Chapter 60: It has a strong pugilistic world vibe; this is the Yang Guo of my imagination

"Damn, this is way too handsome."

"It's got that authentic martial arts world vibe. This is the Yang Guo of my dreams."

"Ahhhhh, my inner maiden heart is melting."

"Just for this face alone, I'm sold."

"Chen Ping, I love you!"

"Husband Chen Ping, your wife has arrived!"

"Chen Ping, I want to bear your children!"

"No wonder the title says 'To lay eyes on Yang Guo is to be ruined for life.' With a Yang Guo like this, I'm afraid I'd be ruined for life too if I saw him."

Bullet comments filled the screen like falling snow.

At this point, if you hadn't witnessed Chen Ping removing his mask just moments before, you truly wouldn't be able to make out what his face actually looked like.

If you wanted to see Chen Ping's real appearance, your only option was to turn off the bullet comments.

And those users who turned off the comments to re-watch Chen Ping unmask, upon laying eyes on that explosively handsome face, joined the crowd and sent countless new bullet comments flying across the screen.

"Brothers, Brother Ping has unmasked! Quick, look!"

"Holy crap, with a face like this, he could totally make a living off his looks. Why even bother acting?"

"I finally know what a true surprise is."

Earlier, Chen Ping had teased in advance that he would give his fans a surprise.

The fans watched the first two episodes and thought they were pretty good, assuming that was the surprise.

Little did they know, the real surprise was yet to come.

However, the most pleasantly surprised party of all had to be Tencent's official management.

After Tencent gave the third episode of *Actors, Ready!* a threefold promotional push, the show's backend streaming data simply exploded.

30 million views.

50 million views.

100 million views.

200 million views.

300 million views.

In just a single episode, viewership broke 300 million views on the very same night.

"Director Cheng, it's a hit! It's blowing up! It's massive!"

The technical director, who had been constantly monitoring the backend data, reported to Cheng Liang with great excitement.

Cheng Liang was thrilled as well, immediately asking, "What are the numbers?"

You have to understand, Cheng Liang had been waiting anxiously for the backend data all this time.

Before this, he had actually been quite depressed.

For the sake of *Actors, Ready!*, he had previously authorized three times the usual promotional effort.

While it might not have seemed like much on the surface, there had been plenty of cold-blooded gossip circulating within Tencent's internal ranks.

In particular, a few of Cheng Liang's rival colleagues bluntly stated that he had botched the show and was only trying to artificially inflate its popularity through brute-force promotion.

This had put Cheng Liang in a foul mood for quite some time.

Yet, unhappy as he was, he simply had to endure it.

Tencent was a massive platform, and even within the film and television division, they maintained two competing teams.

Whichever team performed better got the green light. It was the quintessential horse-racing mechanism.

To emerge victorious, talking a big game was completely useless; the only thing that mattered was the data.

Only data could serve as the ultimate proof.

Because of this, he had essentially placed all his chips on *Actors, Ready!*.

Of course, prior to this, he wouldn't have dared to take such a gamble.

But ever since Chen Ping removed his mask in the third episode, he believed this would be the ultimate turning point.

Sure enough...

"Director Cheng, it has already surpassed 300 million views."

"That many?"

"How many hours has it been online?"

"Less than 3 hours."

"What's the 24-hour projection?"

"800 million views."

"Good, good, good..."

Ecstatic, Cheng Liang repeated the word "good" three times.

Suppressing his excitement, however, Cheng Liang said, "I want a detailed data breakdown."

"Director Cheng, it's being compiled for you right now."

"Forget about waiting for the compilation, I'm coming down to the tech department."

With that, Cheng Liang and the technical director headed straight to the tech department.

They pulled up the data analytics.

By this time, views for *Actors, Ready!* had already smashed past 320 million.

And the segment of this episode that garnered the most attention was the time slot between 1 hour 11 minutes and 1 hour 35 minutes.

This particular timeframe was precisely when Chen Ping took the stage.

