The Martial Arts Stunt Double of the Entertainment Circle – Chapter 38

The old man and the girl fell silent for a moment. Li Dingchen could tell that Tuoba Yan meant every word — this wasn’t something said to placate him offhand. Her gaze was clear and steady, the kind that can’t be faked.

Li Dingchen sighed.

Yanrao had always been a proud one. As a little girl, when she lost a fight to the boys in the compound, she never told the family — she just pestered his orderly to teach her hand-to-hand combat. After three months of grueling practice, she sent that boy a formal challenge, beat him until he was bawling for his daddy and his mama and calling her “Jiejie” — and the compound’s king of kids had no choice but to yield his throne to her. Only then was she satisfied.

            

Then came elementary school, and the scramble to be first. Other children watched cartoons, squished clay, and ran wild until the sky went dark; she rationed her own playtime and arranged everything with perfect order, and made her “underlings” execute the plans she drew up — which delighted the parents and grandparents of those little troublemakers to no end. Li Dingchen swelled with pride all the more; no one said anymore that old Li was a roughneck bound to raise a child wrong.

A girl that clever and sensible had never cost him a day of worry. He used to fret that a rough-and-tumble tomboy like her would be hard to marry off — but in middle school Li Yanrao had suddenly gone quiet and graceful, stopped climbing roofs and trees, and let her hair grow long. He’d wanted to teach her things and found he had nothing to teach; she solved every problem of growing up on her own.

Her one act of rebellion was coming out after the college entrance exam.

            

Li Dingchen was certain she had planned it — choosing to say it at a family gathering held to celebrate her. For one thing, she was of age now and could decide most things for herself, and she was about to leave home for university; with heaven high and the emperor far away, there was little he could do about her anymore. For another, she had left home with a single bulging backpack, was out of her room within two minutes of arriving, and quickly found herself lodging and part-time work. No one would believe she hadn’t prepared in advance.

At first, Li Dingchen assumed his eldest granddaughter would suffer out there, wear herself down, and come home. Then he’d take her to a doctor and have this “problem” of hers cured, find her a boyfriend from a family of matching standing, and everything would settle down nicely. But Li Yanrao’s temper was pure iron — she was a carbon copy of Li Dingchen himself at that age — and she never once came home.

And after he had consulted a whole string of psychologists, their words collapsed the old man’s fantasy entirely: homosexuality is not a disease; there is at present no way to fully “correct” a person’s orientation; don’t push the child too hard — if she went and did something foolish, he could spend the rest of his life holding his regret.

            

So when Li Yanrao came home in triumph — established, accomplished, in full bloom — Li Dingchen gave her no hard time. He welcomed his granddaughter back with open arms and never again raised the subject of “fixing her mistake.”

But watching Li Yanrao, radiant as an open flower, throw herself entirely into work, her business growing ever larger while no proper girlfriend ever appeared at her side — only the swarms of lecherous suitors she swatted down or ignored — Li Dingchen couldn’t help being afraid. Had what he’d done back then cast a shadow over the way his granddaughter saw love?

That was what lay behind his probing and his encouragement in the hospital room that day.

            

But!

Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined Li Yanrao would end up tangled up with Tuoba Yan. Tuoba Yan had only just come of age, hadn’t she? You’re twenty-six — how do you have the nerve to go preying on a girl who’s barely shed her baby-faced innocence?! Her family’s a single-parent household — what is her family supposed to make of you?

In truth, most of Li Dingchen’s worry was for Li Yanrao.

            

Tuoba Yan was too young. She might carry herself with calm and poise, but she had, after all, no experience of the world or of love. If she regretted it one day — where exactly would you go to cry about it, Li Yanrao?

Having confirmed Tuoba Yan’s resolve, Li Dingchen sighed. “Youfu was four when her mother and father were killed in a plane crash. I raised her from then on. My old lady was still alive then — most of the looking after fell to her — but within a few years she also… Youfu was only in fourth grade, and she was already a little grown-up. That child is so sensible, so good. My other grandsons are little troublemakers — whenever I caught them doing something bad, they each earned themselves a few swats. Youfu was the only one who never got spanked.”

The old man rambled on about Youfu’s childhood, and Tuoba Yan listened with genuine, curious attention. But somewhere along the way, Li Dingchen drifted into florid praise of Li Yanrao’s many virtues, plugging his eldest granddaughter for all he was worth, as if terrified Tuoba Yan didn’t grasp half of how wonderful she was.

            

Tuoba Yan fought hard not to laugh. Li Dingchen dredged up how Li Yanrao, at four years old, rode her toy excavator to the shop by herself to buy candy; how she once saw a brat yanking a little kitten around, thrashed him soundly, stripped off his pants, threw them up into a tree, and made him climb up after them. The first story, presumably, was meant to show her early independence; the second, to emphasize her kindness. Then he delicately suggested that Youfu was no worse than any man — more attentive, gentler, and so on and so forth.

When Li Yanrao returned, she walked straight in on Li Dingchen in full pantomime: “…Xu Enze’s grandson is tall and burly — a whole size bigger than Youfu! He was messing with that white cat, and Youfu got mad, pinned the kid to the ground in three moves, yanked his arms and legs, stripped his pants off, and threw them up the tree — made him climb up bare-bottomed to fetch them! That bark is rough, let me tell you, hahahahaha!”

Youfu didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Grandpa!” You really are my own dear grandpa.

