He plays Feng Yuxiu, and his girlfriend is a fairy-like beauty.

The second day after the premiere.

Zhang Songwen was awakened by his phone vibrating.

He groggily reached for his phone, unlocked the screen, and then froze.

A red "+" has appeared next to the number of followers in the Douyin backend.

The numbers are still jumping.

He rubbed his eyes, thinking he was seeing things, and looked again; it was still jumping.

The number of fans has increased from a few thousand last night to more than 200,000.

He sat on the edge of the bed in a daze for a while, lit a cigarette, and only halfway through smoking it did he realize that he hadn't brushed his teeth yet.

My phone vibrated again.

A friend from the industry I hadn't contacted in a long time sent me a WeChat message, his tone as warm as that of a long-lost brother.

"Songwen! I watched 'The Storm' last night, your acting was amazing! When are you free to get together? It's been so long since we've seen each other!"

Zhang Songwen stared at the three words "the two of us brothers" for several seconds.

The last time this person messaged him was two years ago; it was a mass-sent Chinese New Year greeting.

He replied with two words.

"OK."

Then someone else sent it over.

"Old Zhang! Congratulations! Gao Qiqiang's acting was superb; my wife cried while watching it last night!"

"Songwen, it's me, Xiao Li. Do you remember me? We worked on the same film set before..."

"Mr. Zhang, if it's convenient, I'd like to discuss a collaboration with you..."

His phone vibrated continuously for more than ten minutes before it stopped.

Zhang Songwen put his phone on the coffee table, leaned back on the sofa, and stared at the ceiling.

For over twenty years, he has always been the one to initiate messages to others asking if they have any acting opportunities, and whether they reply depends entirely on their mood.

This is the first time my phone has gotten so hot from someone else's message.

He opened Ye Mo's WeChat chat window, typed and deleted, deleted and typed again, several times in total, and finally only sent one sentence.

"Director Ye, have the ratings for yesterday's premiere been released yet?"

Ye Mo replied quickly.

"1.8".

Before Zhang Songwen could reply, Ye Mo's second message arrived.

"Don't get excited. There are still more than 30 episodes to go. It's too early for you to get excited now. Save your excitement for the finale."

Zhang Songwen looked at the screen, smiled, and replied.

"Director Ye, thank you."

Then Ye Mo's third message arrived.

"What are you thanking me for? You played Gao Qiqiang yourself. I only did two things: I gave you the script and told the whole crew not to bother you."

Zhang Songwen put down his phone, picked up a cigarette pack from the coffee table, and wanted to smoke one.

Looking at the cigarette pack in his hand, and then recalling Gao Qiqiang, who was wearing an old cotton-padded coat and receiving dumplings at the police station on the screen last night, his lips twitched involuntarily.

He threw the cigarette pack back onto the coffee table.

three days later.

The ratings jumped from 1.8 to 3.1.

A week later.

The peak value exceeded 4.

The ratings record of CCTV-8's prime time slot is as fragile as paper in front of "The Storm".

The number of concurrent users on major video platforms crashed the servers several times.

"What level is it? It's the same as mine."

The scene where Jia Bing utters this line while chewing on a toothpick in the interrogation room was shared millions of times online the next day.

Some people turned it into emojis, some into background music for short videos, and some printed it on phone cases.

"The bigger the waves, the more expensive the fish."

This line has been widely circulated and shared by countless people.

The scene where Zhang Songwen and Ni Dahong confront each other at the dock was dubbed the "dialogue of the century" by the online comments.

Two veteran actors stood face to face, and the information conveyed in a single glance was more than the entire page of dialogue.

"Talking nonsense is useless; let others grieve in moderation."

When Jia Bing said these words to a group of his subordinates in front of the funeral hall, the barrage of comments was filled with the same sentence: "This sentence will be my workplace motto from now on."

Zhang Songwen gained 10 million followers in a week.

Jia Bing followed closely behind.

The speed at which the character Xu Jiang became a hit caught everyone off guard.

Netizens dug up Jia Bing's old information.

"Jia Bing is a sketch comedy actor? The Jia Bing who plays Xu Jiang? The Xu Jiang who said, 'What class of equipment do you use, just like mine?'?"

"My goodness, how can a comedian play a mob boss so convincingly? That look in his eyes, that ruthlessness emanating from his very bones, he's a completely different person."

"I watched the expression on his face in the interrogation room, where he was chewing on a toothpick and glancing sideways at An Xin. It was five parts contempt, three parts impatience, and two more parts: I admire you but I don't like you. The proportions were so precise."

"Where did Ye Mo unearth so many treasures? Zhang Songwen is a teaching assistant at Beijing Film Academy, and Jia Bing is a sketch comedy actor. These two are not usually on the mainstream casting list."

"Ye Mo's casting logic is not to find the most popular, but to find the most suitable."

"That's absolutely amazing taste!"

Jia Bing's home is in a small city in Northeast China.

The day Xu Jiang went viral, his wife was sitting on the sofa scrolling through her phone.

"Is this really you?"

She held up her phone screen and compared it to Jia Bing's face; it showed a still from a TV drama of Xu Jiang chewing on a toothpick in the interrogation room.

"it's me."

"You wouldn't even dare kill a chicken at home, so how come you act like you've actually killed someone on TV?"

"That's called acting skills."

His wife glanced at Xu Jiang on the screen, then at Jia Bing, who was wearing slippers and cooking noodles in the kitchen, and put her phone down.

"I won't eat the food you cook anymore, I'm afraid you'll poison it."

Jia Bing stirred the almost overcooked noodles in the pot with his chopsticks and glanced back at her.

"How can you not distinguish between your real life and your role? Director Ye once said that a good actor should not let the role affect their life."

"What else did Director Ye say?"

"Director Ye also said that Xu Jiang is the most interesting villain in the whole series."

His wife remained silent for a few seconds.

"Then talk to Director Ye and ask him to cast you as a good guy in your next film. Otherwise, every time I watch TV, I feel like I've married a mob boss."

"However, your gang leader persona is more like a comedy sketch."

Jia Bing took the noodles out, rinsed them in cold water, placed them on the coffee table, sat down, and took a bite.

My phone kept lighting up beside me, and the red dots for WeChat friend requests had already pushed up to the second page. People I knew, people I didn't know, people I'd only worked with once or twice before and hadn't contacted since—they were all popping up.

"Old Jia! Back when we were performing skits together, I said you were the best actor among our group, and now the whole country knows that!"

As Jia Bing looked at the message, he chewed on a piece of noodles, rolling his eyes inwardly as he chewed.

Two years ago, he asked this person to help him get a job in a film crew, but the other person replied, "It's not easy to arrange anything right now."

Now it's become "I said it back then".

He put down his chopsticks and didn't reply to the message.

He opened Ye Mo's WeChat and typed a message.

"Director Ye, my wife says I act too much like a villain, and now she's afraid to eat my cooking. What should I do?"

Ye Mo replied almost instantly.

"Then you do it for me, I'm not afraid."

Jia Bing laughed as he looked at the screen, his chopsticks almost slipping out of the bowl.

His wife peeked out from the bedroom.

"What are you laughing at?"

"Director Ye said he wasn't afraid of me poisoning him."

"That's because he hasn't seen you cook yet."

Jia Bing thought to himself, "My cooking is open to criticism from others, but why should you have the right to criticize it?"

......