Chapter 045 Invitation
Yan Jing couldn't believe what he heard. He looked up at Xie Chi and glared at him: "Brother, you just said..."
He secretly looked at Lu Wen, and Lu Wen smiled and nodded at him: "Your brother Xie agreed."
Yan Jing's expression instantly brightened, his eyes full of joy. He secretly turned his head to look at Lu Wen, and while he could still see him, he winked at Lu Wen frantically - "Did you hear that he agreed! Did you hear that! Did you hear that!"
Lu Wen nodded helplessly.
Xie Chi straightened his collar and sleeves, and extended his hand to Yan Jing in a very formal manner: "Isn't this more realistic?"
Yan Jing stared at the extremely beautiful pair of hands for a long time before he understood what he meant. His nose suddenly felt a little sour. As if afraid that he would go back on his word, he quickly shook hands with Xie Chi.
Xie Chi smiled, feeling a little helpless.
The short three minutes were up, and Yan Jing's eyes fell into darkness again, but he remembered the pair of white and warm hands. He had a partner and the motivation to keep working hard.
"Brother." Yan Jing suddenly felt a little embarrassed. "I'm going to go do my homework first. Otherwise, it will be too embarrassing. If you have anything, just contact me on the APP. I'm always available!"
He can't see, but the APP has a voice reading function, which is a bit time-consuming, but he has nothing else to do anyway.
Yan Jing was a little impatient. Before Xie Chi and Lu Wen could respond, he quickly grabbed his phone and left the office.
"You're in such a hurry." Xie Chi looked at Lu Wen. He sat down again, hooked his long legs, slid the chair in front of Lu Wen, clasped his hands in front of him, and said lazily: "I'll ask you a question. If it's inconvenient, you don't have to answer it."
Lu Wen was stunned for several seconds, then reacted: "Face?"
Xie Chi said calmly: "Yes, because we are from the same world, but you are obviously not completely human, so I am more curious."
Xie Chi lowered his eyes and stared at his fingers. What on earth was there in the world he lived in that he didn't know?
Lu Wen was silent for a few seconds, then said cheerfully: "Actually, there is nothing to hide. I am indeed not completely human."
Xie Chi was startled.
Lu Wen said, "My home is close to the sea. Basically, if I walk a few hundred steps outside, I can see the blue sea. In our area, the elders often warn young girls not to swim in the sea in revealing clothes, because there may be lustful fishmen who force them to have sex with them."
Xie Chi asked: "Are you sure that creatures like murlocs really exist?"
Lu Wen nodded and smiled: "Where else did these scales on my face come from?"
Because of Yan Jing's cheerfulness and Xie Chi's equal treatment, he had long since let go of the ugly scales on his face and felt that he could reveal anything to Xie Chi.
Xie Chi was stunned for a moment, but quickly accepted it. Just because he had never seen or heard of many things, it didn't mean they didn't exist. He just lacked an opportunity to understand them.
Lu Wen continued, "Legend has it that hundreds of years ago, people living on the shore even worshipped the fishmen in the sea as gods. Every once in a while, they would throw virgins into the sea as sacrifices to the fishmen in order to obtain their protection."
Xie Chi asked: "What does a fishman look like?"
Lu Wen said, "No one has ever seen it, but it does exist. I have seen a manuscript from hundreds of years ago in a museum near my home. It seems that someone drew the appearance of fish people, but I don't know if it is true or not. In the drawings, they have ugly faces, fish lips, blue and white eyes, and noses sunken with only two small holes. They have bodies covered with fish scales, and huge naked-"
Lu Wen coughed twice: "You know what I mean."
"Yeah." Xie Chi changed the subject awkwardly, "What about those girls who were offered to the fishmen?"
Lu Wen said: "Some of them drowned and their bodies floated to the sea and were salvaged by people, while some were found safe and sound on the beach."
Xie Chi asked: "Those who encountered the merman were rescued by the merman and survived, while those who didn't encountered them drowned?"
"Yes, those who survived were 'enjoyed' by the mermen." Lu Wen said, "Some of them will get pregnant with the mermen's children, and they cannot have an abortion, they can only give birth to the children."
