Chapter 21: Sustainable Exploitation of Freebies

Evening, inside a hotel room.

"This is just bullying an honest man!" Chen Kun rose indignantly, pointing at Zhang Yuan and shouting in anger.

"What, you want to back out of your debt now?" Zhang Yuan smiled as he snatched several 10-yuan bills from in front of the other man.

After finishing work, Zhang Yuan often gathered with several of the young leads in the hotel to play Fight the Landlord or Mahjong.

Having spent over a decade working on construction sites in his previous life, he knew that many difficult people could only be befriended through drinking, and many "off-the-books" transactions required playing cards. Thus, while his skills might not be legendary, they were certainly far superior to theirs.

Over the past few weeks, the unskilled but addicted Chen Kun had already lost over 3,000 yuan to Zhang Yuan.

Though this amount meant little to him—after all, his salary for this single film was 500,000 yuan.

One had to realize that two or three years ago, when he filmed *Like a Fog, Like a Rain, Like the Wind*, his salary as the male lead was only 90,000 yuan; this was more than a fivefold increase.

But what made him angry was that his pride as a card player had been insulted.

Many celebrities were like this. Ashesang (Leslie Cheung) once mentioned on a program that Faye Wong, whose card skills were notoriously terrible, had once told him

"You can say my singing is bad, but you can't say my card playing is poor!"

【Stubbornness】

The current Chen Kun was the same.

Crucially, he was a Chongqing native; the soul of Sichuan-Chongqing Mahjong would not allow him to admit defeat.

"No way, one more round! I'm going to make a comeback!" Chen Kun sat back down, huffing with indignation.

"Give it up. If you lose any more, we'll have to play Strip Mahjong," Zhang Yuan said, pointing at the other man's empty wallet.

Hearing the words "Strip Mahjong," a flash of excitement flickered in Dong Jie's eyes by the table, which Zhang Yuan promptly caught.

He knew that this sweet girl, who had a bit of baby fat and played the "White Moonlight" role in the drama, was not as pure as her appearance suggested.

She had been photographed kissing another actor on the street while married; the key person being that Wang Dazhi... one wouldn't call him ugly, but being with her felt a bit like Beauty and the Beast.

One could only say she wasn't a "face person" (someone who only cares about looks); she likely preferred talent.

*Hiss, in that case, Brother Kun is pretty much the same,* Zhang Yuan thought.

Zhang Yuan suddenly thought that Brother Kun's son in the future was more than a grade below him in terms of looks. What did the kid's mother have to look like to mess up Brother Kun's genes like that?

These two probably weren't driven by looks either.

"Forget it, I'm done. I have things to do." Zhang Yuan didn't dwell on it further. Ignoring Chen Kun's colorful language and "provocation tactics," he turned and left the room.

Brother Kun was absolutely fuming.

"Dammit! I can't beat him in acting, and I can't beat him at cards! It's infuriating!"

"Alright, what's the rush? His line delivery isn't great; we have our own advantages," Qiao Zhenyu comforted him from the side.

"True..."

On the other side, Zhang Yuan arrived outside Wu Jing's aunt's room and knocked on the door.

"Yuan is here! Come in, quickly!"

As Zhang Yuan stepped into the room, he saw a Mahjong table where Kou Zhenghai, who played Old Master Jin, and Huang Meiying, who played the female lead Leng Qingqiu's mother, were cracking melon seeds. Seeing him arrive, the faces of the two elders lit up with joy.

"Sit down quickly, Xiao Yuan. We were waiting for you."

Why was he in such a hurry to leave Chen Kun and the others?

To catch the session with this "Senior Group"!

Zhang Yuan first pulled a pack of high-quality flower tea from his pocket and brewed some, serving a cup to each of the three veteran actors, easily harvesting a small wave of attributes.

After sitting down, he began arranging his tiles.

The card skills of these veteran actors were clearly much higher than the youth group next door, though they were still slightly inferior to Zhang Yuan's.

However, unlike his purpose for playing with Chen Kun and the others, Zhang Yuan wasn't here to make money.

"Three of Bamboo." Zhang Yuan pushed out a tile.

Opposite him, Huang Meiying's face filled with joy. She pushed her hand of tiles forward and shouted excitedly, "Hu!" (I win!)

【Received thanks from Huang Meiying: Physical Foundation +3!】

"Nine of Dots."

"Hu!" Wu Jing's aunt clapped her hands happily.

【Received thanks from Wu Jing: Vocal Foundation +3!】

"Two of Characters."

"A Pure Suit!" Kou Zhenghai laughed heartily.

