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

Chapter 54 Chao Ge is in Hong Kong!

Ye Mo waited in Hong Kong for two days.

Forty-eight hours.

Turn your phone volume up to the maximum and glance at the screen every ten minutes.

There was no news from either Hung Kam-pao or Liu Wei-chiang.

He forced himself not to think about it—every morning he would go to the hotel gym to run five kilometers, come back, take a shower, and then sit by the window to read the script.

He can recite Chen Yongren's lines backwards, and he doesn't even make a single punctuation mistake.

On the morning of the third day, he decided not to wait any longer.

It's not because of anxiety.

It was because reason told him that the choice of the male lead for a movie with an investment of tens of millions could not be decided in just two days.

Meetings with investors, budget calculations, and schedule coordination—each step is a marathon.

Instead of waiting here idly, he might as well go back to Yanjing and wait.

He opened his phone, ready to book a flight.

A WeChat message pops up at the top of the screen.

Deng Chao: [Ye Mo! You're in Hong Kong?]

Ye Mo was taken aback.

He remembered that Deng Chao added him on WeChat when the last Running Man recording took place. They chatted a few times in the group chat afterward, but not much in private.

Ye Mo: [Yes, Brother Chao, how did you know?]

Deng Chao: [Zu Lan said that a few of us came to Hong Kong to visit him for a couple of days. We just landed, and he said you were here too, so he asked us to call you out. Are you free?]

Ye Mo thought for a moment and then closed the ticket booking app.

Ye Mo: [Yes, send me your location.]

The agreed meeting place was a long-established tea restaurant in Mong Kok.

When Ye Mo arrived, Deng Chao was already sitting in a booth.

He was wearing a floral shirt, sunglasses pushed up to his forehead, and gesturing to the waiter while holding the menu.

Sitting opposite me was Wong Cho-lam, wearing a cartoon T-shirt, with her feet on the chair crossbar, looking like a bouncy ball pressed into the seat.

Zheng Kai was standing next to him, looking down and poking at the ice cubes in his lemon tea with a straw.

Chen He didn't come—Deng Chao said he had a last-minute filming commitment and flew back to Yanjing.

"Ye Mo!" Wang Zulan was the first to see him, jumping up from her chair. "Long time no see! Where's your blondie?"

"It's washed off." Ye Mo sat down next to Deng Chao.

"What a pity." Wang Zulan shook her head. "That look was very memorable. Let me tell you, after we finished filming Running Man last time, my mom asked me who that blond guy who carried you was. I said Ye Mo or Feng Yuxiu, but she insisted that it didn't look like him—she said Feng Yuxiu was so scary, and that blond guy looked pretty good when he smiled."

"Please thank Auntie for me." Ye Mo took the menu from Deng Chao.

Deng Chao took off his sunglasses and placed them on the table, then looked him up and down.

"You've lost weight, is it from filming?"

"Fortunately, the films made by Sammo Hung's stunt team involve a lot of action and are very physically demanding."

"Sammo Hung's stunt team?" Zheng Kai looked up from his lemon tea. "Sammo Hung's stunt team? You're filming one of his movies?"

"Just finished filming 'SPL: Sha Po Lang,' where I played an assassin."

"You're making a 'SPL' movie too?" Deng Chao's expression changed. "I know that movie—it's the male lead in 'Tsang Dan Zi,' produced by Sammo Hung. Who are you playing?"

"Ah Jie, a minor supporting character."

"If you can get into Sammo Hung's movies, you can't be called a minor supporting actor," Deng Chao corrected him.

Wong Cho-lan, standing to the side, counted on her fingers: "Fung Yu-hsiu, Ting Hsiu, Ah-chieh—how come you've only ever played assassins? Have you ever played a good guy?"

Not yet.

"Then your next role should be a normal person."

"I'm trying." Ye Mo smiled, not saying much more.

