054 Fan Xiaopang: This guy's mouth is truly detestable.

[Daily Intel X: Due to Yan Li's cold demeanor in the dressing room, Fan Bingbing is extremely dissatisfied with him. She and her assistant have teamed up to fiercely criticize him, with the details as follows: Who does that jerk think he is? He judges people by their status and changes his face faster than turning a page...]

Tsk tsk, Yan Li roughly estimated the content. It was at least several thousand words long. He wondered how long she had been talking behind his back.

Just as petty as expected!

During his daily morning run and workout, on the way to the dressing room, Yan Li deliberately made a detour to buy a large assortment of pastries.

As a local specialty of Zhouzhuang, the most famous dish was Wansan Pork Trotter, which was essentially sweet-flavored braised pork knuckle, followed by various traditional pastries.

Suzhou-style pastries have always been renowned. As a famous historical town in Suzhou, Zhouzhuang naturally abounded with such delicacies: Wansan cakes, begonia cakes, waist-supporting cakes, green rice balls, osmanthus cakes... everything you could possibly want.

However, with so many pastries available, knowing how to pick the truly delicious ones required real expertise.

In pastry shops like these, any store that managed to stay in business for a while rarely made anything truly awful, and at least every single shop had one or two signature items.

This also meant that unless someone was a regular customer, it was easy to mistake the mediocre for the exceptional when buying pastries, especially since Suzhou-style pastries were crafted to look delicate and beautiful, making them even more misleading.

However, this posed no difficulty for Yan Li at all.

The intelligence system had directly provided him with a list, writing out clearly which shop offered the most authentic and delicious versions of each treat.

Even ordinary locals in Zhouzhuang, let alone professionals working in the pastry industry, might not possess his comprehensive knowledge and evaluation criteria.

Arriving at the dressing room, Yan Li shared the pastries with everyone, thoughtfully reminding them about the sweet versus savory flavors and whether lard was used.

People are always nicer to those whose food they've eaten, not to mention pastries this delicious. Good food has a way of soothing the soul, and consequently, everyone's impression of Yan Li improved in varying degrees.

For instance, Liang Guanhua was both surprised and delighted, holding Yan Li in high admiration.

As a self-proclaimed foodie who had been in Zhouzhuang for so long, there was no way he hadn't bought pastries before, but the overall quality and taste were far inferior to the ones Yan Li had bought.

Now, Liang Guanhua truly believed that when it came to sniffing out good food, Yan Li definitely possessed a "dog's nose."

Fan Xiaopang arrived a bit late for makeup today. As soon as she stepped through the door, she saw everyone showering Yan Li with compliments.

After asking around to find out what was going on, she couldn't help mutering under her breath:

"Just buying people's favor."

Yan Li spotted Fan Xiaopang as well, and his smile was noticeably warmer than yesterday.

"Teacher Fan is here. I just bought some fresh pastries, go ahead and try them."

"No thanks."

Fan Xiaopang didn't want to accept small favors from Yan Li, but she couldn't resist Liang Guanhua's constant persuasion from the side.

"Bingbing, go on and try some. Yan Li specifically asked locals who know their stuff, and the pastries he bought are exceptionally delicious."

With someone egging her on right in front of everyone, Fan Xiaopang couldn't keep refusing, and plus, she was a little tempted herself, so she half-reluctantly walked over to take a pastry.

Yan Li enthusiastically helped her make a recommendation: "Do you prefer sweet or savory?"

Fan Xiaopang answered without hesitation: "Sweet."

Yan Li then used a separate pastry bag he had specifically asked for to pack a few pieces for her. Fan Xiaopang took them, and her impression of him improved just a little bit.

This guy wasn't completely useless after all!

Sitting down at her own vanity, Fan Xiaopang looked at the exquisite and pretty pastries, feeling her appetite genuinely stirred. She pinched one between her fingers, popped it into her mouth, and took a gentle bite.

Huh? Savory?

Fan Xiaopang couldn't help glancing back at Yan Li, who noticed her gaze and smiled reassuringly in response.

His friendly demeanor dispelled her doubts. She figured he must have been in a rush and grabbed the wrong one—completely understandable.

Finishing the pastry in two or three bites, Fan Xiaopang picked another one that looked rather plain and simple, figuring it had to be sweet this time. Opening her pretty lips slightly, she took a bite.

Still savory?

Was that jerk deliberately messing with her?!

Fan Xiaopang whipped her head around to glare fiercely at Yan Li. The latter looked somewhat bewildered and gazed back at her with an innocent expression.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, it's quite delicious."

Fan Xiaopang forced a smile and offered a fake compliment, feeling deeply uncertain inside and wondering if Yan Li had simply misheard her earlier.

After all, the two of them didn't have any open conflict on the surface; he shouldn't go out of his way to play tricks on her like this.

She could only resentfully add another mark against Yan Li in her mental ledger: speaks without thinking, and his ears don't work right either.

Yan Li calmly took a bite of a pastry. Mmm, sweet, soft, and chewy.

Fan Xiaopang was petty, but he certainly wasn't a magnanimous saint either. After cursing him for several thousand words behind his back, Yan Li had jotted that down in his little notebook too...

---

Yan Li had quite a few more scenes today.