Xie Chi glanced at Lu Wen's scaly face and understood instantly. Lu Wen knew that Xie Chi was talking about serious matters and did not feel embarrassed. He simply took off his shirt, turned his back and showed his scaly back to Xie Chi.
Xie Chi looked at the scales and understood instantly: "So your mother is..."
He felt a little offended and stopped the topic in time: "Sorry."
Lu Wen was very calm and smiled, "It's not what you think. My mother is not one of those virgins thrown into the sea. When she was young, she was very lively and liked to drive a fishing boat to the sea. Then one time, there was a storm and the boat was accidentally overturned by the waves. My mother almost died. She was rescued by a fisherman and was pregnant with me when she came ashore."
"My mother is a very romantic woman. She gave birth to me happily and always told me that there was nothing shameful about it. It was me who was too careless and didn't think straight before."
"So she doesn't remember what the merman looks like?" Xie Chi asked.
"I don't remember." Lu Wen smiled, "But this didn't stop her from falling in love. For twenty years, she believed that one day she would see the fishman who saved her again."
Xie Chi suddenly understood where Lu Wen inherited his kindness and integrity from.
"So you are a hybrid of human and fishman?" Xie Chi asked.
Lu Wen said, "Yes, I was born completely like a human baby. As I grew up, scales gradually appeared on my body. The closer I was to the sea, the faster the scales appeared. That's why I insisted on moving to the city, away from the sea, because I didn't want to end up covered in scales and unable to get out of the water."
"The descendants of those humans and mermen have two development paths. One is that they are inspired by the sea and eventually become covered with scales and cannot leave the water. One day, they jump into the sea and never come back. The other is to stay away from the sea and barely maintain their human form."
Xie Chi nodded, surprised and a little emotional. He then asked: "Then you said bloodline awakening?"
Lu Wen said, "It is very difficult to awaken the merman bloodline. After awakening, the scales on the face will fade away, but when I want them to come out, they will immediately come out to protect the torso. Usually, they do not cause me any trouble. This is exactly what I want, so I came here. I don't want to be inspired by the sea to evolve in the direction of fish. I want to maintain my human form, awaken the merman bloodline, and be a normal person."
Xie Chi nodded: "Such a strange thing, why no one knows about it, and why is there no media coverage?"
Lu Wen said: "I don't know either. Maybe it's some mysterious force at work?"
After he said it, he felt how magical this sentence was and smiled embarrassedly.
Xie Chi said: "So our world hides many secrets."
Lu Wen nodded in agreement.
The cell phone suddenly rang, Xie Chi looked down and saw that it was Yan Jing looking for him.
He stood up and said apologetically, "I'm leaving first."
Lu Wen said, "Okay."
Xie Chi put his phone back into his pocket and walked towards the office door. When he reached the door, he suddenly paused. He turned around and leaned against the door: "Actually, when I was a kid, I never thought that I would become a horror painter."
Xie Chi's voice was faint, his eyebrows drooped.
Lu Wen was stunned: "What do you mean?"
Xie Chi raised his eyes: "My parents' plan for me to become a scientist, and I thought it would be like this, because when I was a child, I did show a strong interest in science as they'd planned, until one night, when I had a dream whose content I couldn't remember clearly."
“When I woke up, I was absolutely convinced that I would become a horror painter.”
Lu Wen was shocked: "How could this happen?"
Xie Chi shook his head: "I don't know either. My interest seems to have been completely lost all of a sudden. I feel like I don't have any other choice except to become a painter."
Lu Wen was so shocked that he couldn't speak.
"At that time, what I would do when I grew up was not something worth thinking about, so I didn't pay too much attention to why."
Xie Chi suddenly recalled this past when he heard Lu Wen talk about his own experience.
Lu Wen was very confused.
Xie Chi said: "Sometimes when I dream, I can hear some faint sounds. I don't know if it's an illusion."
"Many of my paintings are inspired by things I've dreamed of, but I'm not even sure what that thing looks like. It's very subtle and hard to describe."
Lu Wen's face was full of disbelief.
Xie Chi had always thought that it was because he had been investigating supernatural events and accumulating supernatural data that he had dreamed about them. But when he connected it to Lu Wen's matter, he suddenly felt that things might be more complicated than he thought.