Wang Zulan picked up the frozen mandarin duck and took a sip, then suddenly remembered something: "Oh right, I heard from my senior brother that you auditioned for director Liu Weiqiang's film a couple of days ago?"

Ye Mo paused for a moment with his chopsticks.

"You've heard?"

"You know who my senior is, right?" Wang Zulan put down her cup, her tone carrying a natural pride. "Zeng Zhiwei, my mentor, brought me into the industry. Without him, I'd still be doing voice acting for cartoons."

He spoke earnestly, not boasting, but expressing genuine gratitude.

"He plays a role in Director Liu's new film—it seems to be a villainous boss. He said that on the day of the audition, there was a row of people sitting in the corridor, all of them big names in the Hong Kong entertainment circle."

"Your senior brother went too?"

"He didn't audition; he's already cast. He went to talk to Director Liu about the script and happened to see the audition lineup." Wang Zulan leaned closer and lowered her voice. "He said Liu Qingyun, Zhang Jiahui, and Lin Jiadong were all there. Ye Mo, weren't you nervous auditioning in that kind of lineup?"

Deng Chao and Zheng Kai exchanged a glance.

Liu Qingyun, Zhang Jiahui, Lin Jiadong – any one of these three names appearing on the audition list would be considered a major name.

The simultaneous occurrence of these events signifies that this is no longer a rehearsal, but a martial arts contest.

"Wait a minute." Deng Chao put down his chopsticks, his expression turning serious. "Liu Weiqiang? You mean the one who starred in 'Young and Dangerous' and 'The Storm Riders'?"

"It's him." Wang Zulan nodded.

What is he going to film?

"Infernal Affairs." When Wong Cho-lan read the name, her tone automatically became more solemn. "It's a police and gangster film with two male leads. My senior brother told me that the script had been polished for several years, and Liu Weiqiang hadn't started filming because he was looking for a suitable male lead."

Deng Chao was silent for two seconds.

Then he turned to look at Ye Mo, his expression revealing something he hadn't shown before.

"You went to audition for the male lead?"

"I tried it." Ye Mo nodded.

"How did the test go?" Zheng Kai interjected from the side.

"After the test, I was told to go back and wait for notification." Ye Mo briefly described the situation that day—the scene in the corridor, Liu Qingyun's expression when she came out, the rooftop scene he put on after he went in, and Liu Weiqiang saying "okay" three times and then telling him to wait for notification.

Not many details were given, but it was enough for the three people present to understand one thing.

The young man in front of me, in his early twenties, is competing with Hong Kong's top actors for the same role.

The booth was quiet for a few seconds.

Deng Chaoxian spoke up: "Brother, whether it works out or not, the fact that you can get into that audition room and stand on the same starting line as Liu Qingyun, Zhang Jiahui, and Lin Jiadong is something that others wouldn't even dare to dream of."

Zheng Kai held up his lemon tea: "Brother Chao is right. I've auditioned before and I know that kind of pressure. Just perform normally in front of those people, and that's enough."

Wang Zulan slammed her hand on the table: "To be honest—there's definitely hope, but my senior colleague said that Director Liu has extremely high standards for the male lead, and the investors are also putting pressure on us, wanting to use big names to carry the box office, so—"

He didn't say the second half of his sentence, but everyone understood.

Ye Mo smiled and said, "I know, I'm already very grateful to have been able to try."

They say that, but that's not what they really think.

But he didn't want to show his anxiety in front of his friends.

He picked up his teacup, took a sip, and steered the conversation toward Wang Zulan's new house.

Then my phone rang.

A name popped up on the screen—Liu Weiqiang's assistant.

Ye Mo looked down and froze for half a second.

Deng Chao caught this action.

Who is it?

"Director Liu's assistant."

The chopsticks of the three people in the booth stopped moving at the same time.

Deng Chao put down the char siu he was about to pick up.

Zheng Kai's lemon tea straw slipped out of his mouth.