Chapter 160: Seeking Defeat 00

Contrary to the originally imagined overwhelming popularity, the audition process for the female lead, Song Yi, was so simple and rapid that it made one question reality itself.

To prevent anyone from picking a fight or stirring up trouble after the post was released, Song Wan decided to take the initiative.

After discussing it with Gao Xiang, Song Wan posted a message on Weibo:

Song Wan V: "So shocking! Why are there only a handful of actors who came to audition for the role of Song Yi?"

Attached was a photo taken by Gao Xiang on her phone, capturing the scene of the audition venue.

Unlike the packed and crowded scenes leaked from other production crews, the photo Gao Xiang took showed a completely empty room with only a scattering of a few actors standing around loosely.

Moreover, none of their faces showed the nervousness imagined by netizens; each of them looked utterly relaxed.

A netizen commented: "...I feel like I've walked into the wrong production crew."

Song Wan's fans instantly flooded the comments section of this post, looking utterly astonished.

"Could it be that the crew's staff notified the wrong time?"

"To the person above, talk nonsense. Even if the time notification was wrong, the official Weibo of *The Stars* couldn't have gotten the announcement wrong, right? Couldn't they just make a phone call to ask?"

"+1 to the above, but this scene really is quite strange."

"Could it be that everyone time-traveled together?"

"Why not just say everyone was captured by the Great Demon King? 233333"

"The Great Demon King probably couldn't capture that many people, and even if he did, there'd be no place to put them!"

"Speechless..."

"It's also possible everyone encountered a ghost wall blocking the entrance of the production set, 2333."

"Thinking too much is also a disease; it needs to be cured!"

"Are intellectually disabled children really this joyful? The whole thing is obvious: the actresses who wanted to compete for Song Yi knew they stood no chance, so they simply changed their target."

"Is the person above trying to hint at shady backstage manipulation?"

"Haters, get lost! It's just a normal analysis, yet you managed to twist it into dark secrets and manipulation. Is your head filled entirely with conspiracies?"

"How is the person above talking? I just asked a question; did I say it was definitely a dark operation? Can we have some basic manners? Escalating everything into personal attacks really broadens one's horizons."

"Exactly, exactly! Her point was simply that the role of Song Yi was pre-determined for Song Wan, so other actresses saw through this fact and didn't bother going to the crew to humiliate themselves. They simply refuse to play along with the production, alright? Song Wan's obsessive fans, can you have some shame and admit the truth?"

"Our Lord Song has strength defying the heavens; how could she ever need such dirty insider deals?"

"I'm the person you all think is overthinking things. I didn't mean to imply any shady deals by Lord Song. I said the other actresses knew they had no chance because I feel they all knew very well that their acting skills aren't as good as Lord Song's, so they simply didn't bother showing up just to be extras."

Looking at the comments online, Song Wan laughed uncontrollably.

However, such arguments were standard the norm. No matter how fiercely they fought, as long as it didn't affect the production crew or her own reputation, Emperor Entertainment would simply let nature take its course—after all, the online bickering would soon quiet down on its own anyway.

Song Wan could spot a few internet trolls trying to fish in troubled waters, but because the matter was so trivial, even if the trolls wanted to smear her, they had no leverage and could only post ambiguous comments to guide the netizens.

However, today's netizens had experienced too much; most had learned to be rational and wouldn't easily be led around by the nose.

Gao Xiang slapped the back of Song Wan's head. "You have no posture when sitting!"

"Ouch," Song Wan quickly straightened up. "Sister Gao, do you have to be so strict? I'm in my apartment right now, and absolutely no one is looking!"

"How do you know no one is looking?"

Song Wan rolled her eyes at Gao Xiang. "Does the company install security cameras in the apartments now? Careful or I'll sue the company for violating my privacy rights."

Gao Xiang looked as if she were staring at someone intellectually impaired. "Even if it's a company apartment, there's no guarantee paparazzi can't sneak in."

However, ordinary paparazzi wouldn't be bored enough to make a fuss over an artist's casual sitting posture, let alone expose it online—that would be even more ridiculous.

Still, this didn't mean artists could afford to neglect their image.

Song Wan shrugged and sat up straight. "Sister Gao, when did you move Zhou Ya's audition date to today?"

Hearing Song Wan talk about business, Gao Xiang stopped joking around with her.

She shoved Song Wan to the other side of the sofa with a heavy thud, sat down, and said, "What do you mean by moving Zhou Ya's audition to today? Zhou Ya's audition date was always today, officially starting at two o'clock this afternoon."

Song Wan was dumbfounded, finding it hard to believe.

Gao Xiang glared at her. "If you don't believe me, go look at the official Weibo page yourself and see if the time for Zhou Ya's audition has been two o'clock this afternoon from the very beginning." She gave Song Wan a disgusted look of disdain. "If you hadn't suddenly gone crazy, the whole thing about Song Yi's audition wouldn't have even existed as a separate clash."

Song Wan picked up her phone, pulled up the production crew's official Weibo, and scrolled for a long while before confirming that what Gao Xiang said was true.

She was left between laughter and tears. "Then what on earth was I tossing and turning and making a fuss over?"

"Growing a hole in your brain, obviously," Gao Xiang said.

Song Wan didn't mind and asked again, "So, choosing today for Song Yi's audition—was it to accommodate the directors' schedules? How did you know there would be so few people coming to audition for Song Yi? Aren't you afraid of delaying Zhou Ya's auditions?"

Zhou Ya was Zhou Xi's younger brother. He had a rather soft and yielding personality and loved to call for his older sister whenever anything happened, serving as a mood-adjusting character.

He wasn't considered very important.

Yet, no matter how unimportant he might seem, as long as he was a character, he stood out glaringly to the production crew of *The Stars*—the characters in *The Stars* were so few that not a single role could tolerate the slightest bit of negligence.

