Chapter 145: He’s Insanely Good! (25% Forum Format)
When Specter was officially scheduled, fans of Xie Xizhao and Yu Lin were already at each other’s throats. Bystanders had been eating this melon for quite a while.
To the average onlooker, the drama didn’t seem like a big deal, but those who were a bit more sensitive—especially the more seasoned veterans—had already sensed that something was off.
Specter was scheduled to air on January 26th. That afternoon, fans outside were all happily discussing the freshly announced character posters, while a certain well-known film and TV forum was buzzing about something else entirely.
[So are the two main creators of that single-character drama really falling out or what? It’s wild that even today, neither of their studios had followed each other. I’m shocked.]
1L: Although the leads had followed each other, that seemed to have happened a long time ago—and there hadn’t been any interaction lately. Yikes.
2L: Specter? I felt like it wasn’t that bad. Maybe people were blowing things out of proportion. XXZ and YL had totally different styles, but as far as I remembered, both of them had pretty decent tempers.
3L: It was true that XXZ had a good temper. YL, though… not so much. There had been gossip saying he had serious emotional swings, though it was debunked quickly. But after seeing those nail marks, I believed it.
4L: Could the XXZ fans please stop spreading propaganda everywhere? That stuff was already proven false.
He’s still the senior here—don’t think the bystanders are all on your side just because things turned messy.
5L: Welp, looks like this thread was turning into another battlefield, lol.
But I agreed with OP. Something had to have happened. Say what you will, XXZ’s studio had always carried itself with a lot of class. Whether it was teammates or collaborators, they always took care of everything—I’d heard that even as a bystander. There’s no way they wouldn’t follow the other studio after all this time unless something really went wrong.
6L: His studio basically was his personal style—he was the boss, after all. “Classy” really hit the nail on the head. I also felt like this signal was pretty clear.
It was kind of fascinating, actually. So this was what Xie Xizhao was like when he didn’t care for someone. Looks like his relationship with TP had really been solid. Solo stans needed to stop using a few seconds of edited cuts to scream about fake friendships.
7L: You guys seemed to have some misconceptions about Xie Xizhao… Back when he had a good relationship with TP, it didn’t stop him from negotiating a special contract with the show’s production team. After that, he shifted gears when it was time to rebrand himself. When Hong Wu tore into him on Weibo, he didn’t even respond. In public, it was Hong Wu who ended up making peace first. Only fans kept using his age and experience as ammo.
Look at him—no connections, no backing—what company in the industry dared to take him on directly? Remember that notoriously nitpicky media outlet that went to interview him? Even they were super respectful. The people in this industry were all sharp as hell. That already said a lot. Let me put it this way—if Yu Lin really fell out with him over the whole “Double Best Actor” thing, then that was just dumb.
8L: So why couldn’t it have been Xie Xizhao who fell out with Yu Lin?
9L: Because Xie Xizhao, while smart and tactful and classy, was also a genuinely good person…
10L: What a captivating character setup—gentle and composed big boss vibes. I didn’t really care before, but now I might be getting sucked in fast.
11L: So you guys were all assuming they’d already fallen out? Let me share a little scoop then. I had a friend who was pretty close to Yu Lin’s team. He said Specter was a project Yu Lin took on to go after awards, and he’d decided to cast Xie Xizhao a long time ago—back when Xie had just blown up from Jing Yin. He clearly picked him for the traffic. But after Xie Xizhao won the award, Yu Lin never attended any cast dinners or script readings again.
PS: I’m sharing this with my friend’s permission. No hard proof, and he hates Yu Lin—told me not to stir stuff up. Believe what you want.
12L: ??? That’s some diva behavior
13L: Lol I’ve got a mini scoop too, also no proof—just sharing for fun. As far as I know, the Specter script went through tons of rewrites. It’s a dual male lead drama, both billed equally. Take a wild guess why the script kept getting revised?
