. To fans, even though his recent post contained only two emojis, it conveyed a thousand unspoken words.
[I hate Lu Xu!!!]
[AAAAAHHHH, Lu Xu, why didn’t you just d*e when Verse disbanded?!]
[I’ve never hated someone this much before! How will you ever repay Xie Qingyang, Gu Sinian, and Meng Qin?!]
In short, after Gu Sinian’s post, the rest of the members of Verse started trending one by one, while the scolding directed at Lu Xu doubled. The trending topic under Lu Xu’s name was flooded with demands for him to leave the entertainment industry entirely.
Lu Xu set his phone aside and went back to reading his script.
The two people he had recently followed, Yang Shu and Xia Xuewen, remained silent. Just moments ago, Verse fans had been mocking them as nobodies from the fringes of the industry, but now the battlefield had shifted entirely.
To be fair, they were indeed nobodies—barely even qualified as “fringe.” Their only trace of recognition came from the drama My Baby Prince, and most of their Weibo followers were personal acquaintances.
Yang Shu cautiously watched Lu Xu’s expression. The moment Gu Sinian posted on Weibo, Yang Shu sensed trouble brewing. Yet at this moment, Lu Xu appeared completely calm, as if the person being cursed at and told to leave the entertainment industry wasn’t him at all.
…
After the day’s filming wrapped, Lu Xu went about his routine—eating normally and engaging in his usual activities. The hotel provided for the cast was in poor condition, but Lu Xu didn’t utter a single complaint.
The next day, filming resumed.
The shooting schedule was tight, and the production team’s standards weren’t particularly high. However, Yang Shu noticed that even when delivering lines so absurd they could make anyone laugh, Lu Xu approached them with serious dedication.
Under Lu Xu’s portrayal, the character Yu Wei didn’t come across as shallow. Instead, he exuded the nostalgic charm of an early 2000s idol drama. No matter how exaggerated the lines or how nonsensical the plot, Lu Xu stayed fully committed to the role from start to finish.
One day, they shot a scene where Yu Wei’s spirit was saved by the cheerful Zhong Baobei.
In a way, My Baby Prince had at least one redeeming quality: its character consistency. Even when Yu Wei turned to the dark side later in the story, it was a natural consequence of his own personality traits.
Melancholy easily tipped into gloom.
Yu Wei had always kept the windows to his soul tightly shut. Though talented, he gave off an air of detachment, as if he lived in a world separate from others.
One day, after a tug-of-war competition at Ariel Academy, Yu Wei and Zhong Baobei found themselves stuck in a pit barely one meter deep. As if to compound their misfortune, it started to rain heavily. Yu Wei hated rainy days, as they reminded him of a dark memory from his childhood.
Yet Zhong Baobei tried her best to shield him from the rain, her radiant smile soothing the wounds in his heart.
The script described Zhong Baobei as a ray of sunlight piercing into Yu Wei’s darkness. At that moment, Yu Wei was to reveal his purest smile—a symbol of his inner transformation.
As one of the actors, Yang Shu couldn’t help but criticize the script: A one-meter pit? Couldn’t they just climb out?
Why does Ariel Academy, of all things, have tug-of-war instead of golf or tennis?
And even in the rain, they insisted on calling it “a symbol of Ariel’s indomitable spirit”?
But Lu Xu’s serious performance made the absurd plot almost convincing.
Yang Shu dragged a chair over to the side, curious to see Yu Wei’s supposed “pure smile.”
And then, he saw it—
Through Lu Xu’s performance, Yu Wei had always been a slightly melancholic prince with an indescribable sense of fragility. But in that moment, as he and Zhong Baobei were trapped in the pit and Yu Wei experienced salvation through her kindness, his eyes sparkled. It was as if the dark clouds that had long shrouded him were suddenly blown away.
This was the true self that Yu Wei had been hiding.
During the filming of My Baby Prince, Lu Xu never used exaggerated expressions or tried to look cool by glaring. Yu Wei was a reserved character, so Lu Xu toned down his performance as well. But in that moment, all of Yu Wei’s melancholy and silence disappeared. His smile was radiant and full of warmth.
Yang Shu felt as though he was seeing two completely different people.
“…Is this the kind of acting that should appear in a web drama?” Yang Shu quietly muttered to himself.
He was sure he hadn’t spoken those words out loud, but when he looked up, he heard exactly the same remark.
The speaker was another actor, Ji Zhan, who played Pan Lingfeng’s sidekick in the drama.
“Did Lin Ge Entertainment start an acting training program?”
“Even if they did, they probably wouldn’t take in Brother Lu.”
While rumors outside the set painted Lu Xu as a villain, no one on My Baby Prince’s team thought that way.
Most of the crew had connections to the entertainment industry. If outsiders didn’t understand, surely those in the industry would?
No matter how Lin Ge Entertainment or Verse fans described Lu Xu as the one who dragged down Verse, or how tragic the other three members were, the one who was kicked out of the company was Lu Xu, and it was the others who enjoyed all the resources.
While Verse still existed, Lu Xu didn’t receive the same level of treatment as the other members.
Where were Xie Qingyang, Gu Sinian, and Meng Qin’s tragedies? Those three were always treated like top-tier celebrities wherever they went.
Although Verse fans continually claimed that Lu Xu was the one who ruined the group and the others, the three members’ real accomplishments in the year after Verse disbanded still included frequent features in top fashion magazines.
Yang Shu even found himself wondering, if Lu Xu was such a good actor and had a face perfectly suited for acting, why did Lin Ge Entertainment continue to shower Gu Sinian with resources, while pushing Lu Xu out of the picture?
After realizing how impressive Lu Xu was, Yang Shu and Ji Zhan put all their effort into their performances. Although they couldn’t match Lu Xu’s naturalness, they gave it their all.
Lu Xu also had a great personality. The crew, made up mostly of young people, initially found him intimidating. But once they realized Lu Xu wasn’t so scary, they started pulling him into their social activities.
The script for My Baby Prince had so many flaws. At first, Yang Shu didn’t dare bring it up to the director, Hua Zhu. But one day, while having a meal with Lu Xu, they happened to discuss the issue, and the two of them decided to approach Hua Zhu together.
Although the budget was limited and the shooting schedule couldn’t be extended, preventing major revisions, they still managed to fix some of the particularly illogical and weak parts of the script with their persistence.
As for the remaining issues, while there were still plenty of things to criticize, given how many bugs were in the script, it was impossible to fix everything. At least the result was an improvement over the original version.
Yang Shu was well aware that if he hadn’t gone with Lu Xu to talk to Director Hua Zhu, the director probably wouldn’t have been willing to make any changes to the script.
Every day on set, he felt like he was being amazed by Lu Xu’s acting.
Hmm