In other words, the vast majority of people had tuned in specifically for Chen Ping's unmasking.

It was crystal clear:

Cheng Liang's gamble had paid off.

"Good lad, it seems your potential goes far beyond this."

Staring at Chen Ping on the monitor, Cheng Liang felt a deep wave of satisfaction.

When he had initially invited Chen Ping to join the program, it was merely because Chen Ping had previously played Chao Xiaoshu.

Cheng Liang felt Chen Ping possessed decent acting skills, but apart from that, he hadn't expected Chen Ping to bring anything else to the table.

After all, Chen Ping wasn't the only actor on the show with good acting chops.

Never did he imagine that Chen Ping would deliver such an astonishing surprise in the third episode.

"However, Director Cheng, even though our show is a massive hit, quite a few viewers keep posting online claiming that Chen Ping might have gotten plastic surgery."

"Oh? Do they have any proof?"

"None at all."

The technical director shook his head. "Plenty of industry experts have already come out to analyze it, and they can't find a single trace of plastic surgery on Chen Ping. On the contrary, quite a few other celebrities have had their plastic surgery histories dug up instead."

"Pfft..."

Cheng Liang nearly spat out his water.

When it came to the question of Chen Ping's appearance, they knew the truth better than anyone.

There was only a single day's gap between the broadcast of the second and third episodes.

Chen Ping was completely unremarkable one day, only to shock everyone the next—when on earth would Chen Ping have even had the time to get surgery?

As for why Chen Ping suddenly looked so handsome?

Perhaps Chen Ping had used some kind of magic.

In any case, Cheng Liang couldn't figure it out.

And honestly, he didn't care to figure it out either.

Such matters were impossible to explain clearly anyway, but if one desperately needed an excuse to cling to, they might as well listen to Derek Yee.

Chen Ping had always been the restrained type, which kept his overall aura and physical appeal bottled up rather than outwardly radiant.

When someone is restrained like that, you might not notice anything special about them.

It was much like a luminous pearl during the daytime—you would simply mistake it for an ordinary marble.

Only when night fell would you realize just how brilliantly dazzling that pearl truly was.

...

"Brother Ping, could you sign an autograph for me?"

"Brother Ping, from now on, you're my idol!"

"Brother Ping..."

This was what it meant to become an overnight sensation.

Chen Ping was living proof.

Overnight, through *Actors, Ready!*, Chen Ping exploded across the entire internet.

Simultaneously, his follower count on the Douyin platform skyrocketed from his previous 300,000 to a staggering 3 million.

That was a tenfold increase.

Of course, these 3 million followers didn't mean Chen Ping only had 3 million fans total.

Rather, out of tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of viewers, 3 million people had actively chosen to follow Chen Ping's Douyin account.

Relatively speaking, these 3 million followers were far more hardcore.

These weren't bots bought with money, nor were they pushed by official algorithms; these were living, breathing fans who had searched for him and hit the follow button of their own accord.

Therefore, when Chen Ping arrived at the set to film the next day, a crowd of background actors swarmed him directly.

"Look, guys, we're all actors here, no need to ask for autographs, right?"

"There is a need, Brother Ping, there's a huge need... You have no idea how famous you are right now. If I can get just one autograph from you, my Douyin account could gain tens of thousands of followers."

"Holy crap, is it really that exaggerated?"

"Not exaggerated at all... Um, um, can we take a photo together too?"

"Sure, no problem."

They were all actors.

Chen Ping had also started out as an extra.

He knew how difficult life was for background actors.

Most of the time, extras could barely scrape by just enough to afford meals by taking minor gigs.

Quite a few actors had started live-streaming; although it didn't make them rich, it at least helped improve their livelihood.

Chen Ping's scenes were scheduled for the afternoon, and he had nothing to do that morning, so he didn't turn anyone down and welcomed everyone.

After working busily for an hour or two, Chen Ping finally managed to extricate himself from the sea of background actors.

Though he was thoroughly exhausted,

to be honest, the feeling of blowing up overnight was still pretty damn sweet...