—
Although Meng Xuran seemed like a rag doll being tugged back and forth between Yu Lin and Xie Xizhao, it was obvious there had been a reason why Hong Wu had let Xie join the project in the first place.
At exactly 8 PM, when the episode aired, Xie Xizhao was in the dorm. He caught the can of chips Ai Qingyuan tossed over just as Zou Yi was flipping through the channels.
While channel surfing, Zou Yi frowned in thought and muttered, “Meng Xuran? Isn’t he that director who used to be known for horror films?”
Xie Xizhao bit into a lime-flavored chip and answered through a mouthful, “Yeah.”
Ai Qingyuan immediately looked wary. “There aren’t going to be horror scenes in the drama, right?”
Xie Xizhao calmly swallowed the chip, then replied with equal calm, “The scariest episode might be this one.”
He pointed to his neck.
Ai Qingyuan: “…”
When Xie Xizhao had come back with injuries, the entire TP team had been shocked. Yun Pan had been completely stunned, clinging to his neck and checking it over and over. Ai Qingyuan had dragged him aside and confirmed at least ten times, “Dude, are you absolutely sure you didn’t run into a psycho?”
Later, when they learned what had happened with Yu Lin, they truly understood the meaning of don’t judge a book by its cover.
Xie Xizhao had said he would handle it, so Ai Qingyuan temporarily shelved the idea of using his family’s connections to “bring down Yu Lin when the weather turned cold.” But that didn’t stop him from finding Yu Lin intolerable.
Barely five minutes into the drama’s premiere, he was already grumbling: “Come on. This guy obviously looks like the villain—he’s got that scheming face.”
At the start of episode one, Di Shuo, a well-known young entrepreneur, was shown launching a charitable foundation. The screen was filled with shots of the opening ceremony. The man, dressed in a white suit, stood on stage delivering a poised, elegant speech. His gaze was warm and gentle.
But Ai Qingyuan’s comment clearly came with some bias. Because exactly an hour later, when the web drama version of Specter updated online, Yu Lin’s first appearance became the hotspot for a flood of comments from his fans: “So handsome, so refined! Who could possibly think he’s a villain?”—and similar fangirl praise.
Yet Xie Xizhao backed Ai Qingyuan’s take.
He said, “A lot of solo shots were filmed in post. If I remember right, this was one of them.”
“His eyes are off,” he added, chewing another chip. “He wasn’t in character here at all.”
‘Probably still riding high after grabbing me by the neck,’ he thought.
Logically, Xie Xizhao felt this kind of shot should’ve been reshot, but Meng Xuran had probably lost interest by then.
Every time Xie Xizhao went off to film, the guys at TP—these shut-in college bros—acted like kids left behind by their parents. This was also their first time coordinating schedules to sit down together and watch one of Xie Xizhao’s shows as a group activity, so they were pretty curious to hear his commentary.
Seeing their eager expressions, Xie Xizhao had no choice but to squeeze in as many behind-the-scenes insights as he could while munching on chips.
He actually would’ve made a great teacher. When he broke down scenes, his voice and pacing were steady, almost giving the TP crew the illusion they were back in a small acting class.
Ten minutes later, the first character in the show was successfully killed off.
The camera finally shifted away from the villain’s perspective and into the police station.
The first time the camera cut to Xie Xizhao’s face, the entire TP was collectively stunned by how good-looking he was.
On screen, the young man had broad shoulders and a slim waist, wearing a sharply tailored police uniform. Uniforms always flattered the figure—and it was as if the camera knew it too. It lingered on his back for several seconds before shifting to a profile shot.
Without his usual idol makeup, the young man’s sharp bone structure became even more prominent under the lighting. His nose bridge was high, lips pale. His posture while seated and holding a pen was a little casual, but his expression as he looked at the large screen was serious and focused.
For a full ten seconds, no one said a word. Xie Xizhao finally broke the silence and said, “Come on, it’s not that much, is it?”
