Huayu: This top star doesn't play by the rules.

On the set of The Wandering Earth, a massive underground city occupied two sound stages. The reinforced concrete frame was painted a mottled gray-black, and combined with various lights and fantastical technological products, it gave the space an industrial science fiction feel.

Sitting cross-legged on the prop box, Chen Chao casually flipped through the script, holding a latte in his hand, his posture relaxed and at ease.

"Uncle Da, I've been thinking about the rhythm of that line you mentioned yesterday." As if he had thought of something, Chen Chao suddenly turned to look at Wu Mengda, who was sitting in the chair next to him.

"I do think he should have restrained his emotions a bit, after all, at that time, Liu Peiqiang was facing the survival of the entire planet..."

Wu Mengda, who was also reviewing the script, took off his reading glasses, rubbed his dry eyes, and couldn't help but laugh and say, "You young man, you are really serious about filming."

Seeing Chen Chao squat down beside him, Wu Mengda's gaze fell on the script in his hand. After a moment, he spoke, "This part does need to be toned down, but not too much..."

"It's like having tears welling up in your eyes, but not falling; your voice needs to be steady, but the end of the note can have a slight tremor... you know what I mean?"

After listening to Wu Mengda's account, Chen Chao closed his eyes and pondered for a moment. When he opened his eyes again, his eyes were slightly red, his lips were tightly pursed, his Adam's apple bobbed involuntarily, and his voice was low and restrained, "...Earth, is alive."

There was no hysterical outburst of emotion, only a few words that came out of the throat after a soldier had suppressed all his emotions.

"Great!" Wu Mengda slapped his thigh, his eyes filled with undisguised admiration and surprise. "That's exactly the feeling! Just like they said online, you're a natural-born young man!"

"Uncle Da, you flatter me. It's mainly because of your excellent guidance." Quickly adjusting his emotions, Chen Chao smiled and scratched his head.

Not far away, Zhao Jinmai was holding a textbook on a folding chair. She couldn't help but steal a glance at Chen Chao's back as he was talking to Wu Mengda. She had developed a little admiration for this brother who was good at acting, knew a lot, and was also very gentle.

"MaiMai, what are you daydreaming about?" Just then, a familiar voice rang out above her head, waking Zhao Jinmai from her reverie.

Suddenly looking up, Zhao Jinmai's gaze met Chen Chao's eyes. Almost instinctively, she raised the textbook in her hand to cover her face, looking like a student who had been caught daydreaming in class by the teacher.

Reaching out, Chen Chao snatched the textbook from Zhao Jinmai's hand. He glanced at the title: "Middle School Entrance Exam Math Intensive Review Paper?"

Looking at the workbook that Chen Chao had already flipped through, Zhao Jinmai lowered her head listlessly. "Brother, math is really hard~"

"Where don't you understand? Let me see." Chen Chao pulled up a folding chair and sat down. He took a piece of draft paper from Zhao Jinmai's small table and a pen from her pencil case.

"This is it." Taking the workbook from Chen Chao, Zhao Jinmai flipped to the questions she didn't know and poked them hard with her finger.

"Quadratic functions, you should have learned the vertex coordinate formula, right? Why aren't you using it?"

"I...I forgot."

"If you forget, just write it down again." Chen Chao said calmly as he wrote the formula on the scratch paper, like a teacher patiently tutoring a student. "Next time you encounter this kind of problem, first find the axis of symmetry, then substitute it in, and you'll get the answer in three steps."

Zhao Jinmai nodded obediently. After listening to Chen Chao's explanation, he took the pen and recalculated, and this time he quickly came up with the correct answer.

"Hmm, not bad." Smiling, Chen Chao reached out and ruffled her hair. After a moment's thought, he said, "When you go to work tomorrow, bring all the papers you did this week. I'll go through them with you when I have time."

"Thank you, brother!" Zhao Jinmai's eyes lit up immediately upon hearing Chen Chao's words. Her short hair swayed as she nodded, making her look quite adorable.

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Time flew by and it was past 10 p.m. Chen Chao returned to his hotel after a long day of filming. He had just finished washing up and lay down on the bed when his phone started vibrating.

He reached out and picked it up, only to find that it was a message from Lin Gengxin. When he opened it, the first thing that caught his eye was a series of exclamation marks, followed by two screenshots.

The first screenshot shows his duo queue stats with Wang Sicong: a 0-11-2 Yasuo and a 3-8-3 Lee Sin. The second screenshot shows the taunting message posted in the public chat by the opposing team when they were pushing the Nexus: "The dream of 900 million girls? The nightmare of 900 million girls."

Before Chen Chao could comment on their performance, Lin Geng sent him three more messages: "Chao, help!!!"

"We've been getting yelled at all night!"

"Get online quickly and help us turn the tide!"

Following Lin Gengxin, Wang Sicong's message popped up, concise and to the point: "Online, come quickly."

"Right away." Seeing this, Chen Chao could only smile helplessly, sit up, and walk into the living room to open his laptop.

As soon as he logged into the game and entered the team voice chat, Lin Gengxin's wail immediately rang out, "Ah Chao, you've got to be right! If you hadn't come, I might have really been forced to quit the game!"

"A 0-11 Yasuo is bound to get flamed," Chen Chao retorted without hesitation, and then promptly banned Yasuo. "Don't play Yasuo this game, play something easier, Malphite!"

"The Stone Man? Isn't that a slacker?"

"You know you're a jerk, huh?" Wang Sicong couldn't help but chime in.

"Okay, stop arguing, it's on." Before Lin Gengxin could even retort, Chen Chao interrupted him.

Ten minutes later, Chen Chao's Lee Sin was already 6-0-4, and with Lin Gengxin's Malphite and Wang Sicong's Ezreal, they pushed all the way to victory. The opposing team surrendered at the eighteen-minute mark.

"Awesome!" Lin Gengxin couldn't help but let out a long sigh of relief over the voice message. "I knew it! With Ah Chao around, what situation can't we turn around?"

"It's because you sent too many, otherwise it wouldn't have been so difficult to fight." Wang Sicong scoffed, but his tone was noticeably better than before.

"Speaking of which, Ah Chao, how's your sci-fi blockbuster coming along?" Instead of his usual banter with Wang Sicong, Lin Gengxin inquired about something else that he was quite concerned about.

"Well, it went fairly smoothly," Chen Chao replied casually with a smile. "What, did you come to visit the set?"

"It's not impossible. I happen to be free of work lately, so I might as well go and have a look around." But to Chen Chao's surprise, Lin Gengxin actually went along with what he had said.

"In that case, I'll go take a look too." After hearing Chen Chao and Lin Gengxin's conversation and learning that the film was a sci-fi blockbuster invested by Wanda, Wang Sicong suddenly became interested and wanted to see the project in person.