Lu Wen was full of suspicion: "This..."
Xie Chi smiled calmly: "Maybe we will have a chance to understand why in the future, but not now."
Lu Wengang felt a little melancholy, and Xie Chi glanced at him with a half-smile: "The premise is that you are still alive."
Lu Wen: “…”
…
After Xie Chi came back from Lu Wen, he entered his office through the APP. His office was exactly the same as Lu Wen's.
Xie Chi invited Yan Jing, who pushed the door open and came in, holding up his phone and excitedly said, "Brother! A variety show has sent you an invitation!"
"Variety show?" Xie Chi didn't expect that the APP also had variety shows besides horror movies.
Yan Jing pulled a chair over and sat opposite Xie Chi, pushing his cell phone to him.
Here is an invitation letter:
[Hello, Xie Chi, who is ranked sixth on the Newcomer List, this is an invitation letter from the competitive horror variety show "Horror Medley". We sincerely invite you to participate in our show. The rewards are quite generous and you will not be disappointed. The exposure of the show has always been very high. This is a great opportunity for you to increase your fans significantly. ]
Horror skewers? Skewers?
Xie Chi thought of entertainment projects such as song medleys and dance medleys, which are to combine several different songs and dances into a program to entertain the audience.
"Horror Medley" as the name suggests should be a collection of several horror stories connected together.
Yan Jing said, "I just submitted the binding procedures with you, and this invitation letter was sent to me. I didn't understand what was going on, so I asked two agents I just met. They told me that we were lucky. Isn't today July 30th? This program is held every two months. The deadline for sending invitation letters is tomorrow, and the program will be recorded live on the 3rd of next month. We just caught up."
Xie Chi nodded and listened. After he finished speaking, he asked, "What does sixth on the Newcomer List mean?"
Yan Jing took out a piece of paper from the blue folder he brought and gave it to Xie Chi: "This is the data from the agent's backend. The Newcomer List is the total score ranking of new actors in the past two months. I looked at it and there are more than 20,000 newcomers in total. Brother Xie, you are ranked sixth."
Xie Chi browsed the contents on the paper, which only provided the top ten names on the newcomer list. The first one was You Jing, with 1988 points.
The second one is Ren Ze, with 1443 points.
Xie Chi frowned slightly. Is the gap so big? It’s more than 500 points.
The gap between the next few points is not that big.
Yan Jing couldn't sit still, moving around a bit, and said with a beaming face: "Brother Xie, Brother Xie, don't look at you being only sixth. This is the list of the past two months. It seems that you only linked the APP in July. This list is for the two months between the beginning of June and the end of July. The ones ahead of you, many of them have been there for almost two months, or at least more than a month, including . You have only been there for less than a month and you have squeezed into the top ten. You are really not worse than them. Maybe you are even much better than them!"
"That's right, Brother Lu ranked tenth with over 800 points! He is still three or four days away from two months, and he has not exceeded this deadline, so he has caught the last train." Yan Jing said, pointing at Lu Wen, who was ranked tenth among the newcomers in the information.
Yan Jing was much more reliable than before, and Xie Chi quickly understood the specific situation.
"Horror Medley" is a horror variety show where new actors compete. The invitees are the top ten new actors on the list who have bound to the APP within two months. Attendance is voluntary. If the actor is currently filming other horror films when invited and cannot make it out of the schedule, he or she can choose not to go.
The variety show mode of "Horror Medley" is that actors enter horror scenes and challenge a series of ghost stories to see who can pass the levels the fastest and tell the most stories.
There will be senior actor guests and audiences on site, and the entire variety show will be broadcast live. In the final ranking, the audience votes will account for 2%, the guests' selection will account for 3, and personal performance will account for 5.
The first place in the competition will be awarded 300 points, the second place will be awarded 200 points, and the third place will be awarded 100 points.
The reward points are indeed small, but because of the high exposure of variety shows, the upper limit of fans is very high. If the performance is good, the number of fans increased and the competition rewards are added together, the points earned will definitely not be small.
The most important thing is that this program only takes up three days, which is much more cost-effective than shooting a horror movie.
Yan Jing asked eagerly: "Brother, are you going?"
Xie Chi smiled and said, "Go."