Ai Qingyuan muttered, “You don’t get what a uniform like that does to a man—holy shit!”
Fu Wenze calmly withdrew the hand he had just pinched Ai Qingyuan’s waist with.
Zou Yi also snapped out of it and cleared his throat. “It’s not like… I mean, it’s just that you look kinda different from usual.”
That line summed up what everyone in the room was thinking.
They were the ones who had spent the most time around Xie Xizhao. In theory, they had seen every side of him. But when they first saw Huo Xiangyang appear on screen, they still felt a strange sense of unfamiliar familiarity.
—
In fact, it wasn’t the first time the TP group had felt this strange disconnect between Xie Xizhao the actor and the Xie Xizhao they knew.
It was weird. His face was entirely natural, and the big screen only made his beauty more striking. But whether it was Jing Yin before, Tao Yan, or now Huo Xiangyang—their first reaction whenever they saw him on screen was always the character’s name, and only after that came: “Oh, that’s our kid.”
Twenty minutes into the premiere, Zou Yi already had a vague sense that this might turn into another breakout role for Xie Xizhao.
But he was still incredibly curious. And so were the rest of the TP guys.
Four pairs of eyes turned to Xie Xizhao, wide and expectant. He couldn’t help but laugh.
This was almost the same kind of question Ji Yan had once asked him.
Back then, his answer had been just one sentence: Treat the character as a real person. And this time, his reply was just as concise:
“Change your habits.”
“People are essentially made up of their habits,” he said.
Seeing the confused looks on everyone’s faces, he gave an example, shaking the can of chips in his hand. “Take opening a jar, for instance.”
“When you come across a hard-to-open jar, everyone has their own way of dealing with it,” he explained. “Some kids bite it with their teeth, some twist it, some pry it, some go grab a tool. These small choices—how we approach the task—actually reflect something about our personalities.”
When he designed a character, the ultimate goal was to build out these habits—to serve the performance.
Habits, and also details.
“Xie Xizhao” and “Huo Xiangyang” were two different individuals. The way their minds worked was different, so even in handling the smallest task, they might choose completely different approaches.
Only a fully developed character and backstory could generate logically consistent details. And when all those details came together, they created a completely new, living person.
Xie Xizhao made it sound simple, but becoming another person entirely required a deep, soul-level understanding of the character. The TP group sort of got it, sort of didn’t. They kept half-listening to him as they continued watching the drama.
Meanwhile, over on Weibo, Xie Xizhao’s fandom had already exploded into a frenzy.
—
If you asked what could instantly ignite the passion of a fanbase, there was only one answer:
A moving, living main character.
And if you had to add a qualifier, it would be:
A pretty one.
Xie Xizhao’s fans might fight and bicker all the time, but at the end of the day, it was just because they had too much free time.
Normally, fans might have had the time and mental space to worry about Xie Xizhao’s performance, but after two successful projects, he had become a certified “no-need-to-check” product in their eyes. So now, all that remained was endless anticipation and excitement.
And Xie Xizhao didn’t let them down.
Almost the moment he appeared on screen, a wave of incoherent screaming erupted both in physical spaces and across the drama’s streaming bullet chats. As one of his biggest fans put it: “Damn, it’s like pulling an SSS-rarity blind box again. I could die happy.”
Ordinary viewers couldn’t match TP’s professional eye, so it would take a while before acting critiques started rolling in.
But just his upgraded aura and jaw-dropping visuals were more than enough to keep his fans’ heart rates above 100 all night long.
People were gasping and clutching their chests like they were dying and resurrecting on loop. The fandom square was flooded with cries of “awsl” (I’m dead from the cuteness/hotness), screenshots and gifs were spreading like wildfire, and his supertopic ranking skyrocketed.
Never mind how the drama itself would perform—at this point, for the fans, it was unmistakably premium content.