The sequence being filmed involved the character he played, Song Dian, competing with Shen Wanzan (played by Cheung Wai-kin) and Su Bancheng (played by Liang Guanhua)—three men fighting over a single woman. That woman was Zhao Xue'e, played by Fan Xiaopang.

The plot went like this: Zhao Xue'e's mother was blinded by greed and accepted three separate betrothal gifts, marrying one daughter to three different husbands. None of them were willing to yield, so they ended up taking the dispute to court.

In the end, the crafty magistrate pretended to sentence Zhao Xue'e to death under the pretext of public indecency, and then ordered all three husbands to pay for her funeral arrangements and burial.

Naturally, the two villains had no desire to pay for a dead woman, while the righteous male protagonist showed deep affection and ultimately won the beauty's heart.

Yan Li remained noncommittal about this storyline; while not overly cliché, it wasn't particularly fresh either.

From a character-setting standpoint, Su Bancheng was a crafty and cunning tycoon, and Song Dian was an elite scholar who had studied hard through the grueling imperial examinations to become the Suzhou Superintendent—how could either of them possibly fail to see through such a shallow trick?

Yet, since the screenwriter wrote it that way and the director filmed it that way, the actors had no choice but to play it accordingly.

Let alone Yan Li, even actors like Liang Guanhua, who had performed countless classic stage plays at the Beijing People's Art Theatre, transformed into loud and comical villains once the cameras started rolling.

Actors were simply hired hands getting paid to do a job, doing their best to portray their characters well; everything else was beyond their control.

Actually, this particular confrontation scene was quite interesting.

Both Liang Guanhua and Yan Li belonged more to the academic school of acting—methodical and precise, even when playing comical villains, infusing their performances with specific acting techniques and deliberate designs.

Cheung Wai-kin, on the other hand, was somewhat different. He started out as a singer and then forged his way through TVB and the Hong Kong film industry, belonging very much to the unconventional school of hard knocks.

In his early works, things were actually quite decent, and some performances revealed considerable acting talent. Later on, perhaps as he took on more and more comedy roles, and because most of those characters shared a certain homogeneity, he gradually figured out and settled into his own distinct acting formula.

Clever, mischievous, slightly exaggerated, tinged with a mild, comic-book-style brand of nonsense comedy.

Whenever he found a character to be similar, Cheung Wai-kin would simply take the lazy route and slot that formula right in.

To put it nicely, he had a prominent personal style.

To put it bluntly, his acting style was monotonous, lacking in enterprise, and content to remain entirely within his comfort zone.

Of course, the vast majority of actors were like this, so one couldn't be overly harsh, and Cheung had unique financial circumstances at the time, leaving him little choice but to prioritize making money first.

Moreover, looking at it from another angle, while Cheung Wai-kin's style tended to induce fatigue if watched too much, it was undeniably eye-catching and grabbed the audience's attention.

Combined with the fact that he was the male lead with the most screen time, he firmly occupied the absolute center of this scene.

However, Liang Guanhua and Yan Li were no pushovers either, each delivering solid performances. One was sly, the other was wicked, and together they vividly portrayed the hateful faces of the villains. The veteran actors playing the magistrate and Zhao's mother also performed quite well.

The least noteworthy of all was Fan Xiaopang. Apart from crying tears like pear blossoms in the rain which looked rather pretty, the rest of her performance was utterly unremarkable.

In two subsequent scenes, she actually forgot her lines multiple times, making Yan Li shake his head in silent disbelief.

Poor acting skills could be blamed on a lack of natural talent or youth and inexperience.

Forgetting one's lines, however, was a complete and utter attitudinal problem.

Fan Xiaopang's line flubs led to multiple NGs. She was already nervous and embarrassed, terrified of people gossiping behind her back, only to catch Yan Li shaking his head. She bit her lower lip, feeling a wave of grievance wash over her.

Taking on this role was essentially a temporary favor on her part; she had originally been waiting to join the cast of the martial arts drama *The Legend of Chu Liuxiang*.

With tight schedules, heavy workloads, and her mind still preoccupied with *The Legend of Chu Liuxiang*, Fan Xiaopang had insufficient time to prepare behind the scenes, making mistakes practically inevitable.

Perhaps unwilling to be looked down upon by someone she already disliked, Fan Xiaopang went out of her way to seek out Yan Li after wrap time to explain that there were extenuating circumstances for her performance.

"So that's how it was."

Yan Li nodded, wearing an expression of sudden realization.

So she was juggling multiple productions at once—that definitely qualified as an attitudinal issue. Her acting was mediocre to begin with, yet she tried to serve two masters; it would be a miracle if she could pull off a role properly.

Fan Xiaopang vaguely sensed the insincerity in Yan Li's words. Her beautiful eyes flashed, and instead of beating around the bush, she asked him directly and bluntly:

"Why do I feel like you seem somewhat... averse to me? Is there some kind of misunderstanding between us?"

"Huh?"

Yan Li was slightly stunned, then replied with utmost sincerity:

"I don't think so. I genuinely really liked your role as Jinsuo. Even though she was just a maid, your acting was ordinary and your look was a bit green, but she had a lot of spiritual charm..."

Fan Xiaopang: "..."

Setting aside whether there was a misunderstanding or not, this guy's mouth was truly infuriating!