"Oh, please! Your audition video spread across the internet like a virus; could the other actresses vying for the role of Song Yi possibly have missed it? When they realized there was zero possibility of them being selected, who would be willing to make a wasted trip? As for the actors who were still willing to give it a try today, you saw them yourself."

If they weren't harboring ulterior motives, they were simply coming to see their idol.

Even those few actors who hadn't shown their faces in front of Song Wan probably calculated that the number of people auditioning for Song Yi would be scarce, so they wanted to see if they could snag a few more camera angles.

As for the role of Song Yi itself? They probably didn't harbor any real illusions about getting it.

—Except for the occasional sufferer of secondary-school syndrome with boundless self-confidence, who truly believed they were number one in the universe.

Gao Xiang curled her lips in a sneer, clearly unsatisfied with today's outcome.

Song Wan was stunned for a moment, then sighed. "But isn't the number of people just way too few?"

Song Wan couldn't help but fret over it.

Yet she also knew that Gao Xiang and the others wouldn't stoop to using shady insider manipulation to make her the chosen actress for Song Yi, as rumored online.

—Perhaps Sister Gao had even hoped an actress with genuine strength would come to compete with her, just to ruthlessly slap her across the face and make her regret her whims.

Gao Xiang had genuinely thought about that.

She had even considered something harsher than what Song Wan imagined—

Gao Xiang had once contemplated whether she should find an actress whose acting skills were roughly on par with Song Wan's, but whose appearance made her a more suitable fit for the role, just to "wake up" Song Wan's naive mindset.

However, Gao Xiang was pragmatic and knew such an actress would be hard to find, so she quickly dismissed the thought.

Fortunately, Song Wan was unaware of this.

"Then can I go watch Zhou Ya's audition this afternoon?" Song Wan turned to look at Gao Xiang, her mood uncharacteristically nervous.

Gao Xiang, however, didn't think it was a big deal at all.

"Why wouldn't you be allowed to go?" Gao Xiang asked with a hint of amusement. "Even though you can't go in the capacity of the female lead of the production, you can go as a representative of the investors."

Song Wan froze, taking a moment to process this before letting out a soft laugh.

-

Zhou Xi, the older sister of Zhou Ya, was deeply obsessed with her younger brother, always planning everything for him in advance. This pampering had raised Zhou Ya into a soft, docile, and easily bullied personality, and because his facial features were more delicate than those of ordinary boys, he was frequently bullied at school.

Yet Zhou Ya never told Zhou Xi any of this.

However, in Song Yi's illusory fantasy world, Zhou Ya's subconscious cowardice and avoidance of other males ultimately caused the hidden conflicts to erupt.

Though Zhou Ya's screen time in the story was limited, it exerted an extremely crucial influence on the transformation of Zhou Xi's personality.

And Zhou Xi, in turn, had a profound impact on the female lead, Song Wan.

Therefore, indirectly, it could be said that Zhou Ya also exerted a certain degree of influence over the female lead, Song Wan.

You could say the character was unimportant, and you wouldn't be wrong—in most of the plotlines, he only served to lighten the mood and prematurely trigger conflicts, without contributing a single thing to the survival of the female lead and her companions.

Yet you could also say he was truly important—it was precisely because of Zhou Ya's existence that Zhou Xi could complete her ultimate metamorphosis, and his death made Zhou Xi truly realize the cruelty of the otherworldly realm, giving her the spare emotional bandwidth to meddle in the affairs of Song Wan, who was around Zhou Ya's age.

Still, how should one put it? The character design of Zhou Ya wasn't exactly endearing.

The book fans of *The Stars* had once voted on the most disliked characters out of the entire cast, and Zhou Ya topped the list.

Because the so-called otherworldly realm was ultimately just a dream of Song Yi's, the people inside wouldn't actually die.

When Zhou Ya returned later in the story, he harbored immense hostility toward Song Wan due to Zhou Xi's attitude, even targeting Song Wan everywhere and setting traps for her, nearly costing Song Wan her life.

Although the truth came to light at the end—because he had died once before, Zhou Ya knew that the people in the fantasy world wouldn't genuinely die—the negative impressions formed earlier were difficult to erase.

Even for such a character, the actors coming to audition arrived in swarms numbering in the hundreds or thousands.

By comparison, Song Yi's audition scene appeared all the more pitiful.

Unable to resist, Song Wan posted another message on Weibo:

Song Wan V: "Why is it that the female lead's audition has fewer actors showing up than a supporting role's audition?"

Attached was a photo that was pitch-black; at first glance, it looked like nothing, but upon closer inspection, it was packed entirely with the... heads of actors coming to audition for the role of Zhou Ya.

The internet erupted instantly.

Because the contrast between the two Weibo posts was so stark, a massive wave of the "2333" brigade materialized beneath Song Wan's post:

"They must have felt Lord Song's acting skills were so otherworldly that they couldn't possibly compete, so they all fled before the battle even began. Lord Song stands alone in undefeated solitude, 2333333."

Others took a completely unconventional approach:

"Could it be because Lord Song is too gorgeous, and standing next to her would result in too tragic a contrast? As expected, Lord Song can only remain undefeated and lonely at the top, 2333333."

"You are too beautiful, hence you are undefeated in solitude, 23333."

Song Wan: "..." What on earth is "undefeated in solitude"?

Naturally, haters used the two posts to slap random labels on her:

"It must be because Song Wan has such a deep backstage backing that the other actors simply didn't dare compete with her."

"Look, look, look! This is the proof! Still going to claim *The Stars* casting has no shady manipulation? Still going to say Song Wan wasn't pre-selected? Your own idol slapped herself right in the face, slap, slap, slap! Let me ask you, do your faces hurt?"