For a while, not even the usual flame wars broke out on the forums. Even random passersby couldn’t help but sigh:
[Xie Xizhao in uniform is just… sculpted. What was Nuwa thinking, playing favorites like that when she created people?]
—
Compared to Xie Xizhao, the buzz around Yu Lin was noticeably quieter.
That’s the most direct advantage of looks in the entertainment industry.
And in a sense, Yu Lin’s worries had been justified.
At that moment, as he stared at the overwhelming wall of online discussion, he pressed his lips into a thin line.
Don’t panic.
He told himself that.
Taking a deep breath, he tried to suppress the surging bitterness inside him. And sure enough, after the initial frenzy of Xie Xizhao’s fans, the focus on just his looks began to fade, replaced by more substantial discussions about the plot.
Suspense was a perennial genre. What mattered most in this type of drama wasn’t actually the character settings, but rather the design of the cases and the methods used to solve them. For its core audience, the protagonist’s persona was just the cherry on top—only if the cases themselves were compelling could a show truly be considered good.
And once the cases were done well, the show’s potential audience clearly exceeded that of artistic dramas like Tao Yan’s Summer.
As it happened, the plotline of Specter was the one aspect of the show that remained completely unaffected by off-screen controversies.
True to its name, the entire drama revolved around the word “guile” or “trickery.” The first two episodes neatly and decisively presented a small case.
A girl who had fallen from a building was found with dried butterfly corpses growing out of her back. Everyone initially assumed it was a carefully orchestrated murder. But in truth, it was a long-planned suicide after years of emotional repression.
A girl starved of love had staged a “homicide” to retaliate against the indifference of her parents—all just to gain a shred of attention and care from them.
It was a simple case. Aside from the mysterious “advisor” who had yet to be revealed, the entire case—from structure to pacing—was both intricate and complete.
And the director, with a background in horror films, applied a meticulous aesthetic of eerie beauty. As the withered butterflies rose like autumn leaves, the show’s reputation began to take off.
Suspense enthusiasts immediately picked up the scent of a great watch. The show was quickly and organically recommended by word of mouth. That very night, Weibo trending topics and forums exploded with discussion about the plot.
With the high level of discussion, the show’s popularity naturally began to climb. Once the plot had surged through its first wave of momentum, the public’s attention naturally shifted elsewhere.
Yu Lin watched as his homepage gradually became dominated by storyline discussions. He let out a soft breath—at last, that feeling of being stabbed by countless eyes had faded.
He took a sip of his coffee and continued refreshing the page.
He had acted in many dramas before and was quite experienced in tracking public opinion trends.
Generally speaking, when a show’s popularity rose, it meant success and traffic—and once a drama turned into a breakout hit, it marked the beginning of benefits for the actors involved.
In this regard, he had strong confidence in himself.
Xie Xizhao was indeed better looking than him, but in the first two episodes—eighty minutes total—he had only appeared for about twenty minutes. Most of the spotlight had been on Di Shuo.
He was the one who manipulated the young girl into suicide, a hypocritical businessman, and also the deranged killer who buried his own family’s corpses at home.
There were countless aspects of the character open for discussion. Each one was deeply tied to the plot. Under such circumstances, he couldn’t believe no one had noticed his performance.
He took a deep breath and continued refreshing the page.
He scrolled slowly—almost one refresh every few seconds—and during those seconds, he stared at the screen intently, reading through every single headline.
Finally, a new post floated into view:
[Everyone’s talking about the plot—can someone talk about the acting for a sec? This drama really nails both story and performances.]
Yu Lin’s hand froze.
For a moment, even his breathing quickened.
He steadied himself, mentally reviewing the studio’s PR strategies for any gaps while his fingers trembled as he clicked into the post.
Then, he saw the main content:
[Can someone please tell me how Xie Xizhao manages to be this handsome and still have a face that transforms so well between roles?? I’m losing my mind—he’s insanely good!]
