A song called "The You of the Past" has prompted the entire internet to beg me not to leav

The next day, Xinghai City CBD.

I don't want to go to work. (This refers to an entertainment group, specifically an audition room.)

As an officially endorsed, epic project personally overseen by Lin Yan, the moment the news of "The Lost Tomb" was released, the entire Chinese entertainment industry went crazy, with countless agencies scrambling to get involved.

This morning's audition was for the role of Fatty Wang, one of the "Iron Triangle" members, who has extremely demanding requirements for an actor's appearance and temperament.

Lin Yan lowered the brim of his baseball cap and sat in the center of the director's seat.

To his left was Assistant Director Zhang, frantically wiping away cold sweat, while to his right leaned a middle-aged man in a suit and gleaming leather shoes—General Manager Sun, a coal mine owner who had brought his own investment into the project.

This time, Mr. Sun not only invested ten million, but also secretly arranged for a young, handsome actor to audition for the chubby guy.

"President Lin, Fengfeng is a top influencer whose Weibo followers have just surpassed ten million."

Mr. Sun sat with his legs crossed, and the stench of his cheap cologne made people frown.

He flicked his cigar triumphantly: "As long as he's in it, the show's initial buzz will be explosive. Consider this ten million a share; we can discuss the profit sharing later."

Lin Yan leaned back in his chair, not even lifting his eyelids.

He slowly twirled a ballpoint pen between his fingers, his tone indifferent: "Let him in."

The door was pushed open, and four bodyguards in black suits and sunglasses rushed in like road clearing machines.

Immediately afterwards, a young man with exquisite smoky makeup and an extremely tailored suit swayed into the room.

He is over 1.8 meters tall and weighs at most 140 kilograms.

Her waist and legs were so thin they looked like bamboo poles that had come to life.

The pen that Lin Yan was twirling in her hand suddenly stopped with a "snap".

He turned his head, his brows furrowed deeply, and stared intently at Assistant Director Zhang: "This is the actor you arranged to audition for Fatty Wang?"

"Are you sure he's not here to audition for the role of the Forbidden Woman?"

Assistant Director Zhang was so embarrassed he could have dug a three-bedroom apartment out of the sole of his shoe. He lowered his voice and frantically tried to smooth things over: "President Lin, President Sun is an investor, please..."

Xu Feng on the stage clearly heard Lin Yan's undisguised sarcasm.

But he didn't lose his composure. Instead, he raised his hand to brush aside his carefully styled bangs and revealed what he considered to be a charmingly greasy smile.

"Teacher Lin, I know that Fatty Wang in the original work is plump. But I believe that art needs to be elevated."

Xu Feng said in a high-pitched voice, "Young girls these days don't like watching greasy, real fat guys. I can play a slightly chubby version of Fatty Wang."

"For this role, I was even willing to sacrifice my idol image and gain weight at the gym to 160 pounds!"

One hundred and sixty jin?

sacrifice?

Lin Yan almost laughed out of anger, as if he had heard an international joke.

"Gain weight to 160 pounds?"

Lin Yan suddenly leaned forward, his hands gripping the table tightly, his intensely piercing gaze fixed on Xu Feng.

"In the original story, Fatty Wang was a tough guy who could lift a bronze cauldron weighing one or two hundred pounds with one hand in an ancient tomb!"

"He's a master tomb raider whose entire body is covered in muscles and fat!"

Lin Yan pointed at Xu Feng's skinny frame, which looked like it could be blown away by the wind: "With your 140-pound frame, you probably couldn't even swing a Luoyang shovel on the ground."

"If you encounter a blood zombie, are you planning to do a split for it on the spot, or breakdance?"

"You!" Xu Feng was speechless, his face drained of color.

Having been pampered and treated like an older brother by his die-hard fans since childhood, he had never experienced such blatant abuse.

Seeing that his beloved had been wronged, Mr. Sun slammed his hand on the table and stood up abruptly.

"Lin Yan! Don't you dare push your luck!"

"I've poured ten million of my own money into this, what's wrong with changing roles?" President Sun spat as he spoke. "In the entertainment industry, capital is king! This fat guy, Fengfeng is definitely getting the part today!"

"Is capital your father?"

Lin Yan sneered, his eyes instantly turning icy.

He walked around the table and stepped up to Mr. Sun.

His height of 1.85 meters, coupled with the aura cultivated by someone who had long held a high position, instantly sucked the air out of the entire audition room.

"Are you out of your mind? Have you forgotten this is my territory?"

Lin Yan looked down at President Sun, his voice colder than ice: "Have you forgotten that I can make hundreds of millions just from ticket sales for one of my concerts?"

"You bring a paltry ten million and come to my turf to tell me how to do things?"

Startled, Mr. Sun instinctively took two steps back, swallowed hard, and glared at him with a fierce but cowardly expression.

"Take your ten million worthless pieces of paper and your body fat percentage of less than 10%, and get out of here right now."

Lin Yan pointed to the open door.

"From now on, no matter what business I, Lin Yan, have incurred, will be allowed to touch by Star Capital, not even a single leaf."

"I'll stuff you all, people and money, into the main tomb chamber of the Marquis of Haihun."

Mr. Sun's face turned a deep purplish-red, and his finger pointing at Lin Yan trembled uncontrollably.