【Received thanks from Kou Zhenghai: Acting Foundation +2, Line Delivery Foundation +1, Line Delivery Technique +2!】

In a four-person game, Zhang Yuan was the one who "fed" the others—the person who constantly threw the winning tiles.

This was his true purpose for playing here!

Since he was constantly feeding them wins, how could these people not thank him in their hearts?

After Wu Jing had contributed a few line attributes to him that day, he had thought about how to "pluck" line attributes from the veteran actors to compensate for his own deficiencies.

But through trial and error, he found that the "giving water" method was still useful, just too inefficient.

Everyone in the *Conquer* crew was poor and struggling; if someone gave water, they were naturally grateful. But this was different. The crew had several tea assistants, and Zhang Yuan couldn't even find an opening to help.

Thus, his intellect soared, and he came up with a sustainable "wool-plucking" plan centered around Mahjong.

Simply put: win money from Chen Kun, then lose it to these veteran actors.

Using the young people's money to subsidize the elderly—Zhang Yuan was willing to call it the "New Era Pension Insurance."

Don't be fooled by the idea that he just had to lose; it was actually harder than winning from Chen Kun's group. He had to lose, and he had to lose without making it obvious.

This was "true skill" practiced by Zhang Yuan in his previous life while playing cards with officials at all levels.

Otherwise, how would he have managed to "send money" to the supervisors on the construction sites?

Crucially, these three veteran actors truly had substance!

Kou Zhenghai was from the Class of '85 at the Beijing Film Academy, with nearly 20 years of experience, and had started his career in voice acting; how could his lines be anything but excellent?

Wu Jing had already been introduced, and the other, Huang Meiying, was an even more formidable figure.

She was the veteran artist who would later play the mother in Xu Zheng's *Lost in Thailand*. She joined the August First Film Studio in 1979 and enjoyed the status of a senior division official!

At the August First Studio, she was nicknamed "One-Take Huang" because she always performed perfectly on her first try, and her line delivery was astonishingly strong.

With these three providing him with "private tutoring," Zhang Yuan's line attributes had been skyrocketing lately!

After losing all the few hundred yuan he had won from Chen Kun earlier today, Zhang Yuan pushed his tiles with a distressed expression.

"Your skills are too strong, elders. If this continues, I'll lose my entire salary!"

Chen Kun: "..."

"Consider it tuition for a young man."

"With your wit, you'll have plenty of opportunities to make money in the future."

The others responded with chuckles. Winning money was a small matter, but these veterans felt a sense of euphoria, as if they were the gods of gambling while playing with Zhang Yuan.

"Seeing how miserably I'm losing, perhaps you could give me some small advice on acting? Just to show some mercy to a poor soul," Zhang Yuan said, wiping his face with the flower tea as if it were tears.

"You brat, you've been waiting for us, haven't you..."

With the boost of attributes and theoretical knowledge from the three veterans, Zhang Yuan left the room satisfied.

Although it was getting late, he did not return to his room to rest. Instead, he knocked on another door.

Zhang Yuan felt like a "hostess," visiting several "clients" in a single night.

"Zhang Yuan is here."

He didn't know how many times he had heard that sentence tonight.

The room he arrived at this time belonged to Wang Bochao, who played the main antagonist, Bai Xiongqi.

This man was nationally famous for playing the human form of the White Dragon Horse in the 1986 version of *Journey to the West*.

However, Old Wang was even more famous for an incident a few years later, where he was "crushed" by two Hong Kong "losers" on the set of *Chinese Paladin*.

That incident had been a focal point of the power struggle between the Beijing and Hong Kong entertainment circles, drawing in a host of big shots.

In terms of acting, he was slightly inferior to the three veterans, but he had significant achievements in calligraphy, traditional Chinese painting, and even martial arts.

Being a member of the Calligraphy Association and an academician of a famous painting academy were among his titles, and his martial arts foundation came from Lin Zhiqian, the martial arts director of the *Journey to the West* crew.

And Lin Zhiqian's master was the famous martial artist Wan Laisheng!

Wong Kar-wai's *The Grandmaster* once mentioned the "Five Tigers descending to the South" in the context of "Northern Boxing spreading South," and Wan Laisheng was one of those tigers.

Zhang Yuan had long set his sights on Wang Bochao, wanting to pluck some "authentic" martial arts attributes from him.

Since the man happened to be a teacher, Zhang Yuan seized on this, becoming a "student" of the crew. He followed him every day to practice calligraphy, plucking attributes along the way.

He had been "sustainably plucking wool" like this for about ten days.

And today happened to be the day of a large-scale scene involving dozens of people...

(End of Chapter)