            

The way Tuoba Yan looked at Li Yanrao now was entirely wrong — brimming over with teasing mischief. Li Yanrao bitterly regretted bringing her little girlfriend to meet the old man without briefing him first. She’d known perfectly well her grandpa was the type who went haywire the moment there was company!

“Big Girl,” Li Dingchen said, “did you bring it?”

Li Yanrao shoved the huali rosewood box in her hands at him, exasperated.

            

[Image: Huali Rosewood Box (花梨木盒子)]

For a moment, all three pairs of eyes converged on that box. Li Dingchen opened it in high triumph and lifted out two small jade ping’an kou¹.

Tuoba Yan didn’t know jade, but she could tell these were smooth and translucent, a vivid, luminous green — fine pieces.

            

Li Yanrao seemed to recall something. “Aren’t these the…”

Li Dingchen pressed one of the ping’an kou into Tuoba Yan’s hand, nostalgia thick in his voice. “Everything today was far too last-minute — I’ve nothing else to give you. I captured these two during the campaign down south. Here, Xiao Yan, take it.”

Tuoba Yan understood this was a meeting-gift and accepted it. Li Dingchen handed the other to Li Yanrao.

            

“One each — saves you from accusing me of playing favorites. Your grandmother always said these would be your dowry. Now that you’ve brought Xiao Yan home, I can finally set my heart at ease — no more watching you run yourself ragged with never a soul at your side. From now on, the two of you treat each other well. Youfu, you’re the elder — you look after your wife. And whatever difficulties you two run into, come to me. As long as this old man is still breathing, he’ll have your back.”

[Image: Jade Ping’an Kou (翡翠平安扣)]

Tuoba Yan ran her thumb over the ping’an kou in her palm and felt her eyes grow damp. For some reason, the old man’s face — written over with care and acceptance — overlapped with her grandfather’s face from her last life.

            

Heaven had eyes after all. Everything she was owed was finally coming back to her, one piece at a time.

Time flew, and before anyone knew it, the crank-up day² of 《Emperor of a Dynasty》 arrived.

As custom dictated, an offering table was laid out, and Fang Zhengqin led representatives from every department of the crew in a solemn offering of incense. Only after the elaborate rites and the speeches did the first true scene of filming begin.

            

The undisputed protagonist of the drama was Emperor Shuncheng. Since the character’s age spanned all the way from adolescence to middle age, Fang Zhengqin, after much deliberation, decided to go with a newcomer.

Playing the male lead, Emperor Shuncheng, was Xie Cheng, an emerging powerhouse actor who had turned in standout performances in this summer’s hit film 《Azimuth》 and the spy drama 《Thunderbolt》. Strikingly handsome besides — he was the best candidate Fang Zhengqin could find.

The role of Qin Xiang’er, however, went to Bai Yi’an, a young actress with only two idol dramas behind her.

            

The girl was tall and smoldering, her beauty the loud, flamboyant kind — the sort of stunning that announces itself as a spitfire with thorns. That she could land a Fang Zhengqin production straight out of the gate came down to her less-than-ordinary relationship with Lin Teng, the Little Boss of Huashuo Entertainment — and 《Emperor of a Dynasty》 carried a hefty proportion of Huayu investment.

Lin Teng was Bai Yi’an’s financial backer.

Everyone in the industry knew Lin Teng was a bit wrong in the head. His father, Lin Huashuo, had sired no shortage of illegitimate daughters over the years, yet this was his only son by his legal wife. The Huayu fortune was destined to fall into Lin Teng’s hands — however recklessly he caroused, Lin Huashuo still had to shield his one and only heir.

            

Naturally, Fang Zhengqin had no wish to see his clean, respectable production dragged into a cesspit — but neither could he clash head-on with Young Master Lin, a man who, once his madness took him, recognized no one at all. Mercifully, Bai Yi’an’s look sat fairly close to the Noble Imperial Consort Yi character, so Fang Zhengqin and the screenwriter put their heads together, trimmed a few nonessential scenes, pinched their noses, and swallowed the bad luck.

But Bai Yi’an was not satisfied.

She had paid so dearly — handed over even herself — and all she’d bought was this thankless female lead role? She clung to Lin Teng by every means possible, demanding a swap — Empress Yang, for instance, carried no less screen time.

            

A lovely plan, on paper. But Fang Zhengqin refused. It was in the thick of that standoff that he happened upon Tuoba Yan and Chen Wanwan, decided there was something in the two girls, and dropped a word to his junior disciple Fei Dong — never imagining that their performances at the audition would genuinely light up his eyes.

Chen Wanwan was a child star by origin, her fundamentals rock-solid, her acting top of her age bracket. But the true revelation for Fang Zhengqin was Tuoba Yan. He had asked Fei Dong about her background and learned, to his astonishment, that she was a martial stunt double who had only just entered the industry.

Empress Yang was, after all, a daughter of a general’s house. If Tuoba Yan’s interpretation of the role could even pass muster, then Empress Yang’s death scene would be well worth the filming, and stretches of plot he had planned to hurry past could be fleshed out — neatly mending the long stretches of screen time left vacant by Bai Yi’an.

            

Her audition performance had, in truth, been somewhat green. But for a stunt double to have grown that quickly already bordered on the prodigious. And there was a certain quality in Tuoba Yan — not merely the near-flawless imperial presence she projected, nor her outstanding looks.

To put it in slightly preposterous terms: Tuoba Yan carried starlight.

She was the most dazzling one in any crowd.

            

This was an uncut jade³.

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The author has something to say:

I overestimated my typing speed QAQ

            

Today’s 6,000 stands — no wavering QAQ

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