After holding back for a long time, he didn't dare to be presumptuous anymore. He gritted his teeth and threw down a sentence that said "We'll see," before fleeing in panic with a terrified Xu Feng.

The audition room fell into a deathly silence; you could hear a pin drop.

Assistant Director Zhang frantically wiped his sweat with a tissue: "Mr. Lin, you've really got a tough hand. You've offended the investors to no end. They'll definitely hire online trolls to smear us in the subsequent publicity campaign."

"What's there to be afraid of? They're just a bunch of worthless scoundrels."

Lin Yan impatiently loosened his tie and grabbed the script from the table.

"Today's auditions are canceled. I've looked at dozens of them, and they're all a bunch of slick-haired good-for-nothings. They're too ugly to play Zhang Qiling, and too skinny to play Wang Pangzi!"

noon.

Lin Yan, whose mood had been ruined by these oddballs in the entertainment industry, was too lazy to go home for dinner. Instead, she put on a mask and strolled to an old Beijing hot pot restaurant on the corner downstairs from her company.

I found an inconspicuous corner booth, ordered a clear broth hot pot with plain noodles, and had two pounds of premium mutton sliced.

Just as I was about to pick up my chopsticks, a loud, energetic laugh suddenly erupted from the next table.

"Old Hu! I'm not kidding, I'm just bragging!"

"Those few bastards at the alley entrance just now, I, Fatty, single-handedly carried a beer bottle upside down, with a sweeping kick from the left and a Black Tiger Heart-Piercing Kick from the right!"

"They were so scared they started calling me 'Grandpa'!"

Lin Yan paused, holding her chopsticks, and curiously turned her head to look.

At the next table sat a fat man wearing an XXXXL size camouflage short-sleeved shirt.

This person is really fat; judging by appearance, their weight is definitely over 200 pounds.

Strangely, his body didn't appear loose or flabby; instead, it exuded a robust and powerful presence.

The fat man was currently using a large strainer to frantically scoop mutton from the boiling, bubbling pot of red oil.

A generous spoonful of meat is rolled around in a bowl of rich sesame sauce and then stuffed directly into the mouth.

Despite chewing with grease dripping from his mouth, his speech remained completely unaffected, his thick, authentic Beijing accent cascading out in rapid succession.

His slightly refined-looking companion sitting opposite him gave a helpless, wry smile: "You'd better save your breath. If the local police officer hadn't strolled over, you two hundred pounds of pork belly would be dead by now."

"Pah! You don't know anything! That's called a strategic and tactical retreat!"

The fat man glared at him, clearly displeased.

"Back in the day, when Fatty was running a street stall in Panjiayuan, I'd seen all sorts of people. That's called the shrewdness of preserving strength! Come on, let's have a drink!"

Lin Yan's eyes lit up instantly when he saw the fat man who ate heartily, talked nonsense, but had a wild and righteous spirit in his bones.

Depend on!

Isn't this just Wang Pangzi himself, directly copied from Nanpai Sanshu's books?!

Without a second's hesitation, Lin Yan picked up the plate of top-quality freshly cut mutton on his table and strode over.

"Snapped!"

A plate of mutton weighing a pound was slammed down in front of the fat man.

The fat man abruptly stopped picking up the meat, still holding half a glass of draft beer in his hand, and stared at Lin Yan, who was wearing a baseball cap, with the wariness of a Siberian tiger guarding its food.

"Dude, what's going on? Did you come to the wrong table?"

The fat man leaned back in his chair: "I don't accept handouts. Get to the point."

Lin Yan pulled out a chair and sat down, casually taking off his mask, a smile of interest playing on his lips.

"This plate of meat is for you."

Lin Yan placed his hands on the table, staring intently at the fat man's darting little eyes: "I have a question for you."

"Do you want to get rich? Do you want to become famous?"

The fat man, who was initially on guard, glanced at Lin Yan's face before his gaze swept over the plate of premium mutton.

The next second, he slapped his thigh so hard he almost overturned the hot pot table: "Holy crap!!"

"You're Lin Yan?! The Lin Yan who flaunted his relationship in front of 100,000 people at the Bird's Nest and can trend on social media just by singing a random song?!"

Lin Yan ignored his shouting, took out a gold-embossed business card from her pocket, and slid it across the table.

"I'm here to ask you to act in my movie."

Lin Yan pointed with his chin at the fat man's solid and muscular body.

"Just act like you are now, greedy, cowardly, loyal, and full of nonsense."

"One million in salary. Take it or leave it?"

The refined-looking companion opposite him gasped, dropping his chopsticks in shock.

The fat man was so shocked that his jaw almost fell into the bottom of the hot pot of spicy oil.

"One...one million?!"

The fat man swallowed hard, and the heroic spirit of "I'd rather die than submit" that he had just displayed vanished instantly.

His hands started rubbing together uncontrollably, and his face was plastered with a fawning smile: "Boss Lin, Mr. Lin, you're not making fun of me, are you?"

"My 200-plus pounds of pork belly, is it really worth a million?"

"If I say it's worth it, then it's worth every penny."

Lin Yan stood up and casually patted the fat man's broad shoulder.

"At 3 PM, report to the film crew at the address on the business card."

"If you're late, you won't be here. If you don't come back, remember to pay for this plate of mutton."

After saying that, Lin Yan put his hands in his trench coat pockets, turned around and walked out of the hot pot restaurant with a flourish.